Eco-Farm 07 Conference Plenary Speakers

Wednesday Opening Plenary Session: 8:00 to 10:00 pm:
Farm Power – World Focus
Peak Oil: Forty Million Farmers Needed
Richard Heinberg, New College, Santa Rosa, CA
The 20th century saw a decline in the number of farmers in industrialized countries like the US and Canada, as fuel-fed machinery and petrochemicals increased productivity at an unprecedented pace. Food became cheap and abundant, and most farming families gave up and moved to the cities. During the coming century, as oil becomes more scarce and expensive, many of the trends of the past hundred years will be reversed. Water shortages and climate change could combine with Peak Oil to create local or general famines unless agriculture is re-localized. This means North America will require up to 40 million new farmers during the next 30 years. It also means we will need to undertake profound changes in both agricultural policy and farming practices.

Richard Heinberg is the author of six books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. He is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer, and a core faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches a program on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. In September 2005 he participated in an energy conference convened by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), which was broadcast on C-Span.

Agroecology: Challenges and Opportunities of the Sustainable Agriculture Movement in the 21st Century
Miguel Altieri, UC Berkeley Division of Organisms & Environment, Berkeley, CA
Which forces are shaping what, how, where, and for whom we produce? How can we ensure that our movement does not exploit the open niches of the globalized economy and succumb to green washing? Dr. Altieri will highlight models for how to achieve a truly sustainable agriculture that emphasizes food sovereignty as a key strategy. He will analyze the effects of free trade, the demand for biodiesel, China’s hunger for proteins, and other market influences.

Miguel Altieri received a BS in Agronomy from the University of Chile and a Ph.D in Entomology from the University of Florida. He has been a Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley since 1981 in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Since l980 Dr. Altieri has been a Technical Advisor to the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development (CLADES). He is Regional Coordinator for Latin America Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension, which is funded by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Development Research Centre. He is the author of many publications, including Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems. His newest book is Agroecology and the Search for a Truly Sustainable Agriculture, co-authored with Clara Nicholls.

Thursday Plenary Session: 2:00 - 3:30 pm:
“Organic, Inc.” and Beyond
The organic food industry has been highly successful, moving from a back-to-the-land movement into the aisles of Wal-Mart in three decades. Has the organic movement realized a larger vision in this evolution, or betrayed the ideals at its heart?

Business journalist Sam Fromartz has recently published an engaging book — Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew — that attempts to answer these questions. The author was drawn to analyze the organic industry when he saw that he was not the only one spending a large chunk of a paycheck on organic food. Intrigued by his shopping experience, he began to follow the story to its roots. In this provocative talk, he reveals what his research taught him about the foundation of the organic movement. He discusses the future of ‘green consumption’ and lays out a vision for more responsible alternatives desired by deadicated consumers.

Mr. Fromartz’ presentation will be followed by a panel of representatives from various types of organic businesses who will react to the trends in organic food. The speakers will address the issue of how companies, farms, and organizations like theirs can distinguish themselves in the mainstream organic future.

Sam Fromartz, Author, Washington, DC
Business journalist Sam Fromartz has written for Fortune, Business Week, and Inc.
A persistent and perceptive researcher, he became fascinated by the pioneers who created the organic market. “I am a consumer who began to buy organic food and then wanted to know why,” he says. “I sought to parse the myths from the realities and meet the people who were feeding me…My background as a business reporter gave me the skills to see how these people worked and what made the industry click into high gear.”

Panelists:
Jim Crawford, New Morning Farm and Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, Hustontown, PA.
Jim and Moie Crawford farm 95 acres of vegetables in south-central Pennsylvania. Since 1972 they have grown 40 to 50 different crops that they market directly in the Washington, DC area and wholesale through the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative. Their story is featured in one of the chapters of Mr. Fromartz’s book.

Bob Scowcroft, Executive Director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, Santa Cruz, CA.
Bob Scowcroft and a number of certified organic farmers founded the Organic Farming Research Foundation in 1990. Bob averages 200 media interviews and over 40 conference presentations on all subjects “organic” per year. Prior to working for OFRF, he was the Executive Director of California Certified Organic Farmers; before that he served as Friends of the Earth’s national organizer with a primary focus on pesticide reduction and organic farming advocacy.

Kelly Shea, Vice President of Organic Stewardship, Horizon Organics, Longmont, CO.
Kelly Shea has been involved with organic farming for nearly 20 years, with the last 7 1/2 years working with organic dairy farmers for Horizon Organics. Her company has reached into the largest organic markets and is well known for both the advantages and challenges involved in being in the mainstream.
Arran Stephens, Nature’s Path, Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.
Arran Stephens founded his company in 1985. It is still an independently owned company, now employing 250 people and run with the guidance of several family members. The son of an organic berry farmer, Mr. Stephens has modeled his personal and professional life after the words of his father: “Leave the earth better than you found it.”

Friday Plenary Session: 8:30 - 10:00 am:
Successful Organic Farmers
Johari Cole, Iyabo Farms and Pembroke Farming Family, Hopkins Park, IL
Seventy-five miles south of Chicago is the 45-acre farm managed by Johari and her family. Twelve years ago they became part of an African-American organic farmers’ collective: the Pembroke Farmers Cooperative. Johari and fellow farmers supply a diversity of row-cropped vegetables to Chicago inner-city greenmarkets, natural food stores, and to the best Chicago restaurants.

John Williams, Frogs Leap Winery, Rutherford, CA
Known for its iconic lunging frog and whimsical cork inscriptions (ribbit!), Frog’s Leap is dedicated to producing high quality wines that deeply reflect the soils and climate from which they emanate. Established by the Williams and Turley families in 1981, the winery has grown from 500 to 50,000 cases produced annually. Their success is based on a firm commitment to quality, responsible stewardship of natural and human resources, and a healthy sense of fun. Frog’s Leap employs traditional cultivation or “dry farming” methods and organic practices on roughly 200 acres of prime Napa Valley vineyards. In addition to 10 varieties of fruit trees, two acres of heritage vegetables, and a small flock of guinea fowl, Frog’s Leap produces Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Petit Syrah, Zinfandel, and a classic Cabernet Sauvignon. The winery is entirely powered by solar energy.

UCSC Farm and Garden Apprentice Program, Santa Cruz, CA
Presenters: Diane Nichols, Apprenticeship Coordinator; Christof Bernau, Farm Garden Manager; Julie Stultz, Field Production Manager; Orin Martin, Chadwick Garden Manager; Jim Leap, Farm Manager; Nancy Vail, Farm to College/CSA Coordinator.

The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz provides apprenticeship training in the concepts and practices of organic gardening and small-scale farming. A combination of theoretical and practical instruction, this six-month, full-time program has graduated an extraordinary group of over 1,200 apprentices who have spread out over the world to establish their own commercial farms and market gardens, community and school gardens, international development projects, and food policy and social justice efforts. In acknowledgement of the Center’s 40th anniversary, their success in training farmers is highlighted here.

Saturday Closing Plenary Session: 10:30 - 11:45 am

Food as Medicine; Food as Poison
Chuck Benbrook, Chief Scientist, The Organic Center, Enterprise, OR.
Dr. Alan Greene, www.drgreene.com; Board Member, The Organic Center, Danville, CA.

The way that foods are grown and processed determines food quality. Production systems can have surprising impacts on nutrient content, antioxidant levels, fatty acid profiles, and the presence of pesticides, animal drug residues, and food-borne pathogens. These key dimensions of food quality, coupled with dietary choices, play critical roles in sexual development and reproduction, as well as a child’s development through adolescence. High quality food can also help prevent conditions such as ADHD, autism, infertility, low IQ, Alzheimer’s, high cholesterol, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, depression, obesity, and premature birth.

Chuck Benbrook will describe factors contributing to the downward trend in nutrient density of many conventional foods and how organic farming can help reverse this troubling erosion in food quality. Alan Greene, MD, storyteller, physician, and expert on organic foods, will share the latest research on how food production systems, inputs, and technologies alter us — for better or worse.

Dr. Alan Greene is a practicing pediatrician and father of four. He has devoted himself to freely giving real answers to parents’ real questions about those all-too-common childhood conditions as well as the rarest childhood illnesses. In 1995, he launched DrGreene.com, cited by the AMA as “the pioneer physician Web site” on the Internet. His award-winning site receives over 50 million hits a month from parents, concerned family members, students, and healthcare professionals. He also teaches medical students and pediatric residents at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and is an attending physician at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Dr. Greene is the author of From First Kicks to First Steps and The Parent’s Complete Guide to Ear Infections, and is co-author of The A.D.A.M. Illustrated Family Health Guide.

Dr. Charles Benbrook worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science, and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997. He served as the agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at the end of the Carter Administration. In 1981, following the election of Ronald Reagan, he moved to Capitol Hill and worked as executive director of the subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade, and foreign agricultural issues. In 1984 Dr. Benbrook was recruited to the job of executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, a position he held for seven years. In 1990 he formed Benbrook Consulting Services. He has written many reports, books, and peer-reviewed articles on agricultural science, technology, public health, and environmental issues.