FVC Board member named to lead EcoFarm

From the website of the Ecological Farming Association:

Poppy Davis to be Executive Director of EcoFarm

The Board of Directors of the Ecological Farming Association (EcoFarm) in Watsonville, California is pleased to announce that Poppy Davis will join the organization as the Executive Director in May.  Poppy is a California native, returning home after three years at the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. where she worked on Secretary Vilsack’s “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative, Women and Working Lands, and with Native American farmers and ranchers. No stranger to the EcoFarm Conference, she has counseled financial sustainability to conference attendees for fifteen years.

The Ecological Farming Association was founded in 1981 to bring people together for education and advocacy in support of ecologically based farms, food systems and communities. Through educational conferences, training programs, on-farm events and communications initiatives, EcoFarm provides practical tools for building food systems that encourage diverse ecosystems and healthy rural communities.

Prior to working in Washington, Poppy worked for three years in the Davis Regional Office of the USDA Risk Management Agency. Her career prior to that was as a Certified Public Accountant working in small accounting firms with a practice emphasis in family scale farms and ranches and related estates, business and not-for-profits. She is a past fellow of the California Agricultural Leadership Program, and has a bachelor’s in Agricultural and Managerial Economics from the University of California at Davis.

She says that the best part about being with the USDA was getting to know people from all over the country and working with South East Asian, Latino and Native American farmers and ranchers. She hopes to continue to work with diverse populations in her new position.

Poppy is on the board of directors of The Carrot Project and Red Tomato, both in Massachusetts, and the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, in California. Previously she served on the board of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers in California.

Poppy Davis to be Executive Director of EcoFarm