This is Eliot Coleman’s presentation at the Asheville Mother Earth News Fair in April of 2016. Eliot is a celebrated farming expert encouraging people and communities to choose locally grown organic food. He helped pioneer the movement with his first book “The New Organic Grower” published over 20 years ago. He continues leading the way, expanding the limits of the harvest season deep into and through winter at his world-renowned farm in Harborside, Maine.
His latest book, “The Winter Harvest Handbook” which is featured in this talk, shares his hard-won experience for gardeners and farmers alike. Reap the benefits of his wisdom and grow abundant cold season harvests even through the depths of winter. Grow quality produce in unheated or minimally heated, movable greenhouses by adopting his innovative practices and adapting them to your own climate.
Our keynote speaker, Clara Coleman, is a second-generation organic farmer, consultant, writer, TEDx and keynote speaker on sustainable four-season farming and daughter of renowned farming pioneer, Eliot Coleman. In 2008, she created Divide Creek Farm – an organic, intensively-managed 2-acre four-season vegetable farm, located in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where she mastered high tunnel season extension in the midst of the harsh winters of the Rockies.
Like her father, she is a proponent of the ‘small is better’ model of farming, advocating business growth through improved efficiency, innovative production methods, farmer collaboration and direct customer marketing, rather than physical expansion. She has provided consulting for groups including Wegmans Food Markets, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, the Maine Farmland Trust, and many others.
She is an active collaborator with many farming innovators who share her mission to farm smarter, not harder, including FarmHack, FoodTank, and Slow Tools. Clara and her two sons now live back at Four Season Farm in Maine, the family farm where she was born and raised. Today she co-manages the farm with her father and step-mother. With four season farming experience in the harsh climates of Maine and the Rocky Mountains, Clara has much to offer Carolina farmers seeking to provide abundant four season harvests. Clara is passionate about inspiring and supporting the next generation of farmers to create sustainable and lasting farming legacies for generations to come.
Dec 2, 2015
No stranger to what makes farming successful, Clara Coleman has a clear plan for a new collaborative farming model that responds to today’s particular challenges and embraces entrepreneurial diversification. She calls this the ARC Farming Project—Agrarian Resource Collaborative Farming—and she’s on the path to making it a reality.
Clara is the daughter of renowned farming pioneer Eliot Coleman. She is a second-generation organic farmer, consultant, writer, and speaker on sustainable four-season farming. In 2008 Clara created Divide Creek Farm, an organic, intensively-managed, two-acre, four-season vegetable farm in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. She produced year-round vegetable crops under harsh winter conditions using unheated and minimally heated moveable high tunnels and greenhouses. Clara is now focused on building the ARC Farming Project, consulting, writing a book on four-season farming for the next generation, family farm grant projects with land trusts, and promoting the work of both Slow Tools and Farm Hack to further the collaboration between farmers, engineers, and makers of innovative tools. She participates in farming workshops and speaking engagements nationwide as a means to inspire and encourage the next generation of farmers. Clara lives in Portland, Maine, with her two sons.
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. What if we could reverse global warming with just one methodological shift? Can the way we farm radically impact not just our output but also overwhelming wide-ranging concerns for our environment, hunger, and poverty? Ben Dobson has a unique, personal perspective on how we can make universal changes.
Growing up on an organic farm in Hillsdale, NY, Dobson was raised in an environment that was conscious of the ground. Having established multiple organic agriculture businesses in the Northeast, dabbled in coffee importation from Haiti, and assisted in producing and exporting organic products from the Dominican Republic, Dobson has now returned to his roots. He is currently working to plan and transition Stone House Farm in Livingston, NY, into an organic and sustainable producer. Implementing the “no-till” method, the transition of Stone House Farm is based on holistic management of our land to retain and rebalance the earth and bring healthy grains and meats to local markets.
Thomas Rippel has a vision to turn the world’s soils into a lush paradise, reverse global warming and reduce world hunger by living in symbiosis with cows and composting their manure with biochar. For this vision, cows should only eat grass and clover from pastures like the alps and from crop rotation. And the number of cows on this planet should not be determined by our appetite for meat, but by the amount of grass and clover available to us in this wonderful symbiosis. And lastly, farmers should compost the manure of their cows with biochar, giving us all the organic fertilizer we need to grow grains and vegetables for humans without needing any chemical fertilizers.
Thomas is a globetrotter who has settled down in Switzerland to live his life as an organic farmer. Sustainable agriculture is central to his life’s philosophy and combines his passions for cutting edge science, healthy nutrition, animal welfare and combatting global climate change.
(Visit: http://www.uctv.tv) Soil really does matter! Join our distinguished panelists and learn about climate change’s hottest topic – Soil! Find out how soil’s ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere may hold the key to solving the massive environmental problems caused by climate change. Panelists include: Ryland Engelhart and Calla Rose Ostrander of Kiss the Ground; Scott Murray, organic farmer and resource conservationist; Pablo Rojas, rancher,El Mogor Ranch, Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California; Keith Pezzoli, Director of Urban Studies and Planning, UC San Diego; David Bronner, CEO, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps; Justine Owen, soil scientist, UC Berkeley; and Michelle Lerach, Founder of the Berry Good Food Foundation. Series: “UC Climate Solutions Channel ” [3/2016] [Public Affairs] [Science] [Agriculture] [Show ID: 30529]
Expert Panel Host: David Montgomery • A riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves—and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine. Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health—for people and for plants—depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. David Montgomery tells the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine, from garden to gut. David R. Montgomery is a Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he leads the Geomorphological Research Group and is a member of the Quaternary Research Center. Montgomery received his B.S. in geology from Stanford University in 1984, and his Ph.D. in geomorphology from University of California, Berkeley in 1991. His research addresses the evolution of topography and the influence of geomorphological processes on ecological systems and human societies. His published work includes studies of the role of topsoil in human civilization, the evolution and near-extirpation of salmon, morphological processes in mountain drainage basins, the evolution of mountain ranges, and the use of digital topography. He has conducted field research in eastern Tibet and the American Pacific Northwest. In 2008 Montgomery received a MacArthur Fellowship.
His book, “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” won the 2008 Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction.[1] Montgomery’s 2012 book, “The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood” explores the relationship between catastrophic floods in the distant past, flood legends, “Noachian flood geology”, and geologic discovery over the past several hundred years. After the catastrophic Oso mudslide in Washington State in March, 2014, Montgomery appeared on various news segments to discuss the science behind landslides.
He appears in DamNation the 2014 documentary film about dam removal in the United States.Montgomery (King of Fish), a geomorphologist who studies how landscapes change through time, argues persuasively that soil is humanity’s most essential natural resource and essentially linked to modern civilization’s survival. He traces the history of agriculture, showing that when humans exhausted the soil in the past, their societies collapsed, or they moved on. But moving on is not an option for future generations, he warns: there isn’t enough land. In the U.S., mechanized agriculture has eroded an alarming amount of agricultural land, and in the developing world, degraded soil is a principal cause of poverty. We are running out of soil, and agriculture will soon be unable to support the world’s growing population. Chemical fertilizers, which are made with lots of cheap oil, are not the solution. Nor are genetically modified seeds, which have not produced larger harvests or reduced the need for pesticides. Montgomery proposes an agricultural revolution based on soil conservation. Instead of tilling the land and making it vulnerable to erosion, we should put organic matter back into the ground, simulating natural conditions.
Feb 20, 2016
• David Montgomery author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations and The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health.
• Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it’s everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. David R. Montgomery finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it’s no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, David R. Montgomery tells us that the compelling idea we are—and have long been—using up Earth’s soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, David Montgomery traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
David R. Montgomery is a Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he leads the Geomorphological Research Group and is a member of the Quaternary Research Center. Montgomery received his B.S. in geology from Stanford University in 1984, and his Ph.D. in geomorphology from University of California, Berkeley in 1991. His research addresses the evolution of topography and the influence of geomorphological processes on ecological systems and human societies. His published work includes studies of the role of topsoil in human civilization, the evolution and near-extirpation of salmon, morphological processes in mountain drainage basins, the evolution of mountain ranges, and the use of digital topography. He has conducted field research in eastern Tibet and the American Pacific Northwest. In 2008 Montgomery received a MacArthur Fellowship. His book, “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” won the 2008 Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction.[1] Montgomery’s 2012 book, “The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood” explores the relationship between catastrophic floods in the distant past, flood legends, “Noachian flood geology”, and geologic discovery over the past several hundred years.
After the catastrophic Oso mudslide in Washington State in March, 2014, Montgomery appeared on various news segments to discuss the science behind landslides. He appears in DamNation the 2014 documentary film about dam removal in the United States.Montgomery (King of Fish), a geomorphologist who studies how landscapes change through time, argues persuasively that soil is humanity’s most essential natural resource and essentially linked to modern civilization’s survival. He traces the history of agriculture, showing that when humans exhausted the soil in the past, their societies collapsed, or they moved on. But moving on is not an option for future generations, he warns: there isn’t enough land. In the U.S., mechanized agriculture has eroded an alarming amount of agricultural land, and in the developing world, degraded soil is a principal cause of poverty. We are running out of soil, and agriculture will soon be unable to support the world’s growing population. Chemical fertilizers, which are made with lots of cheap oil, are not the solution. Nor are genetically modified seeds, which have not produced larger harvests or reduced the need for pesticides. Montgomery proposes an agricultural revolution based on soil conservation. Instead of tilling the land and making it vulnerable to erosion, we should put organic matter back into the ground, simulating natural conditions.
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Author David Montgomery has discovered that the three-foot-deep skin of our planet is slowly being eroded away, with potentially devastating results. In this engaging lecture, Montgomery draws from his book ‘Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations’ to trace the role of soil use and abuse in the history of societies, and discuss how the rise of organic and no-till farming bring hope for a new agricultural revolution.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
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