MOSES Conference Going On-Line

The Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service, better known as the MOSES Conference, is one of the largest farmer education organizations in the country. And like most other events over the past year, MOSES is moving into the virtual world because of the pandemic. MOSES Executive Director Lori Stern said this year’s “Growing Stronger” conference will be a 5-in-1 Collaboration.

“There are five organizations, and actually even more than that, coming together to provide content. Early on, as we were all evaluating whether or not we would be able to hold any events in person, we looked around our farmer education community and realized all of the folks that are involved in this event typically would be doing their own event. And, knowing ahead of time that we would all probably have a bit of Zoom fatigue, a bit of virtual space fatigue, maybe we should join forces.”

So with MOSES going on-line this year, what can participants expect?

“GrassWorks, they do grazing; the Organic Pork Conference, which is the Iowa Organic Association; O Grains, they do organic Grains out of the University of Wisconsin; the Organic Vegetable Production Conference, which is a joint effort between the Fair Share Coalition, which are the veggie farmers that so many people turned to this growing season to get their organic produce.”

Stern added this year’s conference will allow farmers from across the country, and even beyond to connect, share ideas and success stories.

“We’ve got veggies and we’ve got grazers, and we’ve got protein production, grain production, and then our organization is usually inclusive of all those things on some level," Stern said. "We have a lot of small farms that are pretty diverse in what they offer, so we’re in the mix as well. Part of what people look forward to is someone once described it as almost a class reunion every year. Coming together in La Crosse and seeing people you don’t normally get to see coming off of busy growing seasons, and having the opportunity to talk to people in hallways, over meals, and so we’ve tried to build into the conference opportunities to have active question-and-answer sessions for all the workshops, to continue to offer roundtables, we’ve got some social events in the evenings, really trying to find a platform and space in the schedule to make those connections.”

The Growing Stronger Conference is scheduled for February 22^nd-27^th. Click Here for more information.

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