​Donations support equitable participation

Transforming our food systems requires supporting diversity in leadership and participation. Summit organizers and partners are dedicated to enabling equitable decision-making and participation in the Summit by ensuring financial resources are not a barrier to participation. Your sponsorship supports this commitment by helping to offset direct event costs such as registration, travel, and lodging for scholarship applicants. It will also support diverse and equitable participation in Summit leadership committees.

​

Why sponsor the Farmland Summit?

We all need to care about protecting farmland — and help to get next generations of farmers on the land. Our future depends on it. In the last 20 years, hundreds of thousands of acres of the Upper Midwest's agricultural lands have been paved over, fragmented, or converted to uses that remove them from agricultural use. If we continue along the same trajectory, we’ll lose millions of acres in the next 20 years regionally (American Farmland Trust, Farms Under Threat ).

​

When farmland is bulldozed for buildings and parking lots, it is permanently lost for growing food. The conversion of this land impacts soil health, water quality, and wildlife and pollinator habitat. It also prevents emerging farmers from accessing land to run successful farm businesses.

​

The Farmland Summit is a timely and unique event bringing together farm leaders, practitioners, and changemakers for urgent conversations about the complex challenges and opportunities related to farmland access, transfer, and conservation in the Upper Midwest. Your sponsorship supports and connects you to this community.

The Farmland Summit is designed to be a participant-informed event, with plenaries, participatory workshops, and open space designed to catalyze collaborative action, policy engagement, and information-sharing. We anticipate over 200 participants from across the Upper Midwest and beyond in attendance. We invite you to join us!