BIPOC Food & Farming Conference

2025 BIPOC Food & Farming Conference

Statewide organization honors Dayton's Edgemont Solar Gardens for community agriculture

The 2025 Black Indigenous People of Color Food and Farming (BFFN) Conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19 & 20 at Central State University’s Dayton location at 840 Germantown Street. The lead partners with BFFN are the Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association, the City of Dayton, and Central State University Extension. 

Free and open to the public, activities include fun, hands-on skill shares and workshops, local farm tours, and more than a dozen food trucks, vendors and exhibitors will participate in an outdoor community market at Central State Dayton.

The conference, formerly known as the Black Farming Conference, is in its fifth year. The event celebrates the heritage of food producers of color in Ohio and their contributions to agriculture locally, regionally and throughout the state.

The weekend of activities will culminate on Saturday night with an Awards Dinner. Edgemont Solar Garden will be honored for its outstanding work in the city of Dayton as the recipient of the 2025 Excellence Award. Edgemont Solar Garden Executive Board Member Nikol Miller, who grew up in the neighborhood and is now Executive Director of the Miami Valley Urban League, will share the center’s story and impact on her life.

Founded in 1978 as a partnership among residents of the neighborhood, the city of Dayton and University of Dayton, the community transformed a razed factory site on Miami Chapel Road into a garden and community center. Over the past 40 years, the Solar Garden and center provided valuable programs within the neighborhood, including serving as an incubator site for Central State University’s Beginning Farmer program. Harvest from the Garden, including its signature collards, have provided fresh vegetables to the neighborhood.

BFFN will also be honoring our youth and young professional award winner, Te’Lario Watkins II. Te’Lario is a nationally recognized youth entrepreneur, urban farmer, and advocate for food justice. At just seven years old, he founded Tiger Mushroom Farms, growing gourmet mushrooms for local farmers markets, restaurants, and grocery stores. Now 16-years-old, Te’Lario, who was on Steve Harvey's Show, has collected several major national awards, including, the 10 Under 20 Hormel Food Hero Award (2023), participation in the Disney Dreamers Academy (2024), and has also given a TEDxOhioStateUniversity talk on “The Future of Food.”

The conference offers many hands-on workshops and skill shares opportunities, such as creating herbal extractions and fire cider with Donnetta Boykin from the Trotwood-based Endigo’s Herbals and Organics; bee-keeping with James Beard award-winning agriculture and food activist Jim Embry, Food Preservation and Emergency Food Kits with Jamie Harris of Resilient Roots Doula. 

Project L.L.A.M.A, a program that provides support to fledging farms, will offer business workshops and sessions,such as a free small business legal clinic offered by Columbus attorney Ambrose Moses; a workshop on Farmland Leasing Basics; Heir Property & Succession Planning offered by the Bean Foundation and S&B Farm of Eufaula, Alabama. BFFN is a lead partner in the United States Department of Agriculture-funded Project L.L.A.M.A (Local Land and Market Access), an education, loan and grant program to support growers in Montgomery, Greene and Clark counties.

Sponsors of the conference include Farm Credit Mid America, Nationwide Insurance, the Ohio Farmers Bureau Federation, and the Yellow Springs Community Foundation.

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Central State University

BIPOC Food & Farming Conference is taking place at Central State University, which is located at 840 Germantown Street in Dayton. Central State University - Central State University (CSU) is Ohio's only public Historically Black College & University, with a diverse faculty and student body.