Non-Profits in Spotlight at Everything Local
Illinois Stewardship Alliance highlighted importance of farmer-activists
When Changemakers Get Action from Lawmakers
If you’re a regular reader of Local Food Forum, you know that I have a close working relationship with Illinois Stewardship Alliance, the state’s leading policy advocate for the local farm and food communities. Most of my connections with the non-profit are remote, so it was great to catch up in person — and see some longtime friends — during the Everything Local Conference held in Springfield (January 17-19).
The Alliance has long relied on farmer-advocates to impress upon state lawmakers the need for changes that will help build a better and fairer food system. Its Local Food Farmer Caucus plays a major role each year in shaping the policy priorities that the Alliance pursues.
So it was no surprise that the organization focused its Everything Local panel discussion on the first three winners of its Changemaker of the Year Award. The award is giving to farmers who played a key role in one of the Alliance’s major legislative successes.
The panel, moderated by Alliance Deputy Director Molly Pickering, featured the Changemakers of the Year winners in the photo above. From the left:
Libby Ervin, Glacier’s End Farm, Johnson City: Libby and her husband Derek Ervin were the first Changemaker winners in 2021. These first-time farmers met in Chicago but moved to Southern Illinois to take over land that had long been in Derek’s family. They planted fruit trees with the goal of producing value-added foods, but because the trees take time to mature, they explored utilizing the existing state Cottage Food Law to make products, such as hot sauces and drinking vinegars, from other plants, including some wild-growing vegetation foraged on the farm.
Finding the existing law too restrictive — it only allowed cottage food sales at farmers markets — the Ervins stepped into a leadership role in the Illinois Stewardship Alliance’s campaign to expand the law. The measure, titled the Farm-to-Market Act and enacted that year, enables cottage food producers to ship allowed products anywhere within the state of Illinois. The changes had such immediate benefit to the Ervins that they were able to open a store with a commercial-grade kitchen in nearby Marion… which means they have already graduated from cottage food production.
Ed Dubrick, DuChick Ranch, Cissna Park: The man speaking in the middle of the photo is the 2022 Changemaker of the Year, the great Ed Dubrick (indulge me in a bit of an inside joke, though Ed really is great).
Ed and his wife Lindsey also are first-time farmers, raising chickens, turkeys and produce in Iroquois County in east-central Illinois. But when they tried to expand their sales to farmers markets beyond their home base, they were caught in a web of permitting and licensing fees that varied greatly from county to county. This prompted Ed to get heavily involved in the ultimately successful effort to enact the Farmers Market Permit Act, which greatly streamlined the permitting process in order to provide small farms with the opportunity to expand their sales without enduring excessive costs.
Morgan Sneddon, Fox at the Fork, Monee: Morgan and her husband Josh Sneddon also are first-time full-time farmers, working land in Will County at the southern edge of Chicago’ suburbs. Their farm produces prolific amounts of produce.
Yet even though a bumper crop is a good thing, they ran into a big problem: the lack of local processing facilities, an infrastructure gap wrought by the centralization of food processing and the increasing dominance of the “conventional” food system over the course of the 20th century. The Sneddons had to make preserved value-added products to ensure that all of their tomatoes and other crops didn’t go to waste, but with no reasonably local alternative, they had to do it all themselves in their home kitchen.
That is why Morgan and Josh dived into advocacy for the Local Food Infrastructure Grant Act, which turned into the Alliance’s biggest legislative victory in 2023. The grant program — with a January 31 application deadline that Local Food Forum previously reported — provides a pool of $2 million in state funds to be distributed in a competitive process in increments of up to $150,000 per project.
Eligible applicants include Illinois farms or cooperatives with fewer than 50 employees, similar-sized processing facilities or food businesses, local governments, health care entities and even correctional facilities. Allowed expenses include transportation vehicles such as refrigerated trucks, milling or pressing equipment, cooler walls and refrigeration units, and much more.
Preference in the selection process, which concludes in March, will be given to proposals that have established community support, have a positive economic impact on the local food sector, increase availability of agricultural products to underserved communities, projects involving underserved farmers, and those that support long-term economic development in local foods.
(The need to bolster local food infrastructure subsequently spawned a $6.4 million, federally funded grant program that was announced during the opening session of Everything Local; click here to read about it).
In a postscript, Ed Dubrick and Josh Sneddon, whose volunteer efforts played such a role in the Alliance’s successes, now work for the Alliance while continuing their farming careers. Ed now holds the title of Policy Organizer, while Josh serves as the Alliance’s Grant Program Coordinator.
In the above photo, the Sneddons received the certificate honoring their selection as 2023 Changemaker of the Year from Jerry Costello Jr., director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, at an event held in downtown Springfield on the evening of January 17. As Costello noted, the couple was to receive the certificate during Ag Day at the Illinois State Fair in August, but the ceremony had to be canceled because of severe storms.
[Small world note: I had the opportunity to share with Director Costello that I covered the elections of his father, retired U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello, when I was a political analyst for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C.]
Photo Roundup of Everything Local Non-Profits
As noted in the above article, one of the best things about attending the Everything Local Conference — presented by Illinois Farm Bureau, Illinois Farmers Market Association and Illinois Specialty Growers Association — was being able to connect with virtually all of the major non-profits engaged in support of a robust and sustainable local food ecosystem. The following are photos of the other non-profits who exhibited at the Conference with links so you can learn more about them (in alphabetical order).
Farmers Rising (formerly Angelic Organics Learning Center)
Farmer Veteran Coalition of Illinois
Food Works of Southern Illinois
Illinois Farmers Market Association (ILFMA)
The Land Connection/Illinois Farmlink