Presenters

Torrey Ball
Torrey is part owner of Grassroots Cattle Co. The family farm is located near Hutchinson, KS and has been in the family since 1905. The Balls began grass-finishing in 2003. The farm consists of two herds: the commercial herd for grass-fed beef production and to raise replacement heifers, and the registered herd of Red and Black Angus cows for producing parent stock for use in the commercial herd. The Balls sell some bulls and females every year to those looking for proven grass genetics. They also direct market their beef while also wholesaling to US Wellness Meats, Tallgrass Beef, and three local retail outlets.

Barry Barber
Barry’s Turkey Foot Ranch, located near Winfield, KS, has been raising and locally marketing grass fed beef for 12 years utilizing management intensive grazing  on a forage base of warm season and cool season perennial grasses and legumes.  Approximately fifty 1,100 lb. black angus steers are marketed annually through farmers markets, health food stores and as locker beef.

Harry E. Bennett
Harry has been the market coordinator for the Kansas Organic Producers Association since 2004.  He serves on the Kansas Rural Center Board of Directors and is currently President of the Board.  Harry served as a Peace Corps Volunteer 2002-04 in Central America in a Sustainable Agriculture Program working with indigenous organic farmers in marketing and developing cooperatives.  He and his wife, Margie, have a small organic farm in Marion County Kansas where they have raised livestock, tree fruits, vegetables, small grains for over 30 years.  The farm is also part of the American Tree Farm System since 2007.

Carol Blocksome
Carol is a graduate of Kansas State and Fort Hays State Universities, with a Ph.D. in range management (Agronomy). She has worked in the field of grassland water quality for the past 7 years, assisting WRAPS groups with grazing and grassland management issues. Carol is based out of Manhattan and travels home on the weekends to the farm in Ness County, KS.

Karl Brooks
Karl is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 Administrator, supervising operations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, and nine Tribal Nations. He practiced trial and appellate law for a decade, and is admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court and several federal appellate courts. Brooks served three terms in the Idaho State Senate before coming to Kansas where he taught History and Environmental Studies at the University of Kansas for a decade.

Joel Brown
Joel is a rangeland ecologist at the Jornada Experimental Range. He is assigned to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Soil Survey Center in Lincoln, NE.  His current activities include research and development of land classification systems (Ecological Site Descriptions), carbon sequestration on rangelands (Chicago Climate Exchange Technical Advisory Committee, DOE Southwest Sequestration Partnership Grant PI), and grazing land ecology.  His professional experience includes 5 years as an NRCS Field and Area Range Conservationist in Kansas, 5 years as California NRCS State Rangeland Specialist, 5 years as CSIRO (Australia) Project Leader and Senior Principal Research Scientist, 5 years as NRCS Global Change Leader and Cooperating Scientist with the ARS Jornada Experimental Range.  He is currently the National Leader for Soil Ecology and Ecological Site Inventory.  His formal education includes a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture/Botany from Fort Hays State University (KS), a Master’s Degree in Grazing Ecology from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in Shrubland Ecology from Texas A&M University.

Kirk Cusick
Kirk is the director of the Whispering Cottonwood Farm Educational Center. It is a center dedicated to connecting children, young adults, and adults to nature. WCFEC is currently contracting with 14 schools to develop and maintain school gardens on their sites. The gardens are used for educational purposes in both the school year and during the summer. Produce from the gardens is used in the school cafeterias.

Judy Decker
Judy and her husband Bill own and operate Renaissance Farms Ltd, located near Emporia, KS, where they began selling their grass-fed Galloway beef to the public in 1998.  The farm’s entire focus is on growing quality grassfed beef in an ecologically sound manner.  Renaissance Farms grows beef naturally in a clean, non-confined environment, and without hormone implants, subtherapuetic antibiotics or animal by-products.

Jill Elmers
Jill owns and operates Moon on the Meadow, a 3.5 acre certified organic farm within the city limits of Lawrence, Kansas.  She has experience growing a wide variety of vegetables and small fruits as this is what truly makes farming fun for her. Along with selling at the Lawrence Farmers' Market, Jill operates a CSA with four distribution sites and an on-farm pick-up in Lawrence. Believing that product diversity, an extended growing season and adding value to crops are important, Jill has made several key investments in her business.  She has erected several hoop houses to extend and diversify her offering in the early and late market seasons and, in 2008, Moon on the Meadow became a certified organic farm.  In an effort to expand the farm beyond the 3.5 acres, she and Tom and Jenny Buller together formed Common Harvest Farms LLC which purchased a 34 acre farm in April of 2010.  Together they are growing their businesses to provide even more, soon to be, certified organic products to the local market place.

Gail Fuller
Gail has been experimenting with no-till since the mid-1980’s and has been 100% no-till since 1995. He dryland farms on loams and silty loams with approximately 32” of annual rainfall. Gail owns a small feedlot and is starting to incorporate livestock, intensive grazing, and cocktail cover crops into his no-till system. Gail has been president of Flint Hills Beef Hills Fest three times and has served on the board for 17 years. His son Colby graduated from Kansas State in 2009 and is working for a landscaping company in Kansas City, and is researching truck farms and co-ops in the area, hoping to start his own farm. His daughter Kelsey will graduate from K-State in May with an animal science degree and is looking into her masters in either animal behavior, or cow calf nutrition.

Mary Fund
Mary is the Project Director for KRC's 15 year old Clean Water-River Friendly Farm Project, which provides whole farm planning assistance and environmental assessments to individual farmers and ranchers, and coordinates KRC’s  training program for USDA NRCS staff in organic production and certification. She also is the editor of KRC's newsletter, Rural Papers, and oversees KRC's communications about farm and rural policy issues. Mary and her husband, Ed Reznicek, own and operate a 400 acre certified organic farm in Nemaha County.

Charlie Griffin
Charlie is the project director for the Kansas Rural Family Helpline. He grew up on a diversified family farm in Rice County near Lyons, Kansas. He has a background in rural mental health, chemical dependency counseling and biofeedback training, as well as stress management and crisis intervention. Before beginning his work with farm crisis assistance in 1985, he maintained a private practice as a marriage and family therapist and consulted with a rural hospital in developing a rural wellness program.  Currently he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Family Studies and Human Services in the College of Human Ecology at Kansas State University. In addition to his role at the Kansas Rural Family Helpline he serves as the director of a training grant which provides dispute resolution and mediation skills across Kansas as well as providing consultation in integration of community health care services and many other areas of human service delivery.

Eileen Horn
Eileen is the Sustainability Coordinator for Douglas County and the City of Lawrence, KS.  She coordinates the city and county’s sustainability efforts – from energy efficiency of facilities to local food system promotion.  One of Eileen’s key roles is the staffing and coordination of the recently-formed Douglas County Food Policy Council.  This Council seeks to identify both the opportunities and challenges for a successful, sustainable local food system.  Previously, Eileen served as Education and Outreach Director for the Climate and Energy Project of the Land Institute, where she worked with diverse stakeholders from agricultural producers to wind turbine manufacturers to religious leaders, promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy efforts across the state.  Eileen is a native Kansan, and holds a Masters degree in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont.

Paul Johnson
Paul has been one of the 7 market gardeners with the Rolling Prairie CSA since 1994 providing produce weekly from May through October to over 300 households in the Lawrence/Kansas City area. Paul was a lobbyist for the Kansas Catholic Conference (1992 - 2010) and assisted with the writing of two Agriculture White Papers on farm policy for the Kansas Legislature. Paul was the Kansas Rural Center's representative to the now National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition from 1994 to 2004 and worked on the 1996 and 2002 Farm Bills. Paul currently serves on the KRC board of directors.

Barbara LaClair
Through her work with the Kansas Food Policy Council and the Kansas Food Security Task Force, Barbara has found a way to combine her long-standing interests in healthy foods and gardening and growing foods, with her background and skills in public health, research and policy analysis.   She sees the systems approach of food policy councils as an ideal opportunity for bringing together people with diverse skills and interests to help build relationships, strengthen connections, and develop stronger local food systems.  For the past five years, Barbara has chaired the Kansas Food Security Task Force, which brings together public- and private-sector stakeholders to study and recommend policy solutions to the problems of food insecurity and hunger in Kansas.

Al and Roxanne Mettenburg
The Mettenburgs operate Mettenburg Farm near Princeton, Kansas where they grow all-natural, grass-fed beef.  The Mettenburg’s Simmental-cross cattle are born and raised on the farm or nearby and don't receive added hormones or antibiotics, and the grasses (primarily native Big Bluestem) are not treated with chemicals. Animals who become ill are treated but removed from the grass-fed, direct-market program. The Mettenburg’s beef is super-lean but flavorful and tender, and performs well in Artisan beef tastings.

Norm Oeding
Norm manages the Jansen Family Farm south of Peabody, KS on the Marion and Butler County line, where he raises wheat, milo, soybeans, alfalfa & winter peas.  This operation consists of 640 acres of crops, pasture and hay, most of which are converted to organic practices as of 2010, along with the start of a small red and black angus grass finished beef enterprise.  The operation also continues a 600 head conventional feeder cattle enterprise.  Norm mills a small part of the organic wheat production for a value added organic flour enterprise and plans to market grass finished beef as another value added product.

Dan Nagengast
Dan’s interests are horticulture, local and regional food systems, food safety and human nutrition, renewable energy - especially wind and biomass, and world trade and industrialization as it impacts rural places and society. He is the Executive Director of the Kansas Rural Center and has farmed in one fashion or another most of his life. At present he works with his wife, Lynn Byczynski and their two children on their cut flower farm south of Lawrence. He Co-Chairs the Governor's Rural Life Task Force and Heads the Kansas Food Policy Council as well as serving on the Douglas County Food Policy Council.

Cade Rensink
Cade is currently an Extension Livestock Production Agent where he provides primary leadership to the livestock production and natural resource management programs of the Central Kansas District. His major programming emphasizes production strategies for grazing livestock and implementation of integrated resource management.  Prior to joining K-State Research & Extension, Cade was a ranch manager in east-central Kansas.  He is a graduate of Kansas State University (B.S. in Animal Science, M.S. in Range Science) where his research focused on fire-grazing interactions, botanical composition of the tallgrass prairie, and invasive species management.  Both natives of Ottawa County, Cade and his wife, Amanda, are raising their son, Callan, on a fifth generation family ranching operation northeast of Ada.

Ed Reznicek
Ed works part-time for KRC as a field assistant in the Clean Water Farm-River Friendly Farm Project, where he has experience working directly with farmers  with whole farm planning and  adoption of sustainable farming practices,  and organizing educational workshops.   He is also part-time General Manager for Kansas Organic Producers Marketing Cooperative which cooperatively markets organic grains for about 60 farmers in 3 states. Ed works with transitioning organic farmers and existing organic farmers to help develop crop rotations and system plans for certification.  He and his wife, Mary Fund, have a 400 acre certified organic crop and livestock farm in Nemaha County.  They  began farming in 1981, and certified organic in 1996. Ed has a BA in Philosophy.

Jeff Schahczenski
Jeff is an agricultural and natural resource economist with the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). His recent work includes publication of studies on the role of agriculture in climate change, biochar and soil carbon sequestration and the economics of biodiesel production in Montana. At NCAT his work includes organic and sustainable agriculture marketing and economics, conservation policy, transgenics in agriculture, organic horticulture, cooperative development, sustainable building, intercultural communications and beekeeping   Before moving to Montana in 1991, Jeff worked for Rutgers University, started one of the first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms in New Jersey, received graduate degrees in agricultural economics and political science, served in the Peace Corps in Belize, Central America, and worked many summers on his grandfather’s dairy farm in Wisconsin.

Jason Schmidt
Jason works as a field organizer for the Clean Water Farms-River Friendly Farm Project with the Kansas Rural Center. He grew up on a family dairy farm near Newton, Kansas, and graduated from Bethel College where he studied international rural development.  After college he worked for three years with an array of farming systems in South Africa, North Korea, Colorado and New Mexico. These farming systems included small-scale community dairy and garden projects, cover cropping systems, organic produce and grain production, school gardens, and grass-based livestock production. In his graduate studies at Clemson University, Jason researched summer grazing systems for producing high quality forage-finished beef. Jason continues to farm raising grass-fed lamb and transitioning into his family’s dairy farm.

Troy Schroeder
After graduating with a masters degree in biology from Ft Hays State Univ, Troy started a 30-year career with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks as a field biologist at Council Grove,KS.  He later moved to Hays as a Regional Supervisor for 15 years and worked the last 5 years as a farm bill coordinator.  He has worked as a Clean Water Farms field orgainzer for KRC and is a Kansas Wildlife Federation Board member.  Troy and his son, Steve operate a no-till farm in Rush County and have participated in a variety of USDA Conservation programs.  Troy and his wife, Karen also raise scotish highland cattle and sell some grass fed beef.

Candice Shoemaker
Candice is a Professor of Horticulture and Human Health in the Department of Horticulture, Forestry, and Recreation Resources at Kansas State Univesity. As Director of Graduate Studies in Horticultural Therapy she oversees the campus M.S. and Ph.D. programs and the online graduate certificate program in horticultural therapy. Dr. Shoemaker is also involved in the Urban Food Systems specialization in the M.S. in horticulture program. Dr. Shoemaker’s research focuses on gardening for health with a focus on the older adult and children. The ultimate goal with her research on gardening with the older adult is to develop “gardening prescriptions” for sustained or improved physical functioning, psychological well-being, and social interaction for older adults. The research in children’s gardening focuses on the effectiveness of gardening as a tool for promotion of healthy living behaviors through fruit and vegetable consumption, increased physical activity, and reduced sedentary behavior. She also has a research interest on the impact of community gardens, local food systems, and farmer’s markets on the health of local communities. Dr. Shoemaker has more than 30 publications in scientific journals, proceedings, and books and has presented her work around the world. Dr. Shoemaker is also the executive chair of the People Plant Council, an international council that promotes research and communication on the effect that plants have on human well-being and improved life-quality.

Jennifer Smith
Jennifer is the County Extension Agent specializing in Horticulture in Douglas County, Kansas. She grew up on a fruit and vegetable farm in Missouri and earned a B.S. in Plant Science-Horticulture from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Mercedes Taylor-Puckett
Mercedes is the Farmers Market and Local Food Coordinator for the Kansas Rural Center. Her current projects include the Kansas Farmers Market EBT Program and the local food branding label, Our Local Food. She also serves as the Kansas Co-Lead for the National Farm to School Network. Mercedes is the administrator of ksfarmersmarkets.org and develops manager and board training and the annual Kansas Farmers Market Conferences. Prior to joining KRC, she was the coordinator of the Downtown Lawrence Farmers Market and served as the local food forager for the 2008 National SARE Conference in Kansas City.

Donn Teske
Along with his wife Kathy, Donn raised and sent out into the world four children on a 5th generation farm at Wheaton Ks in Pottawatomie county. They currently raise beef cattle, Native prairie hay, Red Clover, Soybeans, Milo, and Wheat. Their crops are certified organic. Donn is in his 10th year serving as Kansas Farmers Union president.

Mari Tucker
A western Kansas native, Mari currently serves as a Marketing Specialist for the Rural Development Division of the Kansas Department of Commerce. She is the program manager for the Agriculture Value-Added loan program and also administers several Energy Incentive tax credits. Mari is a member of Commerce’s Energy and Alternative Energy Industry Strategic Team and also represents the Wind Working Group on the RA Works! Grant Advisory board. Prior to moving to Topeka in 2002, Mari was an instructor in the College of Business and Leadership at Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS. Mari graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems and earned an M.B.A. in Management from Fort Hays State University.

Joyce Williams
Joyce and her husband Mel are owners of MJ Ranch Angus Beef which is certified by the American Grassfed Association as being 100% grass-fed.  Cattle are born and raised on the ranch just outside of Lawrence, Kansas.  MJ Ranch takes pride in raising beef without the use of hormones, antibiotics or pesticides/herbicides on their pastures.  Three generations of Williams’ live on the Ranch and manage the family herd.  The ranch’s goal is to produce the highest quality 100% grass-fed beef available anywhere and give utmost care to the land.