Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Kirschenmann Lecture: Water and the Challenges Facing U.S. and World Agriculture in the 21st Century

Date: Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Start: 7:00 pm

Location: University of Minnesota St. Paul campus

Contact: Patrick Sweeney, communications director, Freshwater Society, psweeney@freshwater.org, (763) 219-1261

Leopold Center Distinguished Fellow Fred Kirschenmann will present this lecture, sponsored by the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences and the Freshwater Society. His presentation will deal with the serious changes that must be made in the way America and the world grow food due to a number of factors, from dwindling groundwater reserves, changing climate and population growth.

Panelists for a discussion following the lecture include Georgy Boody, executive director of the Land Stewardship Project; Mary Jo Forbord, who owns Prairie Horizons Farm near Starbuck, Minnesota with her husband Luverne; David Mulla, a founding director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment and researcher on nonpoint source pollution and precision farming methods.

This is the sixth in the Moos Family Lecture series on water and the environment. The series is named after Malcolm Moos, UM president from 1967 to 1974. Others in the series include:

  • Robert Glennon, a University of Arizona law professor who has written two books on water sustainability;
  • Hedrick Smith, producer of the award-winning PBS documentary “Poisoned Waters;”
  • Louis J. Guillette Jr., a Medical University of South Carolina reproductive biologist;
  • Craig A. Cox, a senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group; and
  • Gretchen C. Daily, a Stanford University ecologist who is a pioneer in an emerging effort to protect the environment by putting a price on all the services that ecosystems provide for humans.

Related information

News release about the event (Freshwater Society website)

Watch Kirschenmann's lecture live (archive of lecture after the event also available)