Entries by Emilie Ritter

From the Air Force to Growing Clothes

Alvina Maynard likes to say she didn’t seek out alpaca ranching, rather it found her. Maynard is a military veteran in Richmond, Kentucky. It was during a hotel stay while she was still with the Air Force that she saw a commercial about alpacas being farmed as livestock. And the rest is history.   Today, Maynard […]

Armed to Farm, NCAT’s Free Farmer-Veteran Training is Headed to North Carolina

The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is partnering with Appalachian State University’s Frontline to Farm program to bring the free Armed to Farm training to North Carolina for the first time. Armed to Farm will take place July 25-29, 2022, at the Appalachian State University campus in Boone. Farmer-veterans will attend classroom sessions and travel […]

Resilient Butte: Beijing to Butte, Montana 

When I lived in Beijing, people would always ask me how the pollution was. I told them two things: the Communist Party planted trees to stop sandstorms from entering the capital. Second, they also moved factories away from the city, yet didn’t shut them down. Despite all this, the Chinese capital still experiences terrible air […]

NCAT Hires Key Leadership Team

The National Center for Appropriate Technology has added key executive staff to its leadership team, building on NCAT’s 46-year reputation as a trusted, practical connector for sustainable agriculture and energy solutions. “NCAT has a long history of helping people build resilient communities through local and sustainable solutions that reduce poverty, strengthen self-reliance, and protect natural […]

ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture’s Voices from the Field Podcast Posts 250th Episode

For five years, ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture’s Voices from the Field podcast has connected experts from around the world with the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s own specialists for cutting-edge conversations about sustainable agriculture, community resilience, and local food systems. Today, the series marks a milestone, posting its 250th podcast episode: Practical Steps for Reducing Synthetic […]

New Toolkit: How to Reduce Synthetic Fertilizer Use

For more than 35 years, the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture program has been helping farmers and ranchers grow nutritious food and operate successful businesses without synthetic fertilizer. Now, NCAT has released a new toolkit with trusted and practical resources for farmers who want to transition away from the use of synthetic […]

NCAT’s Free Farmer-Veteran Training is Headed to Texas

The National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is bringing its free Armed to Farm training back to the Hill Country, after hosting a 2015 training in Castroville, Texas. Armed to Farm will take place May 16-20, 2022, in Fredericksburg. Farmer-veterans will attend classroom sessions and travel to local farms for hands-on learning experiences. The deadline to […]

NCAT’s AgriSolar Clearinghouse Launches National ‘Follow the Sun’ Tour

The AgriSolar Clearinghouse, developed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is launching a series of hands-on field trips to see firsthand the benefits of co-locating sustainable agriculture and solar energy. The Follow the Sun Tour’s first stop is April 5 at Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. “AgriSolar allows us to harvest the sun […]

Watch: NCAT Releases Soil Health 101 Series

In a new video series: Soil Health 101: Principles for Livestock Production, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist Nina Prater makes the case for modeling soil health strategies after nature’s blueprint that produced that situation in the first place. We all know the basic story. Plants photosynthesize sunlight and make sugars. They use the sugars to build […]