Farmers, doctors and other members of the sustainable agriculture community are set to explore the relationship between healthy people and healthy farms at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s (PASA) 23rd Annual Farming for the Future Conference, Feb. 5–8 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel in State College, PA. The main conference opening session, scheduled for 10:15 a.m. on Feb. 7 and sponsored by Lady Moon Farms, features a keynote address from Dr. Daphne Miller, family physician, Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and author of Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing.
“Agriculture has everything to do with medicine,” Miller said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “In fact, I’ve come to see the divisions between the two disciplines as mostly artificial and arbitrary, and am now convinced that a farm internship should be a required part of medical training, and vice versa.”
Miller’s keynote will elaborate on the conclusions she presents in Farmacology, a book that collects the ideas she developed after traveling to seven family farms around the country, conversing with researchers and treating patients in her own medical practice.
“My time spent learning from farmers and researchers has made me think beyond food as medicine to farm as medicine,” she told The Guardian. “I’ve learned how healthy soil can produce a healthy immune system, how microbes on the farm can communicate with our resident microbes – our microbiome – how certain grazing practices can produce food that stress-proofs our nervous system, how the terroir in which an herb is grown can influence its medicinal value, or how inner-city farming delivers unexpected health benefits to the surrounding community.”
After Miller’s keynote address, the conversation will continue during a full slate of workshops organized around the topic of health, including “The Mighty Microbiome” with Jerry Brunetti of Agri-Dynamics, “Homeopathy & Natural Healthcare: Tools for the Farm & Family” with PASA’s Susan Beal, DVM, “Current Research: Residential Proximity to High-density Livestock Production & MRSA Infection” with Joan Casey of Johns Hopkins University, a Q&A session with Dr. Miller and many others.
“We have always known that sustainable farming is important not only for environmental health, but the health of our people as well,” says Brian Snyder, PASA’s Executive Director. “It will be exciting to explore this relationship even further at this conference.”
Now in its third decade, Farming for the Future has grown into one of the largest and most respected gatherings on sustainable agriculture in the country, a multi-day affair comprising intensive pre-conference tracks, two plenary sessions and over 100 main conference workshops. Registration is open to the public. To register, and to view a full schedule of conference programming, visit PASA’s website.
- Artwork and Photography: PASA
