For the last few days we’ve been attending the Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, WI. Each year it seems to get bigger. When we first started attending, it was at a convent, then it moved to UW-La Crosse, and now at the La Crosse convention center. Nearly 3,000 attended this year’s meeting, and the La Crosse Center now seems too small.
I thought I’d just put in a shot of the river right behind the conference center since few pictures are more boring than people sitting around tables or chairs talking.
For me, the best part of the conference is sitting down for meals. The food, is, of course, outstanding and without exception, the people you meet at your lunch table are interesting and likable. This year, we seemed to meet many people who were just starting out on their farms and there to soak up information, just like I was years ago.
I’m told be people outside the organic community, that this farm conference is rare in the large number of young people that attend. I got to speak a bit with a reporter from Successful Farming magazine, a mainline farm publication and he said he’s never covered a conference with so many young people – he said it was rare to see a person under 55 at any of the other mainline farming meetings/conferences.