(Home)
Outreach & Education – Wireframe – TEXT ONLY with live links
About Us What We Do Farmer Innovation Program Get Involved News Donate (social media icons)
Outreach & Education
Through a variety of events and in-community convenings, Farm to Table works to bring advocacy tools to communities throughout New Mexico. We
- educate policy makers about the importance of New Mexico’s rural and urban agricultural communities and the people they serve
- celebrate and uplift farmers, ranchers and food systems workers
- gather farmers and buyers together in co-learning environments to facilitate networking and problem solving
Programs and events tie this work together to provide ways for people to connect in ways that are meaningful.
New Mexico Food & Farms Day
New Mexico Food & Farms Day celebrates the efforts of individuals, communities, organizations, and agencies who strive to create a thriving local food, farming and ranching economy, while at the same time emphasizing that everyone in the state should have access to fresh, healthy, nutritional food. A focus of Food & Farms Day are the annual Awards which celebrate individuals and organizations in New Mexico who are actively fostering innovation, equity, access, and sustainability in our local food and farming economy. The Awards are intended to ignite a statewide passion around local food that ultimately creates change in thinking, systems, and approaches to food production, use, distribution, and policy.
Food & Farms Day day provides an opportunity to highlight the intersection between health, sustainable food systems, and the economic wellbeing of our farms and ranches. It also speaks to the ways we are working together to increase affordable and healthy food access. It addresses the idea that thriving food systems encourage entrepreneurship and leadership, and reinforces the benefits of cooperation and coordination along with the intersection of informed policy making.
Click here to find information about Food & Farms Day. (page to be updated for 2024)
Past Food & Farms Day Awards
Food & Farms Day is produced by Farm to Table in partnership with the NM Food & Agriculture Policy Council.
Civic Engagement Training
The annual Civic Engagement Training introduces participants to the importance of advocacy and helps them find ways to educate policy makers on key issues. This virtual workshop takes place in conjunction with the NM Legislative Session.
The training provides an introduction to state and national policy in relationship to food and farm systems, and healthy communities. It prepares participants for the New Mexico Legislative session, and includes tools, such as how to tell your story to legislators, that will support participation during the legislative session and beyond.
Through an equity lens and with an upstream approach to engaging policy makers, we will actively involve participants in issues coming up at the New Mexico legislative session. Participants will begin to understand the legislative process, how to track legislation, and how to engage legislators around issues through focused dialogue and sharing their stories. The training brings together people who have worked to create strong advocacy around food, farming, conservation and water issues as well as legislators and members of state agencies who hold key responsibilities. It will include presentations and break out sessions to explore particular topics.
The annual Civic Engagement Training workshop is produced by Farm to Table in partnership with the NM Food & Agriculture Policy Council.
Locally Grown Initiatives
We foster the development of school environments that nourish children and help them to adopt lifelong healthy eating habits. Through our involvement as a founding member of the NM Grown Coalition and our administrative advocacy of the NM Grown Program, we’ve been involved in the expansion of the program statewide to all school districts, early childhood education and senior centers. This includes cultivation of school gardens, promoting strong connections between gardens, school meals and nutrition education, and serving locally grown products in school meals. This program is part of a larger effort called the Food Initiative–a multi-sector, multi- generational approach with nine state agencies, the Office of the Governor, and many partners statewide–that is a coordinated policy effort to fund food, farm, and hunger programs collectively. In 2022, the legislature appropriated $24 million and $58 million in 2023. Farm to Table is a partner in this Initiative through our programmatic and policy work.
Convenings
We also help to coordinate NM Grown regional convenings to bring together Early Childhood Education centers, K-12, senior services, farmers, food hubs, and others, to learn how to buy locally, create co-promotion, outreach and learning, and expand local food security opportunities while adding to the local farming economy.
Storytelling
Storytelling is a way to connect policy and law making to the boots on the ground, hands in the earth experiences that are affected by our country’s history of discriminatory farm policy. Learning how to talk with our elected officials, and using personal narratives gives us a chance to raise our voices, tell our stories and show why everyone’s voice matters in creating change.