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what: 

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The Queer Farmer Convergence is a grassroots gathering format for LGBTQ+ in the farming world to make connections and build real-time community through loosely organized programming, community-run workshops and round tables, movement building activities, and simply being together on the land in a joyfilled, restful, and inclusive space as queers. 

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QFCs tend to be largely outdoor, on-farm gatherings where attendees camp, share food, and spend the days attending scheduled sessions including opportunities to make art, discuss movement-relevant topics, learn practical and land-based skills, and offer and participate in workshops. The hosts provide the structure that shapes the days, but all who attend co-create the space in some way - through their presence, contributions to conversations, skill and workshop offerings, and the sheer magic that happens when queers converge.

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why:

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 The gathering was conceived to provide a space of respite for farming and rural queers who may experience isolation in a variety of intersecting identities in their work, and who may be particularly vulnerable to the mental health struggles well known to both farmers and LGBTQ+ community members. Equally important, the QFC exists as a means to interrupt racist, capitalist, colonial, and heteropatriarchal legacies in U.S. agriculture, and to support the marginalized farmers at the center of transforming these legacies through their radical approaches to farming and landwork and intersecting justice movements related to queerness, racial justice, labor, climate, and more.

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who: 

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We welcome current, aspiring, and lapsed farmers, gardeners, landworkers, and growers of all shapes, sizes, ages, backgrounds, neurospectrums, and identities within the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Within that, everyone who wants to come is 'queer enough' and 'farmer enough', and commitment to this sense of belongingness is cultivated by all our organizing teams. Sometimes regional or affinity-based QFC's have attendance limits, such as regional limits or QFC's for BIPOC-only. But those limitations will be clearly noted and easy to find in registration info for each gathering. If you ever find there is not a QFC for you to attend, we encourage you to get in touch about hosting a QFC for your own regional community of queer farmers!

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history: 

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The first QFC was hosted in 2018 at Humble Hands Harvest, a worker-owned co-op farm outside Decorah, Iowa. It was organized by a group of local farmer friends who had the desire, capacity, community, and land access supporting them to create and host QFCs. The labor involved in hosting these gatherings has primarily been volunteer-based and grassroots, with funding coming from community organizations and local businesses. Since 2021, there have been new QFC's that have emerged in Virginia, Michigan, and in 2024, new events for BIPOC farmers only in Wisconsin and Texas.

This work emerged in Iowa - one of the whitest states in the country - and in the farming sector - one of the whitest industries in terms of ownership and wealth. Thus, we acknowledge there has been an overrepresentation of white bodies at QFC's to date.  This is something we have attempted to combat by reserving a third of QFC participant spaces for BIPOC, providing free registration and travel stipends to BIPOC attendees, as well as supporting the creation of two new BIPOC-only gatherings in the South and the Midwest. We believe that making the necessary transformations to agriculture is impossible without Black, Indigenous, and Farmers of Color at the helm, and stand in support of all efforts being made toward Land Back, worker and immigrant worker power, and land-based reparations to Black farmers.

future: 

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It is our hope that these spaces of respite, movement building, and crafting our queer farming futures together continue to spread and grow into new regions and serve more community members.  To aid us in this quest, we have an in-depth QFC host support resource compiled by our past organizers available to share with any prospective organizers looking to start up a new gathering in a new and underserved area. This guidebook contains details of our organizing structures, tips for creating inclusive community spaces, how to locate funding for events, and much more. It can be printed at home for free and used and expounded upon by your teams as you organize. If you're interested in hosting a new QFC, you can reach out to us directly and we will get you set up with the resources you need to get you started.