TEDxManhattan - Patty Cantrell - New Roads to New Markets

Patty Cantrell is a community organizer and a journalist focused on making the business case for local and regional food. As Regional Food Solutions LLC, she works with nonprofit and educational clients to communicate new food and farm business options and public policy directions. She is a member of the Michigan Food Policy Council and a 2008-2009 Food and Society Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She brings to her work 12 years of on-the-ground food system project management at the Michigan Land Use Institute. There she led development of a 10-county local food marketing campaign, farm-to-school network, farm business education program, and a regional food and farming coalition. She is a 1987 Fulbright Scholar with BA degrees in economics and political science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She received an MBA from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, a city where she also cut her teeth as a business reporter and columnist at the daily Springfield News-Leader.