Spring '25 Greener Pastures Virtual Fundraiser- w/ guest Sonja Trom Eayrs

💻➡️ REGISTER FOR YOUR TICKET TO JOIN THE VIRTUAL EVENT HERE TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK TO JOIN!

Join Greener Pastures for a virtual evening of farms, fun, and taking action to build a more humane, sustainable, just food system while raising $2.5K to support our programs.

On Thursday, March 20, 2025 from 7-8 pm CT join Greener Pastures staff and our wonderful community to support our education and advocacy work!

Location: Virtual

When: Thursday, March 20, 2025 from 7-8 pm CT (8 pm ET, 6 pm MT, 5 pm PT)

Event Program:

A conversation with Sonja Trom Eayrs, author of Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America
Silent Auction featuring beautiful regenerative-themed gifts and treats
A guided take-action to help you raise your civic voice to help small, sustainable farms survive & thrive

Cost: Free (sliding scale tickets with donations strongly encouraged!)

Sonja Trom Eayrs’ powerful new book reveals how corporate agriculture has reshaped rural America—displacing small farmers, polluting our air and water, and eroding local democracy. Through a gripping legal drama, she shares her own family’s fight against factory farming in Dodge County, Minnesota, and exposes the larger crisis facing our food system.

Register today and consider making a tax-deductible gift to support Greener Pastures work.

Your generosity will help us . . .

Produce Farm Features, guides and educational resources to help folks vote with their fork to support local farms
Conduct our next pilot round of Farm Matchmaking appointments to help community members get paired with local farms to purchase from!
Bring you more grassroots take-action opportunities on the state and federal level.

Mark your calendars, grab a drink and a friend, and we can't wait to see you there!

More on Sonja Trom Eayrs and her book:

Sonja Trom Eayrs will lead a discussion regarding her book, Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America. For generations, the Trom family has lived and farmed in Dodge County, Minnesota, a once-idyllic rural community where area farmers raised pigs, chickens, and cows and grew corn, oats, and soy. But starting in the mid-’90s, Dodge’s livestock farmers became ensnared in contracts with corporations like Tyson, Hormel, JBS, and Smithfield Foods. This was the beginning of a perilous journey, as a generation of small farmers was squeezed out of the market, including friends and family in Dodge County.

Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America (University of Nebraska Press, Nov. 2024) is narrative nonfiction. It’s a compelling legal drama recounting the Trom family’s three rounds of litigation against the county board in Dodge County, Minnesota, in efforts to prevent a corporate factory farm from going up across the road from our intergenerational family farm. With the factual rigor of an attorney and the passion of a farmer’s daughter, Sonja weaves together her family’s struggles to fight corporate injustices in rural America and the larger story of corporate livestock production in the United States: the air and water pollution, the cancer clusters, the destruction of local communities and economies, and the erosion of the democratic process.

The book provides a rare insider’s account, showing how the corporate restructuring of rural areas and profiteering of Big Ag corporations impact the political, economic, and cultural fate of a single rural community. Sonja's scrutiny of local politics – including the infiltration of county boards by factory farm owners – draws a clear line between the U.S. Farm Credit System, compromised D.C. politicians, and what actually happens on the ground in local communities. Along the way, Sonja asks the larger, difficult questions about how – and whether – small farm towns can regain the sense of community and devotion to environmental sustainability and stewardship that was once effortlessly intrinsic to daily life.

Dodge County, Incorporated has received enthusiastic reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and others, as well as blurbs from Senator Cory Booker, authors Corban Addison and Christopher Leonard, Humane Society president Kitty Block, and others. Full blurbs are available at Sonja's author website here. Sonja's book has also received significant media coverage, including Forbes, Farm Aid, Farm Action, Civil Eats, Minnesota Star Tribune, Barn Raiser and other publications.

Family Photography Session with Zoe Yates Photography