Day 4: Wednesday, Dec. 9th

9am – 5pm

Help Desk Open

We have staff on call during the entire conference to help with any questions or issues you may have. 

9:30am – 10am

Yoga

Stretch out and mentally prepare for your day with yoga instructor: Megan Miller, Yoga For Good. Today’s focus is: a mindful meditation to reflect on this year’s gathering and how you’ll move forward.

10am – 11am

Nutshell Talks

A main feature of the gathering will be the ever-popular 5-minute Nutshell Show & Tell talks, which are open to all attendees to share success stories, lessons-learned, or nagging questions to help build knowledge across the region.

10am – 11am CST

AFTA Session: Research Relevant to Farmers

11am – 12pm

Passing on the Gift: Sponsored by Curt Grant: Country Financial

The importance of recognizing the next generation of farmers: Joseph Klingelhutz, SILT farm specialist, Lyle Luzum, land donor, Will Lorentzen, Owner and Farmer at Jupiter Ridge Farm. Many beginning farmers can’t find long-term access to land, putting agroforestry far down their list of farming options. Long-term leases, ground leases and other innovative approaches can solve this problem while providing the many benefits of keeping roots in the ground. In this workshop, you’ll hear the story of a landowner who donated his entire heritage farm to a land trust dedicated to long-term leases. You’ll also hear from a young farmer about his experience with a long term ground lease in partnership with SILT.

11am – 12:20pm CST

AFTA Session: New Approaches, Techniques, and Crops

2pm – 3pm

Regenerative Farm Design – From Paper to Practice: Sponsored by Osage

Designing and managing an ecologically regenerative and economically profitable farm requires focused research, diligent planning, keen observation, and unshakable determination, With over two decades of experience, Peter and Lindsay will guide you through the process of defining your context, mapping and analyzing your site, becoming aware and interactive with the ecology of your landscape, and getting up to speed on regenerative farm enterprises such as silvopasture and multi-species grazing for crafting your very own Regenerative Farm Design.

Lindsay Rebhan, Ecological Design and Peter Allen, Mastodon Valley Farm

3pm – 3:45pm

Forever Green: A Market-Driven Strategy for Perennializing Agriculture

Colin Cureton and Nick Jordan, Forever Green Initiative, University of Minnesota. Forever Green is a public/private/NGO partnership, hosted by the University of Minnesota and spanning the Midwest. Forever Green partners are working in concert to advance and commercialize a portfolio of perennial and winter-hardy annual crops for our region, including the perennial grain crop Kernza®. These crops complement current agriculture, providing a wide range of options for perennializing agriculture, i.e., achieving the perennial presence of green and living crops in agroecosystems, across the annual cycle and across the landscape. We will describe the crops and our market-driven strategy for commercializing and scaling these crops, so as to advance social, environmental, and environmental sustainability in our region.

3:45pm – 4:30pm

Farm Finances Panel

David Lezaks environmental scientist and financial activist at the Croatan Institute, Paul Dietmann, Senior financial specialist at Compeer financial, John Steven Bianucci, Director of Conservation at Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, discuss the trends of concern and promise happening in their respective fields.