Susan Futrell has worked with food businesses (including farms) and nonprofit organizations in marketing and distribution for over 35 years, including over two decades in the natural and organic foods industry. Futrell is currently Director of Marketing for the nonprofit Red Tomato, which provides marketing, logistics and market development for a network of fruit and vegetable farmers in the northeastern US. 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.

Trained in nonfiction writing, Futrell has written about food systems as a freelance writer, essayist, and consultant. She writes and speaks frequently on the challenges of bringing local foods to a broader segment of US eaters, sustaining family farms, and the history, science and joys of apples. Most recently, she has authored a book titled Good Apples – Behind Every Bite (University of Iowa Press), a non-fiction introspective into commercial apple production in the USA.

With the Guru Travel fellowship, Ms. Futrell aims to understand the opportunities to strengthen the Kashmiri food system, with a specific focus on sustaining the region’s remarkable apples.