Meet our amazing board and staff.
We are a group of farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and educators in the Pacific Northwest who are deeply motivated to find solutions to growing food in a hotter, drier climate. We have multiple decades of experience in sustainable agriculture research and small-scale farming. We believe farmers are the ultimate knowledge-keepers and innovators that keep our food system strong and resilient.
DFI Staff
Amy Garrett
DFI Co-Director, Director of Operations
Amy has more than 25 years of experience in the horticulture industry ranging from landscape design, installation and maintenance to organic farming, research, and education. Drought mitigation tools and strategies for growing with little or no irrigation have become a focus in her work in recent years. She worked with OSU Extension Small Farms Program in the Southern Willamette Valley 2011-2022, where she initiated the OSU Dry Farming Project in 2014, the Dry Farming Collaborative in 2016, and founded the Dry Farming Institute in 2019. As Director of Operations, she is excited to help build capacity for DFI as we transition from a working board and maintain a work culture that emphasizes transparency, communication, innovation, and collaboration.
Ashley Rood
DFI Co-Director, Director of Development
Ashley Rood has worked at the intersection of food, farming, and conservation issues across the west for two decades. Her work in the nonprofit sector has focused on creating cross -sector collaborations that center the needs of producers to build a more climate resilient agricultural system. Her work in Oregon has included a focus on farmland preservation through succession planning and land access as well as climate resilience on farms. As Co-Director of The Dry Farming Institute she’s excited to focus on advancing water resilience on farms and thoughtful growth of the organization as we transition from a working board. She looks forward to building a culture that emphasizes transparency, communication, innovation, and inclusion.
DFI Board of Directors
Lucas Nebert
President
Lucas Nebert, PhD, is a sustainable agriculture researcher who specializes in soil health (M.S. Wageningen University, Netherlands) and plant and soil microbial ecology (Ph.D. University of Oregon Environmental Studies), and most recently dry farming. He has worked with the Dry Farming Collaborative since 2017, as a hobby farmer, field technician, data analyst and the DFI Resilient Seed Stewardship Program coordinator. He is passionate about dry farming with staple crops, such as corn, beans and squash, and his latest work focuses on breeding culinary field corn varieties to thrive in the Pacific Northwest under dry farmed conditions.
Eliza Mason
Secretary
Eliza farms in Monroe, Oregon at Lilliputopia, which she founded in 2017 and is named after the little people in Gulliver’s Travels. Lilliputopia was created to serve as a model for sustainability and community, and specializes in dry-farmed fruits and vegetables. Eliza holds a BS in molecular biology, a doctorate in microbiology and works as a contract editor of scientific manuscripts. She currently serves as a director on the board of the Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District. She hunts for wild mushrooms in her free time.
Melissa Parks
Board Member
Melissa Parks is an applied anthropologist researching climate adaptation and food systems in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. She completed her PhD at Oregon State University focusing on small farmers’ perceptions of and responses to climate change in Oregon. Since graduating, she has worked for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center where she studied the ways Alaskan fishing communities are being impacted by climate change and management policies. As a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Washington, she is currently researching opportunities for expanding food sovereignty as a climate adaptation strategy in these communities.
John Miedema
Board Member
Cathy McQueeney
Board Member
Cathy McQueeney is an Education and Outreach Specialist with the Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District in Oregon. She has been involved with organizing Small Farms School, is on the board for Oregon Conservation Education and Assistance Network, and has been on the steering committee for the Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Network (OFSSGN). She (has been an educator in academia for 20 years and) has a small farm in Colton, OR. where she has been experimenting with dry farming for four years.
Kristin Trippe
Treasurer
Eliza and Melissa (not pictured here)
Thank you to our former board members: Matt Delaney and Ron Oberg!