Starting from the Soil Up: Conversations with Agricultural Leaders at the Food Forever Event

Eli Kulp and Christopher Plant visit Pocono Organics during their massive Food Forever event and sit down with multiple farmers and agricultural geniuses to talk about the future of food production and how we can go beyond sustainability. Food Forever is a communications campaign, which started in 2017, to raise awareness about what crop diversity is and how everyone around the world is connected to and benefits from agricultural biodiversity. Eli and Christopher sit down with Ashley Walsh, Cierra Martin, Jeff Moyer and Erik Oberholtzer. Ashley Walsh is the owner of Pocono Organics and talks about how she got into organic farming, working with Food Forever and Rodale and the creation of her immense organic farm, the home of three story greenhouses.  Cierra Martin is a representative for The Crop Trust, the creators of the Food Forever campaign. The Crop Trust is an international organization with a mission to safeguard crop diversity for food security. The Crop Trust supports a network of genebanks with are facilities for tasking with conserving and sharing seeds. They're making sure this diversity stays alive at the seed level, but they're also packaging it up and shipping it around the world for breeders that use it every day.  Jeff Moyer is the CEO of Rodale Institute. "Widely recognized as the birthplace of the organic movement, Rodale Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to growing the organic movement through rigorous research, farmer training, and consumer education." Jeff talks about the importance of regenerative organic agriculture, farming not just organically and sustainably, but with the future of the soil in mind, and the recently released White Papers. The White Papers are a report on climate change and how a shift from cash crops to cover crops could actually reverse our carbon emissions by putting carbon back into the soil. Erik Oberholtzer is a chef, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Tender Greens. He is on the Rodale Board of Directors and is a leader of the food forever experience, helping to connect Rodale with The Crop Trust. He discusses the importance of building transparent supply chains, new organic certification regulations, and the nutritional and environmental importance of organic agriculture.