8.
Organic Dairy Production Meeting -- Wednesday September 13 in Clare The meeting will be held from
9:00AM to 2:00PM, at the Town & Country Restaurant in Clare.
Lowell Rheinheimer, Mideast Dairy Pool Coordinator
for the Cooperative Regions of Organic Producer Pools (CROPP)/Organic Valley
(OV), visited with farmers during the Horse Progress Days in
This interest prompted OV to schedule an additional
meeting for dairy farmers wishing to learn about the opportunities in organic
dairy production. The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, September 13 in
Clare.
During the Horse Progress Days s Rheinheimer said,
“We anticipate that an OV Michigan milk collection route will be
operating in spring of 2007.”, “More than 100 Michigan dairy
farmers have expressed an interest in transitioning to organic dairy production
and are considering marketing their organic milk as OV members,”.
Founded in 1988, CROPP is a farmer-owned cooperative
based in La Farge,
OV is a farmer-owned and controlled cooperative.
Farmers work together to set their own policies and establish their milk pay
prices. Member OV farmers like the fact that the cooperative provides them with
many support services such as educational workshops, an organic grain program,
a staff organic veterinarian, and organic certification assistance.
“Creating a new organic milk market collection
route is both challenging and rewarding,” Rheinheimer continued.
“We need farmers to work together and coordinate the time they get
certified and are ready to start shipping organic milk.” “The
milk that we pick up must be of very high quality as we are very particular
about the quality of our milk supply,” he said. “OV customers
demand that high quality, and we deliver.”
Jim Wedeberg, one of the seven original founding
members of OV, also visited with dairy farmers at Horse Progress Days.
“The organic milk market is truly a sellers’ market. The
demand by consumers has consistently outstripped the supply,” he said.
According to Wedeberg, the organic food industry has averaged 20%
growth rates for a decade now.
“We are being pulled by dairy farmers to
expand. They are asking us to market their milk,” said Wedeberg.
OV is currently looking to create additional organic milk collection
routes in other states as well.
OV educates its farmers so that they understand milk
marketing. By managing milk flow, it can achieve and manage a steady
supply which means sustainable pay for its farmers.
“Marketing organic milk is a wonderful
opportunity available to the traditional family farm,” said
Rheinheimer.
“This marketing initiative hopes to create another
organic milk market in
Founded in 1998, Michigan Food and Farming Systems is a
statewide membership organization (510c3) whose purpose is to promote diverse
efforts that foster and sustain food and faming systems that improve economic, ecological
and social well-being. To learn more, visit www.miffs.org, call (517)
432-0712, or e-mail [log in to unmask]
For additional information regarding OV’s
program to market organic milk in
For more information about
9. Harvest Festival
at
The harvest festival will be on
October 7th from 1-5pm. There will be live bands, hay rides, face painting, pie
contest, cookies, cider pressing, farm tours, and other fun. This is the first
festival of this kind for the Student Organic Farm and we hope that it will be
a big success. We look forward to your participation!
THE
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
By Ron Krueger
[log in to unmask]
• 810.766.6117
Tina and Greg Lawrence are on the circuit. The
"We go to
"Our farthest drive is 32 miles, which isn't
bad."
[log in to unmask]">Seasonal, one-day-a-week farmers
markets in suburban and rural towns have come of age.
The Grand Blanc market, which continues through Oct.
29, was a success from its mid-July start, says city community and economic
development director Keith Leonard.
"As soon as we announced we were doing it (a
weekly market), I had 60 phone calls from people who were interested in being
vendors."
Many of those calls were from crafters and others
selling nonfood items. Leonard informed them the Grand Blanc market would be
driven by farmers from
Given that the number of farms in
Both the number of small farms and farmers markets is
growing, according to the Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Systems. This is
a nonprofit group linked with the state agriculture department.
The number of farmers markets has grown by 65 percent
to more than 150 since 2001, according to Dru Montri, a spokesperson for the
group. This includes markets at farms and those hosted by municipalities.
"Farmers are finding that, by directly marketing
their products to the consumer instead of wholesaling it, they receive a larger
share of that dollar," Montri said.
"From the consumer side, more people want to
meet the farmers, and these markets fill that need," she said.
One such person is Mary Anne Reising of
Around the area, one can find a municipally sponsored
market six days a week. This includes the Flint Farmers' Market, which operates
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
In addition to the Grand Blanc market, others have
started this year in
Ortonville in
"We switched from Saturday morning to Friday
because participation on Saturday had really fallen," said Julie Courtney
of the village's Downtown Development Authority.
"We are getting 15 to 20 vendors with about half
being food-related, and about 200 people are showing up each week," she
said.
The evening features bluegrass jam sessions and a
$5-per-person spread catered by a local church.
In Grand Blanc, Patricia Dinger of
"The market is supposed to
continue until 3 o'clock, but the vendors had sold out of virtually everything
by 1:30. The man who brought sweet corn brought 70 dozen ears, and they were
all gone in no time."
11.
Farm Press Magazine
Aug 31, 2006 10:11
AM
If
I may share my personal opinion, this article is full of contradictions
regarding world hunger, environmental concerns and genetic engineering (
By Hembree Brandon
Farm Press Editorial Staff
Perhaps no individual has done more to save people
from hunger and starvation over the past six-plus decades than Norman Borlaug,
whose “Green Revolution” in the 1960s helped farmers in developing
countries use high-yield technologies to revolutionize grain crops production.
|
|
The
A new book, The Man Who Fed The World, by Leon
Hesser, will be out Sept. 5. It chronicles the life and achievements of this
remarkable man, those who’ve worked with him, and those who are
continuing to carry elements of the Green Revolution to areas of the world
still confronting food shortages, famine, and starvation.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to hear Dr.
Borlaug, there’s a radio interview with him, conducted Aug. 9 by Penn
Jillette (the big guy of the show biz team, Penn & Teller), that is well
worth the hour of listening time. It’s at
http://podcast.penn.freefm.com/penn/25352.mp3.
Borlaug doesn’t mince words when it comes to
defending modern agricultural practices. Some comments from the broadcast:
• “(Despite doomsday predictions)
it’s possible to produce enough food to feed the predicted 10 billion
people of the future. The more difficult problem is distributing that food
equitably once it’s produced and to be sure we can do it without
destroying the environment and to have funding for additional research into new
biotechnology and transgenics.”
• “In 1950, total world production of all
major cereal grains was about 620 million tons; in 2000, it was more than 1.9
billion tons. (With conventional technologies) we’d have had to cut down
approximately three times as much forest or plowed up three times as much
grazing land…to produce a harvest equivalent to 2000. That’s how
much land high-yield technology saved for Mother Nature.”
• “If we’re interested in tranquil
world conditions for our sons, daughters, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, they won’t be built on empty stomachs and human
misery. When we have widespread misery in many African and Asian countries,
it’s a very fertile ground for sowing seeds of disruption by
extremists.”
• “(Those against genetically-engineered
crops take) a ridiculous position. If we look at the genetic makeup of bread
wheat, which constitutes more than 95 percent of all the wheat in the world,
it’s a natural cross done in pre-history of wild wheat and two other wild
grasses, producing the basic chromosome we’ve used for traditional
genetic modification and more recently with transgenics. (Opposition to GMO
crops) is a lot of nonsense.”
• “Same thing with organic versus
chemical fertilizers. For God’s sake, I’ve always said, ‘Use
all the organic fertilizer that’s available, but don’t come around
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Vicki Morrone
Organic Vegetable and Crop Outreach Specialist
C.S. Mott Sustainable Food Systems
303 Natural Resources Bldg.
517-353-3542
517-282-3557 (cell)
517-353-3834 (fax)
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