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Friday, January 22, 2010
Session F: 4:00 - 5:30 pm

 

Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses for Year-Round Vegetable Production

Eliot Coleman’s recent book The Winter Harvest Handbook details an incredible amount of useful information on growing crops using unheated greenhouses and a great mix of farmer-created, proven ideas. Drawing on more than four decades of small-farm vegetable production, Eliot will teach us how to maximize production and quality using a minimum of fossil fuels. A great communicator and advocate for the small farm, Eliot is the small farmers’ farmer. He is the author of The New Organic Farmer and Four Season Harvest as well as a farm tool inventor and advisor to Johnny’s
Selected Seeds.
Presenter: Eliot Coleman, Four Season Farm, Harborside, ME.

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Digg it! - How to be a New Media Insider (Double session continued)

This two-part workshop will explore how to use new media most effectively in communication and marketing projects. In the first half we will survey new media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, and YouTube. Participants will learn about framing messages to maximize impact, along with learning tips and tricks for delivering successful interviews, nailing that spectacular quote, delivering that perfect sound bite, and keeping journalists coming back for more. In the second half, attendees will work in small groups to turn the messages they crafted in the previous session into a short audio or video clip. They will learn how to create the clips, convert files to a digital format, and download them onto iTunes or YouTube. Audio and visual files from this session will be showcased on the EcoFarm website and on Facebook and YouTube when approved by the producers.
Moderator: Bob Scowcroft, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Santa Cruz, CA.
Presenters: Haven Bourque, Straus Communications, Oakland, CA; Scott Dick, The Tasty Planet Show, Carmel Valley, CA; Steve Cowan, Habitat Media, Portland, OR.

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Marketing Local Food to Schools

Selling farm-fresh food directly to local schools is not easy, but it’s not impossible if the farmer knows the rules of the game. In this workshop, real life examples and practical guidelines will illustrate each step in the process. We will hear from a farm-to-school coordinator and a school food service consultant who are helping growers get in the school food system door, and from a farmer who markets directly to schools. Participants will learn useful techniques for negotiating with school bureaucracies to draft fair supply contracts. The speakers will explain how communities can gain political support to change school food sourcing.
Presenters: Helge Hellberg, Marin Organic, Pt. Reyes Station, CA; Phil McGrath, McGrath Family Farm, Camarillo, CA; Suzanne Du Verrier, school food service consultant, CA.
Moderator: Ildi Carlisle-Cummins, Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Watsonville, CA.

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New USDA Resources for Organic and Sustainable Management Practices

Congressional approval of the 2008 Farm Bill was a watershed moment, providing new resources to organic and transitioning farmers through USDA conservation programs. It is time to use these programs and make sure they work. The Environmental Quality Incentives program (EQIP) has a new organic initiative with dedicated funding to reward transitioning and existing organic growers who implement conservation and sustainability measures. The new and improved Conservation Stewardship Program compensates farmers for sustainable practices, including several that are specifically for organic operations. There are also set-asides in these programs for beginning and minority farmers. Interested in transitioning to organic management, installing a hedgerow, or planting a cover crop?  Hear from a local grower who successfully applied for EQIP funds and has been through the sign-up process. Other speakers include an NRCS representative and an organic policy advocate who is helping to make these and other new Farm Bill programs more accessible. Bring your questions, concerns, and experiences. Maybe that hedgerow isn’t as far off as you thought.
Presenters: Ariane Lotti, Organic Farming Research Foundation and National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Washington, DC; Bruce Manildi, Soquel, CA; Daniel Mountjoy, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Salinas, CA.

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Organic Farming in a Contaminated World: The Tough Problem of Residues in Compost, Soil, and Water

In spite of our best efforts to farm organically and produce food that is healthier and free of harmful residues, chemical pollution has seeped into almost every aspect of our environment. Most recently, residues of the widely used chemical insecticide Bifenthrin and the breakdown product from DDT used decades ago, DDE, have been found in several brands of widely used compost in California. Although these residues have not turned up in food yet, the California Department of Food and Agriculture has banned several of the composts. Yet there is no threshold for contamination of compost as there is in food. What should the policy be for residues in compost and soil? And shouldn’t the policy be applied evenly to all products, rather than just prohibiting brands in a piecemeal way? It is a complicated issue, balancing our desire to produce food that is as clean as possible with the fact that we live in a highly polluted world.
Presenters: Chuck Benbrook, The Organic Center, Enterprise, OR; Renee Mann, Organic Materials Review Institute, Eugene, OR;Eugene, OR; Claudia Reid, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), Sacramento, CA.

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Social Responsibility as Practiced by Farms and Processors

There has been a lot of criticism of the social and environmental responsibility of large agriculture over the years, but it has reached a fever pitch in recent months. The writings of Pollan and Fromartz, movies like Food, Inc., and other media events all portray large-scale agriculture as the bad guys. With little fanfare, large and medium producers have responded to these challenges by addressing the issues of employee welfare, community involvement, water conservation, sustainable farming, energy conservation, recycling, alternative fuels, solar power, and more. The speakers will detail what their companies are doing to meet the challenges of corporate responsibility in this century.
Presenters: Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm, Londonderry, NH; Gary Tanimura, Tanimura & Antle, Salinas, CA; John Williams, Frog’s Leap Winery, Rutherford, CA.

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Songbird, Bat and Owl Nest Boxes

The authors of a recent UC publication will discuss the challenges and benefits of establishing habitat for beneficial birds and bats in farmscapes. Studies have been conducted on the nesting and fledgling rates of various nest box designs as well as the actual beneficial pest management effect of these boxes.
Moderator: Jo Ann Baumgartner, Wild Farm Alliance
Presenters: Emily Heaton, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Julie Jedlicka, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA; and Rachael Long, UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE), Yolo County, Woodland, CA.

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Unconventional Farmers for the 21st Century

In order to reinvent the food system we must redefine what it means to be a farmer—socially, politically, and ecologically. Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, will explore the growing movement to give agriculturists a more prominent role in society. She will also discuss past attempts to give farmers a leadership role and why things are different in the 21st century. Unconventional farmer Theresa Podoll of Fullerton, North Dakota will tell the story of how her own family went against the grain of their commodity-farm neighbors and transformed their 480-acre farm, particularly through their work with seeds.
Presenters: Lisa Hamilton, author, Mill Valley, CA; Theresa Podoll, Prairie Road Organic Farm, Fullerton, ND.

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Water and Wolves - Balancing Agriculture and Conservation (Double session continued)

The conflict between agriculture and wildlife conservation has reached a critical point on many fronts. California is in its third year of a drought so severe that the governor has declared a statewide emergency. Making matters worse for farmers, court rulings have limited irrigation supplies for the San Joaquin Valley in order to protect endangered delta and river fish species. Farmers blame their losses on environmentalists and the Endangered Species Act (ESA), while fishermen and conservationists charge that a healthy Delta environment is a legal right. In another raging conflict, wolves were exterminated from many western states, but have come back recently because of the ESA and cooperative efforts between ranchers and environmentalists.

Join us for a provocative discussion where we will first consider the wolf. Becky Weed, a Montana Rancher, has been part of finding new, non-regulatory, solutions for the long-standing conflict between Western ranchers and the wolf. She will discuss some approaches that are working, and how the ongoing challenges surrounding wolves relate to farming/conservation conflicts elsewhere. Next, we will dive into the history and politics of water use in the San Joaquin Valley, the biology of California’s waterways, and the perspective of three California food producers who depend on Delta and San Joaquin water for their livelihoods. A facilitated discussion will follow.
Presenters: Glenn Anderson, Anderson Almonds, Hilmar, CA; Jacob Katz, UC, Davis, CA;  Jim Verboon, Verboon Farms/Familes Protecting the Valley, Laton, CA; Becky Weed, Thirteen Mile Lamb and Wool Company, Belgrade, Mt; TBA
Facilitator: Miriam Volat, Ag Innovations Network, Sebastopol, CA


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