Steve Diver

Steve Diver has worked in alternative farming systems as a grower and researcher for over 30 years. He is the author of “Biodynamic Farming & Compost Preparation”, “Alternative Soil Testing Laboratories”, Nature Farming & Effective Microorganisms”, “Controlled Microbial Composting and Humus Management”, and other publications. He conducted the first biodynamic consultancies for USAID, in Russia and India, and served on the NOSB Compost Tea Task Force. Steve has worked as an Extension Horticulturist, soils consultant, and farm manager since 1984 – including 18 years as an agriculture specialist with ATTRA, the flagship sustainable agriculture program managed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). He is currently the Farm Superintendent at University of Kentucky’s Horticulture Research Farm.

Cathryn Couch

Cathryn Couch is the founder and CEO for Ceres Community Project, an innovative non-profit organization working to foster health by connecting people to one another and to a healthier food system. Ceres provides 150,000 organic, medically tailored meals annually to low-income people struggling because of a health challenge. Youth volunteers grow food and prepare the meals as part of a youth development and culinary education program.  Ceres has trained a dozen communities across the United States and in Denmark to replicate their model. Couch chairs the California Food is Medicine Coalition, a six agency collaboration conducting the first statewide medically tailored meal pilot for Medicaid members. Ceres is also one of four agencies currently conducting large-scale randomized control trials for medically tailored meals at Kaiser Permanente.

Cathryn is an advisor to the Aspen Institute’s Food & Society initiative; contributed to the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2020 Reset the Table report; helps lead Hearts of Sonoma County – a collaborative working to reduce heart attacks and strokes; and participates in Marin Food Policy Council, California Food & Farming Network, and the Food Lab at Google. Cathryn is a CNN Hero and has been a finalist for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Community Health Leaders Award, finalist for the James Irvine Leadership Award, and a Red Cross Adult Humanitarian Hero.

Greg Watson

Greg is Director of Policy and Systems Design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His work currently focuses on community food systems and an initiative to improve global systems literacy informed by a reimagining of Bucky Fuller’s World Game Workshop. Greg has spent over 40 years learning to understand systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and to apply that understanding to achieve a just and sustainable world. He has served on the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and as a juror for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

In 1978 he organized a network of urban farmers’ markets in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area. He served as Commissioner of Agriculture in Massachusetts from 1990 to 1993 and again from 2012 to 2014 when he launched a statewide urban agriculture grants program.

Greg gained hands-on experience in organic farming, aquaculture, wind-energy technology, and passive solar design at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, first as Education Director and later as Executive Director. There he led the effort to create the Cape & Islands Self Reliance energy cooperative.  He served four years as Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, multicultural grassroots organizing and planning organization where he initiated one of the nation’s first urban agriculture projects (anchored by a 10,000 square foot commercial greenhouse).

Watson was the first Executive Director of the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust (now the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center). In 2005 he coordinated the drafting of “A Framework for Offshore Wind Energy Development in the United States” and the following year founded the U.S. Offshore Wind Collaborative. Watson was part of the team that landed the National Wind Technology Testing Center in Massachusetts.  He served on President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Department of Energy transition team in 2008.

In 2015 he founded the Cuba-U.S. Agroecology Network (CUSAN) following a trip to Cuba to learn about its agroecology system. CUSAN links small farmers and sustainable farm organizations in both countries to share information and provide mutual support.