The annual Bioneers conference heads to the San Francisco Bay Area again this October - as it has for over twenty years - with a terrific lineup for the Food and Farming portion of the program. If you're anywhere near San Francisco on October 14-16, and you're interested in school lunch programs, just food systems, GM crops, colony collapse disorder, growing natural medicines, youth food movements or finding out how mushrooms can help save the world (and more), this year's Bioneers conference is definitely something to consider attending.
Local food activists and advocates Kirk Bergstrom from WorldLink in San Francisco, Karen Brown of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, and Nikki Henderson of the People's Grocery in Oakland are presenting at the conference, along with a host of other leaders in the food and farming community (full listing below).
Besides the conference plenaries, panels and workshops, a special pre-conference intensive Schools and Food: Invitation to a Revolution is scheduled. The one-day intensive will present resources and strategies for improving school meals; supporting wellness and achievement; and understanding culture, health and the environment. There will also be a native food demonstration with hands-on prep work as part to the Native Essentials: Traditional Foods, Sacred Waters, Songs and Stories from the Land and Seas pre-conference intensive, and a farm field trip into Marin County. San Francisco, have you met your farmers yet?
Bioneers 2011
October 13 - 17, 2011
Marin Center
10 Avenue of the Flags
San Rafael, CA 94903
The Veterans Memorial Auditorium at Marin Center is less than twenty miles north of the Civic Center in San Francisco. Plan your trip by public transportation HERE.
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FOR MORE INFO:
Food and Farming Program: Bioneers 2011
Plenaries
Solutions from the Underground: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
In this sixth Age of Extinctions, the life support systems that have allowed humans to thrive are eroding. Paul Stamets, the world’s leading visionary “myco technologist,” shows how fungi and mushrooms can help restore ecosystems, degraded landscapes and human health - fast. Like people, habitats have immune systems, and our close evolutionary relationship to fungi provides the basis for novel environmental deployments of key mushroom species that can lead to greater sustainability and better health.
The Real Food Challenge
As Director of National Programs at Boston’s famed The Food Project, Anim Steel has been building a strong nationwide youth movement for just food systems. Since 2003 he has provided leadership training for over 700 young people and forged a network of 5,000 + young activists and farmers. He highlights the Real Food Challenge, a campaign he co-founded to re-direct $1 billion of college food purchases away from industrial agriculture towards local, fair, sustainable and humane sources.
Revolutionizing K-12 Education with Sustainability in Mind
“Smart by Nature” education has the potential to impart to our young the keys to sustainable living, revitalize our nation’s approach to schooling, and point the way to a hopeful future. This bold vision developed by the Center for Ecoliteracy is preparing today’s young people for the ecological challenges of the coming decades. Karen Brown, CEL Creative Director and an award-winning designer, explores how this vision is becoming reality in K-12 schools nationally with special emphasis on using food systems as educational tools and processes.
Panels and Workshops
Seeding Leaders: Young Leaders for Food Justice
Dedicated young leaders of the food justice movement are working to educate people about healthy food as a human right. They’re empowering communities to create food access while mobilizing students to exercise their power to change the system by bringing real food to college campuses. With: Anim Steel; Nikki Henderson, Executive Director of People’s grocery in Oakland, CA; Yonatan Landau, co-founder of the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFed), building sustainable campus food cooperatives. Moderated by Hai Vo, Real Food Challenge student leader and Brower Youth Award winner.
Teaching Sustainable Living Through Food
Food offers a lens through which K-12 students can learn about the web of ecological relationships deeply rooted in soil and sun. The Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL) and WorldLink’s Nourish Project lead an interactive dialogue and showcase inspiring resources for teachers, including the film Nourish: Food + Community and its companion curriculum. Participants receive the Nourish Curriculum Guide; Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and Environment, and the updated Rethinking School Lunch Guide. Hosted by Zenobia Barlow, CEL Executive Director. With: Kirk Bergstrom, founder and President of WorldLink; Carolie Sly, CEL Director of Education Programs; Karen Brown, CEL Creative Director.
Genetic Engineering: The Battle for Safe Food, Public Health and Environmental Sovereignty
Genetically engineered crops can have drastic negative impacts on personal and environmental health and biodiversity. The nation’s two leading figures working to resist GM crops say the stakes have never been higher. Hosted by Arty Mangan. With: Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food safety, who has taken the USDA to the Supreme Court to force it to uphold even its own weak standards; Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette, on health risks.
Growing Growers: The 100,000 New Farmers Challenge
Only 5 percent of farmers are under 35. Discover the vanguard of a new generation of young farmers and “their struggles, their valor, and the redemptive force they have for our culture, our agriculture and our nation.” Moderated by Arty Mangan. With: Sarita Role Schaffer, co-founder of GrowFood, an NGO that connects new farmers to internships, apprenticeships and hands-on education in the U.S. and 54 other countries; Severine von Tscharner Fleming, farmer and organizer in New York’s Hudson Valley, producer of The Greenhorns about new generations of young farmers; Tyler Webb, Generation Organic farmer from Vermont.
The Rural + Urban Youth Food Revolution: Growing Soil, Community and a Healthy Future
Co-sponsored by Generation Organic
Young farmers and urban activists are revolutionizing how we eat and think about our relationship to food and the environment in both city and country. They come together to illuminate issues and strategies. Hosted by Arty Mangan, Bioneers Food and Farming Director. With: Hai Vo, Real Food Challenge student leader and Brower Youth Award winner; Doron Comerchero, founder of Food What?!; Casey Knapp, Generation Organic farmer from NY.
The Organic Premium: Good For the Body, Good for the Planet
Rodale Institute’s field trials comparing organic and conventional farmingsystems show that organic agriculture can play an important role in mitigating climate change by capturing atmospheric CO2 and storing it in the soil as carbon. Organic farming develops healthy soil biology resulting in an array of other environmental benefits. With: Dr. Elaine Ingham, Chief scientist for the Rodale Institute.
Colony Collapse Disorder: A Call for Revising Beekeeping Practices and Our Relationship to Bees
Colony Collapse Disorder has devastated many commercial honeybee hives. Industrial beekeeping practices that mimic the intensified conditions of concentrated animal feedlots, compounded by systemic pesticides, have put these crucial allies in peril - but sustainable beekeeping practices can re-establish the health and vitality of honeybees. Hosted by Arty Mangan. With: Gunther Hauk, legendary master biodynamic farmer and holistic beekeeper; Kate Frey, pollinator-friendly garden designer; Barbara Schlumberger of Melissa gardens, a honeybee sanctuary.
Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science: The Buckminster Fuller Challenge!
Hosted by Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI)
Fifty years ago visionary designer Buckminster Fuller called for a design science revolution. BFI’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge Prize is a clarion-call for today’s whole-systems designers to solve the world’s greatest ecological and social challenges. Hosted by Elizabeth Thompson, BFI Executive Director. With: John Edel, Director of the Chicago sustainable Manufacturing Center and of Plant-Chicago, an extraordinary urban vertical farm project; Sheila Kennedy, principal of KVA Architecture Ltd./MIT professor, designer of portable photovoltaic textiles that can revolutionize the lives of the rural poor in the global South; 2011 Challenge Award winner Blue Ventures.
Farm to Pharmacy: Revolutionary Grassroots Healthcare Models
How can communities have access to nontoxic, affordable, locally produced natural medicines and therapies? How can the need for herbs that support immunity and detoxify the body be translated into cash crops to support organic farmers? How can families protect their health by planting herb gardens and adopting traditional kitchen pharmacies? With: David Crow, renowned herbalist and acupuncturist, founder of Floracopeia, Inc and author of In Search of the Medicine Buddha; William Siff, founder of goldthread, a Massachusetts medicinal herb farm, apothecary, distillery and education center.
Campaign Connection: Help Protect Our Food Against Genetically Modified Organisms
This interactive session will be an opportunity to discuss strategies for grassroots organizing on the GMO issue including: support for state and local legislative initiatives, such as GMO labeling; how to conduct outreach in your community; local media outreach; and market based campaigns, including targeting specific food companies. The session will be coordinated by staff from the Center for Food Safety in conjunction with the Institute for Responsible Technology.
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