).png)
Content Collaborators
Are you ready to start growing your a locally adapted variety and share your progress with others?
Included are the existing courses
Plus access to the private community, monthly mentorship zoom calls, and additional content produced during the year. Click on each course below to view the curriculum in each.
-
FreeComing in 2022--Indigenous Farmers of the Americas
Western cultures have largely adopted input intensive agriculture, but there are farmers around the world who are actively growing their indigenous, genetically diverse varieties. More details coming soon.
-
$125.00Growing Modern Landraces
Joseph Lofthouse teaches how vegetable crops can adapt to thrive in any environment, without inputs or stress.
-
$95.00How Plants Use Endophytes
This course is taught by Dr. James White of Rutgers University. Guaranteed to change the way you save seeds, or consider nutrient deficiencies, nutrient density in crops, and disease resistance.
What are all the ways to help collaborate on this project?
There are a few ways to get involved, and if what you want to do is not listed here, reach out anytime.
-
If you have garden space and you are willing to get started implementing any part of either course suggestions, and document your progress
-
Marketing and outreach. We are farmers and not marketers... so any form of marketing or design (online, print, social media) would be helpful.
-
Do you see anther way to get involved that isn't listed here? We'd love to hear your ideas.
What else will be included?
Additional content coming throughout the 2022 growing season:
-
Monthly zoom calls will be there to support members in specific challenges or questions that come up throughout the course of the growing season.
-
Additional content will include follow up interviews of Dr James White, additional case stories of individual crops converted to landraces by Joseph Lofthouse.
-
New interviews and courses by new instructors covering various topics related to developing modern landraces.
-
Applied Landraces: Monthly interviews with members that are already breeding landrace crops, including photos and videos, and how their projects have evolved.
-
The opportunity to share your work with other members: Either as a first year project, or if you have experience with
Instructors
Click on arrows below to see additional instructors
Joseph Lofthouse
Guide
landracegardening@gmail.com
Joseph Lofthouse taught landrace gardening at conferences hosted by the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, National Heirloom Expo, Organic Seed Alliance, Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NY), and Utah Farm & Food Conference. He serves as World Tomato Society ambassador. Joseph is a sustenance market farmer and landrace seed-developer. At his garden in the Cache Valley in Utah, he grows seed for about 95 species, and is working to convert every species that he grows into adaptivar landraces.
He is the author of the recent book Landrace Gardening, and is a popular speaker at farming conferences around the world. He has been growing landraces and selling seeds for a decade. He is dedicated to helping gardeners and farmers grow healthy plants with less stress.
Farming Philosophy:
Joseph's style of landrace gardening can best be summed up as planting many varieties together, then allowing them to promiscuously cross pollinate. Through a combination of survival-of-the-fittest and farmer-directed selection, arriving at a locally-adapted population with valued culinary traits.
Joseph lives under a vow of poverty and grows using subsistence level conditions without using 'cides or fertilizers. He prefers to select for genetics that can thrive under existing conditions.
Julia Dakin
Course Creator
julia.dakin@gmail.com
I have been in agriculture for most of my life, but wasn't able to start farming full time until three years ago. After many years of focusing on soil health, I felt like there was something missing in that approach. After reading Landrace Gardening and seeing first hand how much genetic variability plays into plant health and flavor, I decided to devote some time and energy into creating a learning experience that would give farmers and gardeners the information and confidence to get started on their own breeding project.
Dr James White
Instructor
Dr James F. White, is Professor of Plant Pathology. Dr. White obtained the M.S. in Mycology and Plant Pathology from Auburn University, Alabama, and the Ph.D. in Mycology from the University of Texas, Austin in 1987. Dr. White specializes in symbiosis research, particularly endophytic microbes. He is the author of more than 180 articles, and author and editor of reference books on the biology, taxonomy, and phylogeny of fungal endophytes. He and students in his lab are exploring diversity of endophytic microbes and the various impacts that they have on host plants.
Primary Focus Area: Plant Protection and Biotic and Abiotic Interactions
Secondary Focus Area: Sustainable Agricultural Systems