TN Local Food

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We support farmers and local food systems across Tennessee through education, resources, and connections.

10/06/2026

Let's fill out the TLFS scholarship application together! 📝

Scholarship applications for the 16th Annual TN Local Food Summit close Monday, October 12, so we're walking through the whole form, step by step.

A scholarship covers full Summit registration, including meals, for December 4–6 at Tennessee State University in Nashville. Travel and lodging aren't included.

We encourage new and beginning farmers, Black, Indigenous, Latino/a, and people of color, veterans, women, and agricultural students to apply.

📅 Apply by Monday, Oct 12
🔗 www.tnlocalfood.org/scholarships

Want to fund a scholarship? $175 covers a ticket for someone who needs it: www.tnlocalfood.org/scholarship-fund

09/29/2026

Just added to the Summit schedule: Ellen Polishuk! 🌱

Just about everything you buy for the farm costs more these days, and many growers feel they've already hit the ceiling on what their market will pay. So where does the profit come from?

On Friday, December 4, Ellen leads Finding Profitability in Tough Times, a day-long intensive that takes a methodical look at every corner of your farm business. She'll share a guide for working through the levers you can pull toward higher profitability:

🌾 Production prowess
📣 Marketing smarts
📊 Business acumen

Time is built in to get specific, so come ready to dig into your own operation. Everyone in the room gets to take part.

Who it's for: This workshop is designed for growers with three or more seasons behind them who've figured out the basics and are ready to sharpen their business.

Ellen has 30 years of farming experience, is a former owner of Potomac Vegetable Farms, and co-wrote Start Your Farm with Forrest Pritchard. Through her business, Plant to Profit, she now coaches growers across the country on production systems, crop profitability, soil fertility, and farm leadership.

Special thanks to Mad Agriculture for making this workshop possible!

Tickets are available, and scholarship applications are open through October 12th: www.tnlocalfood.org/registration 💚

09/26/2026

TN Local Food fam, we need you. Right now, we’re losing a $10,000 sauce showdown.

and are running the Sauce Showdown. If Team Cilantro Lime wins, $10K goes to support our work of strengthening local food systems in Tennessee.

Love teriyaki? Keep loving it. Just vote Cilantro Lime.

It takes less than 10 seconds to vote!

Link to vote: bit.ly/4ckjdYo

Then tag 3 friends who’d love to vote, too. Help get us in the lead!

09/17/2026

🎉 Early Bird Discount Alert! 🎉

Planning to attend the Tennessee Local Food Summit? Sign up for our email newsletter to unlock a special Early Bird Discount on tickets! This is your chance to join a powerful community of farmers, food advocates, and local food lovers—at a great rate.

Discount applies through November 06, 2026.

Sign up & save ➡️ https://www.tnlocalfood.org/early-bird-discount
🔗 Link in bio.

09/16/2026

Last year's Summit, in 60 seconds. This year's? You'll want to be there. 🌾

16th Annual TN Local Food Summit · Dec 4–6 · Nashville
Theme: Reimagining Our Food Systems
Keynotes: Leah Penniman & Nancy Matsumoto

Soil and ecosystem health. Food as medicine. Food sovereignty. Farm to school. Sustainable farm businesses. Lots more. 💚

🎟️ Early Bird discount code → Subscribe to our newsletter! Link in bio.
🎓 Scholarships are available! Applications close Oct 12.

09/13/2026

We are beyond excited to announce Nancy Matsumoto as a keynote speaker at the 16th annual TN Local Food Summit!

Nancy is an award-winning independent writer and editor specializing in agroecology, food sovereignty, food, drink, and Japanese American culture and history.

Her newest book, Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System, is about the female-led work building transparent food supply chains as an alternative to conventional agriculture.

Nancy's reporting has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, People, Food & W**e, Saveur, the Los Angeles Times, Civil Eats, NPR, and The Globe and Mail.

She co-authored the James Beard Award–winning Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake, and her translation of her grandparents' tanka poetry, By the Shore of Lake Michigan, received a 2025 American Book Award.

Don't miss the opportunity to hear Nancy speak as she joins Leah Penniman and many other speakers at the Summit, Dec 4–6 at TSU. Subscribe to our newsletter to get the Early Bird discount code!

09/08/2026

Leah Penniman is a farmer, educator, author, food justice activist, and co-founder of Soul Fire Farms in Grafton, NY, and we are beyond excited to announce Leah as a keynote speaker at the 16th annual TN Local Food Summit!

Leah co-founded Soul Fire Farm in 2011 with the mission to end racism in the food system and reclaim our ancestral connection to land.

As Director of Farm Operations, Leah is part of a team that facilitates powerful food sovereignty programs – including farmer training for Black & Brown people, a subsidized farm food distribution program for communities living under food apartheid, and domestic and international organizing toward equity in the food system.

Leah has been farming since 1996 and teaching since 2002. The work of Leah and Soul Fire Farm has been recognized by the Soros Racial Justice Fellowship, Fulbright Program, Pritzker Environmental Genius Award, Grist 50, and James Beard Leadership Award, among others.

Her books, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023), are love songs for the land and her people.

Don’t miss the opportunity to hear Leah speak on Afro-Indigenous Agrarian Wisdom and the movement to reclaim heritage agrarian methods that promise to feed the world without destroying the planet’s ecology.

📍 December 4–6 · TSU Avon Williams Campus, Nashville
Tickets are available, and scholarship applications are open through October 12th.
You can find these at https://linktr.ee/tnlocalfood

09/03/2026

Join us for the final session in our Lunch Hour Harvest series featuring Chris Battle, Mike Larrivee, P.G., and Holly Martin!

This session will explore food insecurity and its impact on health outcomes, comparing the community-based food access models working across Tennessee — from urban farms and community gardens to mobile grocers and neighborhood grocery stores built for the communities they serve.

Participants will identify the characteristics that make local food access initiatives successful and examine how partnerships between the agriculture and public health sectors can expand access, closing out the collaborative conversation between TN Local Food, the Tennessee Department of Health, and the UT Institute of Agriculture.

🎥 Missed a session? Catch up on all four previous webinars on our YouTube channel Tennessee Local Food

📅 Date: September 16, 2026, 12PM-1PM CST

👉 Register: https://www.train.org/tn/course/1136019

08/29/2026

In February, Winter Storm Fern impacted farms and farm businesses across Middle Tennessee. We mobilized and distributed emergency relief funds to 9 farm with the support of Farm Aid.

By May, we were launching the Tennessee Farmers Market Trail which led to 348 people checking in to 5 markets across 69 ZIP codes.

By early summer we were organizing a farmers listening session to share thoughts on aggregation and distribution in Nashville, and opportunities to move the needle on bottlenecks hindering local food.

In between: wholesale workshops at Hydro House and Healthy Flavors, a grower-buyer mixer with Southeast TN Young Farmers, animal husbandry & fiber farming webinars with Bugtussle Farm– now published as podcasts!

Eight months in. A lot more on the horizon.

Tomorrow we set the tables at Hachland Hill — Local Table: Summer Supper, 5:30 PM, a seasonal menu from Chef Carter Hach, live music, live auction. A few seats are still open; link in bio.

And if you can’t be at the table, you can still support this work. Our Fund the Need link is in bio — every dollar goes straight into farmer services, market access, education, and the relief fund that showed up in February.

08/28/2026

One more sleep. 🍽️

Swipe for last year’s table. Tomorrow we set a new one — local food, craft beverages, live music, and a chance to support sustainable food systems in Tennessee.

Saturday, Aug 29 · 5:30 PM · Hachland Hill Retreat, Joelton

Last seats at the link in bio. Can’t make it? Online auction closes Aug 29 at 8:15 PM CT!

Address

7007 River Road Pike
Nashville, TN
37209

Website

http://www.tnlocalfood.org/

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