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Sustainable Agriculture Spotlight

Archives Available on The VoiceAmerica Green Living Channel

Hosted by Jeff Birkby

Sustainable agriculture consists of farming and ranching practices that produce abundant food without depleting the earth’s resources or pollute our environment. Sustainable agriculture is also the agriculture of social values, including vibrant rural communities, rich sustainable lives for generations of families on the farms, and wholesome, locally-produced food for everyone. Sustainable agriculture is only sustainable if it’s also proﬁtable, provides a healthy family income and a good quality of life.
Sustainable Agriculture Spotlight will cover a wide range of topics on sustainable agriculture, including on-farm production of biodiesel, integrated pest management, growing crops for farmers’ markets, organic crop certification, and federal farm policy. Regional and national experts will be interviewed.

Jeff Birkby

Jeff Birkby has been passionate about sustainable agriculture and communities since his childhood in a rural farm community in Southwest Iowa. Jeff majored in botany during his undergraduate studies at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, and later received an MS in Botany from Montana State University.

During the 1980s Jeff managed energy efficiency and renewable energy programs for the Montana Department of Natural Resources. He then moved to the nonprofit world, and for the past twenty years he has managed a variety of sustainable agriculture and community programs for the National Center of Appropriate Technology (NCAT). Jeff has worked on energy and agriculture projects for several state, regional, and national organizations, and has lectured on sustainable topics both in the United States and internationally.

Currently Jeff is outreach director for NCAT’s National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (also known as ATTRA), which answers thousands of questions a year from farmers and educators on the topic of farming more sustainably. The ATTRA website (www.attra.ncat.org) features hundreds of free publications on all aspects of sustainable farming, from producing on-farm energy with wind, solar, and biodiesel, to starting a local farmers market, to raising organic crops in different regions of the United States.