Steering Committee and Founding Board Members
Who we are: Alliances and Partnerships
We have formed partnerships with nationally recognized and local farming organizations and non-profits such as Native Seeds Search, The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) and The Ecological Farming Association. Our networks extend to working closely with pioneering groups such as Ecology Action, California Farmlink, The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Botanical Preservation Corps, and the Organic Seed Alliance.
Benjamin Fahrer is heading up the management of the farming operation and will oversee two other farmers to guide production. Benjamin has over 18 years of field production experience and has worked at the cutting edge of the organic farming and land stewardship movement working on projects in California, Mexico, Costa Rica, and New Zealand. He is the owner and operator of Top Leaf Farms. He was the farm manger at Oceansong Organics, a CCOF certified farm in Sonoma County as well as the farm manger at The Esalen Institute. As a registered teacher with the Permaculture Research Institute he has taught design course and workshops in farm planning and production worldwide and consults with a number of farms in the Bay Area.
Rupa Marya is an artist and professor of medicine at UCSF who brings a decade of experience in using art as a tool of social investigation and medicine as tool of social healing. Her role will be to direct cultural programming at Cornerstone Farms, which will include regular arts performances, scholastic talks and residencies focusing on the intersection between arts, society, economics, politics and land. She has traveled worldwide forging alliances with autonomous arts spaces in San Francisco; Chiapas, Mexico; Athens, Greece and Ahmedabad, India and the work at Cornerstone Farms will be an ongoing bridging of a global conversation occurring in the arts around autonomy and sovereignty. Rupa will also create a platform to host training for healthcare professionals around reawakening our connection to food as medicine and becoming advocates for the health of the planet, learning to see our own health as inextricably tied to the health of the food, water and soil we live with as well as the vitality of the communities we are a part of.
Our team will also consist of a director of education, an administrative assistant, a farm kitchen manager and a product development team. These roles are currently being filled with recommendations and referrals from our advisory board, members and our partnerships.
We have formed partnerships with nationally recognized and local farming organizations and non-profits such as Native Seeds Search, The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) and The Ecological Farming Association. Our networks extend to working closely with pioneering groups such as Ecology Action, California Farmlink, The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Botanical Preservation Corps, and the Organic Seed Alliance.
Benjamin Fahrer is heading up the management of the farming operation and will oversee two other farmers to guide production. Benjamin has over 18 years of field production experience and has worked at the cutting edge of the organic farming and land stewardship movement working on projects in California, Mexico, Costa Rica, and New Zealand. He is the owner and operator of Top Leaf Farms. He was the farm manger at Oceansong Organics, a CCOF certified farm in Sonoma County as well as the farm manger at The Esalen Institute. As a registered teacher with the Permaculture Research Institute he has taught design course and workshops in farm planning and production worldwide and consults with a number of farms in the Bay Area.
Rupa Marya is an artist and professor of medicine at UCSF who brings a decade of experience in using art as a tool of social investigation and medicine as tool of social healing. Her role will be to direct cultural programming at Cornerstone Farms, which will include regular arts performances, scholastic talks and residencies focusing on the intersection between arts, society, economics, politics and land. She has traveled worldwide forging alliances with autonomous arts spaces in San Francisco; Chiapas, Mexico; Athens, Greece and Ahmedabad, India and the work at Cornerstone Farms will be an ongoing bridging of a global conversation occurring in the arts around autonomy and sovereignty. Rupa will also create a platform to host training for healthcare professionals around reawakening our connection to food as medicine and becoming advocates for the health of the planet, learning to see our own health as inextricably tied to the health of the food, water and soil we live with as well as the vitality of the communities we are a part of.
Our team will also consist of a director of education, an administrative assistant, a farm kitchen manager and a product development team. These roles are currently being filled with recommendations and referrals from our advisory board, members and our partnerships.
Those working for Cornerstone Farms LLC and who also sit on our advisory board include the following:
Steve Peters has been involved with agriculture for more than 50 years; he continues to draw upon for inspiration and new knowledge. With a BA degree in geology from Colgate University, Steve became a vegetable farmer in California, and later in rural upstate New York. In 1986 he received a Masters degree in vegetable crops and soil science at Cornell University. He then worked as a research agronomist for the Rodale Research Center from 1986-1995, in ’95 he moved to New Mexico where he was the seed production manager, and then garden product development manager for Seeds of Change until 2010. He then became the seed production manager of the newly formed Family Farmers Seed Cooperative (FFSC), a seed production organization dedicated to producing and improving open-pollinated, public domain seed for commercial farmers. In March 2012 he became a farm research manager for the Native Seeds/SEARCH farm in southern Arizona. He has currently set-up an independent seed consulting business, Seed Revolution, for promoting and distributing high quality, public domain vegetable and flower seed. Steve will be heading up our seed product development and relationship building with breeders, farmers and clients.
Ken Dickerson: Ken first became involved with the Ecological Farming Association nearly twenty years ago as a volunteer for the EcoFarm Conference. This led to participation on the Conference Planning Committee, staff, and the Board of Directors. Ken worked for ten years as a high school ecological agriculture instructor in Santa Cruz County bringing EcoFarm to school with a garden, greenhouse and culinary program. Ken now serves as the Executive Director, working with the association to continue to realize a healthy, safe and socially just food and farming system. Ken is advising specifically on educational and economic models
Raj Patel: Raj is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. He is also an IATP Food and Community Fellow. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller. He is currently working on a documentary about the global food system with award-winning director Steve James
Mark Ellman: Chef and Owner Mark Ellman & his wife Judy Ellman have lived on Maui for 22 years where we have raised a family of three daughters, Tina, Adriana and Michelle. Also they have raised a family of restaurants on three islands in Hawaii, Maui Tacos, Penne Pasta Café and Mala Ocean Tavern. Mark and Judy met over 30 years ago in a small western town in Los Angeles where Judy was the bartender and Mark was a cook in the kitchen at a Mexican Restaurant in Calabasas. They fell in love and opened their first restaurant in Sherman Oaks California called Cuisine Cuisine, a small Italian Eatery, where they made homemade pasta and great friends. Long Story short they moved to Colorado for new surroundings, too cold. Maui it was to be in 1985 Mark and Judy landed on Maui and knew they were home, Mark will be advising on farm kitchen set up and product development
Michael Abelman: is a farmer, author, and photographer. He is the founder and executive director emeritus of The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non-profit organization based on the one of the oldest and most diverse organic farms in southern California where he farmed from 1981 -2001. He is the author and photographer of From the Good Earth; A celebration of growing food around the world (Abrams, 1993), On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm (Chronicle Books, 1998), and Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it (Chronicle Books 2005). Ableman is the subject of the award winning PBS film Beyond Organic narrated by Meryl Streep. Ableman lives and farms at the historic 120 acre Foxglove Farm where he also directs the Center For Arts, Ecology, and Agriculture. Michael’s vast knowledge in production models and product development will help with our start-up and efficiencies.
Ken Dickerson: Ken first became involved with the Ecological Farming Association nearly twenty years ago as a volunteer for the EcoFarm Conference. This led to participation on the Conference Planning Committee, staff, and the Board of Directors. Ken worked for ten years as a high school ecological agriculture instructor in Santa Cruz County bringing EcoFarm to school with a garden, greenhouse and culinary program. Ken now serves as the Executive Director, working with the association to continue to realize a healthy, safe and socially just food and farming system. Ken is advising specifically on educational and economic models
Raj Patel: Raj is an award-winning writer, activist and academic. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. He is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. He is also an IATP Food and Community Fellow. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US House Financial Services Committee and is an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. In addition to numerous scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the LA Times, NYTimes.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and his latest, The Value of Nothing, is a New York Times best-seller. He is currently working on a documentary about the global food system with award-winning director Steve James
Mark Ellman: Chef and Owner Mark Ellman & his wife Judy Ellman have lived on Maui for 22 years where we have raised a family of three daughters, Tina, Adriana and Michelle. Also they have raised a family of restaurants on three islands in Hawaii, Maui Tacos, Penne Pasta Café and Mala Ocean Tavern. Mark and Judy met over 30 years ago in a small western town in Los Angeles where Judy was the bartender and Mark was a cook in the kitchen at a Mexican Restaurant in Calabasas. They fell in love and opened their first restaurant in Sherman Oaks California called Cuisine Cuisine, a small Italian Eatery, where they made homemade pasta and great friends. Long Story short they moved to Colorado for new surroundings, too cold. Maui it was to be in 1985 Mark and Judy landed on Maui and knew they were home, Mark will be advising on farm kitchen set up and product development
Michael Abelman: is a farmer, author, and photographer. He is the founder and executive director emeritus of The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non-profit organization based on the one of the oldest and most diverse organic farms in southern California where he farmed from 1981 -2001. He is the author and photographer of From the Good Earth; A celebration of growing food around the world (Abrams, 1993), On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm (Chronicle Books, 1998), and Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it (Chronicle Books 2005). Ableman is the subject of the award winning PBS film Beyond Organic narrated by Meryl Streep. Ableman lives and farms at the historic 120 acre Foxglove Farm where he also directs the Center For Arts, Ecology, and Agriculture. Michael’s vast knowledge in production models and product development will help with our start-up and efficiencies.