Water and Agriculture – Full Day Workshop
Strategies to Create Resilience and Avert a Crisis – Full Day Workshop, Oct. 21.
This Event Is Sold Out
Global agriculture uses about 70 % of the available freshwater on earth. Arid regions represent 41 % of the earth’s terrestrial surface, are home to 2.5 billion people and grow 44 % of the world’s food. These regions are drought prone, experience water scarcity and are being affected by desertification and biodiversity loss. California, the supplier of two thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts as well as four-hundred other commercial crops, has experienced 8 years of drought out of the last eleven years.
To make up the water shortage from the drought, the California’s agriculture sector has relied heavily on groundwater withdrawals, dangerously drawing down aquifers, which in a number of places in the Central Valley has resulted in land subsidence and saltwater intrusion of the water table in coastal farming regions. A rapidly changing climate will continue to put stress on water supply and will push water availability to agriculture to crisis levels.
At this one-day intensive workshop, hosted at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, farmers, permaculturists, researchers and policy makers will share the hard realities, innovative approaches and best practices of careful and responsible management of this precious resource to help make farms more drought resilient. World renowned experts will join us to explore new technologies and urgently needed strategies of conservation, groundwater recharge, and increasing the water holding capacity of soils, as well as policies that take a long view of water stewardship.
The program will include two Conservation Hydrology Tours with OAEC WATER Institute Co-Directors Brock Dolman and Kate Lundquist.
Tour 1, taking place in the 10-acre OAEC Core Area, will focus on integrated water conservation, harvesting, and re-use systems and techniques (storm-water, roof-water, black-water (compost toilets), rain gardens, sediment control, etc.) for regenerative human settlements.
Tour 2, taking place in the 70-acre OAEC Wildlands Preserve, will focus on watershed-scale restoration and management techniques for increased in-stream flows, riparian restoration, fish-friendly roads, erosion control, and off-stream water harvesting for ag water supply.
Speakers include Brock Dolman, Kate Lundquist, Dale Strickler, Doniga Markegard, Mike McCullough, Mary Ann King, and David Montgomery.
This Event Is Sold Out
Location: Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Occidental, CA
Price: $195 (includes lunch & transport)
Shuttle leaves Embassy Suites in San Rafael, CA at 8:15 a.m.
October 21st | 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
$195
Panelists
Doniga Markegard
Regenerative Rancher
Markegard Family Grass-Fed LLC
Doniga Markegard, author of Dawn Again: Tracking the Wisdom of the Wild, has extensive backgrounds in wildlife tracking, wilderness survival and Permaculture. She is a leading “regenerative rancher” who, with her husband and children, owns and manages Markegard Family Grass-Fed LLC, which leases over 10,000 acres of Bay Area lands, using practices that build soil, sequester carbon, capture and purify water, enhance wildlife habitat, and revitalize communities.Kate Lundquist
Co-Director
Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute
Kate Lundquist, co-director of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute and the Bring Back the Beaver Campaign in Sonoma County, is a conservationist, educator and ecological artist who works with landowners, communities and resource agencies to uncover obstacles, identify strategic solutions, and generate restoration recommendations to assure healthy watersheds, water security, listed species recovery and climate change resiliency.Dale Strickler
Agronomist
Green Cover Seed
Dale Strickler, a leader in the soil health movement, author of The Drought Resilient Farm and Managing Pasture, is an agronomist working for Green Cover Seed, the nation’s leading cover crop specific seed company. He previously taught agronomy at Cloud County Community College and worked for several companies, including Land O’Lakes, Star Seed, and Valent USA. He also runs his own ranching operation near Jamestown Kansas.Mike McCullough
Government Affairs Administrator
Monterey One Water
Mike McCullough, currently the Government Affairs Administrator for Monterey One Water, has worked on various components of the Pure Monterey Groundwater Replenishment Project (which provides a clean, safe and sustainable source of water for domestic and agricultural use by using advanced water recycling technology, replenishment of the groundwater supply and protection of the environment) for the past 6 years.David Montgomery
Professor
University of Washington
David R. Montgomery, a Seattle-based MacArthur Fellow and professor of Geomorphology at the University of Washington and the author of award-winning popular-science books that have been translated into nine languages, is an internationally recognized geologist who studies landscape evolution and the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies. Learn more by reading an excerpt of one of David Montgomery's books, The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, co-authored with Anne Biklé.Brock Dolman
Co-Founder
Sowing Circle LLC Intentional Community and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Brock Dolman, co-founder of the Sowing Circle LLC Intentional Community and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC), co-directs OAEC’s Permaculture/Resilient Community Design Program, Wildlands Program and WATER Institute. A wildlife biologist, restoration ecologist and renowned innovator in watershed management and Permaculture, Brock integrates wildlife biology, native California botany, watershed ecology with education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy in his work.Mary Ann King
Director
Trout Unlimited's California Water Project
Mary Ann King, a leading expert on water and natural resources law and policy who has published extensively on the topic, is the Emeryvill, CA-based Director of Trout Unlimited's California Water Project, where she develops and implements cooperative streamflow projects with landowners and water users along the California coast, with a special focus on the Russian River watershed.
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