How Your Health is Connected to How Your Food Is Grown

• How food quality relates to nutrition and flavor.
• How do farming practices affect this.
• How is our health connected to the way food is grown.
• Ways to tell if food is high in nutrition and quality.

Dan Kittredge, executive director of the Bionutrient Food Association, has been an organic farmer since childhood when his parents purchased an organic farm in Massachusetts. He grew up on that land and in his adult years managed it.

The Bionutrient Food Association has its roots in an earlier organization Dan started called the Real Food Campaign in 2008. The mission of the Real Food Campaign, and now Bionutrient Food Association is to empower and educate farmers toward the production of quality food for the improvement of human health.

He has experience internationally managing organic farms and developing sustainable agriculture techniques. He is passionate about raising the quality of nutrition in our food supply through collaboration with committed individuals, businesses, and organizations that support the value of people growing and eating really good food.

Grow Perfectly Healthy Plants

• Explanation of High Performance Gardening
• What makes it different and how does that benefit the grower and ecosystem.
• Explanation of the levels of health a plant goes through
• How to grow the healthiest plants

Jessica Smith is a Certified Ecological Farmer and Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. With a B.S. in Sustainable Living and Living Soils, she combines her passions to encourage the earth and its inhabitants back into a state of balance and vitality. She teaches Nutrient Dense Gardening and Wildlife Habitat Restoration at the University of Richmond and leads the Virginia chapter of the Bionutrient Food Association in Central Virginia, in hopes to improve soil health, ecosystem health, environmental health, and human health.

She strives to save the world, no matter how childish it may seem, seek the highest. She loves meditation, yoga, hiking, playing in the garden, hula hooping when no one is looking, munching on crickets, and is the chosen kitchen elf of her household. When not doing all the above she is probably sending smiley face emojis to everyone as the Rebel Health Ninja!

How to Sequester More Carbon While Producing Food

• The story of carbon in the atmosphere and how it relates to agriculture.
• The process of carbon sequestration with plants.
• How a plant’s ability and efficiency to sequester carbon from the atmosphere is related to food production and plant health.
• Is there a system to grow food and balance the atmosphere to bring hope.

John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA), a leading crop nutrition consulting company. A top expert in the field of biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who are growing that supply.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology. He has a unique ability to simplify and clearly explain very complex concepts in the areas of soil and plant health. He skillfully discusses the larger social and environmental impacts of food, agriculture, and ecology. John’s mission is to provide support to the world’s farmers and globally impact our food supply.

As a farmer who grew up in and remains a part of the Amish community, John has a very special understanding of plants’ functional immunity. He sought out alternative approaches to prevent damage to his crops once they stopped responding to conventional pesticide treatments. With results proven on his own farm, John went on to found AEA to share his success and insight that healthy crops do not require chemical treatments or genetic modifications.

Small Scale Food Production

• What is small scale food production
• How does growing food in small spaces help the people doing it and the greater community.
• How do you do it, tips, techniques, advice.

Stacey Murphy is the founder of bk farmyards and director of the Small Farm Summit. She is leading efforts to build BK Farmyard’s capacity to grow lots of food and flowers in Brooklyn through the development of new urban farms and organization of community resources. As a real food advocate, she speaks to audiences of all ages about food, farming, and culture. Stacey also runs a backyard farm CSA with a Backyard Farmer Training Program.

Stacey has taught hundreds of teens and adults how to grow, harvest and prepare fresh foods. She is a recovering engineer and architect turned garden geek and farm nerd. Stacey founded BK Farmyards, a cooperative of urban farmers in Brooklyn dedicated to social justice through urban agriculture, and helped create over an acre of new farmyards in Brooklyn. She’s been featured on Martha Stewart Radio, PBS online and once appeared on the David Letterman show with a giant radish. She envisions a world where everyone is nourished by the magic of fresh, affordable and culturally exciting food…extra points if it’s homegrown.

• Explanation about community gardens and why they are so awesome.
• How do they affect youth and adults and relationships in the community.
• How community gardens, food access/security improves the lives of people in the community and how the community changes in respect to the gardens.
• How to start or get involved in a community garden.

Will Allen, farmer, founder and CEO of Growing Power Inc., is recognized as a preeminent practitioner of urban agriculture in America and throughout the world.

Will grew up on a small farm in Maryland, the second-youngest of six children of a sharecropper. Despite a strict rule of his father’s – no sports until all farm chores were done – he became a standout basketball player in high school and the first African-American scholarship athlete at the University of Miami. He was drafted in both the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association.

The ultimate direction of Will’s life truly changed when young people from the neighborhood, including kids who lived in the largest low-income public housing project in Milwaukee, began to ask him for advice and assistance with growing their own vegetables. Almost overnight, Will took up the mantle of teacher and trainer, and the impromptu gathering of neighborhood children became the Youth Corps, a program that continues today. In 1995, Growing Power Inc. was born: a not-for-profit center for urban agriculture training and building community food security systems.

Will has been an innovator in methods of composting, vermicomposting (using worms to refine and fertilize compost) and aquaponics (growing fish and food plants in a closed system). These and other intensive practices result in remarkable yields of food, even in a very small area.