Alice Rolls may be known in title as the President & CEO of Georgia Organics but she is so much more as a human catalyst and spearhead of the good food movement. "The woman scaling up organics in the deep south" is on a mission to grow organics in the state of Georgia, and she has achieved just that since joining Georgia Organics. If you want to hear more from Alice Rolls, join us for the 2020 Georgia Organics Conference, February 7-8 in Athens, Georgia. Tickets are available via conference.georgiaorganics.org.
Season: For me, the Fall season is marked by early darkness with the refrain of crickets, late blooming asters and mums, and the sound of sandhill cranes flying back south.
Food: I excitedly await the first peanut harvest from the new coop of ten Certified Organic peanut producers that was formed at the Georgia Organics conference last February. We are working with Georgia Grinders, a small manufacturer of nut butters based in Chamblee, to run our first jars of co-branded organic peanut butter later this year. I hope this will help us transition thousands of conventional farm acreage into organic production in south Georgia in the years to come.
Career: For fifteen years now, I have had the privilege of watching and participating in the evolution of the good food movement from a time when “farm to table” wasn’t even in our vernacular to being one of the brightest spots in food and agriculture. The success and expansion in organic farming, young people farming, urban agriculture, farm to school and local food system work has bubbled up locally from farmers, chefs and advocates, with important policy successes along the way. We have daunting problems in this world with climate change, but the people in this farm and food space give me hope every day and keep me from slipping into a pessimistic abyss.
Community: When you witness an entire fourth grade class chowing down on kale sautéed in garlic, you know you are on to something special.
Impact: I envision a day when our organic farmers are paid to pull carbon back into the soil and are reimbursed by health insurance companies to provide healthy fresh food to their own community.
Wisdom: E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and other classic children’s books, summed up life’s great paradox for me:
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”