Growing Growers Apprenticeships...

Growing Growers Taking `07 Apprentice Applications

OLATHE, Kan. - A subculture living within 200 miles of metro Kansas
City is getting bigger and better.

As a result, the area - including K.C. - is already eating better,
according to Ted Carey, program coordinator for the Growing Growers
program. More locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables are showing
up in restaurant fare, grocery stores and farmers markets. Plus, an
ever-increasing amount is coming from certified organic farms.

The Growing Growers program is a cooperative effort that has
influenced this growth. As part of its apprenticeship program, it
networks successful market farmers with new and aspiring growers. It
also provides professional development training that´s helping
existing farmers improve and expand..

Released: March 5, 2007

"The metro area has more farmers markets and market farmers than ever
before. But, the demand for locally grown products is still bigger
than the supply," said Carey, who is a Kansas State University
Research and Extension horticulturist at K-State´s Olathe Research
Center.

Nearby community-supported agriculture programs are turning away
people who´d like to be members, Carey said. Both grocery stores and
restaurants are reporting they´d like to get more locally grown
products than currently are available.

For those who´d like to help fill that demand, Growing Growers is now
accepting apprentice applications for the 2007 growing season. The
program offers two approaches to this on-the job training at an area
host farm:

* Work at least 20 hours a week for regular wages - which sometimes
can include room and board.

* Work a minimum of four hours a week as a volunteer.

This year, those accepted as apprentices will have to pay $150 for
books. A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant helped the four-year-
old program get started, but Growing Growers now is having to become
self-sustaining.

Apprentices will still have free access, however, to the program´s
series of monthly study sessions, workshops and tours at nearby sites
in both Kansas and Missouri. The series also is open to other would-
be local growers and any established growers wanting to develop a
particular aspect of their operation.

"A good number of our graduates are already working in farming or in
some aspect of local foods. Several have started their own farms.
Others are working for existing farms and looking for their own
land," Carey said. "Some have been very creative about finding ways
to put their new skills and knowledge to use.

"One apprentice, Hilary Brown, went on to start the Local Burger
restaurant in Lawrence, using almost all local meats and vegetable
products. A couple of graduates have found you can turn a big back
yard into a niche garden - one that supplies an unusual herb or a
vegetable used in ethnic recipes."

Those interested in apprenticing should contact the Growing Growers
program manager by e-mail (growers@ksu.edu) or phone 913-488-1270.
She can direct them through the application process, which includes
visits to possible host farms.

Later, Kelly also will supply some of the apprentices´ one-on-one
training.

More information about the overall Growing Growers program and its
various offerings is on the Web at http://www.growinggrowers.org.

That page now includes a link to a new service - a listserv for
current market farmers interested in (1) asking questions of or
sharing information with peers, (2) combining orders with peers to
qualify for discounts on bulk purchases of seed and other supplies,
and (3) receiving peer and Growing Growers information and ideas on
ways to become more efficient and effective.

The Growing Growers program is a cooperative effort of Kansas State
University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, the Kansas Rural
Center and the Kansas City Food Circle (a community organization).


-30-


K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State
University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension
Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful
knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state,
federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices,
experiment fields, area Extension offices and research centers
statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus in Manhattan.

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rachel's challenge...

A story of inspiration, courage and kindness. Rachel's challenge is a school assembly and training program that was birthed out of the Columbine High School Tragedy in 1999. Rachel Scott was a remarkable young lady who believed her life would have an impact on the world. And it did...

Rachel Scott was the first person killed at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Her acts of kindness and compassion coupled with the contents of her six diaries have become the foundation for one of the most life-changing school programs in America - Rachel's Challenge.

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Eating Better Than Organic

Eating Better Than Organic
Friday, Mar. 02, 2007 By JOHN CLOUD

Organic apples in the produce section at a Whole Foods Market in Willowbrook, IL. on January 5th, 2006. Whole Foods Market along with other organic food distributors is trying to bring down the cost of organic foods to attract the family on a budget..


Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

But I care deeply about how my food tastes, and it makes sense that a snow pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate leguminous flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Guatemala. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away.

Still, the fact that not all locally grown products are organic had me worried. Even if most Americans wanted to buy locally grown organics, they wouldn't be able to find many. In a few not-too-dry, not-too-wet, not-too-warm regions--central California is one--it is possible to find abundant organic produce grown locally. But if you live in a humid climate, say, the moisture that encourages bacteria and fungi means that growing without pesticides is much more risky, expensive and rare. Consequently, in the Hudson Valley of New York, near me, it's very difficult to find fruit that hasn't been sprayed with chemicals at least once. In other regions, like the upper Midwest, most big farms don't grow any vegetables for local markets, conventional or organic. Instead, they produce commodity crops like corn and soybeans for sale to food processors. At a large Hugo's grocery store in Jamestown, N.D., last summer, I noticed only one local product: flour, which is milled in-state from local wheat. But there were organic apples and oranges from out of state.

Farmers' markets often feature organic produce from nearby farms, but not everyone lives near a farmers' market--and most products at the markets aren't organic. "I've been to farmers' markets, and there's people hauling stuff from the truck that they got at a wholesaler," says Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards. Mendelson prefers the "gold standard" of locally grown organics, but he is rather frightening on the subject of nonorganic food, whatever its origin. When I asked him whether I should favor local products, he replied, "I don't know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?"

All of which further tangles my original question: The organic apple or the conventionally grown local one?

It turns out to be a frustratingly layered choice, one that implicates many other questions: What's the most efficient way to grow food for all? Should farms be big or small, family- or corporate-run? How do your choices affect the planet? What tastes better? And then there's that little matter of cancer.

Let's get that one out of the way at the start. If scientists could conclusively prove that agricultural chemicals are harmful, we would all go organic. But it's not clear, for instance, that the low levels of pesticide typically found on conventional produce cause cancer. The risks of long-term exposure to those residues are still undetermined.

Even if conventional foods don't turn out to be as dangerous as organic advocates claim, several recent studies have suggested that organic foods contain higher levels of vitamins than their conventionally grown counterparts. In a paper published in October in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a team from the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that organically grown tomatoes have significantly more vitamin C than conventional tomatoes. Even so, the same study shows no significant differences between conventional and organic bell peppers.
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