2020 Keynote Speakers

Thursday, Nov. 12 at 10:30am: Keynote Speaker Ray Archuleta presenting Hawaiian Agricultural Mana'o

Ray Archuleta

BIO: Ray Archuleta is a farmer from Seymour, MO. He teaches Biomimicry Strategies and Agroecology principles on a national scale for improving soil function. He has over 30 years of work experience has a Soil Conservationist, Water Quality Specialist, and Conservation Agronomist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He worked in the following states: New Mexico, Missouri, Oregon, and North Carolina. He is also a Certified Professional Soil Scientist with Soil Science Society of America. He also served two years in Guatemala as a Livestock Specialist in the Peace Corps. He received A.S. in Livestock Science from Northern New Mexico College and a B.S. in Agricultural Biology plus 30 hours of graduate school in soil related classes from New Mexico State University.

Also participating in the Saturday, Nov. 14 at 10:30am: Keypanel Discussion — Nature's Soil Building Process: Joel Salatin, Ray Archuleta, Jeff Moyer, John Liu

One of the most frustrating aspects of farming/ranching is not having the correct goal. Making money is not the goal in farming/ranching, it is an outcome-not the goal! The real goal of farming/ranching is to mimic Nature's Intelligent design, so that you can make a profit. Nature's Intelligent design works within laws, principles, and patterns. If you do not understand these basic concepts, it is difficult to make a profit.

Currently, a majority of US farmers/ranchers are going broke or they are maintained with government subsidies! Why? I call it "death by tools"! The overuse of costly tools like tillage, pesticides, man-made fertilizers, and the over-use of manure continues to diminish soil function. Also, poor crop rotations, bare soil, and poor grazing is diminishing the health of human and natural ecosystems. The current industrial agriculture model is broken, it requires huge amounts of energy to operate, maintain and it is destructive to the natural system. Regenerative agriculture is a new agriculture model that mimics and facilitates life that starts with a renewal in the human mind and heart. “If you want to make small changes in your operation-change the way you do things, but, if you want to make major changes-change the way you see things”!

Thursday, Nov. 12 at 12:30 PM: Keynote Speaker Dr. Elaine Ingham presenting Soil Food Web: Managing the Rhizosphere

Dr. Elaine Ingham

BIO: Dr. Ingham discovered the soil food web nearly 4 decades ago and has been pioneering research ever since. Widely recognized as the world’s foremost soil biologist, she’s passionate about empowering ordinary people to bring the soils in their community back to life.

WEBSITE: Dr. Elaine's Soil Food Web

FACEBOOK: The Soil Foodweb School With Dr. Elaine Ingham

INSTAGRAM: dr.elaines.soil.foodweb.school

Also participating in the Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 PM: Keypanel Discussion — The Soil Mycelial Network, Our Gut Microbiome and COVID: Paul Stamets, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Sandor Katz, Dr. Zach Bush

Friday, Nov. 13 at 10:30 AM: Keynote Speaker Joel Salatin presenting Partnering Your Way to Scale. "Farm and Labor Economics"

Joel Salatin

BIO: Joel Salatin, He co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. Featured in the New York Times bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma and award-winning documentary Food Inc., the farm services more than 5,000 families, 50 restaurants, 10 retail outlets, and a farmers’ market with salad bar beef, pigaerator pork, pastured poultry, and forestry products. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.

Wide-ranging topics include nitty-gritty how-to for profitable regenerative farming as well as cultural philosophy like orthodoxy vs. heresy. A wordsmith and master communicator, he moves audiences from laughs one minute to tears the next, from frustration to hopefulness. Often receiving standing ovations, he prefers the word performance rather than presentation to describe his lectures. His favorite activity?–Q&A. “I love the interaction,” he says. Salatin is the editor of The Stockman Grass Farmer, granddaddy catalyst for the grass farming movement. He writes the Pitchfork Pulpit column for Mother Earth News, as well as numerous guest articles for ACRES USA and other publications. A frequent guest on radio programs and podcasts targeting preppers, homesteaders, and foodies, Salatin’s practical, can-do solutions tied to passionate soliloquies for sustainability offer everyone food for thought and plans for action. Mixing mischievous humor with hard-hitting information, Salatin both entertains and moves people. Seldom using a power-point and often speaking from an outline scribbled in a yellow legal pad, he depends on theatrics, style, and compelling content to hold attention and defend innovative positions. The rare combination of prophet and practitioner makes him both a must-read and must-hear in a time desperate for integrity leadership and example.

Also participating in the Saturday, Nov. 14 at 10:30am: Keypanel Discussion — Nature's Soil Building Process: Joel Salatin, Ray Archuleta, Jeff Moyer

Friday, Nov. 13 at 10:30 AM: Keynote Speaker Paul Stamets presenting Mushroom Mycelium as a Foundation of the Food Web: An Evolutionary Perspective with Ecological Implications

Paul Stamets

BIO: Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur, is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi: habitat, medicinal use, and production. He lectures extensively to deepen the understanding and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life. His presentations cover a range of mushroom species and research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet. His central premise is that habitats have immune systems, just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement.

Paul’s philosophy is that “MycoDiversity is BioSecurity.” He sees the ancient Old Growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. A dedicated hiker and explorer, his passion is to preserve and protect as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from these pristine woodlands. His research is considered breakthrough by thought leaders for creating a paradigm shift for helping ecosystems worldwide.

Paul is the author of six books (including Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms, and Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World), he has discovered and named numerous new species of psilocybin mushrooms. He has received numerous awards, including: Invention Ambassador (2014-2015) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Mycologist Award (2014) from the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), and the Gordon & Tina Wasson Award (2015) from the Mycological Society of America (MSA). Paul’s extensive work in the field of mycology has earned him an official induction into The Explorers Club (2020).

His work has entered into the mainstream of popular culture. In the new Star Trek: Discovery series on CBS, the Science Officer is portrayed by an Astromycologist.... a Lt. Paul Stamets. Paul's work with mycelium is a central theme of this series. Paul funds research to save rare strains of mushrooms that dwell within the old growth forests. He is a collaborator with numerous scientific organizations and research institutes. Currently he is testing extracts of these rare strains at the NIH (National Institutes of Health/Virology) and with Washington State University/United States Department of Agriculture against a wide panel of viruses pathogenic to humans, animals and bees.

Also participating in the Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 PM: Keypanel Discussion — The Soil Mycelial Network, Our Gut Microbiome and COVID: Paul Stamets, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Sandor Katz, Dr. Zach Bush

Habitat health is crucial to sustainability. Factory farming, seemingly efficient in the short term, can have long term consequences that offsets long term sustainability. With the loss of soils, biodiversity and pollinators, our ecosystems have foundational threats. As ecosystems destabilize, zoonotic diseases vector out, threatening the Commons. What can be done? Paul will examine the role of fungi in the ecosystem, the advantage of decomposition nutrients, and solutions for helping bees survive.

Sunday, Nov. 15 at 11:30 AM: Keynote Speaker Kupuna Sam Ka'ai presenting Hawaiian Agricultural Mana'o

Kupuna Sam Ka'ai

BIO: Maui’s Sam Kaha‘ieuanalio Kaʻai is recognized by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for his expertise in carving and carrying his cultural knowledge forward. Ka’ai, who was born in Hāna and raised in Wailuku and Waiehu, was recognized as a master carver, artisan, teacher and mentor. He was among a list of master practitioners and knowledge keepers who were honored at OHA’s inaugural Nā Mamo Makamae o Ka Po‘e Hawai‘i: Living Treasures of the Hawaiian People event in 2017.

John Liu ~ ERC Foundation

BIO: In the 1980s and 1990s John D. Liu worked as a television producer and cameraman with CBS News, RAI and ZDF covering geo-political events including the rise of China from poverty and isolation and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the mid-1990s the World Bank asked John to document the rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau. Since learning that it is possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems John has devoted his life to understanding and communicating about the potential and responsibility to restore degraded landscapes on a planetary scale. Since 2009 John has worked with Willem Ferwerda the Founder and CEO of the Commonland Foundation, which is catalyzing privately invested large-scale restoration in many parts of the world. John is also the founder of the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement that began in 2016 and has grown to currently 36 camps in 6 continents and continues to grow.

Studying ecology has had a number of academic appointments. In 2003 John was given a visiting Fellowship with the Faculty of Applied Sciences and the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of the West of England (UWE), in 2006 John was named the Rothamsted International Fellow for the Communication of Science at the Rothamsted Research Institute of the UK, from 2008 to 2012 Mr. Liu pursued graduate studies in Soil science and ecology at Reading University, in 2009 Mr. Liu was appointed Assistant Research Professor at George Mason University, from 2010 – 2013 he was a Senior Research Fellow with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in 2013-2014, Mr. Liu was asked to collaborate with the Critical Zone Hydrology Group, Vrije University Amsterdam. In 2014 Mr. Liu was named a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIOO/KNAW) and continues to study.

Mr Liu is currently Ecosystem Ambassador for the COMMONLAND FOUNDATION. John has produced, filmed, written, directed and presented numerous films on Environment and Ecology for the BBC, National Geographic, Discovery, PBS and other networks. John’s published and broadcast works are collected and available at: https://knaw.academia.edu/JohnDLiu

WEBSITE: Ecosystem Restoration Camps

Conference Offerings:

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 10:30 AM: Keypanel Discussion — Nature's Soil Building Process: Joel Salatin, Ray Archuleta, Jeff Moyer, John Liu

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 PM: Interactive Breakout Session #1 — Ecosystem Restoration Camps

Jeff Moyer ~ Rodale Institute

BIO: Jeff Moyer is a world-renowned authority in organic agriculture. His expertise includes organic crop production systems with a focus on weed management, cover crops, crop rotations, equipment modification and use, and facilities design.

Conference Offerings:

Friday, Nov 13 at 3 PM: Breakout Session Group #1 — Cover Crops: Jeff Moyer and Dave Brant (Rodale Institute)

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 10:30 AM: Keypanel Discussion — Nature's Soil Building Process: Joel Salatin, Ray Archuleta, Jeff Moyer, John Liu

Sandor Katz ~ Wild Fermentation

BIO: My name is Sandor Ellix Katz, and I am a fermentation revivalist.

Since 2003 when my book Wild Fermentation was published, I have taught hundreds of workshops demystifying fermentation and empowering people to reclaim this important transformational process in their kitchens. The New York Times calls me “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” My latest book, The Art of Fermentation (2012), received a James Beard award and was a finalist at the International Association of Culinary Professionals. The Southern Foodways Alliance honored me with their Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award.

WEBSITE: Wild Fermentation

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 PM: Keypanel Discussion — The Soil Mycelial Network, Our Gut Microbiome and COVID: Paul Stamets, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Sandor Katz, Dr. Zach Bush

Dr. Zach Bush

BIO: Zach Bush MD is a renowned, multi-disciplinary physician of internal medicine, endocrinology, hospice care and internationally recognized educator on the microbiome as it relates to human health, soil health, food systems, and a regenerative future. www.zachbushmd.com

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 1 PM: Keypanel Discussion — The Soil Mycelial Network, Our Gut Microbiome and COVID: Paul Stamets, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Sandor Katz, Dr. Zach Bush