Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:30 p.m.
Gary Paul Nabhan

Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving & Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods

Gary Paul Nabhan, the well-known local foods activist, ethnobotanist and lecturer, is author of a new book entitled Renewing America’s Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent’s Most Endangered Foods. The book is a beautifully illustrated, dramatic call to recognize, celebrate and conserve the great diversity of foods that give North America its distinctive culinary identity that reflects our multicultural heritage. It offers us rich natural and cultural histories as well as recipes and folk traditions associated with the rarest food plants and animals in North America. In doing so, it reminds us that what we choose to eat can either conserve or deplete the cornucopia of our continent. He is a writer, professor and conservationist and is the director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. His writing is widely anthologized and translated, and has won the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a Western States Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.

Friday, Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m.
Roger Newman Turner, ND, DO, BAc, FBNA, FBAcC


Health from the Soil Up
Britain's Organic Pioneers — Prophets or Pipe-Dreamers?

    Roger Newman Turner is a naturopathic physician who learned the foundations of health firsthand as the son of a pioneering organic farmer, teacher, author and activist. His father, F. Newman Turner, farmed in the west of England from where he published one of the first journals of organic husbandry and wrote Fertility Farming, Fertility Pastures, and Herdsmanship, now regarded as classics of organiculture.
    F. Newman Turner treated his prize-winning Jersey herd with fasting and herbs from the pastures on his farm and challenged the British Ministry of Agriculture on its Foot-and-Mouth Disease policy. He became a founder-member of The Soil Association and Garden Organic, Britain's leading agricultural and horticultural campaigning organizations. In this presentation, Roger describes some of the early experiments in healthy living and the people who withstood scorn and criticism to start the gentle revolution that has become the global phenomenon of organic agriculture.

Saturday, Dec. 6, 7:30 p.m.
Joel Salatin

Taking Back Our Food: And If We Did, What Would Tomorrow Look Like?

    Despite unprecedented scientific confirmation that environmentally-friendly food is the antidote for nearly every fear expressed by politicians, our side can't seem to find a seat at the table: from either Republicans or Democrats. A local non-industrial food system radically realigns the authority and financial power structure, and Washington and Wall Street insiders know that. In the end, restructuring the status-quo scares politicians more than sending the culture to extinction. In this rousing call to grassroots action for both farmers and foodies, Salatin will articulate an individualistic Boston Tea Party approach to taking back our food system and saving the culture.

2-3 p.m.
The Big Lie in agribusiness, government and academia is that if agriculture worldwide went organic, half of the world's population would starve. Science and verifiable fact simple do not bear this out. At all. Given the shortages of grains — and Biotech companies use of this as an excuse to introduce more GMO crops — the need to dispense with this myth is urgent. In this presentation see solid data on high-yielding organic, biological and ecological farming systems and learn that eco-agriculture outperforms GMOs and is better for the family farm.

3-4 p.m.
Join farmer Steffen Schneider as he profiles the operation and explains the many levels of diversity found on Hawthorne Valley Farm. This 400-acre biodynamic farm outside Albany, New York features a dairy, CSA, farm store, bakery, sauerkraut manufacturing, and more. The takeaway lessons, however, are the principles through which all attendees can discover opportunities on their own farm through diversification.

4-5 p.m.
This consultant and researcher into soil life and biochemistry holds that there are two limiting factors of a health soil without exception: the presence of humus and the existence of a humus formation pipeline; and mycorrhyzal composition. Tied together, these two factors stand behind a soil that performs. Learn how to make your inputs and farming methods work to eliminating these two proven limiters.

9-10:30 a.m.
Fred Provenza studies dietary behavior of range animals and has learned much about the behavior of animals, particularly toward diet. It is clear there is an inherent "nutritional wisdom" within, wisdom that can be taught as well. In order to farm and ranch more sustainably, we must learn to appreciate diversity, live in an evolutionary spirit, and develop agricultural management strategies that enable us to adapt quickly to change. In this amazing presentation you will gain insight into natural systems as well as come home with practical ideas.

10-11 a.m.
Noel Garcia is a Certified Crop Advisor in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas who serves growers throughout the United States, Mexico and beyond. Working with both conventional and organic growers, he bases all their recommendations on plant nutrition requirements determined by "Ask the Plant" analysis programs calibrated to a natural soil testing procedure. Learn to understand plant needs and key in on appropriate ecological treatments. He will present attendees with innovative procedures for determining soil fertility and nutritional needs of plants, including leaf and petiole analysis.

2-3 p.m.
Drawing from own farm's experiences, this California farmer will discuss the Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, model including the "good, bad and ugly." Learn how to make this marketing/service/community model work on your farm.

3-4 p.m.
This presentation by organic farming researcher Joel Gruver explores management strategies that promote healthy root systems such as cover crops, tillage tools, soil correctives, microbial inoculants, etc. The ultimate "precision agriculture" lies in the capacity for healthy roots to stimulate microorganisms at the right time and place.

3-4 p.m.
Given the high-energy world we live in, bombarded by many forms of energy, it's no wonder that organisms are affected by these non-natural frequencies. The cow may or may not feel this energy, depending on the magnitude and duration of the voltage exposure. But the animal's health and productivity can be impacted, sometimes in major ways. Gain an understanding of stray voltage as it applies to dairy cows, and all living creatures.

10-11 a.m.
This Australian farmer will explain how to practice "carbon farming" — managing weeds/ground covers to reduce pests and diseases and increase soil carbon and fertility. Soil carbon, particularly the stable forms such as humus and glomalin, increase farm profitability by increasing yields, soil fertility, soil moisture retention, aeration, nitrogen fixation, mineral availability, disease suppression, soil tilth and general structure. Research shows that these soils have an improved water use efficiency due to the ability of humus to hold over 20 times its weight in water. This talk will explain how atmospheric carbon is introduced into the soil and how it is stored in stable forms.

2-4 p.m.
This lifelong biodynamic practitioner and teacher will discuss the biodynamic compost preparations in such a way that the strange way they are made (oak bark in a skull, chamomile in the bovine intestine, etc.) becomes less mysterious. He will show that there is an inner logic in these indications and methodologies. Come away with a deeper understanding of biodynamics and the techniques behind creating rich, living compost.

Making the Soil Food Web Work on Your Farm
Michael Martin Meléndrez

9 a.m.-12 noon
Plants depend on beneficial soil organisms to help them obtain nutrients from the soil, to prevent nutrient loss, to protect them from pathogens, and to degrade compounds that could inhibit growth. A spoonful of healthy soil contains millions of organisms that perform vital roles, roles that are disrupted by pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. In this in-depth workshop learn how to take the soil food web into consideration in your farming practices. Understand how a highly populated and balanced soil food web will: create humus, improve soil structure, protect roots, retain nitrogen and other nutrients, slowly release retained nutrients, produce enzymes and hormones, and decompose pollutants.

Developing & Managing Organic Matter to Elevate the Humus in Farming Soils
Bob Shaffer

2-5 p.m.
The decomposition of organic matter is a foundation concept in ecologically correct farming. But why do some farms end up building soil, while others do not? There are specific techniques that farmers can do when managing decomposition to elevate humus levels in the soil. This West Coast consultant show how in this detailed, practical workshop.