Just as farmers markets must navigate the seasons, the ebb and flow of supply and demand, so must we! The WorldFMC has awakened from its Ferragosto slumbers of August revived and refreshed. Good thing! With many challenges ahead, please join us as we craft the future.
If you are like me, there is still a residual glow in your heart from the warm intensity of our
in-person General Assembly in July in Rome. Thank you to everyone who dropped their tentsand umbrellas during the peak season to help shape the future of our shared work to facilitate direct relationships between urban and rural communities.
In truth, despite the traditional Italian holidays in August, work continued. The MAMi Farmers Market Project (Mediterranean and African Markets Initiative) is closing in on opening dates for new markets in Egypt, Kenya, and Lebanon. As many of you know all too well, the opening day of a market is the culmination of many complex conversations and negotiations between the most unlikely of stakeholders. Meanwhile, the projects to develop evaluation metrics and communication strategies for farmers markets are moving forward with the FAO. If you attended any of those meetings in recent weeks, thank you for making the time. We will have much to report on soon.
In the coming weeks, there are in-person meetings that span the globe: Terra Madre in Turin,
Italy, where we will join programming with Slow Food on the Thursday conferences and at an aperitivo that caps the day with the Slow Food Earth Market community. I will be attending the G7 Agricultural Ministers Meeting in Siracusa that same week. However, once we get to October and November, it is the World Food Forum and Committee on Food Security events in Rome, followed by the World Urban Forum in Cairo. These are important events, in-person events.
However, it is the digital events that are forthcoming on the calendar that particularly excite me, since they bring our community of practice together. Please join us for the WorldFMC Academy Studio on the following dates:
Sept 25th
Oct 23rd
Nov 20th
Richard McCarthy – President of WorldFMC
