Seedstock Event
Food Systems Expert to Host Panel on Value of Local Agriculture at Seedstock Grow Riverside Conference
January 7, 2014 | seedstock
Local food systems expert and Whole Foods Market forager Dwight Detter will be participating in the upcoming Grow Riverside: Citrus and Beyond! conference at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20. Detter will moderate a panel that will examine the value and importance of setting up a local food systems infrastructure in Riverside and beyond.
Dwight has spent 20 years in the Food Service Industry in San Francisco and Los Angeles before joining the grocery industry. Dwight has been with Whole Foods Market for 14 years. As a local forager for the past 3 years he been helping local start-ups get on to retail shelves. Dwight also teaches a series of 4 classes throughout LA, Orange County and San Diego in conjunction with the Fine Foods Group on developing local artisan businesses. He works with community groups such as the Orange County Food Access Coalition, the San Diego Food System Alliance and county Farm to School groups. He is currently involved with developing a value added program with Archi’s Acres VSAT Program for returning Marines and Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
California State Exec. Director of USDA FSA to Talk Microloans at Seedstock’s Riverside, CA Conference on March 19 – 20
January 6, 2014 | seedstockVal Dolcini, the State Executive Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), where he is responsible for all USDA farm programs and policies in the nation’s leading agricultural state, will be participating in the upcoming Grow Riverside: Citrus and Beyond! conference at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20. Dolcini will talk about the USDA’s Microloan program and how the FSA can help new farmers and agriculture entrepreneurs get their operations off the ground.
Dolcini has been appointed to this position by two presidents – President Clinton in 1999 and President Obama in 2009. In 2011, he served as the acting Administrator of the Farm Service Agency in Washington, DC.
Prior to his appointment, he worked for a Fortune 500 technology consulting firm where he guided government relations programs for company clients, strategized with business teams about relationship development and consulted with company executives on a wide range of political matters. He has held senior staff positions for the Governor and Lt. Governor of California and earlier in his career, Dolcini spent several years as a senior staff member for two California members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
A fifth-generation Californian, Dolcini received a B.A. in History from San Francisco State University and a J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law. He also attended the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He currently serves on the San Francisco State University Foundation Board of Directors.
Register today and receive the Early Bird Ticket discount!
LA Food Policy Council Founder to Address Urban Ag Conference in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20
January 3, 2014 | seedstock
Paula Daniels, the founder of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, a collective impact initiative that is advancing innovative policy initiatives and programs designed to increase the production and availability of food that is healthy, affordable, and grown locally, sustainably, and fairly, will be participating in the upcoming Grow Riverside: Citrus and Beyond! conference at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20. Daniels will discuss how cities can create effective policies to support robust local food systems.
An expert in food and water policy, she was Senior Advisor to Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, and has taught at UC Berkeley and UCLA. As a Los Angeles Public Works Commissioner, Paula led the development of a suite of green infrastructure policies, best practices and tools. An attorney actively engaged in California environmental policy issues for over 20 years, Paula was also commissioner with the California Coastal Commission, and a gubernatorial appointee on the governing board of the California Bay-Delta Authority.
She has served on a number of boards of environmental and Asian American non-profit organizations and bar associations, and is the recipient of a number of recognitions and awards, including: Heal the Bay’s Superhealer Award (1991); the Environmental Leadership Award of the California League of Conservation Voters (2005); the Water Quality Leadership award from the State of California Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (2007); and the Stanton Fellowship of the Durfee Foundation (2012-2013). She was named by the LA Weekly as one of the top ten people making Los Angeles a better place, in their People 2012 issue.
Register today and receive the Early Bird Ticket discount!
Archi’s Acres and VSAT Co-founders to Participate in Urban Ag Conference in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20
January 3, 2014 | seedstockColin and Karen Archipley, the CEO and Co-founder/Vice President, respectively, of Archi’s Acres, Inc. and the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program will be participating in the upcoming Grow Riverside: Citrus and Beyond! conference at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, CA on March 19 – 20. The two co-founders will discuss sustainable agriculture entrepreneurship, how to create an economically viable operation on a small plot of land and how to create more new farmers.
Founded in Escondido, Ca., Archi’s Acres has demonstrated there is profit, public interest, and a compelling story in joining one of our country’s most pressing needs—sustainable food—with our country’s greatest untapped resource—our returning veterans.
Archi’s Acres developed sustainable, hydroponic, organic farming to create opportunities for our returning veterans. To reach out to these veterans and give a hand up (not a hand out), Colin and Karen created the Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program, an intensive six-week agriculture entrepreneur incubator. By making business opportunities available to our veterans through farming, and capturing the entrepreneurial spirit with rigorous training, the mission is defined.
Now, Archi’s Acres is looking to expand its successful, profitable and environmentally friendly hydroponic growing model and enable motivated VSAT graduates to open their own Archi’s Acres farms in select areas nationwide. This expansion is poised to become the largest, for-profit, veteran-driven initiative in our nation’s history.
In addition to the healthy, high-nutrient food that this initiative brings to local communities, every acre of greenhouse will create over ten jobs, and every job created on the farm will create over 2.5 jobs elsewhere in that community.
Register today and receive the Early Bird Ticket discount!
Speakers at Seedstock’s “Grow Riverside” Conference to Examine Opportunities for Urban and Local Ag
December 3, 2013 | Robert PuroRiverside, CA – How can cities leverage unused agricultural land to increase the supply of locally available and create new jobs and farmers? What small scale urban agriculture solutions are bearing fruit? Is it possible to create an economically viable farming business on one or two acres of land? How can the USDA help? What are innovators in the sustainable urban agriculture space doing? What policy needs to be put into place to facilitate an active agricultural economy in a city and on its fringes?
These and other questions will be the focus of Seedstock’s upcoming Grow Riverside: Citrus and Beyond! conference, which is set to take place on March 19 – 20 at the Riverside Convention Center in Riverside, CA. The event will feature urban agriculture innovators, key policy makers, nutrition experts, and investors, who will partake in a two-day, outcomes-based conference to examine solutions to help cities, Riverside in this particular case, to galvanize their citizens, growers, advocates, government officials and other major stakeholders around the economic opportunities that can result from employing sustainable urban agriculture.
Some of the innovators and noteworthy presenters who will address these issues include:
Pierre Sleiman is a young entrepreneur who has become involved in the mission of accelerating the movement towards local and sustainable farming and fostering interest in youth to choose agriculture as an exciting career. Pierre is the founder and CEO of Go Green Agriculture, a local farming business that grows local, high-quality leafy greens. He has been named as one of the “50 People to Watch in 2013” by San Diego Magazine and has been featured in over two-dozen other publications and live news broadcasts. He holds a Masters degree in Business from UC San Diego and a double Computer Science/Business bachelor’s degree from UC Riverside. Pierre was also recently elected to the Board of Directors of the San Diego Farm Bureau. Read More
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