May 29, 2025, 5:40 p.m.
2025 Spring Newsletter: Important Updates for Local Farms & Markets 🌾
The Latest from Open Food Network USA
Spring Is Here🌷
Fresh air, fresh produce, and a fresh start this spring! 🌱
Just like open source, our community is all about sharing and connecting. Take a moment, explore what's new, and see how you can be part of the network that’s growing this season 🥕
A little note from the Team📜:
Hey! We’re glad you’re here. This newsletters got a lot of good information, but if you feel you need more help or just want to chat 1:1 — we have office hours too! Every Monday at 9am PST join us over at http://meet.openfoodnetwork.net/
more of a chat kind of person? We got Hylo for that - post your questions, look to see what resources are available, and more.
Please let us know how we can help - we do what we do because of you!
Team Changes
The players on Team OFNUSA are changing, but we’re still here to fulfill our shared mission for good food, available to everyone at a fair price for farmers. Our work is grounded in our values and that won’t change.
We’re so delighted to welcome Emily Ricks to the team and a little wistful to say so long to our founder in the USA, Laurie, as she moves on after an 8-year adventure with OFNUSA. Apparently OFN is pretty addicting, because Laurie is still going to be hanging out as a board member of the nonprofit that runs the OFN Instance in the US. Emily will join Amber, Gina, and Kent to in supporting OFNUSA and you.
A little about our new face Emily:
Emily is passionate about decolonizing food systems! She has a background in physics, farming, data analysis, and music and is working on bookkeeping and related tasks, in addition to being backup tech support for Kent. She lives in a rogue, self-build cabin in the TN woods with her two dogs, and loves foraging and gardening with friends. She also manages the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market, which happily runs on the Open Food Network!
Our US team joins the global team in gratitude for you and for the opportunity to support your work.
New Monthly Virtual Gatherings for the OFN Hub and Producer Community – Join Us Every First Monday!
Calling all food hubs, shopfront managers, farm hands, and dreamers 📣 starting June 2nd OFN will be hosting Monthly OFN User Gatherings the first Monday of every month at noon Eastern, 11 Central, 10 Mountain, and 9am Pacific time 📆. This is a dedicated time to get together, learn, and discuss relevant topics that impact your operation with others in the same boat.
July 7th is the next call, so mark your calendars and register below!
New Contribution Model & Contribution Reminder 🪙
Haven’t paid for your last season or year yet? Caught up in the spring prep and forget? Here’s your chance to check it off your to-do list! Make sure you contribute your fair share and help us keep making great features to support our changing food system.
You might have noticed that when you are doing business on OFN, we will write you a monthly email inviting you to contribute and sharing a little tidbit with you. Whether or not you have a payment to make, please feel free to hit the ol’ “reply” button and say hi, ask a question, pat us on the back, make a complaint or tell us a joke. We would love that.
We have introduced a simpler suggested contribution model for 2025 based on monthly sales. We think this will be more responsive to your business, more transparent, and waaaay easier to figure out for you and for us. We’ll contact you at the end of every month and suggest a fair contribution based on this formula:
As usual, when you are ready to pay, just head to the OFN Donation Shop and pay with Paypal, a Credit Card, or let us know you are sending a check. Contact us for other options like bank transfers and crypto (just kidding, we don’t take crypto yet).
Did you know you can also contribute to OFN when you score some OFN swag? Every hat or t-shirt sold from our swag shop (run by a unionized cooperative, of course) puts $5 in our bank account while keeping you stylish.
Pay Suppliers Report - Have you tried it yet?
Shout out and a big thank you to the flower farms in Canada who supported funding for this improved feature!🌻🌷🪻
The Pay Your Suppliers report has new column options, such as Order Number, Order Date, and Order Cycle, making tracking and managing payments to suppliers easier. Many Hubs find it especially useful to download the report as a spreadsheet and add custom notes—like check numbers—for streamlined payment tracking. This update is a great step toward simplifying workflows and supporting transparency with producers.
As described by our friends at OFN UK in their recent newsletter:
The report, called Pay Your Suppliers, can be accessed from the Reports screen and gives a breakdown of products purchased within the period you specify. The price columns specifically break down the amount owed to suppliers for sales; if the supplier has added a fee (i.e. on the incoming producers screen of an order cycle), this will be shown in the total fees column. Ditto if the supplier is tax registered, tax will be shown in the total tax column. This report excludes fees and tax charged by the hub, which are still shown in other reports. We hope this will help simplify the admin process for paying your suppliers!
As always, make sure you check the OFN User Guide for an overview, and reach out via email, visit Kent and Emily during office hours Mondays, or make a visit to Hylo to ask any questions!
Conferences and Events
Catch our team members in action advocating for change.
ECO FARM’S 45th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Each year EcoFarm invites diverse stakeholders from California and beyond to promote grassroots leadership and regional solutions to decrease the negative impacts of industrial agriculture on environmental and community health. It’s full of farmers and passionate supporters of ecological farming, and we love it.
OFN team member Laurie Wayne was able to attend EcoFarm’s 45th Annual Conference this year! Experiencing four days filled with over 60 skill-building workshops, keynote addresses, pre-conference events, farm tours, seed swaps, tastings, and of course a million casual and mind-blowing conversations about technology, food justice, staying solvent, and more — we can’t thank Laurie enough for taking this opportunity to grow and connect with others in the agriculture and food space.
We are always excited by the new information and resources that our team members bring back to continue improving the OFN for our users and our food system 🫛🥦
Growing Urban Ag in Colorado
The Growing Urban Ag Conference was hosted on May 1st at CSU Spur in Denver. Participants heard from Commissioner of Agriculture Kate Greenberg, interacted and connected with local growers during the Farmer Panel, and participated in an open feedback session to share challenges and garner support.
Thank you to Hunt or Gather Buying Club, pioneering OFN users based in Colorado Springs, CO, who attended the conference and represented OFN in the urban agriculture space.
Is there a regional gathering you love to attend? Let us know and we would love to send you along some info about OFN to share with folks you meet. This is the best and most common way for the OFN community to grow.
Upcoming 2025 and 2026 Conferences
ASFS-AFHVS Joint Conference
June 18-21, 2025 in Corvallis, Oregon at the Oregon State University Campus is the joint annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS).
This event highlights social justice issues and explores ways to mitigate its damages. ASFS-AFHVS invites you to share food in Corvallis and participate in conversations to cultivate equitable and environmentally sound food and agricultural systems.
Cross-Pollinating Food Movements Conference
Come join us at Cross-Pollinating Food Movements Conference hosted by the Institute for Social and Economic Development (ISED)! 🐝 June 22-24, 2025 in Portland, Oregon.
Attend to explore strategies for sustainability, democracy, and community resilience while fostering connections across sectors. Whether you’re a nonprofit, farmer, community advocate, local government staff, or academic this is your chance to collaborate, share insights, and lead the charge for a more fair and resilient future. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a transformative event
Registration is now open, and scholarships and work trade are available courtesy of ISED 🌱
ECO Farm’s 2026 Conference
If that post above got you excited for EcoFarm no fear! There is a 46th annual conference is already on the calendar for January 21-24, 2026 at the Asilomar State Beach & Conference Grounds Pacific Grove, CA.🚜
The EcoFarm Conference is one of the largest and longest-running gatherings of sustainable and organic farmers, ranchers, and food system advocates in the U.S. Held annually in California.
Registration opens in August 📆
If you’ve attended a conference this year or have information or ideas to share you think could help others in the fair food community, don’t forget to post on Hylo! Collaboration is our jam 🙂
Survey Alert ⚠️⚠️
The Open Food Network (OFN) is refreshing its mission and strategic direction and we need your input. We want to better understand who we serve, the value we create, and the change we aim to make in the world. This survey is part of a broader process to define a clear and inclusive path forward, grounded in the voices of our community.
Your responses will directly shape how we talk about OFN’s purpose, focus our efforts, and evolve for the future. If you have 15-20 minutes to provide some ultra-candid feedback and suggestions, we would sure appreciate hearing them!
Thank you for helping us move towards a better food system!
Add OFN Donations To Your Shopfront ♥️
Join us this month by adding a donation “product” to your shopfront. Some customers love to pitch in, and this is an easy way for them to do it. Contact us to add an OFN donation to your shop’s options or if you need any help setting up a donation for a local cause or your own enterprise!
Hey, Change Makers, Help us out:
There are lots of ways you can support us all year round, moolah or nah we appreciate every type of contribution! But money works better to pay for server fees of course. Here's how to help:
Make an old-school donation : Every contribution counts, and every dollar goes directly to supporting OFN. To contribute at our shop, you choose your own donation "product", and our gratitude gets delivered right away. Are you more modern than credit cards and Paypal and checks in the mail? Give us a shout and we’ll work it out.
If you are an OFN hub, you can add a donation "product" to your shopfront and invite your customers to contribute. Check out Grand Rapids Farmers Market Hub's shop to see it in action.
Buy some OFN swag : These union-made t-shirts and hats remind you and everybody who looks at you what OFN does: support everyone in a community. It also firmly establishes you as one of the cool kids...and $5 of every purchase comes to OFN as a donation!
Spread the word🗣️: Share our mission with friends, family, and colleagues to amplify our impact. Gina's our social media genius, and if you're not following OFN on at least two social platforms, you are missing out!
Contribute what's fair 🫱🏼🫲🏼: For your use of OFN: We don't gatekeep access to our software - that doesn't mean it's free for us to create, maintain, or support. It means we're trusting you to contribute at a level that works for you, knowing that our suggested amounts can work out to about a quarter of what you'd expect to pay to use another platform with similar functionality. When you contribute at higher levels, you help us support other folks who are just starting out or are in historically excluded communities.
Volunteer👩🏽: Are you motivated, communicative, fun, and good-looking? You'll fit right in! Get involved in our community and contribute your skills and time to further our cause.
Let's work together to shape a future where everyone can access fresh, local, and ethically sourced food at a price that's fair for everyone.
Don't be a stranger.
With love and warm wishes to you and your community,
From your OFN USA Team
Don't forget to share this newsletter with a friend using the social media links below!