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.