FUTURE HARVEST CASA ANNOUNCES 2013 CONFERENCE KEYNOTE, OPENS CALL FOR PROPOSALS

April 27, 2012 – Amish organic dairy farmer David Kline will deliver the keynote address at the 14th Annual “Farming for Profit and Stewardship” Conference, presented by Future Harvest CASA on January 18-19, 2013 at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, Virginia. Kline is the publisher of Farming Magazine and author of three books of essays chronicling nature and the rhythms of life on his Fredericksburg, Ohio farm. Kline is a contemporary of Wendell Berry, who has written the foreword for two of Kline’s books. His keynote will be presented during the opening plenary session of the conference on Friday, January 18 at 1:00 p.m.

Future Harvest CASA has also announced a Call for Proposals, available on the group’s website, www.futureharvestcasa.org. “This is the first time we’ve solicited proposals for our annual conference,” said executive director Alice Chalmers. “The volunteers on our conference planning committee come from many aspects of the community and have always done a great job of recruiting top-notch speakers. The sustainable agriculture field is now growing so rapidly that we wanted to take every step to cast as wide a net as possible to fill our schedule with the most relevant and timely topics.”

The two-day conference offering dozens of sessions and workshops on topics related to sustainable farming and food attracted more than 400 participants in January 2012 and organizers expect to match or exceed those numbers in 2013. “We look forward to building on last year’s success by returning to the National Conference Center for a second year,” said Chalmers. “The location was convenient to attendees from all across the region – Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The NCC team was great to work with and amazingly accommodating of farm machinery displays, construction of mobile poultry pens in their break-out rooms and demonstrations of chicken processing on their loading dock!”

Conference sponsorship, exhibit opportunities and registration information will be posted at www.futureharvestcasa.org as it becomes available.

# # #

Future Harvest- A Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture (Future Harvest-CASA) is a nonprofit organization representing a regional network of farmers, agricultural professionals, landowners and consumers living and working in the Chesapeake region. Future Harvest-CASA promotes profitable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable food and farming systems that work to sustain communities.