Glynwood is calling for nominations for its annual Harvest Awards. In its ninth year, the Harvest Awards recognize farmers, entrepreneurs, organizations, and businesses across the United States that demonstrate innovation and leadership in support of regional agriculture and sustainable food systems.

Please help us recognize outstanding work from around the country by nominating someone whose work has had a positive impact in your community.

The categories for the 2011 Glynwood Harvest Awards include:

• The Farmer Award
  
• The Award for Connecting Communities, Farmers, and Food
  
• The Wave of the Future Award
  
• The Good Food Entrepreneur Award

The Award for Connecting Communities, Farmers and Food

The Wave of the Future Award recognizes an emerging farm/food professional, business or organization that is addressing the critical challenges facing our food system in innovative ways. Examples include cutting edge approaches to climate change, regional food distribution and infrastructure, and creative support for beginning farmers.

The Good Food Entrepreneur Award is a new award in 2011 intended to showcase entrepreneurs that are getting good, healthy food to market in innovative ways. We are particularly interested in enterprises that are working to ensure fair returns for farmers and farm workers, as well as those with an innovative business structure.

In all categories: This year, we are especially interested in nominations that are building regional value chains, through production and distribution hubs and other supply chain developments that creatively work to connect communities with farms and increase access to locally produced food.

How to Nominate Someone:
Please visit Glynwood's website for nomination details, information on past winners, and to make an electronic submission. To receive nomination forms via snail mail, please contact Kim Vargo at kvargo@glynwood.org or (845) 265-3338. Additional information about Glynwood and past Harvest Award winners can also be found on our website.

Nominations must be postmarked or e-mailed no later than July 20, 2010.

About GLYNWOOD and the HARVEST AWARDS
The Glynwood Harvest Awards honor individuals, organizations, and businesses across the United States that demonstrate innovation and leadership supporting regional agricultural and sustainable food systems. Glynwood created the Harvest Awards program in 2003 to help to identify and disseminate "best practice" ideas and to inspire others to take action within their own communities.

Located in the Hudson Valley, Glynwood's mission is to save farming by strengthening farm communities and regional food systems. With its deep experience and expertise in working hands-on with communities to help them develop policies and infrastructure that support their farm economies and conserve their farmland, Glynwood's goal is for small- and mid-sized farmers to thrive on the land and in the marketplace. As a small but growing organization, Glynwood carefully invests its resources, seeking to lead the way to solutions for difficult problems and focusing energy where it will result in the greatest benefits for farmers and farm communities.

Glynwood

Glynwood

Glynwood is one of the nation’s leading sustainable agriculture and food organizations, with a mission to save farming by strengthening farm communities and regional food systems. Founded in 1995 and located in the Hudson Valley, Glynwood operates its own 225-acre farm, which models sustainable farming practices, conducts science-based soil and pasture restoration, and trains young farmers.

To further its mission, Glynwood conceives and implements community-based programs like Keep Farming®, and tackles infrastructure challenges such as the shortage of slaughterhouse facilities so that small to mid-size farmers can thrive and supply local and regional food systems. Through a national and international network of like-minded professionals and organizations, Glynwood gathers, develops, tests and shares innovative ideas and initiatives from around the world that may be effective in local communities in the Northeast and other regions of the country. In addition, the organization sponsors conferences, educational programs and public events to further a sustainable and robust food system. In 2010, Glynwood founded The Glynwood Institute as an incubator for ideas and action, a "creative action-tank" that develops and promotes realistic solutions to critical issues within the food system.

Glynwood's main programs:

• Keep Farming® is Glynwood's unique, step-by-step program for empowering communities to develop and implement plans to support local farming and conserve farmland.
• Glynwood Farm tests, innovates, and teaches techniques that demonstrate the economic viability of environmentally sustainable farming. With 225 acres in the Hudson Valley, it is a real-world model of farming practices that seek to optimize production while operating as an ecological unit.
• The Apple Project: Saving Orchards with Apples, is stimulating ‘apple entrepreneurship’ in the Hudson Valley by encouraging the diversification of apple varieties, promoting the production of high-value hard cider and spirits, giving growers new resources for knowledge and skill, and supporting a growing market for hard cider and apple spirits.
• Modular Harvest System™ is a revolutionary mobile system that is modeling the solution to the severe shortage of humane and high-quality meat processing facilities for pasture raised livestock - a solution that will benefit farmers, consumers, communities and the environment.
• The Harvest Awards honors farmers, organizations, and businesses across the United States for innovation and leadership in sustainable agriculture and regional food systems.
• The Glynwood Institute is a creative action-tank working to shift the U.S. to regional sustainable food and farming through its public programs like TEDxManhattan: Changing the Way We Eat.

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