Agraria_Journal_Summer_2022

46 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 RIVER JOHNSON River started at Agraria in March 2021 as a one of six Fellows who participated in the first Regenerative Farmer Fellowship (RFF), a mentorship program that supported the incubation of agriculturally based businesses using regenerative farming practices. She joined Agraria this year as Assistant Coordinator for the 2022 RFF, helping with the design and implementation of the program as well as management of the George Washington Carver Demonstration Farm. She is also Assistant Farm Manager for Agraria, a position she will hold during and after completion of the 2022 RFF training. River‘s love for the outdoors began in her childhood exploring neighborhood creeks, forest edges and, later in her teens, nearby nature reserves. Her mother’s backyard garden offered her the first taste of freshly harvested vegetables. As an adult, River turned her attention next door to a farmer who sold the fresh produce harvested on his land from a market stand in front of his home. Encouraged by what she witnessed, her endeavors at gardening began. She graduated in 2018 from Antioch University Midwest with a Master of Arts in sustainability and food systems. During her graduate program, she studied various farm system designs including permaculture, organic-marketing, and biodynamic farming. She explored the contribution of Indigenous farming practices and gained hands-on training through various volunteer opportunities. Before joining Agraria, River worked for the Marianist Environmental Education Center (MEEC) on its 150-acre nature reserve. She taught land conservation practices, helped restore wetland and forested areas of the reserve, propagate native plant species, and design, develop, and maintain landscapes, including pollinator, rain, prairie and woodland edge gardens. She also worked with volunteers. The experience, she said, “provided the opportunity to explore and understand the individual activities of the soil, plants, insects, animals, water, and humans, and how their relationships integrated into a self-organizing functioning ecosystem.” As Assistant Farm Manager for Agraria, River hopes to use her work experience, education, training, and passion to encourage regenerative practices on the land and in agriculture. DEANNA NEWSOM Deanna joins Agraria as our new research director. Originally trained as a biologist in her native Canada, Deanna spent four years conducting research on endangered seabirds in British Columbia’s coastal temperate rainforests. It was the 1990s, and environmental activists concerned about disappearing rainforests were seeking alternatives to ineffective government regulation or heavy-handed product boycotts. Deanna was interested in the new programs being developed to give consumers the choice to buy sustainable forest products, and began a master’s degree in forest policy. Her field work abruptly changed from early morning bird surveys to interviews with forest industry executives, environmental activists, and landed aristocrats in Germany, Canada and the U.S. Since then, Deanna has spent two decades working for the Rainforest Alliance, a global leader in supporting and certifying farms using sustainable agriculture practices, whose green frog logo can be found on tea, cocoa, coffee and bananas sold at Tom’s Market in Yellow Springs and elsewhere. As a member of the Rainforest Alliance’s evaluation and research unit, Deanna has worked with farmers and scientists around the world to develop and implement the organization’s research program, using the results to inform stakeholders and improve Rainforest Alliance’s sustainable agriculture standard, projects and strategies. A Yellow Springs resident since 2008, Deanna is excited to apply this global experience closer to home. In her new part-time position at Agraria, Deanna aims to build on Agraria’s existing research program to further regenerative agriculture in Ohio and be a part of the global movement seeking nature-based solutions to climate change. When she’s not at work, Deanna can usually be found digging in her garden, running in Glen Helen Nature Preserve, or traveling with her family.