Sustainable agriculture attracts youth

By TOM KANE

STATE COLLEGE, PA - A large number of young people were in attendance at a conference on sustainable agriculture held last week in State College.

“It’s pretty clear to us that a lot of young people want to be involved in agriculture in Pennsylvania since their attendance at this conference and one last week was so high,” said Dennis K. Hall of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. “This is very encouraging.”

The conference in question was the 17th Annual Conference of the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), which was held between February 5 and 9 at the Penn State Conference Hotel at State College.

Because of the closing of many farms in recent years?especially dairy farms?and the soaring costs of farm operations, it is surprising to see this youth phenomenon. The costs of operation of today’s farms have been rising steadily for the last three years, and they’ve taken a substantial jump in recent months while the income that dairy farmers receive from selling their milk has remained stable over the last 10 years.

“My costs of operation have taken a 30 percent jump since 2005,” said dairy farmer Joe Davitt of Waymart, PA.

Over the past year, local dairymen are claiming that feed prices have risen 60 percent and the cost of energy has risen nearly 90 percent.

In New York State alone, 564 farms closed down in 2006, according to Mariann Kiraly of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Delaware County, NY.

So what is attracting the students? Conversations with a number of them revealed that many were interested in working on, purchasing or starting organic farms. Out of 94 workshops held at the conference, 15 were on the subject of organic farming. Out of the list of exhibitors, nearly 20 percent were organically based.

Especially well attended were workshops on how dairy farmers could diversify into things like organic milk, bottling their own milk, raw milk, cheese making, ice cream, butter, yogurt and cultured products in order to survive.

“It’s not the easiest transition to make, but with careful preparation a small farm can keep open if it knows its market and aims to make specialty products for it,” said Dale Martin of Agri-Service of Hagerstown, MD.