Region 4 Administrator to Address Faith Community

Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL), a non-profit organization that engages communities of faith in stewardship of God's Creation, is thrilled to announce that Gwendolyn Keyes Fleming, Region IV Administrator of the U.S Environmental Protection Agency will be the keynote speaker for its Sixth Annual GIPPY Awards Ceremony.

This year's celebration will be held on Thursday, March 1, 2012 at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta. The GIPPY's honor congregations that have shown creativity and determination in incorporating creation care into all aspects of congregational life.

Workshop: Permaculture in the Deep South

Q: How would you describe permaculture to the layperson?

A: Permaculture is hard to define, but to my mind it is a philosophical and operational construct that can be employed to redesign human settlements and restructure human activities in a sustainable way within our larger ecosystem. Permaculture is a fundamentally different approach to life because it is based on the rules of Nature, not on the dominant cultural paradigm, and includes humans in its calculus just as if they were any other organisms.  It is an overt attempt to separate us from our separateness, to reintegrate human activity into the planetary ecology where it belongs.  'Cartesian dualism' is the model westerners have lived by for the last few centuries - Nature vs. Culture in a zero-sum game; that is, in order for Culture to progress Nature must suffer.  Since humans are just as much a part of Nature as yeast and rhinos are, this worldview is merely one of our own making, and is as damaging to our own well being as it is to Nature's. 

If you’ve moved your backyard vegetable plot toward organic production, you’re probably well aware of the benefits of interspersing flowers and herbs with your calorie-producing plants. Maybe you’ve considered adding some laying hens or beehives to help with pest control, fertilization, or pollination. If so, just think of permaculture as the next step in your yard’s evolution.

Tripp Tibbetts and his family have been farming using applied permaculture principles for the last five years, in situations as varied as a front yard garden in Spokane, Washington, to a quarter-acre inner-city homestead in Macon, Georgia, and now even farther south, helping convert a 300-acre conventional farm and ranch into a holistic production oasis near Tifton, Georgia.

Tripp helps kick off the Georgia Organics Annual Conference on Feb. 24 with a workshop on Permaculture in the Deep South, but he was nice enough to share some permaculture principles for us city and suburb folk who want to keep nature as close as our front doors.

“The best thing about permaculture is that it’s not actually a food production system,” explains Tibbetts. “It works in the garden and on the farm for the same reasons it works at the office and in the community: because it is a system that bases its decision-making processes on the laws of nature.”

Rodney Taylor, Director of Nutrition Services for Riverside Unified School District. Taylor is a noted pioneer and expert in Farm to School salad bars, and is a charter member of the National Farm to School Network.  Rodney will share his experience  in leading the popular  Farmers’ Market Salad Bar Program, which boasts significant successes at providing greater access to fresh fruits and vegetables to public school children in 29 elementary schools.  This salad bar program revolutionized school lunch programs by shifting the “center of the plate”  towards fresh, local  fruit and vegetables. Not only did this program get kids eating more fruits and veggies, the program is financially solvent.

Besides delivering the keynote at the 3rd Annual Farm to School Summit, Taylor is presenting at the Saturday Educational Session, “Farm to Institution.”

Q:  When and why did you start a farm to school program?

A:  Back in 1997, I was working for the Santa Monica Malibu School District as their Director of Food and Nutrition Services and we had salad bars in 5 of our 10 elementary schools.  I was approached by a parent about the idea of buying produce from the local farmer’s market.  We piloted the program and it went well.  Three years later we had it fully institutionalized in all of our schools. 

Nischan is owner and founder of Dressing Room, his homegrown restaurant in Westport, CT, and CEO and president of Wholesome Wave, which is dedicated to nourishing neighborhoods by supporting increased production and access to healthy, fresh, and affordable locally grown food for the wellbeing of all. 

Using private funds, Wholesome Wave creates chapters in multiple states to double the value of food stamps, officially known as SNAP benefits (EBT), WIC FMNP Coupons and WIC Senior Nutrition Coupons spent at participating partner markets and farm stands across the country. 

Basically, Wholesome Wave leverages existing government food nutrition programs to encourage shopping at local farmers markets, by creating an incentive; every EBT or WIC dollar spent at a WWG partner market becomes two dollars.

A proponent of sustainable farming, local and regional food systems, and heritage recipes, Nischan has long been a leader in the movement to honor local, pure, simple, and delicious cooking. Nischanës restaurant is a community gathering place, with a philosophy: "We believe that the food we grow and cook in the place that we call home defines who we are."

Allen is founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc., a farm and community food center in Milwaukee. Son of a sharecropper, former professional basketball player, ex-corporate sales leader, and now farmer, Allen promotes the belief that all people, regardless of their economic circumstances, should have access to fresh, safe, affordable, and nutritious foods at all times. He is a philosopher farmer, and upholds the powers of compost and community. 

In 2008, Will was named a John D. and Katherine T. McArthur Foundation Fellow and was awarded a prestigious foundation “genius grant” for his work  and is only the second farmer ever to be so honored. In May 2010, Time magazine named Will to the Time 100 World’s Most Influential People.

Georgia Organics: The acceptance and support of urban agriculture has made major leaps forward in the past few years. To what do you owe this urban ag renaissance? 

Well I think there are a number of reasons. One of the major, major reasons, started with a survey a few years ago and [reported that] 68 percent of folks wanted locally grown food if they had a choice versus stuff that was being shipped in.

And the food scares. You might say the government oversight over food wasn’t that great in terms of having enough inspectors to inspect these mega-farms and mega-production facilities. It got out of hand and a lot of people got sick and a lot of people died. So I think a lot of folks were afraid to eat food if they didn’t know where it came from.

Distinguished Georgia agronomist and academic to present data at 2012 Southern Weed Science Society Annual Meeting

A recent study by David C. Bridges, Ph.D., agronomist and president of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in  Tifton, Ga., shows atrazine increases U.S. corn crop yields by about 7 bushels per acre, or more than 600 million bushels per year. In sorghum crops, yields rise by more than 13 bushels per acre with atrazine.

Bridges will present the findings from his paper, "A biological analysis of the use and benefits of chloro-s-triazine herbicides in U.S. corn and sorghum production," Jan. 25, 2012, at the 2012 Southern Weed Science Society Annual Meeting in Charleston, S.C.

Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA) Executive Director Kevin Clark announced the approval of financing for environmental infrastructure projects in five Georgia communities totaling $3,036,862. The GEFA executive committee approved the commitments to help finance water and sewer infrastructure improvements for the cities of Boston, Cuthbert and Donalsonville and Bryan and Webster Counties.

“The water, sewer and solid waste programs administered by GEFA assist local governments with improving their environmental infrastructure,” said Clark. “Financing water, sewer and solid waste projects encourages economic growth and the stewardship of our environment.”