Registration now open!
2025 Farm Stop Conference:
March 2-4, 2025 • Ann Arbor, Michigan
Building Strong Retail Systems for Local Farmers and Local Food
Announcing our keynote speaker, Philip Ackerman-Leist!
New Models of Local Food Systems and How Farm Stops Fit into the Mix
Philip Ackerman-Leist is a “Free Range Prof” with a passion for exploring food systems innovation, agricultural systems, resilient communities, and conservation initiatives around the world through his roles as a farmer, educator, author, off-grid homesteader, and consultant. He frequently collaborates with The Lexicon, a California-based NGO that uses story-based design thinking to mobilize and activate influential decision makers to motivate a faster, more targeted response to some of the greatest challenges facing our environment. Much of that work focuses on the development of the Ecological Benefits Framework and resources for collaborative regional value chains.
Prior to leaping the fences of higher education, Philip spent two decades as Professor of Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems at Green Mountain College, where he built the nation’s first online graduate program in food systems, an undergraduate program in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems, and a 23 acre organic farm. He then served as Dean of Professional Studies and Director of the New American Farmstead at Sterling College.
Philip is the author of A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement; Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems; and Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader. He has farmed in the Italian Alps, North Carolina, and Vermont. He now raises American Milking Devon cattle on his family’s off-grid homestead at UpTunket Farm in Pawlet, Vermont, the base for Foodshed Solutions LLC. Philip finds joy and inspiration in working with inquisitive changemakers and communities around the world. He finds solace working in approximately 150 acres of pasture and woodland with his family and their heritage-breed cattle on a remote, solar-powered farm in Vermont. At home and as an educator, he tries to combine a farmer’s pragmatism with a teacher’s collaborative quest for the future.
“Farm Stops are year-round, every-day markets that support small-scale farmers and strengthen local and regional food systems. They do so most often by operating on a consignment model, which gives producers a fair price, flexibility with their time and products, and provides more direct connections with consumers.”
- Kathryn Barr, author of “How to Start a Farm Stop”
Join us for another exciting opportunity to learn about business operations and share best practices.
After the great success of the inaugural Farm Stop Conference in 2024, we are proud to present the second Farm Stop Conference in March of 2025!
With about one dozen farm stops now successfully up and running, and several more approaching launch, we believe now is the perfect time to gather, learn from one another, share best practices, and envision the role we’d like to see farm stops play in our local food ecosystems.
Whether you operate a farm stop already, or think that you may one day want to open one in your community, our goal is to provide content useful to you as you move forward. With that in mind, we are putting together an ambitious slate of local food thought leaders, and planning a full lineup of panels on everything from fundraising and marketing, to farm relations and merchandising, while also leaving plenty of time for networking.
