Welcome to a new year, as January is already proving to be a busy and exciting time for us. The OSU Center for Cooperatives is excited to be invited to speak at the 2024 Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) 45th Annual Conference. This year’s conference will be held at the Cherry Valley Hotel in Newark, OH on February 15th– 17th, and this year’s theme, Cultivating Care, is reflective of how accurate and essential care is in our community. The conference features over 50 workshops from farmers markets to livestock management, numerous exhibits for shopping and networking, locally sourced meals and keynote presentations- ‘My Favorite Mistake’ and ‘Pathways to a Caring and Sustainable Future’ with Jim Embry.
Our team will present a session “Farmers Working Together: Collaborations in Marketing, Purchasing, and Equipment to Improve Your Farm’s Bottom Line” during the Friday morning workshop. Attendees will be presented with a framework that identifies and discusses challenges that farmers face in marketing, distribution, and acquiring their supplies and equipment, as well as discussion of collaborative approaches to help farmers resolve those challenges and struggles. Farmers and service providers with some experience in agriculture will have the working knowledge to identify and understand these challenges as well as ways to pursue strategies that are essential to an already functional farm business.
Collaborative approaches to marketing, purchasing, and equipment sharing can be opportunities for farmers to save time, enter new markets, lower costs, and more. In this session you will learn about collaborative strategies in food and farming and joint marketing models via multi-farm CSAs and co-op markets, cooperative supply purchasing, and equipment sharing. You will be introduced to collaborative models in food and farm marketing and distribution as well as supply and equipment access, the problems these approaches may help farmers solve, and important considerations farmers and service providers using cooperative approaches.
Throughout the two-day conference, attendees can talk and network with vendors from across the state, while enjoying locally sourced foods and products that aide in making farm life easier and more enjoyable for everyone. For more information and registration details click here.
