FROM THE GROUND UP: Stephanie Anderson and Vanessa Garcia Polanco

Join FROM THE GROUND UP author Stephanie Anderson, Contributor Vanessa Garcia Polanco, Moderator Katie Naessens, and Bold Fork Books for an evening celebrating the qomen revolutionizing regenerative agriculture.

ABOUT THE BOOK

It’s well known that our industrialized food system has abandoned priorities of nutrition and environmental stability in the pursuit of profit—a model designed to fail, especially as climate change escalates. Yet this groundbreaking book describes a glimmer of hope: a green wave of diverse female farmers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, scientists, and political leaders who operate with the shared goals of combatting climate change through regenerative agriculture, redesigning the food system, and producing healthy, socially responsible food.

FROM THE GROUND UP, by award-winning author Stephanie Anderson, offers a journey into the root causes of our unsustainable food chain, revealing its detrimental reliance on extractive agriculture, which depletes soil and water, produces nutritionally deficient food, and devastates communities and farmers. Anderson then delivers an uplifting, deeply reported narrative of women-led farms and ranches nationwide, supported by women-led investment firms, farmer training programs, restaurants, supply chain partners, and advocacy groups, all working together to create a more inclusive and sustainable world.

FROM THE GROUND UP sheds light on a set of inspiring journeys, with stories that will transform the way we think about the food chain—one that can weather the storms of climate change, conflicts, and global pandemics.

ABOUT THE STEPHANIE

Stephanie Anderson holds an MFA from Florida Atlantic University, where she now serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, TriQuarterly, Flyway, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org, The Chronicle Review, Sweet and others. Her second book on regenerative agriculture, From the Ground Up, is forthcoming with The New Press in 2024. Stephanie is the 2020 winner of the Margolis Award for social justice journalism and the 2022 winner of the Ninth Letter/Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative Regeneration Literary Contest. Her debut nonfiction book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture, won a 2020 Nautilus Award and 2019 Midwest Book Award.

ABOUT VANESSA

Vanessa Garcia Polanco co-designs the strategy and implementation of the National Young Farmers Coalition government relations campaigns, ensuring equity-driven, farmer-centric research, policy, and programmatic interventions for a more just food system. She also serves as the organizational council member of the US National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. She has previously worked with the US Department of Agriculture, and the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. She is an alumna of Michigan State University and the University of Rhode Island. She is a James Beard Foundation Scholar, an Agriculture, Food, Human Values Society Innovation Leader, and a 2023 Grist Climate Fixer. As an Afro-Dominican immigrant, she brings her experiences and identities to her policy and advocacy activities. She leads Dominican Food Studies projects and funnels financial and agricultural resources to Dominican food sovereignty projects. She enjoys reading Dominican authors, cooking and baking, hosting brunches and thematic parties, long walks and connecting with folks over food and beautiful landscapes. She likes her coffee without sugar.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

As a vice president for Torrey Advisory Group, Katie Naessens advises clients on a wide range of legislative and regulatory issues impacting the food and agriculture sector. Katie joined the firm from the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry where she was senior professional staff under the leadership of Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. For nearly a decade, Katie advised Senator Stabenow on a range of policy issues including agricultural research, organics, specialty crops, credit, beginning and historically underserved farmers, local food systems, urban agriculture, food safety, rural development, and nutrition. Her legislative achievements include passage of the 2018 and 2014 Farm Bills, several COVID-19 pandemic assistance packages, and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Her work included committee oversight of food and agriculture programs implemented at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Credit Administration, as well as the Food Safety Modernization Act at the Food and Drug Administration.

Prior to joining the Committee, she held a political appointment in the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where she worked for the under secretaries in both the Marketing and Regulatory Programs and Food Safety mission areas, in the White House Liaison Office, and in the Office of the Secretary. While at the department, she contributed to new policy development on healthy food access and food safety regulation and worked to expand public and private financial partnerships in rural communities. Katie was born and raised in Minnesota and has a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse.

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