The Kansas Rural Center invites you to join us November 18 and 19, 2016, at our Annual Farm and Food Conference in Manhattan, Kansas, at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel. This year’s activities, speakers and workshops will embody the theme, “Transforming Our Farms, Our Food and Our Future:  Building the Road as We Go.”

The conference will feature two dynamite keynote speakers and two days of workshops sessions, presentations and panel discussions of how we transform our farms and our food system to better meet future environmental, economic and social challenges.

Friday, November 18: The first day will have a focus on Conservation and Diversified Farming Systems with an emphasis on Pollinators and Soil Health with Dr. Jonathon Lundgren as the keynote speaker. He is an award winning scientist (entomologist/agroecologist), who worked for USDA ARS for 11 years before starting his current project- Blue Dasher Farm, a research and demonstration farm. Lundgren has published nearly 100 scientific papers on pollinators and insects, including recent research on neonicotinoids, the body of pesticides suspected of harming pollinators and other wildlife.  Dr. Lundgren will talk about soil health and insects/pollinators, and the critical importance of biodiversity and diversified farming systems for food production.

Saturday, November 19: The focus will turn to how a local food system is part of any diversified farming system, and how collaboration and organizing is critical to development of a successful local and regional food system.  Dr. Liz Carlisle, currently a fellow at the Berkeley Food Institute’s Diversified Farming Systems Project and teaching at Stanford University this fall, will be the keynote speaker. She is the author of Lentil Underground, a non-fiction book recounting her research and experience working with Montana’s sustainable, organic and local food movement and the social networks that organized to make it all work.