The Ecological Farming Association will present the Steward of Sustainable Agriculture Awards (Susties), the Advocates for Social Justice in Sustainable Agriculture Awards (Justies), and the Golden Pliers Award at the EcoFarm Awards Dinner Banquet on Friday, January 24 as part of the 40th EcoFarm Conference.
The Sustie Award honors those who have been actively and critically involved in ecologically-sustainable agriculture and have demonstrated their long term, significant contributions to the well-being of agriculture and the planet.
The Justie Award honors those who has been active advocates for social justice as a critical aspect of ecologically-sustainable agriculture and food systems.
Justie Awards
Joy Moore
Joy has played a key role in community efforts to reform school lunch in Berkeley beginning in 1999 with the Center for Ecoliteracy. She co-founded Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice, and was a member of the Berkeley Food Policy Council. Joy was instrumental in the campaign to tax soda and serves on the City of Berkeley’s Soda Tax Commission. After retiring from their Chronic Disease Prevention Program, she attended the CASFS apprenticeship program at UC Santa Cruz. She now teaches a garden based nutrition program to K-12 students and their families. She has served on many non-profit boards and councils, including Women of Color Resource Center, Berkeley Food Policy Council, Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, EcoFarm, Pie Ranch, KPFA/Pacifica Radio and most recently Oakland’s Planting Justice. Joy strives to provide access to low resource communities to be able to grow, eat and live organically!
Lauren Augusta
In 1994, juggling several part-time jobs to keep her dream afloat, Lauren founded the nonprofit Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA). Three years later, MESA became the State Department's first program devoted to sustainable agriculture. Now entering its 23rd season, MESA’s annual exchange program has forged deep alliances between thousands of global farmers and their U.S. counterparts, one intern and one mentor farm at a time. Lauren has overseen MESA’s expansion to a visionary staff of eight, an online agroecology platform, and a four-acre incubator farm. Every day, her inspiration still comes the “a-ha” moments that happen when people from vastly different backgrounds come together to grow and share healthy food.
Sustie Awards
Lynn Coody
Lynn Coody started her organic career in 1974. She has been an organic farmer, a co-founder of organizations (Oregon Tilth, Organic Materials Institute, and Oregon Organic Coalition), a horticultural consultant, an author of organic laws and standards, a technical specialist in organic certification and accreditation, and a professor teaching about organic oversight systems. After 45 years, she looks back on her enthusiastic participation in many pivotal projects that helped a small group of dedicated hippies evolve into today’s thriving organic trade. Lynn currently serves as Senior Policy Analyst of the Organic Produce Wholesalers Coalition, ensuring that voices from the produce sector are conveyed to the National Organic Standards Board.
Leonard Diggs
Leonard works with Pie Ranch as the Director of Operations with oversight of Emerging Farmers and the Cascade Farm Regenerator Program. He was the farm manager of Shone Farm at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), co-owner with his wife of BioFarm - a certified organic vegetable farm in Lake County, and owner/operator of Diggs Organic Farms in Santa Rosa, CA. Leonard was also the farm manager of The Farmery, Inc., a certified organic vegetable and demonstration farm for the California State Fair. He has served on numerous boards and committees and instructed agricultural classes for SRJC. Leonard received a fellowship from the California Agricultural Leadership Program; the Pedro ILIC Agriculture Award for Outstanding Farmer, the Outstanding Young Farmer of the Year Award from the Sonoma County Harvest Fair, Legacy Farmer of the Year from CAFF/The Farmers Guild, and is a current member of the Castanea Fellowship.
Rosie & Ward Burroughs
Ward & Rosie Burroughs, together with their children, are part of a family legacy of farming spanning over a century. The Burroughs family own and operate farms in California’s San Joaquin Valley and Southeastern Oregon. Burroughs Family Farms is the marketing flagship of all the organic products from Full Circle Dairy, California Cloverleaf Farms, Burroughs Family Orchards and CCF Sullivan Ranch including almonds, beef, cheese, free-range pastured chickens, grass-based dairies, eggs, seasonal meat birds, and olives. Over the past 17 years, they have converted all of their farms to organic. The Burroughs use regenerative agricultural practices to improve soil fertility by focusing on nourishing soil biology and increasing biodiversity. In 2016 Rosie and Ward Burroughs co-founded the CSU Chico Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, now known as the Center for Regenerative Agriculture & Resilient Systems.
Please join us in honoring our awardees!
