Inviting farmers and ranchers of all scales and production systems.

Boulder County, Colo. - Registration is now open at www.SoilRev.org for the fourth annual Soil Revolution Conference on Thursday, Dec. 19, at the Boulder Jewish Community Center, 6007 Oreg Ave., Boulder. Farmers and ranchers of all scales and production systems are invited.

This event is hosted by Boulder County Parks & Open Space, CSU Extension, the City of Boulder, USDA-NRCS, and the Boulder Valley and Longmont Conservation districts. Sponsor and exhibitor opportunities are available.

Topics will cover on-the-ground solutions from producers spanning a variety of climate and soil conditions across the county.

Confirmed speakers include:

Steve Charter
Steve Charter, a third-generation rancher, hails from north of Billings Montana, where the fourth and fifth generations also live on the ranch. Steve was invited to attend the first Alan Savory School in Montana in 1981. Steve and his wife Jean helped found the Center for Holistic Resource Management and started a management club to help learn how to implement these practices. In 2013, Steve and his family started experimenting with other regenerative practices to build soil carbon, including jump starting biological activity on their semiarid range land using biological extracts, livestock and cover crops.

Dan DeSutter
Dan DeSutter farms in west-central Indiana with his wife, Barbie, and three sons, Dylan, Damon, and Dalton. His farm has become a national leader in soil conservation and hosts tour groups from around the globe. Long term, no till cover crops and grazing form the core of their soil health practices. The farm is currently transitioning to organic production. In 2015, he was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship to study the cultural, economic, and social factors that cause farmers to adopt good soil health practices.

Helen Atthowe
Helen Atthowe has spent 35 years connecting farming, food systems, and land stewardship. She farms and does soil and natural enemies’ habitat-building research on a 211-acre organic farm in Eastern Oregon which she co-owns with her husband. Helen has worked in education and research at Rutgers University and the University of Arkansas, as a Horticulture Extension Agent in Montana, and as a research assistant for Oregon State University. She also owned/operated a 30-acre certified organic vegetable and fruit farm in Montana and the organic Woodleaf Farm in California.

Elizabeth Black
Elizabeth Black is a 35-year Boulder resident. She works as an artist painting landscapes and also has a very small U-cut Christmas tree farm and veggie stand with her husband Chris Brown. She is very concerned about climate change and has been promoting soil carbon sequestration as a mitigating strategy for several years. As she has learned more about Front Range agriculture and soils, she has found her best strategy is to give tools to land stewards that improve soil health to help withstand droughts and floods and draw down atmospheric CO². She has organized a Citizen Science Soil Health Project to help growers improve their soil.

Jim and Charlene Dolezal
Jim and his wife Charlene farm and ranch in Northeast Colorado and Western Nebraska. Jim is the third generation to operate his farm. They couple raises wheat, corn, millet, and pinto beans on the dry-land acres and wheat, corn, and beans on the irrigated acres. They are experimenting with incorporating multi-species cover crops in their rotations to supplement grazing for their cow/calf operation. Jim and Charlene also operate Dolezal Certified Seed and work with Arrow Seed selling forages, grass mixtures, pollinators, and cover crop seeds.

Kevin and Keri Schilthuis
Kevin and Keri Schilthuis and family farm almost 200 acres of certified organic irrigated farmland. They have built soil organic matter from 1% to 6% and doubled cation exchange capacity. Kevin hails from northern Wyoming where he and his family of six homesteaded 80 acres of unwanted farmland in 2007. His career, combining agriculture and construction spanning several continents, has provided a problem-solving mentality to enable a soil health program that encourages land owners to treat the soil as a bank account below their feet.

Updates will be posted to the conference website, www.SoilRev.org, including a growing speaker list and program agenda. For more information, please contact Vanessa McCracken at vmccracken@bouldercounty.org or 303-678-6181.