Farm & Food Advocacy Day

Lawmakers need to hear your stories, your challenges, and your solutions. 

You can join our farmer-led, eater-powered Alliance for our biggest collective action of the year: Farm & Food Advocacy Day.

Farm & Food Advocacy Day
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Springfield, IL 

Your voice makes a difference for small farms, local food, and regenerative agriculture — here’s how we know: During Advocacy Day last year, Alliance members helped recruit an incredible 31 legislators to become new sponsors for bills in just one day.

Farmers and eaters like you showing up is how we build power and pass the policies you care about for a better future. 

When you join us on March 25th, you’ll enjoy:

• Lunch and a debrief with raffles and prizes.
• Breakfast and inspirational speeches from lawmakers and farmers, 
• Touring the Capitol with an a team of farmers and ag-tivists like you
• Opportunities to participate in meetings with lawmakers at the capitol, 
• A live press conference in the Capitol blue room to promote local food and regenerative agriculture

No experience in advocating at the state Capitol is needed. Our Advocacy Days are designed to make it easy for you to make a powerful impact from your first step in the Capitol. You’ll be guided through every step of the process. Travel stipends are available for farmers and food system leaders to help you get to Springfield. 

Create and fund an Emerging and Socially Disadvantaged Farmer Grant Program at $2.5 million to support small farmers and help them feed communities in need (HB4922). Funding has been appropriated for this program since 2021; however, there has been no bill passed to guide the disbursement of these funds. This bill changes that by providing guidance on eligible applicants, grant structure, eligible expenses, and overall program implementation. The program is intended to support emerging and limited-resource farmers, especially those working in food deserts and high need communities, with equipment and infrastructure purchases needed to scale their farms and feed more people in their area with fresh, local food. 

Continued $2 million funding for the Local Food Infrastructure Grant
The Local Food Infrastructure Grant (LFIG) is a grant program, administered by the state Department of Agriculture to help farmers, food businesses, livestock processors, cooperatives and local governments in purchasing equipment for processing, milling, refrigeration, trucking, food hubs, community kitchens and other infrastructure needed to scale up local food production and supply chains to meet the needs of Illinois communities

Reform the Illinois Grocery Grant Initiative to help farmers feed communities in food deserts (SB/HB)

The Illinois Grocery Grant Initiative is a grant program to help establish brick and mortar grocery stores and support existing grocers in food deserts. This bill reforms the program to make mobile farmers markets and online farmers markets eligible to apply for the grant, in recognition that these operations are on the front lines of serving food deserts. The bill also makes Point-of-Sale systems an eligible expense so that applicants can better serve SNAP customers. 

Educate lawmakers on the need for a Statewide Good Food Purchasing Policy

This policy will change Illinois procurement code to encourage local purchasing and increase transparency in the procurement process so that more state taxpayer dollars are awarded to contracts with Illinois farmers and businesses that are working to implement local, fair, healthy, humane, and sustainable practices.

There are fewer than 75 days to get the bills to support small farmers and local food producers through the whole process to become laws.