By Carrie Muehling

PONTIAC – It wasn’t exactly a meal in a field, but the inaugural Illinois Harvest Dinner provided a farm setting for conversations about food and where it’s grown.

“The point of it really is to extend that idea of telling the farm story outside of social media, and bring it into a farm,” said Katie Pratt, one of the event’s organizers and a farmer from Dixon.

The group met its goal on Wednesday with about 100 people who were invited to share the meal, from farmers to dietitians to bloggers.

“We provided a venue for influencers to sit down and ask our farmers those tough questions, that maybe they were scared to ask in an intimate setting where there was no pressure. You could sit down, have good conversation, and learn from each other,” said Mary Mackinson Faber, who helped to host the event on one of her family’s farms just outside of Pontiac.

Those discussions included a variety of topics about modern agriculture and the diversity of the industry in Illinois.

“Around antibiotics, how animals are raised, how our crops are being grown. It was a really good opportunity to have those conversations,” said Thomas Titus, who farms near Elkhart.

The meal was a partnership with the Illinois Agri-Women and was also supported by a number of commodity groups and agribusinesses from across the state. Pratt says she hopes it’s the start of something more.

“We’ve had farmers reach out to us from different regions of the state, and say ‘Can you bring it to Western Illinois next year? Can you come down to Southern Illinois?’ And we certainly think this is something that could be mobile and really reach out to our neighbors,” said Pratt.

More information about the Illinois Harvest Dinner is available on Facebook or by following #ILHarvest on Twitter.

Carrie Muehling can be reached at [email protected].