Free Ag Conference Sponsership for Ohio Women

Women Farm Sponsoring a Registration to 5 Upcoming Farmer Conferences!

Ohio women producing food for local markets, or aspiring to do so, who have not yet had an opportunity to attend a conference listed below are invited to apply for our sponsorship of their fee registration!
An applicant must be a woman who resides in Ohio, is at least 18 years of age at the time of application, is willing to meet up at the conference (briefly or as much as you wish) with the owners of Women Farm, and is willing to be interviewed after the conference by Women Farm for publication on our web site.
Women Farm service partners, women farmers whose essays and interviews have already been invited or published by Women Farm are ineligible to apply.
Conference sponsorship opportunities, the application process and deadlines, and award announcement dates are listed below.
ACRES USA
December 8-10, 2011, Columbus OH
http://www.acresusa.com/events/11conf/about.htm
Apply on or before 5 pm Monday, November 21, 2011
Women farmers with 5+ years experience growing food for local markets are especially urged to apply.
Registration award announced by 5 pm Wednesday, November 23rd
Ohio Produce Growers and Marketers Association (OPGMA)
January 16-18, 2012, Sandusky OH
http://www.opgma.org/?q=congress
Apply on or before 5 pm Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Women farmers with 3+ years experience growing food for local markets are especially urged to apply.
Registration award announced by 5 pm Friday, December 16th
Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA)
February 18-20, 2012, Granville, OH
http://www.oeffa.org/events.php
Apply on or before 5 pm Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Women aspiring to farm and up to 3 years experience growing food for local markets are especially urged to apply.
Registration award announced by 5 pm Friday, January 13th
Ohio State University (OSU) Small Farm Conference
March 9-10, 2012, Wilmington, OH
http://clinton.osu.edu/events/2012-small-farm-conference-and-trade-show
Apply on or before 5 pm Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Women aspiring to farm and up to 2 years experience growing food for local markets are especially urged to apply.
Registration award announced by 5 pm Friday, February 10th
Ohio State University (OSU) Small Farm Conference
March 31, 2012, Massillon, OH
http://clinton.osu.edu/events/2012-small-farm-conference-and-trade-showhttp://clinton.osu.edu/events/2012-small-farm-conference-and-trade-show
Apply on or before 5 pm, Monday, February 27, 2012
Women aspiring to farm and up to 2 years experience growing food for local markets are especially urged to apply.
Registration award announced by 5 pm Wednesday, February 29th
Apply Now!

1. Go to our survey page. Complete Join Us and/or Log In and take the short survey Represent Ohio Women Farmers. (Skip this step if you have already completed this survey.)
2. E-mail management@womenfarm.com or send by regular mail to Women Farm, P.O. 954, Worthington, OH 43085-0954 the following information.
   • Full Name
   • Confirm that you are an Ohio resident, 18 years or older
   • Confirm that you are able to arrange for travel, and if required, for food and lodging, if you are awarded a fee sponsorship
   • State the conference or conferences for which you would like to be considered, including specific dates you are able to attend, and confirm that you have never attended the conference(s).
   • Confirm that if you are awarded a fee sponsorship by Women Farm you are willing to meet Women Farm owners at the conference and to be interviewed by Women Farm for publication on its web site
   • State the number of years, if any, that you have grown food for local markets
   • Regarding each conference for which you wish to be considered, write a short paragraph about why you want to attend this conference at this time.

Farmers' Markets vs. Arts & Crafts Markets

There's been a lively discussion lately on the Cincinnati Local Foods Group about whether it's helpful for farmers' markets to include crafters. I've always taken the position that it isn't helpful -- that it's in fact counterproductive to developing a successful market -- but a lot of people don't see the harm. For farmers' markets that are just starting up and/or don't have all their spaces filled with local, sustainably-produced foods, it's tempting to invite crafters to fill the empty spaces. It makes the market seem busy and inviting to have more booth spaces filled.

I believe filling the extra booth spaces with crafters actually hurts the chances of developing the market into a thriving entity, long term. Here's why.

Yes, a full market is more inviting to potential customers. They drive past and see a full market and think, "Wow! Where'd that come from all of a sudden? I want to check that out." They park and go in, ready to shop and buy. It would seem the addition of the crafters did its job: it pulled in more customers earlier than a smaller farmers-only market would have, because it made the farmers' market seem bigger than it actually was at that point. It brought in more customers. That's good, right?

Well, not necessarily. If a customer stops to investigate and instead of the "farmers' market" she was hoping to shop at finds a few farmers but mostly crafters, she's likely to be disappointed. It wasn't what she thought it was. She looks around. She buys a few items, maybe even one of the craft items for sale (leaving less cash in her wallet to buy food items.) But now she knows: it's not really a farmers' market. Next Wednesday when she drives past, she doesn't bother to stop. The market does okay, but although it seems to attract plenty of new customers every week and most of the farmers make enough to keep coming back, few of them make enough that they want to expand their operations. And while enough farmers come back year to year that the market continues, there never seem to be enough farmers interested to allow it to really take off. There's always another crafter interested, though.

But imagine a different scenario: a potential customer drives past a small farmers' market. He can see there are only three booths, and it doesn't seem worth it to stop. The next week when he drives past, there are four booths. Two weeks later, there are five. He thinks, "Wow! It's really been growing! I should check it out." He stops, and when he investigates he finds a booth with lettuces, another selling meats, another with honey and eggs, one with apples, several offering a variety of vegetables. He shops and goes home happy, thinking, "I'll have to remember this is here every Wednesday." He tells his friends to check out the new farmers' market.

Did it take longer to get that customer to stop? Yes, it did. But the customer went away happy and intending to return. Word of mouth spreads in the neighborhood that the new farmers' market is a great place to shop every Wednesday afternoon on the square. Next year, the market attracts four more vendors because they've heard this market is thriving. The year after that, it fills up. The year after that, it has to start turning away new vendors because there's no more space, and one of the farmers suggests they start running a monthly winter market because he's been thinking of growing through the winter in hoophouses.

The farmers make money, and some of them expand their market gardens to include less common items. Customers are delighted. Leeks? At a farmers' market? Who knew? The market manager notices that many of the customers are coming from the next suburb over. Someone gets the bright idea to start a second market in that suburb on Fridays. Not all the farmers want to participate in this second market, so some new farmers get an opportunity to participate. One of them tells a neighboring farmer -- who for years has been planting mostly corn and soy -- that she should put in an organic market garden and give the farmers' market a try. The neighboring farmer tries it and has a good year, and her son (who had figured there was no room in farming for him because everyone knows small diversified farming is dead and he has no interest in growing subsidized industrial-input commodity crops) rethinks the idea of farming for a living.

This is how a local food distribution system builds. This is why I always recommend that new farmers' markets not include crafters. I believe the inclusion of crafters, in the long run, hurts a farmers' market and hurts the farmers at that market. This is counterproductive to the development of a sustainable local food system.

Gourmet: Family farmer in South Dakota rejects farm subsidies

Gourmet Magazine has an excellent article in the April issue about Matthew Stiegelmeier, a young farmer in South Dakota who has rejected government farm subsidies to run a diversified family farm. Stiegelmeier explains why his family converted to organic over twenty years ago:

[Stiegelmeier's father] Jim hated the farm program, thought it made farmers dependent on the government. “Grandpa Mil­ton thinks Roosevelt walked on wa­ter,” Matthew offers. “Daddy thought he was a Communist.” Most of all, Jim hated pesticides. Several times in the late ’60s and early ’70s he got sick from them.

“One night at dinner, my sister-in-law told him, ‘I don’t see how you can be a Christian and put poison on food.’ That was the clincher,” [Stiegelmeier's mother] Emily remembers. It was the early ’80s. Jim and Emily converted the farm to organic.

Jim and Emily turned the logic of the farm program upside down. Instead of planting one or two commodity crops and accepting whatever price the elevator offered, they went looking for organic processors who, ideally, would lock in a premium before they planted. Matthew shrugs. “Why put a crop in the ground that no one wants to pay for?"

The Stiegelmeiers diversified into organic spring and winter wheat, flax, rye, barley, and buckwheat and relied on age-old ways to fight weeds and fertilize the soil. They certified their pastures as organic and grew alfalfa to feed a herd of registered British White beef cattle. [Matthew's wife] Dan­elle started a small herd of sheep.This past year, Matthew made $11 a bushel on winter wheat at mills in Kansas and North Dakota, at the time a four-dollar premium over commodity wheat. Organic flax sold for $19.50 a bushel, a premium of ten dollars.

Unfortunately farm economies keep new young farmers from entering the market.

The value of [area] farmland today is more than $1,000 an acre. With federal subsidies built into the land values and wealthy pheasant hunters eager to invest in private preserves, the value of land has risen 15 to 20 percent every year for the past five years, far more than agriculture can support on a sustainable basis. In today’s market, Matthew Stiegel­meier could not purchase his own farm.

And most of his neighbors, surviving year to year with the help of government subsidies, have no interest in taking the risk of converting their farms to diversified organic operations.

Why I farm: a new farmer explains

One of the more interesting aspects of the local eating movement is the number of new-to-farming farmers sprouting up all over -- folks who did not grow up farming and won't be inheriting a lifestyle or the necessary acreage. For most of them the barriers to entry -- purchasing land and equipment, developing new skills, adapting to an unfamiliar lifestyle -- are daunting. On Epilog, one new farmer explains why he decided to farm.

I believe there is no equal for a life spent growing up on a farm (at least for me and my family). The interaction with the seasons, the soil, the animals, the crops, and of course each other provide timeless lessons that will follow my children and myself no matter where we end up later in life. The work ethic and caring that it takes to be a farmer is something that can bring a family together in a special way.

On top of that, we, as a family, are able to help provide healthy food for ourselves, our friends, and our customers (who will eventually become friends). Of course there are struggles just as with any occupation, but we enjoy the possibilities of connecting people to their food and the land where it is raised. That in a very small nutshell is why we farm.