Susan Futrell — A Democracy of Apples
September 20, 2021 6:30 p.m.
The lecture will be an exploration of the relationship between fostering resilient local food and farming, fostering a vibrant, healthy democracy, and the ways they are woven together in our history and culture. Apples are Susan’s touchstone for connecting these ideas, drawing on her work with apple growers here in the US, visits with apple growers in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and a lifelong love of orchards, apple trees, apples, and words. We hope listeners will find new reasons to love both apples and democracy and new determination to cherish and protect them both.
Susan Futrell is an essayist and author who writes and speaks frequently on the challenges of sustaining family farms, bringing local foods to a broader segment of US eaters, and the history, science and joys of apples. She is the author of Good Apples: Behind Every Bite, published in 2017 by University of Iowa Press.
Futrell has worked with food businesses, nonprofit organizations and farms in marketing and distribution for over 35 years, including over two decades in the natural and organic foods industry. She is currently Program Director for nonprofit Red Tomato, where she helped develop the Eco Apple® program, a collaboration among fruit growers, researchers and scientists from land grant institutions and nonprofits, which supports advanced ecological orchard and pest management practices with a goal of sustaining local fruit production in the US.
Futrell has an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She’s a fifth-generation Iowan and lives with her husband, Will Jennings, in Iowa City, Iowa and mid-coast Maine.