Ask an Agroforester
The fall season is now open!
2024 Lunch and Learn Schedule
11/19 - Who’s Who in National Agroforestry
Kate MacFarland is an Agroforester for the USDA National Agroforestry Center (NAC). She is part of the technical assistance and outreach team at NAC. Her work focuses on providing leadership for national and regional workshops and trainings, developing education and outreach materials to a range of technical and general audiences, and supporting the integration of agroforestry into USDA programs. Kate is also involved with NAC’s human dimensions research. Kate’s office is located in Burlington, Vermont.
Kitt Healy serves as Strategy Lead for The Agroforestry Coalition, a growing network of innovators, agitators and advocates working across sectors to scale up agroforestry in the US. Kitt has an MS in Agroecology from UW- Madison, and she worked in a variety of sustainable agriculture business, nonprofits and research labs before becoming a freelance facilitator and network strategist in 2022. Born and raised in Chicago, she now lives in Madison WI with her partner, two kids, and as many perennial herb and berry plants as will fit on her tiny urban lot.
Hannah Hemmelgarn, MS, is Assistant Director for the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri (UMCA) where she oversees outreach, partnerships, and communication. Her background as an agroforestry practitioner, an educator, and a program coordinator informs her work to advance agroforestry implementation through network development, training program design, and critical research connections. She currently serves as chair of the Association for Temperate Agroforestry board of directors, and as co-chair for the Agroforestry Coalition’s Technical Assistance & Training Working Group where she is actively advancing a professional agroforestry credential and learning exchange for climate-resilient agroecosystems. Her scholarship is focused on program evaluation and relational accountability in community-driven agroforestry research.
11/21 - Centering Racial Justice in Agroforestry
Rafter Ferguson is a researcher and educator focusing on diversified farms, grassroots farmer networks, and justice and equity issues in agriculture. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and postdoctoral work at the University of Lisbon and Haverford College, he spent three years in the Food and Environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, he worked on projects addressing racial equity in agriculture, helped steward relationships with grassroots partners and tribal organizations, authored blogs including Why We Can’t Separate Justice and Sustainability in the Food System, and led reports on the impacts of farmland consolidation on Black farmers and new farmers, and on the impacts of climate change on farmworkers.
A plant-lover and naturalist, Ruth Tyson has invested in understanding her curiosity and passion for sustainable food as a bridge between the natural and social worlds. After studying Sociology and Environmental Studies at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, she committed to building a sovereign, sustainable, transparent, and just local food economy for Black and Brown communities like the food apartheid that impacted her childhood neighborhood. She believes in the power of research, storytelling, art, personal transformation, and organizing as necessary healing modalities for individuals, communities, and ecosystems. Ruth brings a Black queer ecofeminist framework to the gardening/farming, education, advocacy, nutrition, food service, food retail, and foraging worlds of the DMV and nationally. Ruth is creating digital content, hosting plant walks, and consulting for local and regional food and farm organizations to pollinate transformative ideas and relationships to heal land and people.
11/26 - Honeylocusts and Forest Exploration
Zach Elfers is a tree crops enthusiast and lifelong student of nature. He operates a small nursery, Future Forest Plants, where he lives in southern York county Pennsylvania. He seeks opportunities to explore, research, and sometimes even has a little time to write in relation to topics such as ethnobotany, agroecology, and Native American land management and the legacy and persistence of indigenous landscapes. The hickories, persimmons, and honey locusts have featured mainly in his tree crop exploration, selection, and breeding endeavors.
12/13 - Yellowbud Hickory, a Rising Star in Agroforestry
Jesse Marksohn – Bio to come
12/16 - Nut Cooperatives
Justin Holt has worked in agroecology, education, and organizing since 2010. He is a founder and worker-owner of Nutty Buddy Collective and Asheville Nuttery, two closely-linked organizations working to advance nut-centered agroforestry in southern Appalachia. Justin is also owner of Wolf Tree Consulting, providing forestry and agroforestry services to landowners throughout the region. Asheville Nuttery began in 2017 and has worked with over 200 growers and gatherers, who have brought in more than 30,000 pounds of black walnuts, hickories, acorns, hazelnuts, and pecans. The nuts are processed into a variety of products including nut meats, oils, flours, skin care products, and other value-added products. Asheville Nuttery products are sold at tailgate markets and to chefs, are periodically available in the webstore, and are sold via the ‘TreeSA’, a monthly tree crop CSA that was first launched last year.
Jeff Piestrak serves as a Facility and Outreach Coordinator for the New York Tree Crops Alliance (NYTCA). NYTCA is a grower’s cooperative formed in 2019 focused on the production of chestnuts, hazelnuts, and their products. Member farms are located primarily in Central New York State, where the co-op is developing a processing facility that will be used to process, package, and distribute a variety of nut products. Custom processing services will also be offered to non-members. Jeff also owns and operates an agroforestry services business and nursery in the Finger Lakes region of New York, FLX Agroforestry Solutions, and is a member of the Farming with Trees Collective. Recognizing the many ways tree crops can benefit people, places, and the planet as whole (and Cooperative Principle #7: Concern for Community), NYTCA also promotes the cultivation and consumption of tree crops by others.
Don English serves as the Administrative Director of the Keystone Tree Crops Cooperative (KTCC). KTCC is a new not-for-profit Ag Cooperative in Pennsylvania. KTCC’s goals are to establish and support a tree crops industry in the Mid-Atlantic region. KTCC functions as an aggregator for its members and provides value-added processing to tree nuts. KTCC’s initial products include hickory nut oil and culinary chestnuts; plans to expand into products from hazelnuts and black walnuts are progressing.
Interested in watching past Ask an Agroforester webinars? Check out the full Ask an Agroforester playlist on our YouTube channel. There, you’ll find deep-dive discussions on a variety of Agroforestry topics, presented by some of the most knowledgeable leaders in the field.
For questions, comments, or information regarding the Ask an Agroforester programming, please contact Emilie Tweardy at ETweardy@asdevelop.org.
New to Agroforestry? Visit ASD’s Agroforestry page to learn more.
Sign up for our e-newsletter to stay in the loop with Ask an Agroforester.
On This Page