CFS Conversations: Re-Regionalizing Our Local Grain Economies
Join us for a special CFS Conversations panel on re-regionalizing grain economies — with bi-coastal perspectives on how we can collaborate, share research, and move from why to how.
Consumer interest in local grain supply chains is no longer an emerging conversation. The question now is how we make collective change. Three members of our grains community will dig into:
What shifts have we seen over the last decade — in consumer demand, farmer interest, or infrastructure?
What does re-regionalization actually require, at the supply chain level?
What regional varieties, research, and field trials are showing promise for climate resilience, flavor, and nutrition?
And more!
Our panelists:
June Russell is Director of Regional Food Programs at Glynwood, where she works with stakeholders to build markets for emerging crops alongside climate adaptation strategies. Before joining Glynwood in 2021, she spent 17 years at GrowNYC leading the Grains program — a decade-long collaborative that brought dozens of new wheat, bean, and grain varieties to market and catalyzed a wave of small-scale processing infrastructure across the Northeast.
Mai Nguyen is a California-based agroecological grain farmer, activist, and James Beard Leadership Award honoree. Growing a diverse portfolio of heirloom varieties through dry-farming, low-tillage, and rotational practices — without synthetic inputs — Mai maintains full ownership of the grain from seed to sale. Farmer Mai is building a regional grain economy in California grounded in supply chain transparency, living wages, and seed-saving as both ecological practice and cultural inheritance.
Stuart Farr is the owner of Hudson Valley Hops & Grains, a 400-acre certified organic farm in Columbia County, NY. Raised on a mixed arable and beef farm in England, Stuart has been farming the Hudson Valley since 2015, growing wheat, barley, rye, einkorn, oats, sunflower, canola, buckwheat, and black beans — with on-farm oil pressing and a biological approach to soil management.