About PIFF
Who We Are
Partners IN Food and Farming is a nonprofit organization focused on providing education and support for farmers to improve their farms’ financial, social and environmental viability and facilitation of work on food system issues across the state.
Partners IN Food and Farming is dedicated to connecting the farming community, eaters, and food advocates to facilitate collaboration and to make Indiana’s food system stronger.
We believe in creating a stronger farming and food community through the creation of training and networking opportunities throughout the state. We are dedicated to connecting the farming community, eaters, and food advocates to facilitate collaboration and make Indiana’s food system stronger.
Mission
PIFF serves as the primary connector for the sustainable farming community and food systems advocates in Indiana.
Vision
Our vision is a thriving and connected food community through coordinated, collaborative efforts across the state, building a more equitable and just food future.
Future
Our plan is to connect farmers and food consumers/producers throughout the great state of Indiana. To do this, we will create and support programming and offer services for those in the food community.
Our Values
Listening
Equity & Inclusion
Action
Connection
Empowerment
Sustainability
Acknowledgement & Accountability
Here at Partners IN Food and Farming (PIFF), we believe in and work towards a world that is inclusive, honest, and in which equitable outcomes exist for people across Indiana. We work hard to empower a broad diversity of voices on our Board of Directors and our Advisory Panel, to represent Indiana across racial, gender, geographic, and socioeconomic lines.
Equity is the compass that guides our work. PIFF actively seeks out partnerships and collaborations that align with our commitment to fairness, ensuring that no one is left behind in our collective pursuit of a sustainable food future.
We acknowledge that we are a primarily white and cisgender-led organization working in a landscape that contains a multitude of individuals. We work diligently to ensure we are including, inviting, and listening to voices other than our own. We recognize that the food system is inherently unjust, and our goal is to shed light and make change in and on these systemic issues.
Our Promises & Actions
PIFF’s staff will participate in anti-racist training to continuously educate and keep forefront our commitment to creating an equity centered organization and food and farming community in Indiana.
We actively listen to underserved farmers via our advisory panel and focus groups, to gather input that informs our efforts
In our mentorship program, we hold 30% of our mentee seats for BIPOC and LGBT+ farmers, and specifically consider racial, socioeconomic, and gender diversity in mentor and mentee selection.
We actively identify and uplift BIPOC, female, and gender-nonconforming farmers, ranchers, and growers in the Indiana landscape and create opportunities for them to teach, lead, and train in areas of their expertise in farming and ranching.
We continually seek opportunities to co-create, co-host, and collaborate on programs and events with underrepresented farmers, including female farmers, BIPOC farmers, beginning farmers, and military veteran farmers.
We commit to offering low-to-no cost programming and events to ensure financial accessibility to all of our audience. Where programs have a cost, we will offer sliding scale and/or scholarship options.
PIFF will curate resources for Hoosiers who want to make our food system more just.
We conduct equitable recruitment and election practices for board members to ensure a representative Board that reflects our constituencies.
We ensure transparency of organizational practices with sharing of governing documents and annual reports via our website.
How We Got Started
Partners IN Food and Farming (PIFF) grew from a need for a more connected farming community and a more resilient food system for Hoosiers. The work started with the great folks at Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition (HYFC), a chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition. They got to work connect beginning farmers across the state by hosting farm tours and potlucks; running programs like their Fellowship; and highlighting under heard farmer voices. Their work proved that there was a need for more farmer-to-farmer programming in Indiana but they started to hit the boundaries of what else they could take on as an all-volunteer group. Their work was critical to our launch because it showed the need for a full-time, stand-alone organization serving Indiana's food and farming community. HYFC and NYFC lent their support, and PIFF blossomed out of this incredibly strong foundation.
In 2021, PIFF received a huge boost when the Northwest Indiana Food Council included PIFF's launch as a major deliverable of their Regional Food Systems Partnership grant. PIFF was founded to be the network of networks and a way for farmers to receive peer-to-peer training. We provide farmer-to-farmer programming and services that help our sustainable farmers build community as well as the skills to ensure the viability of their farms. We believe in creating a stronger farming and food community through the creation of training and networking opportunities throughout the state.
Currently, we offer programs focused on farmer-to-farmer learning, including our mentorship program and field days. Our mentorship program just finished its inaugural run, and round two of this pilot is underway. The mentorship matches beginning farmers with more established farmers, and gives them paid time to learn from each other. Our field days focus on learning the nuts and bolts of production AND on building a sense of farmer community. Last year, we hosted two field days on bale grazing and a seven-part series on season extension. For more information on those and all of our future events, please visit our Events page.
We're also exploring ways to being a connector in the larger food and farming landscape. Currently, we co-host the Indiana Farmland Community of Practice, in an effort to bring together folks whose work intersects with farmland access and farmland conservation, and find solutions for Indiana. Our goal is to have PIFF play this "convener" role to help catalyze and amplify good work that is happening across Indiana.
As PIFF grows, we will begin to add more services such as business development and grant support for farmers and other nonprofits, a speaker directory, and more. We are grateful to the many individuals and groups who have helped make our launch possible, including the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition, Purdue Extension, Urban Soil Health, Northwest Indiana Food Council, and other organizations across the state.