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Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) for Food Production and Environmental Stewardship

Events

The University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) 2016 Short Course will focus on Controlled Environment Agriculture for food production within traditional rural and nontraditional urban farms, with special concerns for water, energy use and environmental stewardship.

The 15th annual Greenhouse Crop Production & Engineering Design Short Course will be held from March 20 – 25, 2016 at the beautiful Westward Look Resort in Tucson, AZ. New to the 2016 course are specific half-day sessions on “Indoor Growing” and “Lighting for Growing Crops in CEA.” In addition to the new sessions, the short course will feature a comprehensive program that will help you successfully grow crops within controlled environments and ensure those crops thrive and are marketable. Our speakers and experts have over 250 years of combined experience in Controlled Environment Agriculture and are available to answer your questions both during and after the course. The on-site course also includes an exhibitor room where attendees can talk with industry experts about their projects and multiple industry presentations where attendees can meet successful growers and bounce ideas off of them. As one attendee from the 2015 course stated, “I’m taking pages of notes back to the farm to put in production. The combination of UA experts and real world farming experience is exactly what we ‘wannabe farmers’ need.”

Chris Higgins, Urban Ag News founder, will be speaking at the event.

Can’t make it to Tucson for the on-site course? The 2016 CEAC Short Course will also feature a Webcast option, where attendees can watch the lectures live from their computer at home. Webcast attendees will have live access to 3 full days of course lectures and materials and can even chime in with real-time questions for the speaker to answer. There is also an option to receive a DVD of the lectures if you cannot tune in to watch any of the live lectures. All attendees will now also have the option to add a DVD of the lectures to their registration for a small fee, but lectures will be available for all paid attendees in an internet database for 90 days after the conclusion of the course. New to the 2016 course is the option to register for the webcast of an individual halfday session. This allows attendees to save money and only get the information they want! More information about the CEAC Short Course, including registration and the tentative course program with each of the 6 halfday sessions listed, can be found on our website at: http://ceac.arizona.edu/greenhouse-crop-productionengineering-design-short-course.

After 3-days of lectures from March 21–23, Thursday March, 24 th will consist of hands-on workshops at the CEAC research and educational facilities on the campus of the University of Arizona, with the goal to connect theory and information with practical hands-on experience for each participant. The 2016 course will feature technical workshops on Sensors and Controls as well as fertigation. Other workshops will help teach students the fundamentals of growing crops such as tomatoes, lettuce, and strawberries hydroponically in a controlled environment. On Friday March 27 th, there will be an optional tour to a commercial greenhouse, which will attempt to tie everything students have learned together from Monday through Thursday.

For more Short Course details and information such as the course schedule and registration form, visit our website at http://ceac.arizona.edu/greenhouse-crop-production-engineering-design-short-course or contact Aaron Tevik by phone at 520-626-9566 or atevik@cals.arizona.edu

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