Join us for The Future of Food Conversation Series!

The Future of Food: Reimagining Urban and Peri-urban Land Use for a Just and Regenerative Food Future

Nashville is one of our country’s fastest growing cities and yet significant tracts of agricultural land exist both within, and just beyond, our city’s limits. In this conversation, we are hearing from community members who are reimagining and rethinking our relationships with land and how we may connect growers–from hobby gardeners to farmers–with the land and resources they need to grow food for themselves and their communities.

The moderated panel discussion will be followed by open Q&A and an opportunity for community conversation and networking.

This event is free and open to the public.

About our panelists:

Bridget Bryant

I grew up in Mississippi with my parents and brother. I had the privilege of knowing one set of my great grandparents and both set of my grandparents. My father was a preacher and one of his sermons that I was reminded of was The Rabbit and The Turtle which I think of when things don’t go as planned because they always work out for my greater good. My mother was multitalented. She knew how to sew, crochet, and make ceramics. I remember watching and then eventually helping my great grandmother in her garden and to this day there are fig trees that grow there. My grandfather grew black eyed peas and other veggies in a garden in the neighborhood of Savannah Grove. I wanted to help him so bad but I was too small to do so but that put in motion me wanting to farm along with gardens of my other grandparents and my grandmothers flower garden that I helped her with. I lost my Mom at 15 and that was devastating for a teenage girl, even though I didn’t realize it until later. I lost my father at 20. At 22 I moved to Tennessee with my brother and have been here since.  In 2014 I had my beautiful daughter Isis who was stillborn, later that same year a miscarriage (Phoenix) and in 2016 I was gifted Zyon. 

Later I grew a porch full of plants and they all died from the cold. A year or so later I started a home garden and a garden at the Nashville Food Project and Zysis Garden was created. Each year I wanted more land to see if my childhood dream of being a farmer was something that I still wanted and I whole heartedly do. Farming has been my pharmacy and my healer. I was able to relive so much grief working with the land, it has truly been my salvation.

Tyler Skelton

Co-owner of Bells Bend Farms, Tyler Skelton has been farming for 12 years growing vegetables, cut flowers, and managing a small herd of cattle. In addition to farming her work has centered around agricultural land conservation through working with The Bells Bend Conservation Corridor, a small non-profit whose mission is to preserve the rural character of the Bells Bend Community. 

Nia Smith

Nia is the Community Design Coordinator at the Civic Design Center. She is a designer, crafter, gardener, permanent pedestrian, and community member. She got her start with community organizing as a child, when her dad ran for school board and showed her the importance in participating in your community to affect change. Over the years, Nia has lived and organized all over the country, blending her passion for quality design and advocacy together, to make every place she lives just a little bit better than when she arrived. Her advocacy covers innumerable topics, including, housing, transit, expungement, and abolition. Nia’s design focus is on the built environment, but her background is in handmade fashion. Her eye for detail and dedication to the people around her help her find the sweet spot for neighborhood needs, community dreams, and what is truly possible.

At the Design Center, Nia engages with people from all over Nashville about what they would want in their neighborhood to make their lives easier and more enjoyable. She works to make sure people are educated in design language and are given the power to manage and make decisions for themselves. No one knows what a space needs more than the people who live there. Her work attempts to deepen our relationship to the areas around us and believe that we can make the changes we want to see.

When she’s not at work, she’s biking across the city, knitting too hard, or feeding her friends at her cottage.

Kristina Villa

Kristina Villa is the Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust. She is a farmer, communicator, and community coordinator who believes that our connection to the soil is directly related to the health of our bodies, economy, and society.

With over a decade of farming, communication, and fundraising experience, Kristina enjoys using her skill sets to share photos, stories, and information in engaging ways which help to inspire change in human habits and mindsets, causing the food system, climate, and overall well-being of the world to improve.

Kristina has spent the last several years of her professional career saving farmland from development and securing it in nonprofit land holding structures that give farmers, stewards and ranchers long-term and affordable access and tenure to it. Most of her work in the land access space has focused on equitable land security for BIPOC growers, addressing the inequities and disparities in how land is owned and accessed in this country. 

Natalie Ashker Seevers (panel moderator)

Natalie Ashker Seevers is the Executive Director of Tennessee Local Food, a nonprofit organization that provides education, resources and connections to farmers and local food system advocates. Natalie has seven years of experience working for small farms in Middle Tennessee. She managed The Barefoot Farmer's Community Supported Agriculture program for five seasons and worked as Marketing Manager for Caney Fork Farms for two seasons. Natalie has a background in media production and is the host/co-producer of Commons Groundswell, an Agrarian Trust podcast that examines human relationship with land.

Join us June 27!

This event is in collaboration with: