When I explained Tilth to my friends and family, I was forced to truly consider what Tilth meant to me and how it compared with the true definition. Tilth in my own definition meant the upkeep and sustainable maintenance of soil. In comparison to the actual definition, Tilth is the condition of tilled soil in respect to the suitab…
I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity by the CSANR to travel to Yakima and attend the annual Tilth Conference 2019 with some fellow students from Washington State University. As…
This weekend at the Tilth Conference 2019 in Yakima, WA I realized something about change. There are so many issues and projects that need support: advocating for fair wages and treatment for farm workers, protecting and providing for loca…
Wow! What a lot of information, perspectives, experiences, and interesting conversations packed into one weekend. From the Swan Dance performances by the Yakama Nation to the keynote speakers Javier Zamora and Valerie Segrest, to eating those tasty mini kiwi…
Before attending the Tilth Alliance Conference I was unsure what “tilth” even meant. I am currently a senior studying organic and sustainable agriculture at Washington State University. I grew up on my family’s dairy farm in Southern Idaho where the majority of the farms are commodity crops and there is not much farm-consumer interactions. I knew that there would be great food and people who shared a…
“Honeybees are not as great as you might think.” This was said by a representative of the Xerces Society, Eric Lee-Mader. The Xerces Society, according to Wikipedia, is a non-profit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates. Eri…
First, I would like to thank CSANR for generously funding my, and my classmates’, attendance at TILTH Conference 2018. Especially for undergraduates like myself, conferences such as TILTH are a welcome departure from the oftentimes synthetic academic track, onto a more organic (no pun intended) professional…
My name is Matthew Tumlinson, and I’m a junior undergraduate transfer student in my first semester at WSU. I’m working on my B.S. in Field Crop Management with a minor in Crop Science and working toward a certification in Organic and Sustainable Agriculture. I grew up mostly in Vancouver, Washington. I also lived in a pear growing region of northern California and a…
As an aspiring farmer and a student of the social sciences, attending the Tilth conference provided a unique opportunity to engage with topics ranging from applications of sustainable agriculture to issues of gender and race in the organic farming world. Before coming to Washington State University for graduate school to study the sociology of food and agriculture, I was living and farming in Maine…
Entering the Tilth Alliance conference, I was eager to put a finger on the pulse of sustainable agriculture in Washington State. I attended a wide variety of workshops pertinent to me as a small-scale farmer and an academic interested in the structural transformation of our agricultural systems. The collage of researchers, extension agents, and producers illuminated a portrait of the sustainable agriculture movement existing around the edges of population centers, meeting high-end demand, and struggling to impact both the general land management and consumption patterns. As a PhD student in Civil Engineering focusing on water resources and as a small farmer, I caught myself often wondering…
