Peter Pierson comes on with KSCGA at the start of an exciting new year.
Made possible through a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant, the organization now has a staff person dedicated to building organizational capacities in networking, outreach, and expanding awareness and reach for specialty crops, and specialty crop growers, in Kansas.
Peter brings a diverse background that includes freelance writing, nonprofit communications and development, education, land use planning and advocacy, not to mention emergency medicine/fire/rescue in some of the most extreme places in North America. Recently he’s balanced his freelance writing and food systems grant work while working at KSCGA member Gieringer’s Family Orchard and Farm. Peter was elected in 2020 to the Oxford Township (KS) Trustee seat. He holds a BA from the University of Montana and an MA from Prescott College.
Spending his early years in Sioux City, Iowa, where his family roots and connections run in agriculture, Peter has since lived in Northern Minnesota; Saskatchewan; Nome and Fairbanks, Alaska; and Prescott, Arizona. He and his partner, Suzanne, now share home and a rather productive acre with Suzanne’s Master Gardener mother in Stilwell, KS.
Peter’s radio essay work has been recognized with a Minnesota Regional Arts/McKnight Fellowship and has been aired on KAXE/KBXE-Northern Community Radio and CBC Radio One in Canada. His work has also been featured in Natural History Institute’s Real Ground, Woods Reader, Zen Peacemakers International’s Journal, Voices for the Land (Minnesota Historical Society Press), and others. Among the bits of trivia Peter can claim are having hiked the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim five times and run an ambulance call in -53F temperatures.