Snohomish County’s one-day Focus On Farming conference on Thursday isn’t just for farmers.
Interested in growing medicinal herbs, making hard cider, using organic seeds, raising native plants or helping build up the local food economy? Lots of good discussion is planned.
But the conference is directed at regional farmers, who will pack the event to learn about such topics as getting local meat to local markets, growing and malting new grain varieties, grafting vegetables and strengthening the state’s food systems. The conference also offers regulatory, business and technical help to farmers.
Conference participants can choose from 24 agriculture information workshops presented by experts. This year’s trade show offers farmers and those interested in local food production a look at the latest equipment models, samples and demonstrations.
A highlight will be the conference speakers, said the county’s agriculture coordinator Linda Neunzig, a farmer herself.
Robert Thayer, the founder of the landscape architecture program at the Davis campus of the University of California, plans to talk about “Farming in the Bioregion: Nature, Place and Community.” His idea is that regionally-based agriculture has potential to help communities work together.
In the evening, Susie Oberdahlhoff, a self-described “city-born preacher’s kid turned farm wife,” plans to offer “Kids, crops, sows and cows: Life happens, learn to bounce.” The comedic presentation is sure to resonate with those in the audience trying to juggle farm life with relationships, parenting and everyday commitments, Neunzig said.
This year’s keynote speaker is Fred Kirschenmann from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. His previous appointments include tenure on the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board and National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.
Kirschenmann still owns his family’s 1,800-acre farm in south central North Dakota — a farm that was certified organic in 1976 and has been featured in National Geographic, Business Week and Gourmet magazines.
His presentation Thursday is “Anticipating Future Food and Farming Challenges: Opportunities for Beginning Farmers.”
The end of cheap energy, the depletion of water resources and changes in the climate will present challenges to farming and food production, Kirschenmann said.
“At the same time they will create some opportunities to reinvent our food system, provide new opportunities for beginning farmers and improve the quality of food and health,” he said. “Reinventing the food system of the future will be something we all have to do together.”
Kirschenmann sees more young people going into niche farming and he wants to encourage that.
“Young people who used to leave the farm are now staying or coming back to the farm,” he said. “There is a viable future.”
Born in the family farmhouse, Kirschenmann learned to drive a tractor at age 7 and the combine at 12. His father carved the farm out of the native prairie to grow wheat, oats and corn for silage.
“During the dust bowl years of the Great Depression, my father was determined he was not going to let that happen to him. He knew it was important to take care of the land,” Kirschenmann said. “He used conventional fertilizers and pesticides and then was concerned about worms disappearing from his soil. We went organic at a time when nobody else was doing that in the Midwest. The neighbors felt this was terrible and that I was going to ruin the farm. That was the start of our interest in sustainable agriculture.”
Kirschenmann knows a lot of food people across the country and he enjoys making connections.
He introduced his friends Dan Barber and Steve Jones to each other. Jones is director of the Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center in Mount Vernon, where the WSU bread lab is encouraging regional farmers to grow heirloom wheat and new specialty grains that result in tastier, healthier and more nutritious flour. Barber is an owner of one of the country’s top restaurants, New York’s Blue Hill, which uses flour from wheat grown and milled in Western Washington.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
If you go
Focus on Farming — Back to the Farm: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Nov. 20, Evergreen State Fairgrounds, 14405 179th Ave. SE, Monroe. Cost is $60 if you register by Nov. 17, $65 at the door, $30 for college students, $15 for youth. More information is available at www.focusonfarming.org.
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