The first annual New England Food Summit, held March 24-25, 2011 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, brought together stakeholders with the purpose of strengthening our common understanding of overall key trends and mutual awareness of efforts across the food system, with the goal of building collaborative strategies and action plans to build regional food system capacity and sustainability. The need to convene a summit of this nature has been expressed by a wide variety of stakeholders that recognize the importance of a coordinated, comprehensive response to building a sustainable food future. Goals of the summit included to:

• Make the case for the economic, environmental and health benefits of a regional food system.
• Stress the social justice aspects of building a strong regional food system/economy.
• Capture best practices from each state.
• Strengthen the regional perspective of all participants.
• Prioritize a list of regional strategies, or solutions, and identify key opportunities for collaboration

A steering committee comprised of leaders from across the region selected delegates from each New England state to participate in the summit. In addition, a delegation comprised of crosscutting representatives who are working for regionally based organizations or agencies were also invited. Click the links to the left to view summit delegates, materials, resources, and other information.