2009 SSAWG Conference Photo Gallery

During the conference, we asked a number of participants to share their experiences. Here are some of their thoughts.

“This is my first year at a Southern SAWG conference—I’m glad to be here. It is a great combination of networking and practical information. I really got a lot out of it. I am surprised at the wide range of folks from all over the country—a lot of folks I can really identify with.”
Kwabena Nkromo of CVC (Creating Vibrant Communities) Urban Farms, Atlanta, Georgia
 

Conference attendees Kwabena Nkromo and Stephanie Radbill

“I attended the pre-conference course, Start-Up Organic Vegetable Production and Marketing with Ken Dawson and Cathy Jones, who are growers in North Carolina. It was fantastic hands-on production knowledge. I also thought the state networking session was great—to see what’s going on in our state."
Stephanie Radbill, farm manager at site of CVC Urban Farms, Atlanta, Georgia

“This year it was really crucial for me to attend, as I don’t have a good nearby source for sustainable farming information. It is rejuvenating, inspiring. I love the fact that you meet people you would never find—I have met people from the Virgin Islands, and an older farmer from Kentucky. The people you meet, the ideas they give you--that’s what makes these trips special. I drove fifteen hours, and came with our employee—it is important that she also gets continuing education for her work on the farm. It is a marvelous conference, a good combination of making friends, getting some deep scientific training. This is the best place to come.”
Erin Flynn, Green Gate Farms, Austin, Texas

Owusu Bandele, Professor, Southern University Ag Center in Louisiana and SARE Special Development Program Co-Coordinator

“It’s just a wonderful experience for everybody who comes. I am here with quite a group—we brought 47 folks up on the bus, and several folks came on their own. In the state caucus, we had folks meeting each other from around the state. The agricultural professionals here—the language has really changed—they are now true proponents of sustainable agriculture. And I’m going to continue to do everything I can.
Owusu Bandele, Southern University, Louisiana 

“I have found this conference to be very valuable, and have attended very insightful workshops. My favorite so far has been about the Appalachian harvest distribution model up in Virginia. Having an opportunity to network with others throughout the South who are interested in the same issues that I am is great.”
Julie Shaffer, Slow Food Atlanta and Emory University, Georgia

“This is my first time attending and it has been really great. I will be back again. I like the information the workshops have to offer, I like the silent auction, and I like the city of Chattanooga.”
Elizabeth Smith, New Community Coop, Mississippi 

“We work on the only organic farm in our area. Virginia Beach is very heavily populated, but we’re the only one there. One of the coolest things is talking with the people here. Where we come from, there’s not anyone besides us—it’s really nice to come and meet people here. Everyone is very action oriented. I love it.”
Melissa Guingona, New Earth Farm, Virginia

“All of it is valuable. I’m amazed at how many new farmers like me there are out there. It’s very encouraging. Almost half the people I’ve met are just starting up for a few years or brand new—it’s very inspirational. I just want to get home now and get my hands in the dirt.”
Nicholas Broermann, New Earth Farm, Virginia

Sustainable Farms are Critical for the Future

The Southern SAWG conference culminated, as is customary, with a fabulous dinner featuring food grown in the local area. At the dinner, our keynote speaker, John Ikerd, really raised the roof and raised our spirits, discussing how important family farms have been to our history, and asserting that sustainable family farms are “absolutely critical to our future.”

Ikerd, who is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, and an influential author and educator, explained how the values of the sustainable family farmer—hardworking, honest, committed to stewardship—create a system of connectedness and integrity. The current crises we are now experiencing—economic, ecological, and social—exhibit a dramatic disparity “between the wealthy and the rest of us.” These crises have developed over the past 30 years as we accepted “the economic dogma that we could pursue our narrow self-interest, and it would somehow serve the greater common good.”

John Ikerd	Photo by: Terry Hayes

      
He described the untenable future of an industrial agriculture that uses three calories of fossil energy for every calorie of food it produces, and is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gases. And just as industrial agriculture is part of the problem, sustainable agriculture is a big part of the solution. “Sustainable agriculture—the ideal—is an agriculture that is dependant upon solar energy, that’s independent of fossil energy,” he pointed out. “That’s what agriculture was created for, to catch the energy from the sun, captured by plants, and animals. When you catch that solar energy, you capture the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, the nitrogen, all of that stuff that comes out of the air, and put it in the ground, and it’s a continuing cycle. Sooner or later human society has to move to a sustainable linkup of a solar energy agriculture.”

More than being the solution to the problems in agriculture, Ikerd believes that sustainable family farms are a big part of the solution to the ecological, social, and economic problems of society in general. Seeing the root cause of the bigger problems of today as a loss of our sense of connectedness to each other and to the earth, he maintains that sustainable family farms have the capacity to reconnect us, to bring us back together. Sustainable family farms provide a metaphor for the rest of society. We are not just physical, material beings; we are also social beings who need relationships with other people, along with a sense of purpose and meaning in life.

As Southern SAWG’s 18th annual conference drew to a close, we took the message of John Ikerd with us back to our farms, our homes, our communities. Ikerd referred to an important point made by President Barack Obama in his inaugural address: “Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But the values upon which our success depends, hard work, honesty, fair play, courage, curiosity, loyalty, patriotism, these things are old. These things are true.” And John Ikerd, self-professed “ordained economist,” gave us these words with which to go forth:

“In restoring the sustainability of our food system, we can help to restore grassroots democracy to this country. We can do it around food. We can join or form food policy councils; we can join one of the state, regional, and national groups advocating for more sustainable agricultural policies; we can promote local food systems. We can create models within our communities that will then be models for how we ought to organize and function at the state level, at the national level. One by one, little by little, we can fundamentally change the world.” 

To read John Ikerd’s full keynote address, “Why Sustainable Farms are Critical to the Future of the World,”  click here.