New U.S.-German Forum Future Agriculture 2024 Project Cohort
The Aspen Institute Germany is pleased announce the members of the 2024 cohort: Courtney Banach (Daona Farm); Daniel Barnes (Barnes Black & Whiteface Ranch); Jan Brokering (Self-employed dairy farmer); Heather Donahue (Balfour Farm); Agnes Greggersen (Ferienhof Greggersen); Bethany Hodge (Echo Farm, Inc); Patrick Honcoop (AgTech-Pro LLC); Caroline Smit (Lely); Julie Ann Smith (Maine Farm Bureau); Annika Stange (Schleswig-Holstein State Office for Agriculture); Shepherd Stearns (Willard J. Stearns and Sons Inc. DBA Mountain Dairy, University of Tennessee); Annika Johanna Thies (Thünen Institute of Market Analysis); Jens Wester (Wester GbR, Laser Zentrum Hannover); Stephan Westrup (Westrup-Koch Milch GbR); Kirsten Wosnitza (Self-emplyed dairy farmer); Daniel Wunderlich (New Jersey Department of Agriculture)
The U.S.-German Forum Future Agriculture’s second cohort will focus on northern Germany (Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) and the U.S. Northeast (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont). In addition to the fundamental social, economic, and political importance of agriculture for rural regions, the second cohort will focus in particular on the core issue of the digital transformation of dairy and beef farming. The project will involve eleven online workshops and a five-day in-person meeting of 16 U.S. and German farmers and other agricultural stakeholders in Kiel, Germany, from May 13 to May 17.
The development and publication of policy recommendations is a central part of the U.S.-German Forum Future Agriculture project. The participants of each exchange round jointly develop recommendations for the national (German/EU & U.S.) and transatlantic levels based on their personal experiences, expertise, and opinions as well as the lessons-learned and ideas garnered from the joint discussions and site-visits during the program itself. Check out the full set of policy recommendations and action points on climate and agriculture from the 2023 cohort.
