The 2010 ASHS Annual Conference

Objective(s):
The objective of this workshop is to invite California growers to participate in a panel discussion. A series of prepared questions will be given to the growers prior to the workshop, such as how do you define and measure sustainability? What regulatory constraints are your facing? What challenges are your facing with regards to water and nutrient management? What types of research do you think would be most beneficial to your business? What are the biggest issues that you face? Do you have comments on what universities should or should not be teaching the students you hire? There also will be an open question and answer session between the audience and the grower panel.

Growers in California have been invited to participate in a discussion forum about sustainabilty and production issues.  The workshop will begin with a short introduction of each grower on the panel followed by an open discussion.  The growers have been asked to think about the following issues: how do they define sustainabilty and how do they measure it, what regulatory constraints are they facing with regards to water and other issues, what challenges are they facing with regards to water and nutrient management, what changes have they made in their production system to protect and conserve water, what types of research do they think would be most beneficial for their business, what are the biggest challenges they face, do they have any comments on what unviersity faculty should or should not be teaching the graduates that they hire?  We hope that this will be a open discussion with additional questions from the audience.