Schedule

About the Speakers

• Lynn Coody

  Organic Agsystems Consulting

  Lynn S. Coody became an active participant in the organic community in 1974 with her apprenticeship on at Maplevale Organic Farm. Since then, she served in many leadership positions in her long-time home state of Oregon, multiple national organic groups, and internationally with IFOAM. As President of Regional Tilth in the early 1980’s, she worked with other PNW organic activists to restructure Tilth into state-based organizations in Oregon and Washington. She is proud to have been a founder of, and active contributor to, Oregon Tilth, Organic Materials Institute, Oregon Organic Coalition, and Western Alliance of Certification Organizations. In 1982, Lynn established Organic Agsystems Consulting. Her consulting projects have focused on assisting domestic and international certifiers in complying with the accreditation requirements of the USDA’s National Organic Program. Another notable highlight was her work as a visiting professor at the Institute of Mediterranean Agriculture for 15 years, where she taught a short course on organic regulation and oversight to students working toward their Master’s degree in Organic Agriculture.

  Her current work is with Organic Produce Wholesalers Coalition, where she serves as Senior Policy Analyst, providing analysis and recommendations about the issues before the National Organic Standards Board. In 2019, Organic Trade Association honored Lynn with its Leadership Award for Growing the Organic Community. In 2020, Lynn received the Ecological Farming Association’s Sustie Award, which “honors those who have been actively and critically involved in ecologically sustainable agriculture.” She has also been recognized with awards from Oregon Tilth, Oregon Organic Coalition, and Organically Grown Company’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Lynn and her husband recently resettled in northern Vermont to live nearby their son and daughter-in-law.

• David Granatstein

  Washington State University

  David Granatstein is Professor Emeritus and retired sustainable agriculture specialist at Washington State University. He spent his career in Wenatchee, WA working on a wide variety of topics, including sustainable agriculture, soil health, organic tree fruit production, ecolabeling, climate change, biochar, and composting. He produced annual updates on the state of organic ag in Washington for 20 years. David participated in the inaugural Tilth conference in Ellensburg in 1994 and spent a number of years farming in the Methow Valley after that. He has also worked overseas on several international ag development projects.

• Anne Schwartz

  Blue Heron Farm

  Anne Schwartz has been an organic farmer for 44 years. Anne has also been an activist to advocate for better agriculture for nearly 50 years. She has and continues to serve on several boards and advisory committees, and along with her husband, served as volunteer EMTs and firefighters for the Rockport Fire Department for 40 years. Anne has also experienced stress on many levels both as a business owner and lifetime activist and has worked to address stress in her life. She has joined the WRASAP team to further that work and share experiences.

• Arran Stephens

  Entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist

• Keith Walton

  3rd Generation Farmer

  Keith is a third generation farmer on a farm established in 1911. He attended schools in close-by Santa Clara and the University of Oregon in Eugene. His summers as a teen were spent working in the farm’s cherry orchards and vegetable fields.

  Keith began his career as an organic farmer in 1972 on the home farm with his parents’ support. He helped manage the orchards and transition production practices to organic methods. Working with his brother and several others in a cooperative management structure, they produced cherries, vegetables and other field crops including reforestation tree seedlings. He helped envision and establish Organically Grown (then Cooperative) in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he farmed with a newer set of cooperators serving the local farmers market, retail stores, and the wholesale market through OGC’s burgeoning distribution network.In the 1990s he worked at Winter Green Farm in Noti and kept that connection until 2020. Concurrently, he and his partner and wife, Rachael DeBuse, have produced vegetables for a winter CSA and the local farmers markets. They also raise poultry and goats, grains, garlic, hay, and produce compost from farm raised materials. They continue to tend the family’s farm amid the flux of caregiving for elders and mentoring the generations seeking careers on farms.