The Alaska Farmland Trust Board of Directors can comprise of 10 members.   Individual Board members are elected from and by the current Alaska Farmland Trust Board of Director’s.  The Alaska Farmland Trust currently has one full-time staff member and many helping hands.

Meet the Board

Ben Vanderweele, President
Ben is a long-time Alaskan vegetable farmer in Palmer, Alaska.  He was on the founding board of directors and has a passion for agricultural land preservation.

 Troy Shelden, Treasurer
Troy grew up on a farm in the Dakotas and currenlty is a farmland owner.  He has lived in Alaska for the past 11 years and see's the importance of maintaining farmland in production.  He's seen firsthand how development encroaches and overwhelms farmland.

Todd Pettit
Todd is owner of Pitchfork Ranch in Palmer, Alaska.  Todd is a third generation farmer and rancher in Alaska.  His family has been farming in the state since the 1940s.  Todd is passionate about agriculture and land preservation because once the ground is developed it is lost to farming forever.  To insure that productive lands stay in agriculture, farmland conservation is the only viable resource to keep this land going in to perpetuity.

Kathrine Vanover
Kathrine is a child of Alaska.  Born here in 1951, Kathrine is proud to live here and loves living in Palmer, Alaska near to the farms and the farmers.  Kathrine feels that we can not lose our farms because they are necessary to our health as a people, community and as a nation.

Michelle Church, Secretary
Michelle has lived in alaska for the past 38 years.  Michelle, along with her husband own a small hay and market farm.  In describing her relationship to Agriculture she describes that she like to eat and know where her food comes from.  To Michelle, farmland is important from an economic and environmental sense and it is her personal mission to educate the public on this importance. 

Arthur Keyes, Vice President

Glen Price
Glen Price has lived in Alaska for the past thirty two years as an attorney.  He has a long-term interest in farmland and land conservation and hopes as a board member to buy or obtain conservation easements before land is subdivided. 

Interested in becoming a Board of Director for the Alaska Farmland Trust?  Click Here to find out more information.

Advisory Committee

  Meet the Staff

Jack Alcorn

Executive Director

I am grateful for this opportunity to safeguard some of Alaska’s most valuable assets, our farmlands. Growing up in a subdivision adjacent to miles of zucchini and sugar cane fields that have since been completely lost to development, I offer first hand testimony to the destructive urbanization that accompanies farmland loss.

Having spent my management career assisting a wide range of Alaskan social and youth development concerns, I am pleased to offer my professional strengths to supporting activities that ensure the viability ofour local food systems and preserve our state’sfrontier lifestyle potential for our children.  Outside of the office I enjoy the many recreational and subsistence activities afforded by this great land.