Rebekah Slabach

The Alliance to Advance Climate-Smart Agriculture is a three-year, $80-million pilot supported by the United States Department of Agriculture's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program.  Led by the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Alliance will distribute more than $57 million of the largest grant in the university’s history to producers to enact climate-friendly practices and serve as a pilot program for a national model.

As Associate Director, Rebekah generates relationships and opportunities to deliver private market benefits to producers, working with Sustainable Food Lab to develop and launch a prototype climate-smart certificate for producers, and coordinating the Advisory Council and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee activities. She also helps to recruit new producers and producer groups into the pilot, with a focus on helping to reach underserved producers and representative groups.

Rebekah brings 7 years of experience as the VCE-ANR Extension Agent in Halifax County, Virginia, advising producer organizations, supporting value-added marketing efforts, and collaborating on various grants and cost-share programs. In her tenure with VCE, she received various individual and team awards – most recently a 2023 State Poster Winner with an On-Farm Cover Crop Research Demonstration and Soil Health Field Day. She was a member of the VCE Agricultural Management and Economics Program Team and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Fellow. Slabach also served as the agricultural issues committee chair for the Virginia Association of Agricultural Extension Agents. Raised on a livestock farm in southern Virginia, she graduated from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Agricultural Sciences and holds a M.S. in Integrated Resource Management from Colorado State University.