September 17th & 18th, 2025 Colfax, NC
Join Us
$150 – General
(July 8th – Aug 31st)
$175 – Late
(Sept 1st – 9th)
$45 – Keynote Address
Closing Date
(July 8th – Sept 9th)
The Community Food Gathering is Community Food Strategies’ signature statewide event which brings together various food system change makers to explore solutions, learn skills, and strategize around how to create a food system built by us and for us.
Come Join Others:
Community food advocates
and more!
The 2025 Gathering will be held at The Conference Center at GTCC in Colfax, North Carolina, with additional events in the surrounding Greensboro area. We plan to host an in-person gathering, and are mindful of diverse health and safety needs to make this an accessible event for everyone.
Special thank you to The Conference Center at GTCC for hosting the conference!
Desired Outcomes
01
Create a vibrant, inclusive space that celebrates joy, uplifts community voices, and fosters progress in food justice.
02
Re-Ignite strong in-person connections that fuel trust, accelerate collaboration, and mobilize collective action across the network.
Tickets
General (July 8th - Aug 31st)
$150
Grants entry to both conference days with access to standard amenities and activities.
Late (Sept 1st - 9th)
$175
Grants entry to both conference days with access to standard amenities and activities.
Keynote Address Closing Date (July 8th - Sept 9th)
$45
Grants entry to the keynote address on the afternoon of Thursday 9/18 only.
Tier 1 CLOSED Pay-it-forward
$250
Grants entry to both conference days with access to standard amenities and activities PLUS additional funds to support 1 full scholarship.
Tier 2 CLOSED Pay-it-forward
$200
Grants entry to both conference days with access to standard amenities and activities PLUS additional funds to support half of one scholarship.
Tier 3 CLOSED Pay-it-forward
$150
Full Conference Registration plus additional funds to support a portion of one scholarship.
Download the Whova App on your phone to engage with all attendees, see speaker bios & ask them questions, and get the latest updates!
Having trouble joining? Search for our event and enter the invitation code: eq93cfoit2
AGENDA AT A GLANCE
We’ll have a keynote speaker, workshops, and panel discussions. Workshop sessions will weave in themes of resistance, reform, reimagination, and recreation while focused on topics about grassroots-led strategies, working within systems to influence policy, exploring alternative economic models, and deepening our relational practices so that we can transform our food systems towards equity and justice.
Then the first night kicks into high gear with a futuristic ’90s-themed afterparty! Get ready to dance under fun lights, sip on creative mocktails, wine, or beer, play jumbo lawn games and vibe out to a mix of classic 90s jams and fun beats. If lower energy activities are more your vibe, we’ll also have areas for quieter spaces. The night will be the perfect way to unwind, connect, and continue the celebration of community and creative collaboration.
Local Welcome
The Piedmont Triad Regional Food Council (PTRFC) is proud to welcome you to the 2025 Community Food Gathering. Stretching across twelve vibrant counties, the Piedmont Triad is a region shaped by rural heritage and urban innovation. The economy has historically been tied to textiles, furniture, and tobacco, but it is now home to growing industries from food entrepreneurship and agricultural technology to advanced manufacturing, biomedical research, and aerospace.
With over 9,000 farms in the Piedmont Triad Region and more than one million acres being farmed, the Piedmont Triad remains connected to the land. This is a place where food tells stories of culture, struggle, creativity, and care.
We hope your time at the Gathering inspires new partnerships, bold thinking, and the deep sense of belonging that can only grow from shared purpose.
Welcome to the Piedmont Triad. We’re glad you’re here.
-Piedmont Triad Regional Food Council
Keynote Panel Day 1 Transformational Community: Finding Our Strength in Each Other
The keynote panel will kick off the Statewide Gathering with three North Carolinian food leaders who will share their stories on what Transformational Community means to them and how we can lean into each other at such a time as this. We believe that each panelist offers a unique perspective on shifting our food system towards justice in authentic community. The panel will kick off our 2 days together with passion and vision for a way forward.
adrienne maree brown
(she/they)
Keynote Conversation Day 2 Writing Ourselves Into The Future
adrienne maree brown (she/they) is growing a garden of healing ideas. Informed by decades of movement facilitation, somatics, science fiction scholarship, and doula work, brown has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination, and Loving Correction as ideas and practices for transformation. brown is the New York Times–bestselling author/editor of several published texts, a ritual singer-songwriter, co-generator of the Lineages of Change Tarot Deck, and co-creator/host of the How to Survive the End of the World podcast with Autumn Brown. Their latest book Loving Corrections is now available from AK Press.
Community Food Strategies is excited to host adrienne maree brown, in conversation, as the culminating event at the Statewide Gathering of Food Coalitions in North Carolina. In a time of deep transformation, as our movement grapples with significant change, we see amb as a voice to help remind us of our community connections and humanity. She is a voice for imagination, reckoning, creativity, and can inspire us to tap into and embody the best of ourselves, individually, and collectively. We hope you’ll join us to light a flame of abundance and possibility, in face of challenges, as we close our time together at the 2025 Statewide Gathering.
Copyright adrienne maree brown, all rights reserved, https://adriennemareebrown.net/
*The keynote speaker requests that everyone mask for this event. Masks will be provided.
Workshops
Track 1
Elevating Community Wisdom & Accountability
This track highlights grassroots-led strategies, just recovery, mutual aid, and how communities can lead with accountability from and by community. This track centers resistance and reimagining outside of traditional structures, while emphasizing community-led transformation.
Track 2
Policy & Power: Transforming Institutions from Within
This track focuses on working within systems (government, schools, nonprofits) to influence policy, protect resources, and embed justice in institutional practices. This track centers reform approaches, focusing on transforming systems through sustained advocacy and strategic collaboration.
Track 3
Building Solidarity Economies & Democratic Food Futures
This track explores alternative economic models based upon value-driven practices, like co-ops, collective governance, or livable wages, that contribute to creating an ecosystem for equitable food futures. This track is about reimagining and recreating economies and systems for equity, resilience, and shared power.
Track 4
Culture of Care: Connection as a Tool for Change
This track deepens our relational practices – storytelling, care, conflict mediation, and authentic collaboration as core strategies in food justice work. This track is essential to both resist fragmentation and rebuild connection and trust.
Local Exhibitor Booth
Culture & Wisdom Exchange
Give a tote bag, take a bag
As we journey A Way Forward together, this tote exchange is a small act of transformation — reducing waste, sharing resources, and carrying community care with us. Leave a bag, take a bag, and keep the movement flowing. Bring tote bags to contribute.
Book, zine, media swap
Swap books, zines, and media that reflect our shared values — from food justice and care to community power and transformation. Take a book, leave a book, or just explore. Bring a book, zine, or other type of media to contribute.
Mutual Aid
Offers & Needs wall
People fill out a card that shares what they offer and what they need to fulfill a collective dream, post it on a wall, and respond to what other people have posted.
Community Seed Swap
In honor of Josie Walker
Vendors
North Carolina Local Food Council
North Carolina Budget & Tax Center
NC Food Systems Advocacy & Coalition
Center for Environmental Farming Systems
Carolina Farm Stewardship Association
NC Ag Census Infographic
Conference & Hotel
The Conference Center at GTCC
Afterparty – International Civil Rights Center & Museum
Hampton Inn Greensboro-Airport
Rooms & Rates Extended to Aug 22nd
Health
& Accessibility
Health Guidelines:
Choosing comfort level via nametag
Stay home if you are feeling unwell
Masks available at registration desk
Planned Accessibility Features:
Gender-neutral bathrooms
Designated quiet/healing areas
Nursing room
Pre-event access needs assessment
Translation and Interpretation in Spanish available
2023 GATHERING
Hundreds of farm and food system leaders, public service and nonprofit leaders, local food councils, key partners, and community food advocates from across North Carolina participated in Forging our Food Future: 2023 Community Food Gathering March 15-16 in Rocky Mount, NC.
