On the farm

On the farm The 33RD EcoFarm Conference Jan. 23 to 26

Beyond organics: farming to save the world

By Deborah Luhrman

If you are interested in where the organic movement is headed, there’s no better place to find out than at the annual EcoFarm Conference. Now in its 33rd year, the 4-day gathering of organic farmers, ranchers, food activists, researchers, analysts and members of the general public takes place at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove from January 23 to 26. It is the oldest and largest sustainable ag event in the West.

“There is evidence that organic or ecological farming is the quickest, safest, most resilient and reliable way to produce food for people around the world,” says Ken Dickerson, executive director of the Soquel-based Ecological Farming Association that organizes the conference. “A lot has already been figured out, but there is certainly room to innovate and room to advance the technical approaches. That’s what our conference is all about.”

Cross-pollinating ideas is the goal of Dickerson and conference planner Liz Birnbaum, who have developed dozens of meetings around the conference theme, Feed the world you want to live in.

“Our community has been dreaming an alternative food and farming system into existence—one that is healthful, safe and just,” says Dickerson. “So holding that vision in our minds, the conference is about how we make it a reality in the world.”

Forward thinkers

At the core of the EcoFarm Conference are four plenary sessions, surrounded by 65 workshops and numerous round table discussions. Setting the stage at the opening plenary is Brian Halweil, co-publisher of our sister magazines Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn, editor of Edible East End and senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute. Based on a paper he wrote for Worldwatch entitled “Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?,”Halweil will describe how several trends are converging to create a “food theory of everything,” and he will discuss the challenges of feeding a world of seven billion people at a time when global warming is causing harsh climate swings.

Halweil will be joined by Denise O’Brien, an organic farmer from Iowa who co-founded the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and has recently been working for the USDA as an agricultural advisor in Afghanistan. O’Brien will speak about how farmers can collaborate to bring about change.

A second plenary will deal with making the food movement more political. “There are policies that can facilitate or accelerate the (or-

CCOF celebrates 40TH anniversary

Santa Cruz-based CCOF—one of the nation’s largest organic certification groups—was working earlier this year to save parts of the 2012 Farm Bill that help organic farmers, so they went to see Jim Costas in Fresno. Costas is a Democratic congressman who sits on the House Agriculture Committee and has been a strong advocate for agriculture in general, but not specifically for organic farming.

“To his credit, he came on a tour of several farms of CCOF members and realized that these are people in his district who are creating jobs, producing good food and doing it in a way that lessens impact on the environment,” says CCOF Executive Director Cathy Calfo.

Costas got excited about what he saw and stepped up to save organic certification cost sharing in the 2012 Farm Bill. “The amazing thing is that it didn’t take a lot of convincing,” says Calfo. “It’s just that organic has grown tremendously over the last 10 years and it wasn’t on his radar as the force that it is.”

Putting organic agriculture on the radar of lawmakers in Washington is one of CCOF’s top priorities for 2013 as the certification and trade association celebrates its 40th birthday.

“We believe that organic is the future of agriculture, but the policies currently in place don’t reflect that,” she adds. “If this were any other sector of the economy, like energy, for example, we’d be investing in the future, which is clean energy.

“One of the things we’re going to focus on in the next few years, before the next Farm Bill is written, is mobilizing our members so we can have a more impactful presence for organic and sustainable agriculture in the Farm Bill debate,” Calfo says.

CCOF also will be going paperless in 2013 and rolling out a brand new website that includes an updated directory of members and products searchable by product, region and sales channel. The association’s 2,400 members will be able to consult their records or file new plans online, and the site, for the first time, will include a comprehensive list of approved organic input materials.

To celebrate its milestone 40th anniversary, CCOF’s annual conference—the day before EcoFarm’s, also at Asilomar— will include a bus tour down memory lane. The tour starts with a visit to Phil Foster’s Pinnacle Organics ranch in San Juan Bautista, then stops at Fuentes Berry Farms in the Pajaro Valley to observe the USDA organic strawberry research station, and at Serendipity Farms in Monterey. Along the way, participants will hear stories from people familiar with the history of CCOF, including its first staff member, Mark Lipson, and the editors of the book Cultivating a Movement: An Oral History of Organic Farming and Sustainable Agriculture on California’s Central Coast.

ganic) model we are suggesting, then there are policies and regulations that can be an impediment,” says Dickerson. “I think people see through the ways our government has been misused to advance the power of certain vested interests, and they see there is an alternative, a community of people who welcome them to participate on all levels.”

Speaker Wenonah Hauter—executive director of Food & Water Watch and author of the book Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America—will talk about how U.S. agriculture policy has been hijacked by lobbyists and why it is critical for the food movement to become more political. She will be joined by organic advocate Jim Riddle. Owner of an organic farm in Minnesota and former chair of the National Organic Standards Board, Riddle was the organic community’s first choice to be Secretary of Agriculture when President Obama took office in 2009. He will talk about how, bite-by-bite, people can impact the world they live in and show how an unstoppable food revolution is already well underway.

A third plenary will offer up examples of successful organic farms and the conference will close on a more spiritual note, featuring an organic farming nun, Sister Miriam MacGillis, the director of Genesis Farm in New Jersey.

Cornucopia of events

In between plenary sessions, conference goers can choose among a banquet of workshops on topics ranging from blueberry cultivation to GMO labeling, along with beer and wine tastings, film screenings, awards and dancing.

New this year is a one-day, pre-conference seminar on butchery skills that aims to teach farmers and ranchers who raise grass-fed, freerange animals how to get the most value from their livestock. It will be taught by master butchers Rian Rinn of Wyeth Acres in Healdsburg and Loren Ozaki of Flea St. Café/CoolEatz in Menlo Park.

Other pre-conference events include: the CCOF annual meeting and bus tour (see related story p. 33); a short course on pollinator conservation offered by the Xerces society, for the first time in California; a CSA conference sponsored by Urgenci International and the Community Alliance with Family Farmers; and EcoFarm’s own field trip to organic farms along the Slow Coast near Pescadero, which includes a farm lunch prepared by Jim Denevan of Outstanding in the Field.

We are fortunate to have such a wealth of talent and events coming to our own backyard in January. The EcoFarm Conference is open to the public. Tickets can be purchased online for individual events, for an entire day or for the whole conference. “Organic is growing and people are participating because they are concerned about their health, but also because of the values,” concludes Dickerson. “They are choosing a system that is formed by people whose mission is to create something that leaves the world better than they found it.”

Deborah Luhrman was once the Santa Cruz County bureau chief for Channel 46 news. She has been traveling the world and spending too much time on airplanes for the past 25 years. So she returned to Santa Cruz to grow a garden and write about local issues.

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