Healthy Foods, Local Farms Conference Oct. 13

The 13th annual Healthy Foods, Local Farms Conference in Louisville will feature such speakers as author-farmer-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry, Goldman Prize winner Lynn Henning, Environmental Protection Agency water administrator Nancy Stoner, and Dennis Dimick, National Geographic's executive editor for environment.

The conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13 at Kentucky Country Day School in eastern Louisville. The registration fee is $40 and includes meals with locally and sustainably grown food. Scholarships are available. For information email or call Aloma Dew at 270-685-2034. A pre-conference Harvest Party on Friday evening, Oct. 12, at the Bashford Manor B & B, is $45. For information email or call  Joan Lindop at 502-836-3853.

Farmers use more direct access to consumers to build relationships and explain their practices

Farmers are having direct contact with their consumers more and more as a result of farmers' markets, the local food movement and community-supported agriculture, in which consumers agree to buy farmers' produce. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers' markets have increased by 9.6 percent, to about 8,000 markets, since last year. More direct conversations are happening between farmers and consumers, and this can strengthening the relationship between them.

At the farmer's market in Lafayette, Ind., beginning farmer Neil Moseley, right, is able to educate shoppers about his organic farm practices and address concerns they might have about "big agriculture," which his brother practices, reports Sarah Gonzalez of Agri-Pulse. He can also tell shoppers about pesticide and herbicide use, and evolving conservation practices that maintain soil quality, protect sensitive land and preserve water quality. "The best part of what I do is getting that interaction with people," Moseley said.

Direct interaction with customers is a vital part of public relations for Moseley's farm, Gonzalez reports. He's also utilizing social media to interact, reaching more than 2,200 Facebook users. "We didn't realize we'd have to do these things when we started," he told Gonzalez. "There's so much to the marketing side of this it's baffling."

Gonzalez's article is a good example that could be replicated almost anywhere in the U.S. Agri-Pulse is a subscription-only newsletter, but offers a free, four-week trial here.

College students gravitate to agriculture, realizing it's 'more than cows and plows'

In the midst of the soul-killing drought, the mind-numbing Farm Bill fight and the constant debate about the use of pesticides, here's some news that just might make the day in farm country: Enrollment in agricultural colleges is downright booming. Why? Because, university officials tell Jens Manuel Krogstad of USA Today, "ag-related college majors appeal to both the heart and mind of a student." Better maybe still, students feel that with the degree they can help address such global issues as hunger and obesity.

"There's a better understanding that when we use the term agriculture, it's not all plows and cows," said Ian Maw, vice president for food, agriculture and natural resources at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in Washington, D.C.

Also, students see a clear path to a job after graduation. "At traditional agriculture powerhouses such as Penn State, where enrollment is up more than 40 percent since 2004, career preparation can include cutting-edge research in areas such as plant breeding or genomics," writes Krogstad. "Schools in more urban regions draw students interested in local foods and healthy eating. Farmland prices have tripled in the U.S. in the past decade, and corn prices have doubled since mid-2010, and the high-paying jobs that follow are catching students' attention in a down economy, Maw said. 

Iowa State University, where the agriculture college this fall expects to surpass an enrollment record set 35 years ago, is straining to meet industry demand for its graduates, said Dean Wendy Wintersteen. Iowa State reports a 95 percent job-placement rate for graduates from its colleges of engineering and agriculture, and wages can start between $50,000 and $60,000, President Steven Leath said. (Read more)

Farmers and fairs should work together to keep, enhance agricultural elements, experts say

Small-farm experts said during a workshop in California that fairs need to return to their agricultural roots, Tim Hearden of Capital Press reports. University of California's Small Farm Program director Penny Leff and California Department of Food and Agriculture official Diana Poluszak said during a workshop at the Shasta District Fair that regional fairs were centered around agriculture for more than 100 years, and that entertainment has only been the focus for the last 30 years.

Both said the state's "fiscally strapped fairs could help themselves by doing more to highlight their region's specialty crops." The story of fairs facing financial hardship could be true in other parts of the country where local and regional fairs once were a showcase of the region's agriculture. Leff and Poluszak planned the workshop, and others like it, to get ideas about how farmers can better market their products at local fairgrounds, and how both could help promote each other. (Read more)

Local-food advocates, small ranchers trying to revive local slaughterhouses

Almost all small slaughterhouses have gone out of business because they've been unable to compete with large, consolidated abattoirs. Just four corporations in the U.S. slaughter about 80 percent of the country's cattle. The loss of small slaughterhouses, mostly in rural places, has cost jobs in those communities and in many cases creates a lie of the "locally produced beef" label, reports Beth Hoffman of National Public Radio.

Some rural communities and groups are trying to change this by building their own slaughterhouses. The Cattle Producers of Washington will build a new facility in Odessa, Wash. (MapQuest image), exclusively serving small Eastern Washington ranches. Most grass-fed beef in the region had to be transported 400 to 600 miles into Oregon to be processed, but CPOW President Willard Wolf hopes the new plant will change that. "The whole idea is to have quality control and humane processing for local cattle, hogs, sheep and goats that provides consumers in the state with the locally produced products they are demanding," he told Hoffman. "Having a producer-owned plan will help keep dollars, ranchers and farmers in our communities."

Other communities are trying also to keep beef processing local. In Sullivan County, New York, officials say they want to maintain the rural "agrarian feel" of the county. Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency Director Jennifer Brylinski said the county is building the plant 90 from New York City on otherwise undesirable land to see the county's "farmland kept as farmland." The plant will cater to small ranchers in the region. (Read more)