Farm Broadcasters Interview Grantees on Food Systems, Conservation Topics

Food and Society Policy Fellows Francis Thicke and Denise O’Brien, and Jim Petterson, director of public affairs for The Nature Conservancy, gave more than 20 interviews to farm radio and TV reporters at the recent National Association of Farm Broadcasters convention in Kansas City, Mo. Those reporters represented hundreds of stations nationwide.

Thicke, of Fairfield, Iowa; and O’Brien, of Atlantic, Iowa, both operate family farms that are model community-based food systems enterprises. Their interviews with reporters focused on the advantages of community-based food systems to farmers and communities. O’Brien also spoke on farm women’s issues. Petterson focused on how a conservation group and farmers and ranchers can work together.

More information on Thicke, O’Brien and the Food and Society Policy Fellows program can be found at www.foodandsocietyfellows.org. The Food and Society Policy Fellowship is a national program designed to educate consumers, opinion leaders and policymakers on the challenges associated with sustaining family farms and food systems in the United States that are environmentally sound, health promoting and locally owned and controlled. The Thomas Jefferson Institute of Columbia, Mo., administers this program in partnership with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, Minn., with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. For more on The Nature Conservancy and its programs, check out the Conservancy’s Web site at http://nature.org/.