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The inaugural Farming Our Future conference attracted more than 200 attendees, and organizers are anticipating more than 300 for this one. “We expect to see people from all over the northeast, including Albany, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the entire Hudson Valley,” said Karen DiPeri, co-chair of the event along with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia and Greene County’s Steve Hadcock.   “Attendees can expect a day packed with workshops, networking, exhibitors and time for dialog” said Hadcock.

Farming Our Future will engage the agricultural community of local and regional farmers, educators, farmers’ market managers, agricultural students, providers of goods and services, and consumers to think about how to best “grow food, farms, and community” in the context of a rapidly changing local, regional, and global food system. “Jim Slama is a perfect fit for this conference,” said Todd Erling, executive director of the Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corporation. “FamilyFarmed has done in Illinois what we in the Hudson Valley are working on now, for our own farmers, which is to connect local food producers with trade buyers and consumers on a regional level.”

Jim Slama is the editor of the technical-assistance manual Wholesale Success: A Farmers Guide to Selling, Post Harvest Handling, and Packing Produce, which has been used by more than 2,000 small to mid‐size farmers. He has created multidisciplinary expositions and conferences in Chicago and in Santa Monica, California that advance the Good Food Movement and responsible food production. Last year, he helped launch three “food hubs” that have enabled local farmers to sell to wholesale buyers. Food-safety procedures and financing are among his areas of focus.

Exhibitors and sponsorships for the conference are encouraged. Proceeds will go toward Taconic Hills’ nationally award-winning H.A.R.V.E.S.T. Club (Healthy Agricultural Resources by Volunteers & Educators inScience & Technology) and the Taconic Hills Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). The thriving H.A.R.V.E.S.T. program engages youth in the process of growing healthy fruits, flowers, and vegetables in a school-based garden. Community sponsorships are encouraged to help offset the cost. More information can be found online at www.farmingourfuture.org or by calling 518-329-0890.

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    By John Mason
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers | Posted: Sunday, February 26, 2012 1:00 am       

CRARYVILLE — Steffen Schneider, keynote speaker at the Saturday forum Farming Our Future, urged farmers to establish a culture of “mentorship, coaching, learning pods,” in order to meet the challenges of the future.

The all-day event at Taconic Hills High School attracted 200 farmers and farming supporters from near and far. Schneider told them that agriculture needs to be seen as  “multifunctional,” combining the overlapping spheres of society, economy and environment.

“The multifunctionality of agriculture can only be managed by placing agriculture in a social and economic context,” Schneider said.

Focusing on society, he said that three times more individuals take their own lives each year than die in armed conflicts.

“This points to a tremendous chasm somewhere,” he said.

Farming might help heal this chasm, he suggested, as it is “one of the only ways that human beings are asked to interact with nature. We have to relearn we are not apart from nature.”

Creating collaborative settings can help us move toward collective awareness, he said.

He suggested using the right side of the brain to get to the inner life.

“Often, it starts with shifting down a gear, slow down, listen carefully and reflect,” Schneider said.

MIT economist Otto Scharmer has identified four layers of the inner field, the speaker said.  The most superficial: I and me: “You need that,” he said. “You go out in the world full of yourself; but it doesn’t allow you to see much of the other.”

• I and it. “You look at the facts, you start debating, you talk tough, you’re object focused.”

• I and you. Empathy. “You really try to crawl into the skin of the other.”

• I and thou. “You forget about yourself, focus on the moment. Generative listening. The point in any creative process where you have a blank canvas. Where something comes to you.”

“We have to begin cultivating in the soil with the same care we cultivate our inner fields,” Schneider said. In a Power Point slide, he contrasted social pathology, or “absencing,” being “stuck in oneself, one’s skin, one truth, with social emergence, “presencing,” having an open mind, heart and will.

“If we’re going to meet the future, we have to open ourselves out, mind, heart and will,” he said. “There are hurdles on all three levels.

“If you let judgment take hold, your mind will not open up,” Schneider said. “If you can suspend judgment, you can enter the empathic area.”

Cynicism or fear, he said, can close one’s emotional life to the future.

Next, he described three levels of agriculture.

Agriculture 1.0, Schneider said, is culturally embedded and labor-intensive, and characterized by the peasant farmer, traditional methods, and local adaptation, and has low external inputs.

“This is still the most prevalent on the planet,” he said.

Agriculture 2.0, he said, is capital-intensive and dependent on non-renewable inputs, and is characterized by a farm manager and his/her help, intensification, specialization and applied technology.

“These are strands (of a rope),” he said. “We have to find a way to balance them more consciously. We need to add a third strand to meet the challenges coming out of the future.”

This third strand is Agriculture 3.0, which Schneider said is characterized by the agriculturalist, multi-functionality, ecological adaptation, appropriate scale, a holistic approach, living technologies, conscious awareness-based collaboration and learning communities.

Following Schneider’s address, there was a panel discussion moderated by Ben Shute, owner and manager of Hearty Roots Community Farm in Clermont, with Schneider, farm-to-table advocate Amy Cotler, farmers Bruce Davenport and Ellen Poggi and THCSD ninth-grader Ian Perry serving on the panel.

Poggi, an experienced farmer at 24, owns and operates Hand Hollow Farm in New Lebanon. She said that while she wants to meet the challenges Schneider laid out, it’s hard to “look up from the soil.”

Cotler described the winter study groups that were developed from the group Berkshire Grown. “It starts with a core of people committed to what agriculture really means, and spreads out,” she said.

Asked if some of this was going on his grandfather’s day, Davenport, president of the Rondout Valley Growers Association, said the past generations had the grange, the cooperative extension and the farm bureau.

“But the idea of learning pods is relatively new,” he said. Pods grew out of the association, he said.

“I was 2.0,” he said. “Our object was to keep farmers profitable — what do they need to do that.”

Now they have farmer to farmer meetings, farm to community meetings, farm to school meetings.

Schneider said the something has to be done to encourage more young people to go into farming.

Asked if many of his classmates would consider farming as a career, Perry said, “I think a very small percentage. They think of it as a 16-hour day. We need to teach them at a young age. I thought all farmers did was plant corn until (Taconic Hills’ Harvest Club) came up. Now I’m studying the weather and its connections to agriculture, plants, what they need to grow” (and so on).

Cotler said that at one time it was critical to raise demand; now supply is more critical. This is hampered by the “astronomically high” price of land in the Northeast. She agreed that more has to be done to encourage young farmers, as well as to open up markets for farmers.

During the question period, Alex Freedman, a young farmer from the Berkshires, said, “Steffen, your talk wasn’t about farming at all. It was about self-reflexiveness. I came to farming through developing spiritual practice. I can be outside all day, jump in the river naked, eating the food I grow — it’s a spiritual experience. I really love to do it. Farming offers something to people no other profession offers — you can do something you love. People aren’t doing it for fame or fortune. How can we change the conversation — we’re still talking about the material parts, but not about how much we love it.”

His speech was greeted with applause, and all the panelists agreed they love what they’re doing.

“Isn’t it up to us to change the conversation?” Schneider asked. “The times are asking that we do it consciously, openly. I believe as much as we need to talk about how we cultivate soils, we also need to talk about cultivating the inner side. Our time is more left-brain driven. It’s time to switch the conversation to do both.”

To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2269, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.

Join us on Saturday, February 23rd 2013 for an inspiring day filled with networking, collaborative discussions and practical workshops! See you there!

Adonis Press

Angello’s Distributing

Bard Center for Environmental Policy

Berkshire Harmony

Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation

Buster Creek Farm Services

Capital Area Agricultural and Horticultural Program

Center for Environmental Studies, Williams College

Chatham Chickens

Chatham Real Food Market Co-op

Columbia County Dairy Promotion

Columbia County Department of Health

Columbia County Farm Bureau

Columbia County Soil & Water Conservation District

Columbia Land Conservancy

Common Hands Farm

Copake Economic Advisory Board

Copake Farmers Market

Cornell University Cooperative Extension of
Columbia/Greene Counties

Davenport Farms

Double Decker Farm

Esopus Creek Conservancy

FarmAssist Productions

Farm Credit East, ACA

Farm Ducks Limited

Farm Service Agency

Fox Hill Farm Grassfed Beef

Gansvoort Farm/Bard College

Glynwood, Inc.

Great Barrington Agricultural Commission

Great Song Farm

GREENPLAN

Hand Hollow Farm

Hawk Dance Farm

Hawthorne Valley Farm

Hawthorne Valley Learning Center

Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program

Healthcare Consortium Farm to School

Hearty Roots Community Farm

Hometown Foods, LLC

Hudson Ten Percent Energy Challenge

Hudson Valley Bounty

Hudson Valley Clean Energy

i&me farm

JJRT Enterprises

Lakeview Vermiculture

Lebanon Valley Business Association

Lebanon Valley Farmers Market

Lloyd Spear, Beekeeper

Many Forks Farm

New York Nut Growers Association

NYS Dept of Agriculture & Markets

Philmont Beautification, Inc.

Project Native

Questar III

R’Eisen Shine Farm

Rondout Valley Growers Association

ROeliff Jansen Park

Soliphilia Farm

South Pine Street City Farm

SUNY Albany

Susan Senk Public Relations

Taconic Hills Central School

Taconic Hills HARVEST Club

The Abode of the Message organic farm

The Carrot Project

The Locavore Way

The Nature Institute

The Sylvia Center at Katchkie Farm

Thunderhill Farm

Town of Taghkanic Town Board Member

Ulster BOCES

Ulster County BOCES

Williams College Sustainable Growers

Wyomanock Farm

Farming our Future
will take place on Saturday, February 25 at Taconic Hills Central School from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. This inaugural conference is geared towards all who are interested in exploring the future of farming in our community, including  local and regional farmers, educators, farmers’ market managers, agricultural students, providers of goods and services, and consumers. The conference engages the agriculture community to think about its work toward growing food, farms, and community in the context of a rapidly changing local, regional, and global food system.  The cost to attend the conference is $20 per person for adults and $10 per person for students, with advance registration.   

Steffen Schneider, Director of Farm Operations at Hawthorne Valley Farm, will give the keynote address Agri-culture 3.0: An Agricultural Narrative for the Future, followed by a panel moderated by Schneider.  Joining the panel discussion will be:  Amy Cotler – Farm to Table Advocate and Food Writer, Bruce Davenport – fourth generation farmer at Davenport Farms, Ian Perry – 9th Grade Student and President of the HARVEST Club, Taconic Hills CSD and Ellen Poggi, now in her third growing season at Hand Hollow Farm. 

The afternoon is primarily devoted to a series of workshops that participants can learn more information about specific topics.  Farmers in the Hudson Valley will benefit from a variety of workshops including Farmland Accessibility Challenges and Opportunities, hosted by The Columbia Land Conservancy and the Lender’s Panel: Learning About Accessing Credit, hosted by The Carrot Project, Farm Service Agency and Farm Credit East.  

Revitalizing Our Communities Through Food and Agriculture will explore projects in towns like Philmont, Copake and New Lebanon along with inspiring programs from around the United States. “We will discuss current ideas from our own communities to revitalize our towns,” says Karyn Novakowski, Panel Facilitator and local food advocate. “Then we will explore how to move those ideas into action through collaboration, education and community outreach.”

In celebration of the “International Year of Cooperatives” as declared by a resolution by the United Nations, Rondout Valley Growers’ President Bruce Davenport will lead a discussion entitled:  Sharing Resources – The Cooperative Way.  Davenport will talk about what lead to this collaboration amongst farmers, how it got started and how members of this collaboration work together now.

Matching food to market takes skill.  Amy Cotler Author and Food Writer will cover the many options of wholesale and direct to consumers approaches in the workshop entitled:  The Right Fit:  Matching Food and Farm to Market.  

Columbia County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board has been working diligently over the past year to revise and prepare a farmland protection plan for Columbia County.   The Board sought input from residents in the county to assist them in developing the vision and goals for the plan.   After synthesizing the collected information, the Board has prepared a draft document containing some of the parts that will be in the plan.  In the workshop entitled: Farmland Protection Plan – Where Are We Now? Todd Erling and Mary Anne Johnson from Hudson Valley Hudson Valley AgriBusiness Development Corporation will provide an opportunity for county residents to get a first glimpse of what may be contained in the Farmland Protection Plan and provide input.

The Youth Workshop – Building Tomorrow’s Leaders will explore the impacts of current legislation,  and real life agriculture scenarios will be worked out through team activities. 

The “World Café” portion of the program will provide opportunities for attendees to gather around topics of common interest, share collaborative dialogue, share knowledge and create possibilities for action. 

Exhibitors and sponsorships are encouraged.  Sponsors to date include:  Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Hudson Valley Clean Energy, Register Star and KeyBank.   Proceeds from the conference, will go toward Taconic Hill’s award winning H.A.R.V.E.S.T. Club, (Healthy Agricultural Resources by Volunteers & Educators in Science & Technology) a program that engages youth in the process of growing healthy fruits, flowers and vegetables in a school based garden, and the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). 

The full schedule along with registration information can be found online at www.farmingourfuture.org

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