During the last week of May, a handful of Iroquois Valley staff members visited a few of the farms and families that have been a part of our story since the beginning. The field trip was a great opportunity for our newer and more remote staff to have a hands-on orientation and see the transformation happening in the Chicago-area foodshed.

Organic agriculture is growing – in 2019, 8.3 million acres were planted and certified organic in the US. This equates to 18,155 organic farms and a 3% jump from 2018.

The National Center for Appropriate Technology recently released a report evaluating risk in organic agriculture based on five years of research. "I'm able to report that we found no strong evidence that organic farms are any riskier than non-organic ones, and at least some evidence to the contrary".