Torri Estrada is Executive Director at the Carbon Cycle Institute and directs its policy and climate justice work. Torri has worked to advance solutions to social and environmental justice, climate, and environmental issues for over thirty years. Previously, Torri was program director at the Marin Community Foundation, where he managed the Foundation’s environmental grantmaking program and climate change initiative. He was also a program officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program, managing its environmental justice and civil rights portfolios. Torri was the co-founder and a senior policy fellow with the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water; Torri served as Program Director at Urban Habitat and directed its Brownfields and Community Revitalization Project and co-developed its Leadership Development Program. Torri holds an MS in Environmental Sociology and Policy (with environmental justice emphasis) from the University of Michigan, and a joint BS/BA degree in Environmental Science and Policy and Ecological Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Plenary Panel

Resilience Through Catastrophe: Preparation for and Recovery from Climate Disasters

Hear from panelists about how producers and technical service providers can prepare for and recover from climate disasters like wildfire through building soil health, holistic management, and unique partnerships and collaborations. We’ll hear perspectives from New Mexico, California and Australia, including challenges and success stories, as we address local climate and natural disaster catastrophes via local and global perspectives.

Bobby L. Wilson, owner of Metro Atlanta Urban Farm (MAUF), shares a mission and a vision that focuses on agricultural education and recruitment, access to locally grown fresh food for marginalized and underserved communities, youth socio-emotional development, increasing representation in the sciences of those who historically have been underrepresented, and providing a community and therapeutic gardening program for seniors. Bobby is a member of the Urban Agriculture Innovative Production Federal Advisory Committee.  He recently served as a first-time Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on a national research project, the NOISE Project, in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Celebrate Urban Birds, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). He is co-author of several publications, including Understanding the Impact of Equitable Collaborations between Science Institutions and Community-Based Organizations: Improving Science through Community-Led Research, and is a 2022 Featured CNN Hero.
Metro Atlanta Urban Farm (MAUF) is a 501(c)3 organization that is committed to improving the quality of life for residents in College Park, GA, specifically, and throughout Metro Atlanta. For the past thirteen years, Bobby L. Wilson has run a successful certified naturally grown urban farm operation in the city of College Park. 

June 2022 issue of BioScience  
Meaningful Collaborations  
Partnerships for Impact

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Plenary Speaker

Sustainability and Responsible Stewardship: Preserving a Legacy of Clean Air, Clean Water, and Clean Soil for the Generations that Follow

Bobby L. Wilson is a veteran farmer of more than 30 years.  He shares his journey of teaching marginalized and underserved communities to feed themselves well using sustainable practices and responsible stewardship on a 5-acre certified naturally grown farm operation.  Metro Atlanta Urban Farm (MAUF) is an informal educational STEM area that promotes the FUNdamentals of research to motivate and inspire the next generation to not only see themselves in the sciences, but to pursue agricultural education and careers in agricultural science.

Paula Garcia is Executive Director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, a statewide grassroots organization founded in 1990.  Its mission is to protect water and irrigated land through “acequias” which are community operated irrigation systems designed to share water for agriculture. She lives in Mora where she continues to operate an intergenerational ranch with her family.

Paula is former chair of the Mora County Commission, during which she also served as President of the New Mexico Association of Counties. She is former chair of the USDA Minority Farmers Advisory Committee, appointed by Secretary Vilsack. Currently, she serves as an appointee to the Interstate Stream Commission and the State Land Trust Advisory Board.

In her years of service to the NMAA, acequias have built a movement around the principle that “el agua es vida – water is life” with major achievements in water policy, water governance, and agricultural projects. Most recently, her focus has been on disaster response and recover following the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history.

Publications:

Chapter 3, Acequia Waters: Community Resource or Commodity? Water for the People, Acequia Heritage of New Mexico in a Global Context, Editors Enrique Lamadrid and Jose Rivera, University of New Mexico Press, 2022.

Plenary Panel

Resilience through catastrophe: preparation for and recovery from climate disasters

Brittany Cole Bush, (Cole), calls herself a modern-day shepherdess shepherding animals, people and projects She is a practitioner, entrepreneur, educator, and consultant in the fields of climate-beneficial agriculture, land stewardship, and prescribed grazing, guided by her drive to do meaningful work on the land and open vocational pathways for non-traditional agrarians. With over a decade of experience, Cole has successfully treating thousands of acres on private and public lands throughout California for ecological enhancement and fire hazard reduction.

Cole is the owner/operator of a commercial-scale prescribed grazing outfit, Shepherdess Land and Livestock Co., providing prescribed grazing services in some of the most densely populated areas in Southern California. She is also the founder/owner of Shepherdess Holistic Hides, purveying tanned sheep and goat hides mindfully sourced from livestock “raised and grazed” in the west, placing an additional value on a normally forgotten waste product.

Through her own journey to create a viable career in agriculture and land management, her mission to open pathways for others has taken flight through her project The Grazing School of the West, a nascent non-profit organization. The School works to answer to the tremendous demand for labor in the reblooming industry of prescribed grazing, developing curriculum to cultivate an expanded grazier workforce and supporting entrepreneurs in food and fiber, and ecological monitoring.

Video: “Stewards of the Land” – American Lamb Board
White Paper: “Prescribed Herbivory for Vegetation Treatment Projects” – California Range Management Advisory Committee
Interview: “Grazing for Good”, Soil Centric
Photo Editorial by Todd Selby

Plenary Speaker

Growing Graziers: Shepherding a new-generation of agrarians into viable vocations in land stewardship, public safety, and vital food and fibersheds

Through her own journey to create a viable career and livelihood in regenerative agriculture and land management, Cole will share how prescribed grazing sheep and goats in the west is opening pathways for next-generation agrarians seeking impactful work that addresses climate, public safety, vital food and fibersheds, and social change. Through innovative stacked enterprise business models and collaborative partnerships between businesses and non-profit organizations, Cole is “growing graziers” by creating on-the-job training opportunities that will ready individuals to pursue their own entrepreneurial journeys or enter a workforce requiring skills and knowledge only obtained through experience. In a dedication to stacking enterprises and illuminating the wide diversity of opportunity that four legged ruminants offer, Cole will also share how her hide business, Shepherdess Holistic Hides places an additional value on a normally forgotten waste product, while telling the story of animal symbiosis with western range land management.

Hilary Knight is an advocate for regenerative agriculture, with a strong focus on sustainable land management practices. Originally from a beef cattle farm in South Africa, Hilary pursued a Bachelor of Commerce degree at Pretoria University before venturing into entrepreneurship.
After spending time working in London and traveling, Hilary returned to South Africa and embarked on an entrepreneurial career managing IT training, recruitment and selection, and education businesses. Due to family involvement, she became a practitioner of Holistic Management and contributed to her husband’s inter-generational family ranching business at a strategic level. She also assisted with hosting educational events and workshops that showcased the success of Holistic Management on their beef cattle farm in northern South Africa.
Having relocated to north Texas, Hilary currently serves as the Vice President of Operations at the Dixon Water Foundation. In this role, she manages finance, risk portfolios, and outreach efforts while overseeing events at the Josey Pavilion, Texas’ first living building. Through collaborative initiatives with like-minded organizations, Hilary strives to advance the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices.

Workshop Presenter

HMI Succession Planning Workshop