Last week, myself, Benneth Phelps, and Ethan Roland attended Young Farmers Conference 2009 at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in White Plains, NY. There were HUNDREDS of inspiring young farmers and action-oriented food/agriculture folks there – an incredible collection of bright minds.
I want to pass on several great nuggets from this conference.
1. I presented on Tree Crops and Agroforestry to a full room of folks Thursday afternoon. This was a high-energy presentation with lots of storytelling and nature connection elements. Stone Barns recorded the audio, which will be up on the web sometime in the future; for now, here’s my slideshow (from SlideShare):
2. Ethan Roland gave a powerful presentation on Ecosystem Investing. What could happen if we apply systems thinking and permaculture design principles to our financial ecosystems? Lots of cutting-edge thinking here. View Ecosystem Investing and other conference materials here,including Benneth and Ethan’s GREAT presentation “Permaculture for Farmers.”
3. Wes Jackson of the Land Institute gave the keynote address. His mission is to perennialize grain agriculture. Annual grain crops represent one of the greatest threats to the planet, owing to massive soil erosion, water pollution, carbon emissions, and replacement of local ecosystems, economies, and culture with export-crop monocultures. Annual grains are also, of course, the primary means by which most people in the world eat.
This is a problem! And Wes Jackson has identified a very promising leverage point, and laid out a possible pathway for large scale soil-repairing, watershed-repairing, carbon-negative agriculture in the US.
4. A lot more. Stay tuned for more paradigm-shifting insights from this conference. In fact, leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to read more about!
Thanks for posting your slide show! I intend to forward it to folks I know who are working to create wholly integrated systems of food and fauna on their properties in Vermont.