Trainers
Dr. Ann Adams – Holistic Management, Jan 17-19
Dr. Ann Adams has designed and implemented training programs for both trainers and practitioners, including a USDA-funded, three-year $800,000 training program for beginning farmers. She regularly teaches classes (onsite and distance learning) and offers consulting in Holistic Management for family farms and ranches with a particular focus on goalsetting facilitation and financial planning. Trained as a mediator for the Albuquerque Metropolitan Court System, Ann also has experience with other conflict resolution processes that she brings to her facilitations. Ann received her B.S. Ed. in English from Ohio University, and a PhD. in American Literature from Indiana University. She has also been a Holistic Management Certified Educator since 1998 and has written countless articles, helped develop agriculture-based software for financial and grazing planning, and written a training handbook, At Home with Holistic Management: Creating a Life of Meaning, published in 1999. She owns a small farm in the Manzano Mountains, southeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico where she raises goats and chickens.
Darren Doherty – Keyline Farming, Jan 20-22
Darren J. Doherty has had extensive experience across the planet in permaculture project design, development & management, with a focus on retrofitting broad-acre agricultural systems, and has been acclaimed as a pioneer in this important & often overlooked field. He is a qualified Whole Farm Planner (University of Melbourne), an Approved Keyline Designer, & Accredited Permaculture Trainer (APT).
Dr. Wes Jackson – Perennial Agriculture, Jan 24-26
Dr. Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute, was born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. After attending Kansas Wesleyan University (B.A Biology, 1958), he studied botany (M.A. University of Kansas, 1960) and genetics (Ph.D. North Carolina State University, 1967). He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the Environmental Studies department at California State University – Sacramento. He resigned that position in 1976 to found The Land Institute.
Dr. Jackson’s writings include both papers and books. His most recent work, Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture, was published by Counterpoint Press in 2010.Becoming Native to This Place(1994), sketches his vision for the resettlement of America’s rural communities. New Roots for Agriculture (1980) outlines the basis for the agricultural research at The Land Institute.
The work of The Land Institute has been featured extensively in the popular media including The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” In the November 2005 issue, Smithsonian named him one of “35 Who Made a Difference” and in March 2009 Wes was included in Rolling Stone’s “100 Agents of Change.” Dr. Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars award (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), the Right Livelihood Award (Stockholm, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, 2000), and the Louis Bromfield Award (2010). He has received four honorary doctorates and in 2007 received the University of Kansas Distinguished Service Award.
Dave Jacke - Perennial Agriculture, Jan 24-26
Dave Jacke has been a student of ecology and design since the 1970s, and has run his own ecological design firm—Dynamics Ecological Design—since 1984. Dave is an engaging and passionate teacher of ecological design and permaculture, and a meticulous designer. He has consulted on, designed, built, and planted landscapes, homes, farms, and communities in the many parts of the United States, as well as overseas, but mainly in the Northeast. A cofounder of the Land Trust at Gap Mountain in Jaffrey, NH, he homesteaded there for many years. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Simon’s Rock College (1980) and a M.A. in Landscape Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design (1984). Dave is the primary author of the award-winning, two-volume ecological design text Edible Forest Gardens and is currently co-authoring his second book, Coppice Agroforestry.
Eric Toensmeier – Tree Crops & Agroforestry, Jan 27-29
Eric Toensmeier has studied useful plants and food forestry since 1990. He is the author of Perennial Vegetables and co-author of Edible Forest Gardens with Dave Jacke. Both books have received multiple awards. Eric’s current research is on perennial farming practices that fight climate change by capturing carbon. Eric managed the 30-acre Nuestras Raices urban farm site as an incubator farm, assisting aspiring immigrant and refugee farmers to start their own operations. He is also an experienced farm business trainer, including co-developing the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course, now taught in eight U.S. states and three Canadian provinces.
Dr. Elaine Ingham – Living Soils, Jan 31 – Feb 2
Dr. Elaine Ingham is a world-renowned soil biologist who continues to study the microbial life of the soil, which in large part explains why organic “works.” Elaine founded Soil Foodweb, Inc. in 1996, helping farmers all over the world to grow more resilient crops by understanding and improving their soil life. She is also an affiliate professor at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa and has served in academia for three decades.
Elaine started her academic career at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN graduating in 1974 with a double major, cum laude, in Biology and Chemistry. Elaine earned her Master of Science in Microbiology in 1977 at Texas A & M University and her doctorate degree in soil microbiology from Colorado State University in 1981, after which she worked as a Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Natural Resource Ecology Lab at Colorado State University. In 1985, Elaine accepted a Research Associate Fellowship at the University of Georgia. In 1986, Elaine joined the faculty at Oregon State University, with a split appointment in Forest Science and Botany and Plant Pathology, until 2001, when her work with Soil Foodweb Inc. required her to focus on the world-wide network that was developing. In January of 2011, Dr. Ingham joined Rodale Institute as Chief Scientist.
Jason Aramburu – Biochar Colloquium, Feb 3
Jason Aramburu is founder and president of Re:Char, an eco-social biochar enterprise. Re:Char empowers subsistence farmers in the developing world to enhance their crop yields and supplement their income while trapping atmospheric carbon and enriching depleted soils. Jason graduated from Princeton University with a degree cum laude in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a certificate in Environmental Studies. He has extensive research experience in both the lab and field, having spent significant time studying and working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama and at Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative. Named a 2009 Social Innovation fellow by Pop!Tech and a 2010 Echoing Green fellow, Jason believes climate change and rural poverty are the two greatest global challenges and is excited to take part in solving them.
Joel Salatin – Local Food Systems, Feb 5
Joel Salatin, 53, is a farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. A third generation alternative farmer, he returned to the farm full time in 1982 and continued refining and adding to his parents’ ideas. The farm services more than 3,000 families, 10 retail outlets, and 50 restaurants through on-farm sales and metropolitan buying clubs with salad bar beef, pastured poultry, eggmobile eggs, pigaerator pork, forage-based rabbits, pastured turkey and forestry products using relationship marketing.
The family’s farm, Polyface Inc. (“The Farm of Many Faces”) has been featured in SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, GOURMET and countless other radio,television and print media. It achieved iconic status as the grass farm featured in the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA by food writer Michael Pollan.
Joel Salatin has authored six books. His speaking and writing reflect dirt-under-the-fingernails experience punctuated with mischievous humor. He passionately defends small farms, local food systems, and the right to opt out of the conventional food paradigm.
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