Written by: Dr. Frannie Koe, MD
Edited by: Breanne Brazeale
One of my favorite organizations in our state is the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network, or ASAN. Spearheaded by Alice Evans and an incredible team of individuals, ASAN is a network of diverse Alabamians, including farmers, growers, farming organizations, and consumers who work tirelessly to connect buyers with locally grown healthy products and promote and protect sustainable agriculture practices across the state. You can learn more here: https://asanonline.org/
ASAN hosts frequent educational and networking events, and one of my favorites is their annual Food and Farm Forum. Temporarily sidelined by Covid-19 concerns, the Food and Farm Forum is back! The forum serves to bring together growers, eaters, and diverse agricultural experts across our state for a weekend of sharing, skill-building, education and networking. If you are interested in learning more or attending in 2023, please check out the Food and Farm Forum page on ASAN’s website here: https://asanonline.org/forum2023/
I have gone to ASAN’s Food and Farm Forum in the past and loved it. I attended a few years ago for the first time when it was held in Fairhope, AL at Camp Beckwith. Unfortunately, I was so busy enjoying the community and learning from the experience that I forgot to take pictures!
Overall, I found it to be extremely educational — I learn so much from conferences like the Food and Farm Forum and others. Each year, the ASAN team successfully put together incredible events. The speakers and participants at the Food and Farm Forum are incredibly diverse. This helps me learn about new ways of resolving problems across all categories here on my own farm, in Collinsville and around Alabama.
Someone asked me about what happens at these types of conferences or forums. This year, for the first time, ASAN hosted a few field trips for those who could attend. I went on one tour that took us on a visit to the new Christian Farmers Market, located in Prichard, Alabama, which is a community with one of the highest crime rates in our state. The people who live there want to change that. They have been able to get kids and others involved in buying healthier foods at their market and are working to grow nutritious food right on site, keeping food production and agriculture education in their community.
Another part of the tour included a visit to Africatown, which is a community in the Mobile area with an incredibly complex history. This settlement was originally founded by African captives, taken from their homes, and brought to the Gulf Coast during either 1859 or 1860. The ship which brought them, the Clotilda, was often relegated to myth or kept as a closely held family secret, was found in 2019 just off the coast near Mobile, AL. The community, consisting of people for whom resilience and making something out of nothing is their legacy, hope that this discovery will start to not only shine light on the area’s complex and often painful history, but will bring about a much-needed rebirth for the area. Africatown has struggled with everything from hurricane damage to industrial pollution to serious economic hardships. To learn more about this community, I recommend the following article:
How was a visit to Africatown in Mobile relevant to the Food and Farm Forum? We learned how the community was started and how buying land and producing your own food can represent so many things other than just providing nutrition for your family. The men and women who established the Africatown community were brought to Mobile in chains. After the official abolition of slavery with the ratification of the 13th amendment in December 1865, they worked to purchase their own land so that they could grow their own food and provide for their own families as free individuals. The emphasis of the tour was on self-sufficiency and the resiliency and self-reliant spirit of the Africatown community.
After the tours, the bulk of the conference began on Friday. There were multiple breakout sessions and classes that covered diverse topics such as mushroom culture, food forests, farming tools, overcoming obstacles in establishing community gardens, fruit trees that are suited to the hot and humid Alabama climate, and lots more.
Fellowship was excellent. I met new folks working hard in all areas of Alabama toward food sustainability, and connected with old faces I knew from previous meetings. We ate delicious food! ASAN works hard to promote the Youth Food and Farm Forum. I agree it is so incredibly important to get younger generations involved in understanding food production and sustainability.
The weekend’s events ended with a Down Country Boil that included sausage from the Monroeville, AL area and lots of gulf shrimp!
At AgroshareMD, we sometimes partner with other organizations, including ASAN, to fill our Food Finder Map with farms, farmers markets, restaurants, and more so that we can all find sustainable locally grown food no matter where we are in Alabama! I deeply appreciate ASAN’s mission and community support, so I hope that if you are interested in an incredible experience, you will check out their Food and Farm Forum.
