2024 Speakers Coming Soon!
2023 Speakers below
Steve Campbell
How Do the Soil, Plan & Animal’s Health Affect Human Health?
Steve has been around cattle in one capacity or another since the age of ten. His Epiphany moment came in 1999 while recovering from a ranching injury.
The resulting refocusing of his energies into learning about soil, plant, animal and human health since that time have led him to: some very old books; like minded thinkers and mentors; on farm experiments with soil fertility; and to numerous speakers, farm visits and conferences over the past twenty-three years.
From the Weston A. Price philosophy for human health to Carey Reams, Maynard Murray, Jerry Brunetti, Dr. Richard Olree, Gearld Fry, Will Winter and the teachings of numerous authors of yesteryear; Steve has extrapolated those learned principles of nature onto his own ranch-land and animals and to help others make similar improvements on their ranches and with their families health.
Annie Overlin
Lessons Learned in An Arid Ecosystem
My family and I farm and ranch in southeast Colorado and am also a rangeland and riparian ecologist. I’ve studied, played, and worked in the cold desert ecosystems of the western United States and the Great Plains since 1992. Our ecosystem is exemplified by extremes with many miles between gas stations. Like the landscape, the people are hardy, thoughtful, and have a deep history of caring for the land. I am honored to work here and am humbled by the magnitude, complexity, and challenges faced by those who live here. I aspire to understand the ecology, business management, and restoration pathways of our system well enough to assist managers with economically and scientifically sound tools for adaptive management. I focus my time on:
- My kids, our cattle and sheep, horses, hay fields and like the 5 generations of women before me- I’m a number cruncher and wrangler.
- Range Specialist for Colorado State Extension
- Part owner of a rangeland restoration business (17 years) focused in the arid west. My expertise is in rangeland improvements, permitting, and anything related to grazing, plants, soils, and groundwater. Our main clients are ranchers, mining companies, and consulting firms who specialize in restoration.
Roger McEowen
Key Concepts and Opportunities for a Successful Intergenerational Transfer of the Farming/Ranching Business
Roger A. McEowen is the Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, a position he has held since 2016. From 1991-1993, McEowen was in the full-time practice of law with Kelley, Scritsmier and Byrne in North Platte, Nebraska. From 1993-2004, he was an associate professor of agricultural law and extension specialist in agricultural law and policy at Kansas State. From 2004 through 2015, he was the Leonard Dolezal Professor in Agricultural Law at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he was also the Director of the ISU Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation (CALT), which he founded.
McEowen also teaches an undergraduate course in agricultural law at Kansas State University, and has been a visiting professor of law at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, Arkansas, teaching in both the J.D. and L.L.M. programs. He has also previously taught at Washburn Law School and the Drake University School of Law Summer Institute in Agricultural Law.
Keith Berns
Rebuilding Our Soils- A Task of Biblical Proportion
Keith Berns combines over 20 years of no-till farming with 10 years of teaching Agriculture and Computers. In addition to no-tilling 2,000 acres of irrigated and dryland corn, soybeans, rye, triticale, peas, sunflowers, and buckwheat in South Central Nebraska, he also co-owns and operates Green Cover Seed, one of the major cover crop seed providers and educators in the United States. Through Green Cover Seed, Keith has experimented with over 100 different cover crop types and hundreds of mixes planted into various situations and has learned a great deal about cover crop growth, nitrogen fixation, moisture usage, and grazing utilization of cover crops. Keith was honored by the White House as a 2016 Champion of Change for Sustainable and Climate-Smart Agriculture. Keith also developed the SmartMix CalculatorTM one of the most widely used cover crop selection tools on the internet Keith has a Masters Degree in Agricultural Education from the University of Nebraska and teaches on cover crops and soil health more than 30 times per year to various groups and audiences. Keith also was appointed by Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts to be part of the Nebraska Healthy Soils Task Force and had the privilege of serving as the chairman.
Wes McCary
The Equity of Attitude
Born and raised a country kid on the South Platte river of Weld County Colorado, Wes grew up in a typical blue-collar family surrounded by industrial agriculture and cattle operations. His early years were influenced by his family raising animals and swathing hay, and later working for flood irrigated corn farmers, a dairy operation and chicken farm. Living next to the Platte River, he spent most of his spare time exploring and hunting, where he witnessed the direct impacts of agricultural practices on the river system over several decades. Coupled with the “grow your own food” practices of his parents and grandparents, Wes carried these experiences and concern for clean water and safe food forward with him through his 34-year career. He comes from three generations of Colorado agriculture, and four generations in Kansas.
Because of his unique background and experiences, Wes has been coined a cultural visionary for his bold stances on addressing many of the inconvenient truths associated with modern agricultural practices and the influencing rural traditions driving them. This life-long blend of high-tech career, earthy lifestyle and philosophical vantage points has earned him the name “Space Cowboy” by some of his family and colleagues. He simply sees himself as a product of his time and hopes to motivate others to build healthy lifestyles and communities based on genuine truth, real history, and hard facts.