Duesing, Bill

Bill and Suzanne Duesing

A pioneer in organic agriculture in New England, Bill Duesing has been as an environmental educator, writer, artist, and lecturer over for four decades. After graduating from Yale University (1964), Duesing worked as a Cooperative Extension agent before turning to organic principles in the early 1970s, and from 1979 to 1983, he served as Extension Energy Agent for New Haven County, working with the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension Service.

Working toward a socially just and environmentally sound future, Duesing has long emphasized sustainability and greater local food sufficiency. He has been instrumental in developing organic standards for gardening and land care and served as both founding president and later executive director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association Connecticut and president of the NOFA Interstate Council. He has also been a notable proponent of using simple solar technologies to address problems ranging from health care to pollution, and has been involved in education to put theory into practice. Between 1983 and 1987, Duesing developed an innovative series of hand-on courses in food, energy, and agriculture for schools in New Haven and Bridgeport as part of the University of Connecticut High School in the Community curriculum development project.

During the 1990s, Duesing produced two radio shows, "Living on the Earth" (WSHU) and "The Politics of Food" (WPKN), and he is author of Living on the Earth: Eclectic Essays for a Sustainable and Joyful Future (1993). His collection of essays Living on the Earth was published by Long River Press in 1993, and he has been a regular contributor to the Low Tech Page for plain: The Magazine of Life, Land and Spirit . He and his wife Suzanne continue to operate the Old Solar Farm in Oxford, Conn.