- Author: Jeffrey P Mitchell
San Joaquin Valley farmers, Scott Schmidt of Five Points, Darrell Cordova of Denair, and Michael Crowell of Turlock, along with UCCE Stanislaus County Advisor, Marsha Campbell-Mathews hosted Eric Kueneman and Dirk Lange, both formerly international agriculture development workers with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy, at their farms on July 27th.
Kueneman is the former director of international conservation agriculture programs at FAO and was responsible for the organization's CA efforts throughout a number of regions with several member nations. He is currently a consultant involved in the evaluation and review of several development programs in India, Nigeria, and Brazil.
Lange is a career international development worker who has had stints with FAO, the German development agency, “GTZ,” (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit), and has also worked with fellow German development pioneer, Rolf Derpsch, - who was hosted by CASI for a series of seminars in California back in 2012.
Additional information about conservation agriculture and the CASI Center is available at the CASI website http://casi.ucanr.edu/.