KEYNOTES
FISHER-MERRITT Farm Family "Building Community Through Growing Food"
Thursday, February 25th
While their farm may be small, located debatably between planting zones 3 and 4, and purchased for its most notable characteristic, "affordable", it has allowed the Fisher-Merritts to raise a family, build a community and nourish a passel of next generation farmers.
Appropriately named Food Farm, the Fisher-Merritts produce and deliver food to their surrounding communities nine months out of the year. When not feeding their neighbors, they are feeding their soil, which has transformed under their stewardship. Never content to leave well-enough alone, the Fisher-Merritts have applied their innovative nature to small scale systems of production, storage and season extension. Legendary mentors, they have graciously extended themselves to novice farmers time and again. Tonight we can be "the novice at their knee" as they entertain and inspire us with insights gained during their 37 years of organic farming on the edge of the northwoods.
CHUCK HASSEBROOK
"A Wave of Change: Challenges and Hope for
Transforming the American Food and Farming System"
Friday, February 26th
As Executive Director for the Center for Rural Affairs, a nationally recognized research, advocacy, and rural development organization, Chuck Hassebrook has tirelessly championed family farming and ranching, small business, and entrepreneurial rural development. Through over thirty years of rural activism, Hassebrook has seen that organic and sustainable agriculture are creating a wave of change in the farm and food systems that offer rural people and communities the opportunity to retake control of their destinies. Formidable challenges stand in the way, but history and people's freedom to make their own choices provide hope for a brighter future in rural America.
DR. MARGARET MELLON
"Two Views of Food Safety: Organic Agriculture and
Biotechnology"
Saturday, February 27th
Dr. Margaret Mellon directs the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The program promotes a transition to sustainable agriculture and focuses on critically evaluating the use of biotechnology in plant and animal agriculture as well as assessing animal agriculture's contribution to the rise of antibiotic-resistant disease. Trained as both a scientist and a lawyer, Mellon considers food safety through two lenses: organic agriculture and biotechnology. Exploring how people relate to food safety in these contexts as well as through scientific and legal perspectives, Mellon's work considers how to put the issue of food safety into the context of the ongoing debates about the future of agriculture.
 | All general sessions will be ASL interpreted. |
