We at NOFA/Mass are thrilled to announce that our 2020 Winter Conference Keynote Presenter will be the award-winning journalist Carey Gillam!
Gillam is a former senior correspondent for Reuter’s international news service and veteran journalist with over 25 years of experience covering American corporations and agribusiness. She specializes in biotech, pesticide development, and the environmental impacts of food production in the United States. Her articles appear regularly in The Guardian, the Huffington Post, Environmental Health News and the US Right to Know.
Most recently Gillam has become renowned for her book “Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science,” which won the 2018 Independent Book Publishers Award Gold Medal award and the First Place Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists.
In a review of the book published earlier this year, NOFA/Mass Executive Director Julie Rawson wrote,
“I think the power of this book lies in the fact that Carey Gillam came to the topic of glyphosate with fresh eyes and a researcher’s rigor that left me feeling very confident about the veracity of the words that she put on paper…
[This] book really engaged me so much that I pulled a couple of all-nighters to finish it. Gillam goes into great detail chronicling efforts in Hawaii by residents to limit the use of pesticides near schools and by local communities in Argentina to stop aerial spraying in the region. This is the real heart-breaking part of the book — where many examples of death and child deformity and still-birth come to the fore. Gillam does an excellent job of bringing us into the homes of the victims where we see the powerlessness of real people to keep from being poisoned in the name of corporate greed, despite many well-organized campaigns to stop the chemical’s use.”
We are looking forward to hearing from Gillam about what inspired her to spend years of her life researching what has become the most widely-used and arguably most controversial pesticide since DDT, investigating the coverup of independent research and the corporate-government partnerships that have allowed so much of this chemical into our food, water, air and our bodies.
In addition to hearing from Carey Gillam, the 2020 Winter Conference will feature workshops on regional climate change adaptation, soil health, food systems policy and activism, regenerative livestock raising, and lots of self-sufficiency skills like growing a kitchen garden, herbal home medicine, and soap-making.
If you have knowledge or skills to share and would like to propose a workshop for our 2020 Conference, please fill out our Winter Conference Proposal Form. If you would like to discuss your proposal in advance, contact the Winter Conference Workshops Coordinator at [email protected].
