The Farmer-Chef Connection
The 7th annual Farmer Chef Connection Conference (Photo by Andrew Daddio)
The Farmer-Chef Connection (FCC) was established in 2001 — the result of a creative collaboration between Ecotrust and the Portland Chapter of the Chefs Collaborative.
The FCC conference is a unique annual gathering that brings together food producers (principally farmers, ranchers and artisans) with food buyers (chefs, retailers, processors, distributors and institutional purchasers) for what is first and foremost a business-to-business networking event.
Placing strong emphasis on the mutual value derived from long-term, stable business relationships between food producers and buyers, the FCC conference has yielded a powerful set of "best practices" to build strong market collaborations between producers and buyers. Recounts Manuel Recio of Viridian Farms, "We went from nothing — having no contact with restaurants — to suddenly working with eight different restaurants our first year with the program."
What began as a small gathering of farmers and chefs in 2001 has metamorphosed into an economic engine for local agriculture and an educational forum for communities throughout the region — with no end in sight. Farmer-Chef Connection events have been held in Oregon, Wisconsin, Colorado, Florida, and many other states. Events in the Pacific Northwest are organized by local Chefs Collaborative chapters and others, and typically take place in the spring. Go to www.farmerchefconnection.org for more information.
Host Your Own Farmer-Chef Connection
Interested in hosting a Farmer-Chef Connection event – or something similar – in your area? Ecotrust's publication Building Local Food Networks: A Toolkit for Organizers synthesizes our years of experience building and bolstering local food networks in the Pacific Northwest in order to support the efforts of other communities striving to do the same. In conjunction, we've launched an online, interactive learning community to foster peer-to-peer exchange of ideas, questions, and lessons learned around the topic of building local food networks. Learn more here.
