FTCLDF’s mission is to serve our members, who include farmers, ranchers, small businesses, and consumers invested in building resilient food systems. As a member-led organization, our actions and priorities are shaped by their input. Together, we empower producers and expand opportunities for local food across the U.S.
Besides working hand-in-hand with our members year-round, we also give them an annual survey to tell us what we’re doing well and what we should change.
Here’s what they said.
Our members rely on our 24/7/365 legal support.
Our Emergency Hotline consistently ranks as the benefit our members value most. It’s available 24 hours for surprise inspections or short-notice regulatory interruptions of a member’s farm, ranch, or business. Our on-call attorneys can be available by phone during a stressful, unexpected farm inspection or even seizure of product.
We summarize these calls in a Hotline Blotter at least once per quarter. While we will always protect the privacy of our members, this anonymized summary shows the types of challenges facing farmers, homesteaders, and cottage food producers.
They say our policy work is important for local food systems
It’s no secret that U.S. food laws and regulations are tailor-made for big, industrial food corporations — not your local farmers, ranchers, and food producers. We fight for commonsense policies that help rather than hinder local food production.
This is important for consumers, too: By expanding opportunities for independent producers, we’re improving access to good, local food for consumers.
Our members want FTCLDF to pump up our policy reform efforts.
Our team tracks federal, state and local laws and regulations as we work to change this landscape so that it benefits independent producers instead of corporations.
While FTCLDF is small-but-mighty, there is always more than we can take on — another food freedom bill to find sponsors for, another overzealous regulation to defeat.
Will you help us do more?
As a nonprofit, everything we do is funded with resources from fundraisers and our member dues.
Will you support our work to benefit farmers, ranchers, and food businesses? Every dollar we raise helps build the muscle we need to push back on regulatory overreach, help producers through the regulatory process, and provide 24-hour legal support.
Will you support our work to benefit consumers and local food systems? Donations also fund our policy reform work: together with our members, we’re reshaping local, state, and federal laws to support communities’ ability to feed themselves — rather than having to rely on global, industrialized food chains.
Donate today to help us do even more for farmers and ranchers, small business owners, and families in search of local, healthy food.
