Annual Awards Banquet and Fund Raiser
Date: September 20
Time: 11:00 social time, silent auction
12:00 lunch, followed by speaker and awards ceremony
Place: Story County Conservation Center
McFarland Park, north of Ames
Speaker: Frederick L. Kirschenmann
Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center
for Sustainable Agriculture, “Why our Modern Food System is not Sustainable”
Food: Lucallan’s Restaurant featuring local foods
Cost: $35 per person
RSVP: by September 17
to Neila Seaman, Director
Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club
3839 Merle Hay Rd, Suite 280
Des Moines, 50310
Or 515-277-8868
Join us on Saturday, September 20, as we celebrate together the efforts and achievements of fellow Iowa Sierrans and conservation activists. Hear Fred’s unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities we face in balancing an agricultural economy with the protection of our natural heritage. Hike the many trails in the park. The event will be catered by renowned Lucallan’s Restaurant, featuring local foods.
NEEDED: Silent auction items of a unique, novel, or personalized nature. Please send them to Neila at the address above, ASAP.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!
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Directions to the Conservation Center in McFarland Park:
The Story County Conservation Center is located in
McFarland Park, north of Ames. From I-35, take exit 116 (County Road E-29). Travel west 1/2 mile to Dayton Avenue. Turn north on Dayton Avenue to 180th Street. Then turn east on 180th and drive 1/2 mile to the Conservation Center.
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Frederick L. Kirschenmann To Speak at Annual Awards Banquet and Fundraiser
Dr. Frederick L. Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for Sustainable Agriculture will be speaking on “Why our Modern Food System is not Sustainable” at the Annual Awards Banquet and Fundraiser on September 20. Dr. Kirschenamann states “It is my belief that we will see major changes take place in our food and agriculture systems in the next few decades that will likely give the comparative advantage to ecologically sound, smaller farms and a lot more people engaged in producing our food.”
Today's modern food system has been designed as an industrial enterprise. Such enterprises subscribe to the same industrial principles as any industrial operation -- specialization, simplification, concentration, maximum production, and short-term return. While these principles have proven themselves to be very effective in efficiently producing the short term products they are designed to produce, they are dependent on the unlimited natural resources which fuel all industrial systems and they ignore all ecological and social costs. In other words the resilience of the system is essentially ignored. We are now about to reach a series of thresholds which will make our industrial food system dysfunctional and we need to begin redesigning new food systems that are resilient and self-renewing.