LSI Global Greens: The Impacts and Challenges of Supporting New American Gardeners and Farmers
Nov 3, 2021 - 3:20 PM
to Nov 3, 2021 - 5:10 PM
Location
Curtiss 0013
The Graduate Program and Sustainable Agriculture invites you to join us for:
"LSI Global Greens: The Impacts and Challenges of Supporting New American Gardeners and Farmers"
with
Lynette Thornton and Zachary Couture
Lutheran Services in Iowa has been reconnecting New Americans to gardens and farms for the last ten years. Through those years they’ve had many successes as well as encountered many challenges. In this presentation, Zachary Couture, Land and Production Supervisor, and Lynette Thornton, Community Garden Specialist, will share what makes Global Greens’ pathway successful as well as discuss some best practices and pitfalls in the work to overcome systemic barriers that aspiring farmers face when accessing land, resources, markets, and education.
Lynette Thornton aka “The Plant Lady” has been working in gardening and local foods professionally since 1993. She is currently the Community Garden Specialist at Lutheran Services in Iowa’s Global Greens program where she annually connects 150 families to community gardens around the Des Moines metro.
Zachary Couture is a passionate farmer, teacher, and advocate whose experiences obligate him to positively transform our human communities and ecosystem. He is currently Land and Production Supervisor at Lutheran Services in Iowa, where for the last 10 years he has co-led and developed the Global Greens Program into a successful model to incubate aspiring New American vegetable farmers through land access, production education, strategic planning decisions, and market development. He currently lives in Des Moines, IA with his wife, 3 children, and a cacophony of wildlife.
