Farming for the Future Conference

Posted by on December 15, 2008

Please consider attending the 18th Annual Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) conference:

February 5-7, 2009
Farming for the Future Conference
State College, Pennsylvania

Conference brochure available at http://www.pasafarming.org/conf2009/

PASA:  Promoting Profitable Farms Which Produce Healthy Food For All People While Respecting The Natural Environment.

Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is a nonprofit organization working to improve the economic and social prosperity of Pennsylvania food and agriculture. We work with the farmers that grow our food, the consumers that eat the food, and those concerned with the ecological well-being of our environment and natural resources. See About PASA for more information.

Key note speakers for the 2009 conference include Raj Patel and Bernard W. Sweeney:

Raj Patel is a writer, activist, and academic — but most importantly, a voice of justice for all those stuck at the bottom of the world’s food chain.

In his latest book, Stuffed and Starved, he discusses the global food system and explains the paradox of why one billion people are overweight yet 850 million are still starving. Patel is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, a Fellow at the Institute of Food and Developmental Policy, and a Research Associate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He is also a researcher with the Land Research Action Network.

With degrees from Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, Patel has worked for the World Bank, interned at the World Trade Organization, consulted for the United Nations and been involved in international campaigns against his former employers.

An active international journalist, his thoughts on food, hunger, and globalization have appeared in a number of U.S. and international news sources, including The London Daily Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian.

Bernard W. Sweeney is the Director, President and Senior Research Scientist for the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, PA. Sweeney’s current research interests include water quality monitoring in conservation, the effects of global warming on stream ecosystems, and the role of streamside forests in the structure and function of stream and river ecosystems. He has published and presented dozens of papers, most recently at the symposium Taking Stock of New York City’s Drinking Water, hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences.

Sweeney is also an Adjunct Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and has served as a Curator and Vice-President for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Under Sweeney’s direction, the Stroud Water Research Center’s scientific staff has achieved international acclaim for its pioneering research on streams and rivers. The scientists work in interdisciplinary research teams, blending their individual talents in chemistry, microbial ecology, invertebrate biology, watershed ecology, and ecosystem modeling to study the physical, chemical, and biological processes of streams and rivers, the life histories of individual organisms, and the ecology of watersheds.

There is definitely something for everyone. This year’s program is a blockbuster!