Hannah Bernhardt – Committee Chair
Hannah (she/her) is the owner/operator of Medicine Creek Farm in NE Minnesota where she raises grass fed beef and lamb and pastured pork for direct market online. She also educates about regenerative agriculture through agritourism on the farm and public speaking. She grew up on a corn and soybean farm in southern Minnesota and returned to agriculture after a career in politics and government. Hannah was an inaugural member of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Emerging Farmers Working Group, is the Pine County Farmers Union President, and serves on the National Young Farmers Coalition Policy Committee, the National Farmers Union Climate Change Policy Advisory Panel, and the Minnesota Farm Service Agency State Committee.
Sachi (she/they) is a south Minneapolis resident and both a former and aspiring farmer in the Midwest Farmers of Color Collective. She completed LSP’s Farm Beginnings 2023-24 program, sits on the Climate Policy Steering Committee, and has independently worked with Robin Moore on land access issues. She is the founder and director of Waxwing Consulting LLC, which provides climate and equity support to mission-aligned organizations. She formerly served as the Associate Director for Climate with The Nature Conservancy’s Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota chapter, where she led the climate mitigation and climate policy programs and authored several papers on the mitigation potential of natural climate solutions. Sachi previously worked with RMI and the U.S. Peace Corps. She holds an M.S. from the University of Michigan’s School for Natural Resources and Environment and a B.A. in Physics from Grinnell College.
Wendy Johnson – Committee Member
Wendy (she/her) is owner and operator of Jóia Food & Fiber Farm, a diverse perennial-based farm in northern Iowa growing perennial grains, grazing grassfed sheep and cows and humanely raising poultry and pigs. She started Counting Sheep Sleeping Company to add value to the fiber her 100 percent grass-fed sheep produce. Wendy also co-manages her family’s conventional corn and soybean farm. She often speaks and writes about the need for diverse enterprises and people on the land, the intersections of climate change and agriculture, food system inequality, ag policy, and the observations on the lands she cares for. Wendy is currently the Climate Land Leaders federal co-policy lead and spokesperson, is the USDA Farm Service Agency Iowa State Committee Chair, and sits on the boards of the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation, Perennial Promise Growers Cooperative, and the Floyd County Board of Adjustments.
Sylvia (she/her) is a recently retired grass-fed beef producer and current owner/operator of Herbal Safaris which provides guided herbal tours and remedy-making classes at her farm Bull Brook Keep in western WI. She entered farming after a career in journalism, public relations, and crisis communications management for both public and private organizations and foundations. She produces and co-hosts Deep Roots Radio, a weekly radio program featuring conversations with farmers, scientists, chefs, authors, activists, teachers, and policy gurus. She has served on the boards of the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Services (now Marbleseed), the Farm Table Foundation, and the Wedge Community Co-op, and is current board president of the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.
Stephen Carpenter is Deputy Director and Senior Staff Attorney at Farmers’ Legal Action Group, Inc. (FLAG). FLAG is a nonprofit law firm that works on behalf of family farmers.
Stephen is a graduate of Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and of Stanford Law School. In law school, Stephen was active in the East Palo Alto Community Law Project, was a Stanford Law Review Executive Editor, and received a Skadden Foundation Fellowship that brought him to FLAG in 1993.
At FLAG, Stephen’s work has centered on discrimination in agricultural lending, debtor-creditor issues for farmers, Covid-19 and disaster assistance, legal issues for beginning farmers, federal farm and farm loan programs, problems of farmers contracting for carbon capture and for livestock production, urban farming land access, sustainable agriculture, and farmer direct marketing. Ifan addressing these issues Stephen has worked closely with dozens of grass roots farm organizations. He also served as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Monitor in the Pigford case and as the court-appointed Ombudsman for the In re Black Farmers Discrimination case.
Stephen has conducted frequent FLAG trainings and webinars for farmers, advocates, and attorneys and has spoken to farmers and their advocates in more than forty states. He has authored and edited a number of FLAG publications. Law review writing has discussed rebellious lawyering on behalf of farmers, discrimination by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), discrimination litigation against USDA, the future of agricultural law, lawyering for family farmers in poverty, and sustainable agriculture. Other academic writing discusses federal farm policy, populist farm protest, and equality in agriculture.
Stephen has served on several academic advisory committees and on the board of several community organizations. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and has been a guest speaker at a number of law schools. In 2020, Stephen received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Agricultural Law Association.
