Using Our Voices &
Choices: How Growers and Eaters
Can Work Together to Support Regenerative Farming in Illinois
Keynote Speaker: Liz Moran Stelk
Liz Moran Stelk discusses her work as the
Executive Director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance (ISA), a member-based organization that seeks to
create a more just and regenerative local food and farm system in Illinois and nationwide. She will explain how our current policies
perpetuate an industrial agricultural system that is both
ecologically and socially damaging and why it is imperative for us to move
toward more regenerative and sustainable farming and eating practices. This transition is particularly important in
the face of climate change. She will
provide specific examples of how the ISA works to make change happen at local,
state, and national levels. Her talk
will help us understand how we can use our own voices and choices to help
transform farming and eating for the better.
Liz Moran Stelk, Executive Director of Illinois
Stewardship Alliance, is a veteran organizer with experience in sustainable agriculture policy and
building powerful organizations. Liz
previously served as a Regional Organizer with the Western
Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) in Montana where she worked with farmers and ranchers
in seven states on local, state and federal food and agricultural policy. A year working on Crazy View Farm in Wilsall,
Montana, with her husband David dramatically shifted the focus of
her career in organizing and managing field campaigns. While
selling salad mix to Crazy View's devout following at a small town farmers
market, she was energized by the idea that if every person who shops at farmers
market were organized, we could change the food system.
Before the farm, Liz organized home healthcare and
nursing home workers with SEIU Healthcare Illinois and managed the field
operations for the successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in
Illinois. Liz co-founded and serves on the Steering Committee of the National
Healthy Soils Policy Network, helping revitalize the Midwest Sustainable Ag
Working Group (SAWG), and is a partner in the Regenerate Illinois
collaborative. Liz is also a UIS alum
(2005). She was a member of the first
class of Capital Scholars.