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Biography

Jim Downing covers agriculture, climate change and the green economy at The Sacramento Bee, where he has been a staff writer since 2005. His favorite stories explore the economics of the food business, from the marketing strategies at the local supermarket to the global forces that influence what farmers grow and how they grow it. In a series of recent articles, he uncovered the widespread use on California's organic farms of fertilizers spiked with synthetic nitrogen.

Before coming to The Bee, Jim was a science writing fellow at The Seattle Times. His freelance pieces have been published in The Economist, High Country News and the Indian environmental magazine Down to Earth. From 2001 to 2003 he worked as a water and sanitation consultant for the World Bank's New Delhi office.

While a student at Deep Springs College, Jim managed a two-acre organic garden that once sold a few potatoes to Chez Panisse. He received his BS in agricultural engineering from Cornell and holds a master's degree from the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.

Jim will someday inherit the small ranch his great-grandfather homesteaded in eastern Wyoming. He and his wife Seema are now harvesting fenugreek and green garlic from their community garden plot in downtown Sacramento.

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Nancy Creamer is a professor in the Department of Horticultural Science and the Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS). CEFS is a 2000 acre facility whose mission is to develop and promote food and farming systems that protect the environment, strengthen local communities, and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond. CEFS won Organization of the Year Award from Carolina Farm Stewardships Association in 2006.

Creamer's area of specialization includes farming systems research, organic production systems, and community-based sustainable local food systems. She is involved with several ongoing local food projects including NC Choices, a CEFS initiative which is developing local and sustainable pork production in North Carolina, funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation.

Dr. Creamer received the Earthwise Award at the 2006 Earth Day celebration at NC State University for outstanding faculty commitment to campus environmental sustainability. She is a member of the USDA Specialty Crops Advisory Committee to the US Secretary of Agriculture, and a member of the Advisory Council for the Food Systems Leadership Institute, a project of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. She was a member of a multi-state Organic Agriculture Consortium, and the Scientific Committee on Organic Agriculture Research. She has served as a consultant to the European Commission on funding and evaluation on organic research activities in Europe.

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Kathryn Ruhf has served as coordinator of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group since 1992. NESAWG is a network of farm, food, educational, consumer, faith, environmental, nutrition, food security and other groups working to promote a more sustainable regional food and farming system. Kathy specializes in farm and food policy advocacy, beginning farmers and farmland tenure. She manages policy and food system development projects, produces educational materials, organizes events and works with a wide range of groups throughout the region and nationally.

Kathy is also co-director of Land For Good, a New England nonprofit organization that specializes in working land tenure, farm succession, and land access. She has written, taught and consulted on these topics. She served as co-director of the New England Small Farm Institute for 17 years, and on the USDA Advisory Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers for six years, and chair for two. Kathy has a Masters degree in administration from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters degree in natural resource management from Antioch/New England. She lives and works in Belchertown, MA.

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Dr. Michelle Wander is the Director of the Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture Program and Associate Professor of Soil Fertility/Ecology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.

She currently serves on the National Soil and Water Conservation Society's Science and Policy Committee and the eOrganic Leadership Team. She is the past chair of the Committee on Organic and Sustainable Agriculture (COSA) and has been a long standing member of: the North Central Regional Committee on Soil Organic Matter and the Soil Science Society of America's Soil Quality Working Group.

She is the curator of Illinois' Historic Soils Collection which includes over 30,000 soil samples. She has served as an expert evaluator of the Long-Term Research on Agricultural Systems study (for UCD), Rodale's Farming Systems Trial (for the Rodale Research Institute), of the Soil Quality CRIS (for USDA's Nebraska ARS Unit) and, of the Soil Conditioning Index (for the Soil & Water Conservation Society). She was a lead author of agriculture impacts section of UCS/ESA's Great Lakes Climate Change Report and other related publications and has served as a consultant on Wal-Mart Sustainable Organic Fabric's Initiative.

Her research considers the influence of management (tillage and cover crops, perennials, bioenergy crops, organic farming systems; crop rotation and fertilization practices) on soils, organic matter and system performance with emphasis on plant-soil-process relations. Farming systems research employs nutrient budgeting, conservation assessment tools, life cycle analysis, and relies on participatory methods. Community research addresses risk management and soil quality in urban gardens.

Outreach service includes leadership of the Soils Community of Practice for eOrganic, the eXtension site and is the executive ead for the Soil Quality Website, hosted at UIUC in partnership with the USDA National Soil Tilth Lab and the Natural Resource Conservation Service Soil Quality Team.

At U of I, she co-coordinated the LandInformatics Collaboratory to develop capacity for inter- and trans-disciplinary research and education that promotes sustainable natural resource use and management. She maintains active participation in legislative/industry/public educational activities sponsored by Union of Concerned Scientists & the Ecological Society of America and has been a contributor the New Agriculture Network which generates dialogue and educational materials for extension and outreach on organic production.

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Neva Hassanein is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Montana, where she leads an emphasis on sustainable food and farming systems. Hassanein authored Changing the Way America Farms: Knowledge and Community in the Sustainable Agriculture Movement (University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Her recent scholarship focuses on food democracy and on local/regional food systems.

Hassanein is committed to community-based action research. For example, she co-facilitated a community food assessment (2002-04), guided by a local steering committee and involving many students. The assessment led to a multi-stakeholder, food policy council, the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition. Hassanein remains active in CFAC, focusing on protecting agricultural land as the basis of a sustainable, local food system.

In 2003, Hassanein helped found the UM Farm to College Program. In 2006, she and 10 graduate students researched the economic, social, and transportation-related impacts of the Program. In partnership with Grow Montana, the study contributed to passage of legislation that changed state procurement policy, making it easier for public institutions to buy Montana-grown and processed foods.

Hassanein holds a PhD from the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also worked for many years in the non-profit sector as an organizer, coalition coordinator, and lobbyist. She has received the Cox Award for Teaching Excellence and the AERO Sustainable Agriculture Educators Award.

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