Registration is open for the third annual West Virginia Urban Agriculture Conference, to be held Apr. 30 at West Virginia State University (WVSU) in Institute, beginning at 8 a.m. The event will feature workshops on topics such as horticulture, homesteading, conservation, marketing, adaptive gardening and livestock.
“We are showing that people in urban areas can participate in the food system and help combat issues of food access, hunger and health,” said West Virginia University (WVU) Assistant Professor and Extension Agent John Porter. “We are helping to show that locally grown food is a possibility, whether you have a 100-acre farm or a backyard raised bed.”
WVU Extension Service, WVSU Extension Service and the Capitol Conservation District are hosting the event, which stemmed from an increasing interest in urban agriculture planners were seeing in their workshops and trainings.
“This conference is the result of many people coming together to support the agricultural community, both urban and rural, in West Virginia,” Porter said. “Not only are we providing much-needed information and education, we are also helping to build a network here in the Mountain State centered on people producing food for themselves and their neighbors.”
In addition to workshops, the event includes a post-conference local foods reception, vendor exhibits and a feature presentation by Forrest Pritchard, a seventh-generation farmer and the New York Times bestselling author of “Gaining Ground” and “Growing Tomorrow.”
Registration is available through Apr. 15 at a rate of $45. A full schedule and online registration is available at urbanagwv.com.
Additional conference partners include the WV Department of Agriculture, the Natural Resource Conservation Service and Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE).