2008 Sustainable Agriculture Conference
Pre-co n f e re n c e A c t i v i t i e s
"Sustainable Food Systems for Your Community"
Join us for timely information and powerful insights at the 2008 SAC Pre-Conference. Thursday’s activities include a workshop, a reception and a dinner featuring Wes Jackson. All events happen at the Anderson Civic Center.
Note: Thursday Pre-conference activities require an additional fee apart from regular conference activities. See our online registration for details.
Thursday, October 30 at the Civic Center, 2:00- 5:00 pm
“Engaging the Community in the Development of Sustainable Local Food Systems”
This participatory workshop is for NC and SC Extension Agents and others interested in local food systems. The Triangle Region has an abundance of farms, farmers markets and sustainable ag educational programs. So why isn’t the community consuming more local foods? What needs to happen? These questions inspired the birth of the Triangle Food Commons (TFC). A panel will feature speakers from the TFC’s five working groups: Affordable Local Food, Farmer Education/Incubator, Farmland Trust, Local Food Distribution System, and Alternative Local Economy. The talented speakers include David Harper (Land in Common), Jenni Grover (nutrition expert) , Noah Ranells (Orange County, NC), Gerry Cohn (American Farmland Trust), Spence Dickenson (farmer), and Robert Andrew Smith (Leaflight Foundation).
Reception and Dinner, 5:30 – 8:30 PM
After a reception with refreshments and socializing, CFSA will host a delicious dinner from fresh, local ingredients. The meal will be a preview of all the great food that is a highlight of the annual conference. After dinner, we have the honor of hearing from one of America’s leaders in sustainable farming, Wes Jackson.
Wes Jackson
There are few figures who loom larger in sustainable agriculture than Wes Jackson. Wes is the Director of The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas, a non-profit he founded in 1976. Wes is a strong and provocative voice calling out for better farm and food systems in America. The Land Institute under Wes’s leadership has become a center of research into polyculture, planting more than one crop in a field, as in nature. This work in natural ecology in farming is yielding exciting results in the area of perennial food crops such as wheat, sorghum and sunflowers. He is the author of New Roots of Agriculture and Native to This Place, a MacArthur Fellow and holds a PhD in Genetics from NC State University. Come hear the important good news from Wes and The Land Institute. |
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Scholarships Available!
This program is made possible in part by the Clemson Sustainable Agriculture Program and the NC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program. Thanks to their generous support, scholarships for NC and SC Cooperative Extension Agents are available! Each agent that attends may designate one individual from their community to attend the community food systems program and the entire sac on a southern sare scholarship. It’s a great opportunity to engage a community partner—agency personnel, non-profits, farmers, businesses—in your efforts to promote local food system development.
There are a limited number of scholarships available for NC Cooperative Extension Agents interested in attending the conference. In North Carolina, this is an in-service training opportunity. For more information, NC Extension Agents may contact Carol Moore, SARE Model State Program Assistant at (919) 731-2077 or moore6827@bellsouth.net.
SC Extension Agents are eligible to receive a state SARE travel scholarship to attend the conference. For more information, contact Geoff Zehnder at 864-656-6644 or zehnder@clemson.edu.
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