Thank you for your interest in the 2021 Virtual Mississippi Farm to Cafeteria Conference! The annual conference brings farm to school practitioners and future practitioners together from across the state and region to share, learn, and help grow the farm to school movement. Food service directors, farmers, school administration, teachers, students and community advocates are encouraged to attend. Registration opens at 9AM on Tuesday January 11th, here.

In lieu of a registration fee this year, we encourage those who can to donate whatever you can to offset the cost of the event. Please see the link to donate to our fiscal sponsor, Earth Island Institute, below the link to register on the zoom registration page.

We are so thrilled to announce our keynote speaker for this year’s conference, Jessica Harris. Jessica B. Harris, considered by many to be one of the ranking authorities on the food of the African Diaspora, is the author, editor, or translator of eighteen books including twelve cookbooks documenting the foodways of the African Diaspora. Harris consults internationally and conceptualized the award-winning cafeteria of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. She is currently leading the Culinary Institute of America’s new African Diaspora Foodways initiative. In 2021, High on the Hog, based on Harris’s book of the same name, premiered on Netflix. Dr. Harris is also lead curator for the exhibit African/American: Making the Nation’s Table to be presented by New York’s Museum of Food and Drink in 2022.

Dr Harris holds numerous awards and accolades including an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Johnson & Wales University. In 2019, her food-related works were inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame and she is the 2020 James Beard Lifetime Achievement awardee. Dr. Harris taught at Queens College/CUNY, New York , for five decades and is currently professor emerita at that institution.

While we will miss the opportunity to gather in person this year, we are so excited to deliver a flexible and diverse array of sessions that we suspect you will find interesting. We look forward to seeing you, virtually, February 8th. Register here!