Farm to Table

Since the beginning, the NWI Food Council has spent hundreds of hours volunteering to coordinate sourcing Indiana local food for fundraisers, events, chefs, schools and beyond.  Our relationships with local farmers were our first priority as a young organization, and we’ve developed a reputation for opening up new market channels for all types of growers and food entrepreneurs. Until the pandemic changed the events landscape, the NWI Food Council:

• Sourced for for County Line Orchard’s annual Farm to Table dinner for 10 years straight

• Held over 25 community listening sessions at local food establishments and food-focused nonprofits, always serving locally-grown food purchased from our region’s farmers

• Hosted FED: Food Expo & Discussion for 4 years in a row with over 1,000 attendees gathering together for a full day to attend hands-on workshops, network, enjoy local food and challenge themselves to build a better food system.

• Hosted the wildly popular FarmHop farm tours for 4 years, featuring over 40 farms from urban to rural, regenerative to conventional, hydroponic, aquaponic and pasture-based to 300+ attendees. 

Out of these efforts and through our reputation, we were invited to partner on a USDA Local Food Promotion Program Grant with Indiana University and Purdue University. This grant allowed us to hire a value-chain coordinator–a person dedicated to building relationships between farmers and buyers. This value-chain work accelerated our ability to identify the needs, challenges and opportunities between farmers and buyers and we quickly capitalized on our successes – and Region Roots was born.