MOFFA's Annual Report for 2018

MOFFA’s Annual Report for 2018 is now available on the website, joining other reports going back to 1992, the year of our founding.  The year 2018, marking MOFFA’s 26th anniversary, was a year of looking inward, with significant time spent discussing our collective values, priorities, and vision.  We greatly appreciated Julia Darnton from MSUE traveling to the meeting to facilitate a long discussion resulting in consensus on several key values that we all, as an organization and as individuals, hold dear: environment, community, cooperation, health, inclusiveness, and education.  We discussed these values and more, including the word “organic” and its continued shifting political economy.  The statement we settled on remains, like much in life, both imperfect and fully functional. It has been a reminder to all of us why we volunteer our time to discover, share, and promote an agricultural system we believe in. 

MOFFA lost one board member in 2018, when Collin Thompson moved to take up a new position in Virginia.  Unfortunately the first months of 2019 saw the loss of four more members -- Amy Newday, Emily Shettler, Julie Studier, and Emily Nicholls, all of whom needed to have more time for family and farm.  We elected one new board member, Tony Browne, at the Annual Meeting in April, and elected Jessie Smith Chair, replacing Emily Nicholls.  Once again, we encourage MOFFA members to let us know if they are interested in contributing to the spread of organic practices in Michigan by serving on the organization's board.