Local Food Summit to Return to Cumberland University in December

Jeff Poppen, known as The Barefoot Farmer, has been the main inspiration behind the annual Tennessee Local Food Summit for years. But in 2022 he stepped aside to allow a new generation to plan and execute the event. Remaining active as an adviser, Poppen has watched one of his protegees, Natalie Ashker Seevers, step in as the director of the summit.

You may have heard the story about how Poppen battled with a neighbor who built a chicken-breeding facility adjacent to his Long Hungry Creek Farm, endangering the biodynamic and organic farming processes that set the Barefoot Farmer apart from many other producers. Now, Seevers finds herself in the same situation as an industrial chicken house is moving in next to her own organic farm where she grows, cans and preserves food for her family. 

Seevers spent years working as the CSA manager for The Barefoot Farmer and as marketing manager for Al Gore’s Caney Fork Farms in Carthage, so she has been on the front line of sustainable farming practices for quite a while. Under her leadership as executive director, the Tennessee Local Food Summit will continue its leadership of the local food movement with a weekend of panel discussions, film screenings and hands-on workshops on farms during the event at Cumberland University in Lebanon Dec. 1 through 3.

In addition to planning the summit, the organization has recently raised and distributed $19,000 to help farmers recover from storm damage. Additionally, they have partnered with Patagonia and Amazon to expand the resources they are able to offer in the face of industrial farms that are endangering sustainable, organic operations, which represent only 3 percent of American farms. Numerous studies identify large-scale industrial farms as a primary driver of climate change, so the work of the Local Food Summit is truly addressing an existential crisis.

Poppen’s original thesis for the summit is that Tennessee once fed itself, and it can again, relying on small farms instead of trucking in food from mega-operations. If this is an idea that intrigues you, definitely mark your calendar for a trip to Lebanon this winter. We’ll share further details as the programming firms up. Until then, buy local whenever you can.