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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] a research project is born

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: SaladG AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] a research project is born
  • Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 21:03:02 EDT

It is very discouraging to live in the bread basket of the nation and also live  in a food desert because of the fact of nothing around us but big corp agriculture.  I have been working non stop for the past five years with our local foods group to develop new growers in our area.  I have called on a number of schools at the college level at no avail. Lately we have been working on college's and 2 year college's that have large culinary department with an actual Dean.  This has been working to get fresh products to that college. A number of the chef's that have came out of this relationship has prompted a lot of local sales at the restaurant they are working at.  Every little bit helps.
 
It seem's to be a very slow process to get an individual interested in being a grower, and the biggest problem is the money thing.  They are not convinced they can make a living on a small amount of land using very low investment. One problem is some of the college's and University's have not really got behind the growers that are doing winter growing and the fact that we can grow food in the corn belt.
 
We have been putting a lot of our energy's it trying to get project's started in our grade school's.  Challenging the young mind's and making them look at how our foods are being grown, and just really how easy it is to grow so many, many things on a window sill, this seem's to be gaining interest with parents but not with school administrations so we just keep slugging to get some interest going in our local youth.
 
I went to our Vo Ag teacher and  told him I would let their students to visit our farm and show some alterative methods of agriculture, and after he quit laughing he said no so that kindof give's you an idea of the challenges we a facing here in western Iowa.  There is so much good food that could be grown in our area, we have top soil that run's about 16' deep.
 
No sense in reinventing the wheel, I feel we need to target our youth that are still exploring their mind's for their future.
 
Phil from Iowa



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