Are you prepared to manage the increased weather variability and extremes that are currently underway and predicted to intensify in the coming years as our planet warms? Over the next 10 to 15 years, projected changes in precipitation and temperature patterns will increase water and pest management challenges and the potential for crop failure.
Laura Lengnick will present a new way of thinking about climate risk and offers some best practices for managing climate risk challenges on your farm, at the MOFFA Annual Winter Meeting.
The event is February 16, 2013, at the MD Dept. of Agriculture Bldg., Annapolis MD it will run from 8 to 5. Laura Lengnick will speak from 3:35 to 4:30.
Laura serves as the Director of the Sustainable Agriculture Program, in the Department of Environmental Studies at Warren Wilson College, a small undergraduate college near Asheville, NC offering a liberal arts education through a triad of academics, work and service. Since joining the Warren Wilson faculty in 2002, Laura has been actively involved in sustainable agriculture advocacy in North Carolina: she is currently on the Carolina Farm Stewardship board of directors and is a past president and board member of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. Laura advises and teaches in several community-based sustainable agriculture education programs and works with a number of citizens groups on issues around sustainable food systems, sustainable resource use and resilient community redesign. She brings to this work 25 years of research, teaching and public policy experience in soil quality and sustainability assessment, sustainable agriculture systems, and sustainable farm management.
Trained as a soil scientist, Laura’s work in sustainable production systems research at the Beltsville Agriculture Research Center was nationally recognized with a USDA Secretary’s Honor Award in 2000. She has federal agriculture policy expertise gained through work experiences as a U.S. Senate staffer, as a research scientist serving in the Executive Branch of the federal government, and as a private consultant and lobbyist advocating for sustainable and organic farmers in the U.S. Congress. While on sabbatical in 2011/12 as a visiting scientist on the USDA National Program Staff, Laura researched best practices for adapting agriculture to climate change as a lead author of the recently released USDA Report “Climate Change and U.S. Agriculture: Effects and Adaptation”. Laura’s work on the report included a focus on identifying effective practices for farmers faced with managing the increased variability in temperature and rainfall, extreme weather events and novel pest pressures associated with the climate change impacts currently underway in the U.S.
Click here to find more details about MOFFA Annual Winter Meeting.
Maryland Organic Food & Farming Association 