For Immediate Release
Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2017 – Fred Yoder, a fourth-generation Ohio farmer and a past president of the National Corn Growers Association, has been elected a co-chair of Solutions from the Land (SfL).
SfL is a national dialogue of landowners and conservationists focused on the sustainable policies and practices needed to meet food, feed, fiber and energy production needs while protecting natural resources and ecosystems.
Yoder joins A.G. Kawamura, a produce grower and former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and Thomas Lovejoy, a professor and Biodiversity Chair at George Mason University, as an SfL co-chair.
Yoder has farmed for more than 40 years and, along with his wife Debbie and two children, grows corn, soybeans and wheat. He also has operated a retail farm seed business for more than 36 years, selling to an entire range of producers, including those who use biotech or conventional varieties, and those who engage in organic farming.
Yoder has spoken here and in Europe about the co-existence of production systems, talking of how both organic and other production systems can thrive side by side.
As a founding board member of SfL, Yoder chairs the North American Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA), a multi-stakeholder initiative that gives farmers, ranchers and foresters the opportunity to collaborate with industry, academia, government and NGO partners in developing ways to improve production resiliency and mitigate current and future risks of changing climatic conditions.
“It is becoming more evident every day that the solutions to many of our problems can come from the land if we can learn to adapt to what Mother Nature is telling us,” Yoder said of the work of SfL. “While discovering those solutions that can work all over our planet, it has to start at home. That is why working locally with stakeholders regarding food security as well as environmental issues such as clean air and water, will ultimately benefit the rest of North America and beyond. We are all in this together!”
Another SfL undertaking is the Ohio Smart Agriculture project, a multi-stakeholder effort designed to ensure the finite land resources in the Upper Midwest meet the growing demand for local, affordable and nutritious food, feed, fiber and energy, as well as maintain watershed and wildlife habitats and provide other ecosystem services, all while simultaneously adapting to changing climatic conditions. The initiative promotes integrated landscape management of a resilient/climate-smart and multifunctional agriculture sector.
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Solutions from the Land (SfL) is a not‐for‐profit corporation focused on land based solutions to global challenges. SfL’s mission is to identify and facilitate the implementation of policies, practices and projects at a landscape scale that will result in land being sustainably managed to produce food, feed, fiber and energy while protecting and improving critical environmental resources and delivering high value solutions to combat climate change. For more on Solutions from the Land, click HERE.
