But the democratic casualness of the environment — listeners sprawled on hay bales, children frolicking on the hillside — belied the seriousness of purpose as college hipsters and wizened hippies shared space with revered scientists and conservationists like David Orr, an environmental studies professor at Oberlin; Fred Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University who is also the president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.; and Douglas Tompkins, who has preserved more than two million acres of wilderness in Chile and Argentina.

“Wes and company do tap into obviously wonderful expertise from academia, but his brilliance is getting across that boundary line between the ivory tower and the land, and making the connections in fresh and interesting and challenging ways,” said the conservation biologist Curt Meine, a fellow with the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature and the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wis. “There are those who think of him as rather out there, but he would probably say that’s exactly where we need to be.”

This year Mr. Jackson paid tribute to his longtime friend and sounding board Wendell Berry, the literary voice of the agrarian community, who philosophized on the 35th anniversary of his seminal book, “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture,” which addressed rural and small-town landscapes at a time when environmentalism was still focused on the country’s wilderness.

The festival’s ability to connect the dots between the local and the global has lured Dr. Richard Stein, a dentist, and his wife, Peggy, a teacher, from Dodge City, Kan., for the last two gatherings.

“I felt like last year, after hearing the speakers, I really understood what’s happening in the world in a whole different way,” said Ms. Stein, who admitted to finding few liked-minded people in the state’s southwestern quadrant, now decimated by drought. “The big picture was even more clear. And it really helped us see where we needed to go in making some decisions with our lives.”

“I was always wondering if we would like it because we are not farmers,” she added.

“But we’re all eaters,” her husband interjected.