Ann Adams

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Ann Adams

Ann has worked in the nonprofit world for over 25 years, creating and directing national programs, collaborating with over 100 non-profit and government entities to create positive impact among producers and land stewards seeking to build & maintain sustainable farms, ranches and healthy land. Her fund development work has included raising over $1 million for national whole farm planning training for beginning farmer programming. Ann served as HMI’s Executive Director from 2015-2020. Ann has been a Holistic Management Certified Educator since 1998 and has practiced and taught Holistic Management® in multiple capacities for 25 years. She also has facilitated classes (onsite and distance learning), taught workshops and presented at conferences. She has written countless articles, helped develop agriculture-based software for financial and grazing planning and written a training handbook, At Home with Holistic Management: Creating a Life of Meaning. Ann also taught courses at Indiana University, Wittenberg University, and Antioch College. She earned her BSED from Ohio University and her PhD from Indiana University. When she isn’t serving as HMI’s Education Director, Ann is Chief Goatherd on her small farm in the Manzano Mountains and Captain of her Earthship (a house made out of tires with photovoltaics, composting toilet and rainwater harvesting) southeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico with her wife, Ellen.

Book: At Home with Holistic Management: Creating a Life of Meaning

Webinar Week

Determining Value, Risk, and Scale: How to do a Gross Profit Analysis

A Gross Profit Analysis (GPA) is an essential piece of Holistic Financial Planning and a great way to determine your cost of production for any enterprise. You can also determine the risk involved in that enterprise at different scales so you can determine the right scale for you for any enterprise as well as the profit you can expect from that enterprise. A GPA will also help you determine the right price for your products. In this experiential workshop you will have time to practice this financial tool so you will have the skills to do a GPA on your enterprise. Bring your calculator to the workshop! Taught by HMI Certified Educator Ann Adams who has been teaching Farm Service Agency Borrower Training and Beginning Farmer Financial Planning Training for over 20 years.

Rachel Armstrong

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Rachel Armstrong

As the founder and Executive Director of Farm Commons, Rachel Armstrong has led dozens of webinars and workshops for thousands of farmers nationwide and created the organization’s innovative approach to farm law risk reduction. Her vision for changing the way consumers experience business law has been awarded two fellowships: a 2012 Echoing Green Global Fellowship and a 2018 Ashoka Fellowship. As a leading authority on direct-to-consumer farm law, she has authored dozens of publications on farm law matters for farmers, alongside several academic and trade publications for attorneys. Ms. Armstrong instructs continuing legal education classes for the American Bar Association, teaches farm law for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is a co-author of “Farmers’ Guide to Business Structures,” published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. A graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the University of Wisconsin Madison, she lives in Northern Minnesota. She is licensed to practice law in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Webinar Week

Building Your Farm Team: Strategizing Selecting an Insurance Agent, Accountant, or Attorney for the Farm

Eva Stricker

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Eva Stricker

Eva is a dryland microbial ecologist with interests in how plant-microbe interactions in soil affect biogeochemical cycling such as carbon and nitrogen. She has a background in curriculum development for learners of all ages and backgrounds, for example through a science communication fellowship with the Explora Museum and a teaching assistantship that built ecology and evolution labs for the University of New Mexico Department of Biology. She has also trained in active listening and mediation as a way of better engaging with collaborators across all backgrounds. Eva was born and raised in New Mexico (weekends spent on a horse on her dad’s property in La Puebla), explored the coasts for college and her masters, and came back to New Mexico for her PhD working with the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research Station. At Quivira Coalition, she enjoys conducting field work around organic amendment research, developing curriculum, organizing, facilitating, and presenting outreach events such as in-field workshops and academic conferences, and overseeing and conducting technical support such as grant-writing and assisting others with grant-writing. In her free time, she enjoys vintage fashion, dance, and music, and watching F1 car racing.

Webinar Week

Erosion Control and Amendments & Organic Amendments on Rangeland

Across the intermountain west, interest has been growing in using organic amendments and native seeding with erosion control structures to increase plant establishment and productivity while ameliorating active headcuts. The Carbon Ranch Initiative has built rock rundowns on five ranches across New Mexico, with treatments of compost, mulch, and a native grass mixture to measure and compare the impacts of the treatments on different soil health indicators. This webinar will explain how we’re conducting this research, and the initial results we’ve found one year after building the structures and adding the treatments.

George Whitten

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 19, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

George Whitten

George was born into ranching in Saguache, Colorado, on the operation his grandfather established in 1893. Knowledgeable in all phases of sheep and cattle production, he specializes in grass-finishing techniques, genetics, soil health, certified organic production, and restorative ranching practices. He has been a Holistic Management practitioner for 35 years, and he served on the Board of Directors of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District for more than 25 years. He and his wife, Julie Sullivan, co-founded Sweet Grass Cooperative, a marketing coop of small family ranches raising grass-finished beef. He and Julie are also founding mentors in the Quivira Coalition’s New Agrarian Program. More and more as he gets older, George believes in finding whole solutions to whole problems.

Webinar Week

Leasing Our Future in a Changing World

A lease, as defined in the dictionary, is a contract by which one party conveys land, property, services, etcetera to a second party for a specified time usually in return for a periodic payment. There is a great deal of room for innovative thinking in that definition, which is why understanding leasing is so important to a young person who may not own land, livestock, or equipment for starting a business. In this workshop, learn how to take the grazing skills you have and combine them with a leasing opportunity. The presenters will share what makes for a win-win grazing relationship and how a lease provides clarity and structure for this. The presenters will also discuss some of the economics behind leasing land and discuss some unconventional leases that are being implemented in a constantly changing agricultural landscape. This workshop is geared towards beginning or aspiring ranchers who are in the first 10 years of their career.

Ridge Shinn

by Lynne Whitbeck | Aug 4, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Ridge Shinn

Ridge Shinn is the Executive Director of the Northeast Grass-fed Beef Initiative (NGBI). He also is the co-founder and CEO of Big Picture Beef, recently launched to produce Northeast grass-fed beef for Northeast customers. He has been a leader in the shift from feedlot production to raising cattle on a diet of 100% grass and forages – no grain. In addition to raising a large herd of grass-fed Rotokawa Devon beef cattle in Massachusetts, he was the Vice President of a Connecticut slaughterhouse and founded a successful meat company, Hardwick Beef. He has developed markets and distribution systems for 100% grass-fed beef throughout the northeastern United States and has consulted all over the US and for the Argentine government on the production and marketing of grass-fed beef. His work has been recognized in Time Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Wine Spectator and Smithsonian.

Book: Grass-fed Beef for a Post-Pandemic World; How regenerative Grazing Can Restore Soils and Stabilize the Climate, November 2022, Chelsea Green.Economic

Webinar Week

Economic Success with Regenerative Grazing

This talk will focus on economic viability of grazing; creating 3-6 times more biomass per acre, improved animal health and reproduction, how management of the solar collector with ruminants creates consistent high-quality meat. Calve in sync with nature, winter graze and use limited structure to avoid concentration of nutrients. Measure success by evidence of rumen function (manure quality). Economic success with AMP grazing also creates resilience and combats drought and flooding.

Sarah Carden

by Lynne Whitbeck | Jun 9, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Plenaries, Webinars

Sarah Carden

Sarah Carden (she/her) joined Farm Action in December 2021. As Policy Advocate, she focuses her efforts on raising awareness and advocating for policies that meaningfully reform the nation’s food and agriculture system.

Sarah holds a B.A. in Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University. She has been working on food system reforms for over a decade and brings expertise in local food systems and distribution networks, agriculture, non-profit development, and food entrepreneurship. Sarah has also worked as an organizer on two presidential campaigns and one congressional campaign.

Sarah lives with her husband and their two young children on their organic vegetable farm.

Publications:

Plenary Speaker

2023 Farm Bill: Dismantling Big Ag’s Fragile System Propped up by Myths and Hidden Costs