Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Following the December 2025 virtual meeting of the SERA 47 Multi-State Initiative, the group decided to hold its 2026 meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists (SAAS) in Louisville, Kentucky. Partnering with one of the SAAS groups – the Southern Rural Sociological Association – the SERA47 meeting was held as a session on February 1, 2026. Members and non-members were encouraged to attend.

The following topics were covered as part of the agenda.

• What is a SERA project? (Grace Langford)
• SERA 47 History (Grace Langford)
• SERA 47 Current Priorities (Grace Langford)
• SERA 47 Leadership (Kaylee South)
• SERA 47 2025 and Early 2026 Activities (Courtney Brown)
• SERA 47 Working Groups (Tim Woods and Eleanor Green)
• Panel Presentations on Resilient Local and Regional Food Systems: Lessons and Opportunities Post-COVID​

Agriculture Business Innovation Center (Kenrett Jefferson-Moore)
VA Controlled Environment Agriculture's Role in the LRFS (Kaylee South)
Improving Systems and Expanding Capacity (Courtney Brown)

• Future Planning  
• New S Project Proposal and Proposed Objectives (John Green) 
• Discussion 
• Acknowledgements 

The meeting was then adjourned. 

There was a short period of time between the December 2025 virtual meeting and the 2026 in-person meeting. This was because the group decided to commit to a schedule of holding its annual meeting in conjunction with SAAS moving forward. A virtual meeting will still be held in the future to accommodate those who cannot attend the in-person, but the “official meeting” will be held during the typical SAAS conference period. In the future, this will be as an S project as described below. 

Because of the short period of time, there are fewer accomplishments to report here than in previous reports. The 2025 accomplishments were discussed at the in-person meeting, but they are not repeated here to avoid duplication from the 2025 report.

Since holding the February 1, 2026 in-person meeting, some important steps have been made. 

• A Working Group planning meeting was held, and now all four of the Working Groups have leadership, they are:

Tim Woods, University of Kentucky – Marketing Local Food System
Eleanor Green, Green Garden and Delta Scholars Program – Successful Models of Local Food Systems
Millie Murphree, Auburn University Extension – Building Resilient Communities and Food Security
Lance Osborne, University of Florida – Sustainable Agriculture in Local Food Systems (pending confirmation)

• Two upcoming Tea and Coffee Hour Webinars have been planned for 2026.
• The new S project proposal was submitted and is currently under review. It has the following objectives:

Increase understanding of production, processing, distribution, marketing, and demand issues confronted in local and regional food systems;
Strengthen the capacity for Land-Grants to build the local and regional food system workforce;
Address entry barriers for participation in local and regional food systems; and
Enhance knowledge about the intersections of human capital and built/physical capital needs for local and regional food system development.