Sunday, May 4, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Market Review
We were all pleasantly surprised by the success of the first day of our new Farmers' Market. Most of us were sold out by 12:30.
There is even a review, which was published in the Botetourt View. To see it, click here.
We'll have a couple more new vendors this Saturday. 'Hope to see you all there!
There is even a review, which was published in the Botetourt View. To see it, click here.
We'll have a couple more new vendors this Saturday. 'Hope to see you all there!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Farmers' Market
Botetourt Family Farms will kick-off the growing season with a Farmers' Market on Saturday, April 26th at Ikenberry Orchards, Rt. 220 So. in Daleville. Hours: 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Produce is just starting to come in, but there'll be some, eggs, baked goods, flowers, teas, and ???
We expect our offerings to expand as the weeks go on. This is our trial run and we hope to meet interested people from the community and hear about what they would like to see at the market in the future.
We'd also like to welcome interested farmer/producers into the group. Our membership fee is $10.00 per farm. That money goes into promotion and advertising, planning educational programs.
This local market is just one of the projects that the members wanted. We are here to provide opportunities for the mutual good and are open to ideas.
Read all about it by clicking HERE.
Produce is just starting to come in, but there'll be some, eggs, baked goods, flowers, teas, and ???
We expect our offerings to expand as the weeks go on. This is our trial run and we hope to meet interested people from the community and hear about what they would like to see at the market in the future.
We'd also like to welcome interested farmer/producers into the group. Our membership fee is $10.00 per farm. That money goes into promotion and advertising, planning educational programs.
This local market is just one of the projects that the members wanted. We are here to provide opportunities for the mutual good and are open to ideas.
Read all about it by clicking HERE.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Sowing Disaster: Why We Need a New Farm Bill
Published on Friday, April 18, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
by Christopher D. Cook
Congress passes its share of boondoggles, but there’s a real doozy on the docket April 18. If the nearly $300 billion Farm Bill passes in its current form, the American public will pay billions of dollars to large-scale farmers and food corporations for the following end results: an oversupply of unhealthful junk food that worsens our national obesity epidemic; severe depletion of soil and air through overuse of pesticides and destructive farming practices; and the hastened removal of small farms from the land, eroding the spirit and finances of rural communities across the U.S.
To be sure, there are positive elements in the bill, which gets revisited every five years. There’s funding for conservation and nutrition programs, even small bits (in the $5 million range) for innovative community food security projects that expand markets for small farmers while making food accessible to poor inner-city residents. But the bill’s Commodity Title erases all that - using tax dollars of up to $20 billion a year to finance big growers’ production of corn, wheat, and other commodities that are used as ingredients in everything from cooking oil, to sweeteners and fattening agents in processed foods, to livestock feed and auto fuel.
While supporting farmers to produce basic foodstuffs is a laudable policy goal, our current farm-subsidy system accomplishes something far different, propping up profoundly unsustainable growing practices while undermining the nation’s health and its farming and food future. By upholding subsidies for big agriculture, Congress is not only wasting taxpayer dollars at a time of soaring crop and food prices; more fundamentally, it’s undermining vital efforts to make our food supply more healthful and sustainable, both environmentally and economically.
Consider just a few numbers. Seventy-five percent of subsidies go to a handful of commodities (mostly wheat, corn, and oilseeds) used as food additives, making highly processed junk food cheap — while fruits and vegetables and whole foods get no payments at all. Nearly 70 percent of farm payments go to the top ten percent of the country’s biggest growers — while America loses one farm every half an hour, 15,000 per year. This form of corporate welfare encourages the ongoing consolidation of farming and food production into fewer hands while removing small and mid-sized farmers who can no longer compete in this unlevel playing field. Meanwhile, by skewing payments toward large-scale farming, these subsidies promote ecologically damaging intensive pesticide use and severe depletion of precious topsoils — while organic foods, often exorbitantly expensive, get no supports at all. As a nation we dump nearly half a million tons of toxic pesticides on the land, polluting the air, often sickening nearby residents, and tainting rivers and streams, to say nothing of our food supply which is covered in pesticide residue.
Even as Congress appears poised to approve this damaging legislation, we need to start a new national discussion on our country’s food and farming priorities. Instead of spending more money to produce cheap raw ingredients for the meat industry and food processing corporations, we need a radically different yet ultimately sensible New Deal for food that invests the public’s money in sustainable growing practices, organic foods, and small and mid-sized farms that form the bedrock — both economically and socially — of communities throughout America’s heartland.
Hardly a romantic nod to the past, such an overhaul is an investment in the future. As global warming heats up, we cannot afford a food system that guzzles 100 billion gallons a year in pesticides and long-distance transit of packaged foods. As obesity hits thirty percent of the population - harming individual lives and costing the public more than $100 billion in related health costs — we cannot afford to finance cheap junk food and excessive meat consumption. And we can ill afford to continue paying large-scale commodity growers to plunder our fast-eroding soils while making it near impossible for smaller diversified growers to compete and survive. Programs that revive local foods and small farms — via farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, and school purchasing programs — are gaining ground across the country. Consumers show they are hungering for organic foods, and for more farmer’s markets, where growers can increase profits while food prices remain the same or lower than in supermarkets.
The public’s money ought to finance sustainability in its truest sense - supporting farms and food programs that sustain local economies, our health, and the future of farmlands, instead of agribusiness and food corporations that plumb the land and these communities for short-term profit. As Congress lurches toward destructive old policies, now is the time to cast our vote for a new path the next time around.
Christopher D. Cook is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Harper’s and elsewhere.
by Christopher D. Cook
Congress passes its share of boondoggles, but there’s a real doozy on the docket April 18. If the nearly $300 billion Farm Bill passes in its current form, the American public will pay billions of dollars to large-scale farmers and food corporations for the following end results: an oversupply of unhealthful junk food that worsens our national obesity epidemic; severe depletion of soil and air through overuse of pesticides and destructive farming practices; and the hastened removal of small farms from the land, eroding the spirit and finances of rural communities across the U.S.
To be sure, there are positive elements in the bill, which gets revisited every five years. There’s funding for conservation and nutrition programs, even small bits (in the $5 million range) for innovative community food security projects that expand markets for small farmers while making food accessible to poor inner-city residents. But the bill’s Commodity Title erases all that - using tax dollars of up to $20 billion a year to finance big growers’ production of corn, wheat, and other commodities that are used as ingredients in everything from cooking oil, to sweeteners and fattening agents in processed foods, to livestock feed and auto fuel.
While supporting farmers to produce basic foodstuffs is a laudable policy goal, our current farm-subsidy system accomplishes something far different, propping up profoundly unsustainable growing practices while undermining the nation’s health and its farming and food future. By upholding subsidies for big agriculture, Congress is not only wasting taxpayer dollars at a time of soaring crop and food prices; more fundamentally, it’s undermining vital efforts to make our food supply more healthful and sustainable, both environmentally and economically.
Consider just a few numbers. Seventy-five percent of subsidies go to a handful of commodities (mostly wheat, corn, and oilseeds) used as food additives, making highly processed junk food cheap — while fruits and vegetables and whole foods get no payments at all. Nearly 70 percent of farm payments go to the top ten percent of the country’s biggest growers — while America loses one farm every half an hour, 15,000 per year. This form of corporate welfare encourages the ongoing consolidation of farming and food production into fewer hands while removing small and mid-sized farmers who can no longer compete in this unlevel playing field. Meanwhile, by skewing payments toward large-scale farming, these subsidies promote ecologically damaging intensive pesticide use and severe depletion of precious topsoils — while organic foods, often exorbitantly expensive, get no supports at all. As a nation we dump nearly half a million tons of toxic pesticides on the land, polluting the air, often sickening nearby residents, and tainting rivers and streams, to say nothing of our food supply which is covered in pesticide residue.
Even as Congress appears poised to approve this damaging legislation, we need to start a new national discussion on our country’s food and farming priorities. Instead of spending more money to produce cheap raw ingredients for the meat industry and food processing corporations, we need a radically different yet ultimately sensible New Deal for food that invests the public’s money in sustainable growing practices, organic foods, and small and mid-sized farms that form the bedrock — both economically and socially — of communities throughout America’s heartland.
Hardly a romantic nod to the past, such an overhaul is an investment in the future. As global warming heats up, we cannot afford a food system that guzzles 100 billion gallons a year in pesticides and long-distance transit of packaged foods. As obesity hits thirty percent of the population - harming individual lives and costing the public more than $100 billion in related health costs — we cannot afford to finance cheap junk food and excessive meat consumption. And we can ill afford to continue paying large-scale commodity growers to plunder our fast-eroding soils while making it near impossible for smaller diversified growers to compete and survive. Programs that revive local foods and small farms — via farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, and school purchasing programs — are gaining ground across the country. Consumers show they are hungering for organic foods, and for more farmer’s markets, where growers can increase profits while food prices remain the same or lower than in supermarkets.
The public’s money ought to finance sustainability in its truest sense - supporting farms and food programs that sustain local economies, our health, and the future of farmlands, instead of agribusiness and food corporations that plumb the land and these communities for short-term profit. As Congress lurches toward destructive old policies, now is the time to cast our vote for a new path the next time around.
Christopher D. Cook is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Harper’s and elsewhere.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Agritourism Workshop
Agritourism: It's More Than a Farm Tour...Act II -
This workshop delivers a broad overview of agritourism possibilities as well as the need-to-know details from experts and experienced veterans.
Whether you're interested in a corn maze, pick-your-own berries, a pumpkin patch or an enterprise of your own design, this workshop will help with agritourism basics and more.
Topics will include food service on the farm, managing liability, and generating new ideas as well as a discussion of what has and hasn't worked by an experienced agritourism operator.
The workshop is free, but you must register by March 14.Thursday, March 20th - 12:00-4:00 Johnson's Orchards & Peaks of Otter Winery in Bedford, VA
Friday, March 21 - 9:30 - 2:15 Appomattox Community Center in Appomattox, VA
Contact Dr. Martha A. Walker Virginia Cooperative Extension Central District 150B Slayton Avenue Danville, VA 24540 TEL (434)766-6761 FAX (434)766-6763 walker53@vt.edu
This workshop delivers a broad overview of agritourism possibilities as well as the need-to-know details from experts and experienced veterans.
Whether you're interested in a corn maze, pick-your-own berries, a pumpkin patch or an enterprise of your own design, this workshop will help with agritourism basics and more.
Topics will include food service on the farm, managing liability, and generating new ideas as well as a discussion of what has and hasn't worked by an experienced agritourism operator.
The workshop is free, but you must register by March 14.Thursday, March 20th - 12:00-4:00 Johnson's Orchards & Peaks of Otter Winery in Bedford, VA
Friday, March 21 - 9:30 - 2:15 Appomattox Community Center in Appomattox, VA
Contact Dr. Martha A. Walker Virginia Cooperative Extension Central District 150B Slayton Avenue Danville, VA 24540 TEL (434)766-6761 FAX (434)766-6763 walker53@vt.edu
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
How Farmers Can Sell Locally Grown Meat, Fruits and Vegetables
A Ninth District Agriculture Conference
Monday, March 3, 2008 8:30 AM
Edwards Hall
New River Community College Dublin, Virginia
8:30 AM Registration
9:00 AM Welcome and Introductions
Congressman Rick Boucher
9:15 AM The Retail Climate for Locally Grown Products: A Regional Success Story
Steve Smith, CEO, Food City
9:30 AM Exploring the Full Range of Marketing Opportunities
Charlie Jackson, Executive Director, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Charles Green, Director of Marketing, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
10:00 AM Wholesale and Retail Marketing: The Appalachian Sustainable Development Model
Anthony Flaccavento, Executive Director, Appalachian Sustainable Development
10:30 AM Growing Trends in Direct Marketing
Tom Peterson, Agriculture Education Coordinator, Appalachian Sustainable Development
Wythe Morris, Virginia Cooperative Extension
11:15 AM The Retail Buyers’ Perspective
Al Oliver, Senior Produce Buyer, Ukrops
Steve Holloway, Director of Food Operations, K-VA-T Food Stores
11:45 AM Marketing Opportunities with Institutional Buyers
Chris Carpenter, Special Projects Coordinator, Washington & Lee University
Wayne Teel, James Madison University
12:30 PM Lunch
Following lunch, roundtable discussions organized by our cooperating partners
will be held to allow conference attendees to have in-depth discussions of the issues
raised during the morning presentations.
Monday, March 3, 2008 8:30 AM
Edwards Hall
New River Community College Dublin, Virginia
8:30 AM Registration
9:00 AM Welcome and Introductions
Congressman Rick Boucher
9:15 AM The Retail Climate for Locally Grown Products: A Regional Success Story
Steve Smith, CEO, Food City
9:30 AM Exploring the Full Range of Marketing Opportunities
Charlie Jackson, Executive Director, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Charles Green, Director of Marketing, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
10:00 AM Wholesale and Retail Marketing: The Appalachian Sustainable Development Model
Anthony Flaccavento, Executive Director, Appalachian Sustainable Development
10:30 AM Growing Trends in Direct Marketing
Tom Peterson, Agriculture Education Coordinator, Appalachian Sustainable Development
Wythe Morris, Virginia Cooperative Extension
11:15 AM The Retail Buyers’ Perspective
Al Oliver, Senior Produce Buyer, Ukrops
Steve Holloway, Director of Food Operations, K-VA-T Food Stores
11:45 AM Marketing Opportunities with Institutional Buyers
Chris Carpenter, Special Projects Coordinator, Washington & Lee University
Wayne Teel, James Madison University
12:30 PM Lunch
Following lunch, roundtable discussions organized by our cooperating partners
will be held to allow conference attendees to have in-depth discussions of the issues
raised during the morning presentations.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Marketing Value-added Products: Where do I sell all this stuff?
Are you considering adding a value-added product to your agricultural business?
Want to learn what makes one value-added product a cash generator and another product a money pit?
Join eXtension's Entrepreneurs and Their Communities team for an online workshop on Wednesday, March 26 from 1:30-2:30 (EST). Our topic will be Marketing Value-added Products: Where do I sell all this stuff?
Our presenter for this session will be Ginger S. Myers, Regional Extension Marketing Specialist with Maryland Cooperative Extension. Ginger has over 25 years of experience in agri-business and small farm production. She has worked as an agricultural marketing specialist in Maryland since 1999.
Please help us to spread the word about this session. No pre-registration is required and there is no fee to participate. About 10 minutes prior to the start time simply go the Adobe Connect Pro meeting room at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/ecop/. You will be presented with a login screen that has an "Enter as Guest" option. Enter your first name, last name and state, then click "Enter Room" to join the conference. To hear the audio of the workshop and participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using a built-in teleconferencing capability of Adobe’s Connect Pro conferencing software. Once you log into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back number, your phone will automatically be called. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference on your phone. Newcomers to online learning are welcome! We're all learning this together.
Want to learn what makes one value-added product a cash generator and another product a money pit?
Join eXtension's Entrepreneurs and Their Communities team for an online workshop on Wednesday, March 26 from 1:30-2:30 (EST). Our topic will be Marketing Value-added Products: Where do I sell all this stuff?
Our presenter for this session will be Ginger S. Myers, Regional Extension Marketing Specialist with Maryland Cooperative Extension. Ginger has over 25 years of experience in agri-business and small farm production. She has worked as an agricultural marketing specialist in Maryland since 1999.
Please help us to spread the word about this session. No pre-registration is required and there is no fee to participate. About 10 minutes prior to the start time simply go the Adobe Connect Pro meeting room at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/ecop/. You will be presented with a login screen that has an "Enter as Guest" option. Enter your first name, last name and state, then click "Enter Room" to join the conference. To hear the audio of the workshop and participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using a built-in teleconferencing capability of Adobe’s Connect Pro conferencing software. Once you log into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back number, your phone will automatically be called. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference on your phone. Newcomers to online learning are welcome! We're all learning this together.
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