Finding new Ways to Farm

By Randy Weckman

Kentucky’s agricultural economy has been hiccupping for the past few years, in almost perfect synchrony with federal cuts in tobacco quota. Bargain-basement grain prices caused by large world surpluses have further ratcheted down agriculture’s contribution to the state’s economy. Over time, those hiccups have become seizures that have quaked their way through the state’s economy, shaking rural economies dependent on the golden leaf practically to their foundations.

Farmers throughout Kentucky looking for a commodity that will replace lost tobacco income are unlikely to find any single, legal crop that can mimic the qualities of tobacco: a crop with a high return from small acreage with a ready market. Although several crops together may replace lost income, farmers need help in finding those crops and learning how to produce and market them.
The New Crop Opportunities Center, an initiative of the College of Agriculture unveiled in July 2000, is helping farmers identify those crops, find out how best to produce them, and locate markets for them.

Bottom Line Questions and Research

While the New Crop Opportunities Center
already has under way a spate of research and Extension projects— both in production and marketing of new and sometimes novel crops— its biggest contribution to date may well be its template for farmers to use in evaluating whether a new or novel crop could fit into a farm’s operation profitably.

Dewayne Ingram

A Primer for Selecting New Enterprises for Your Farm, developed by agricultural economics faculty members, asks the farmer for answers to thorny questions before a farmer plunges headlong into production of any new commodity. While using the Primer won’t necessarily make a farmer successful, it can help avoid investing money and time into an enterprise that won’t be profitable.

And research under way under the auspices of the New Crop Opportunities Center is helping farmers with both production information and marketing information. Here’s a taste of the current research projects:

• evaluating the disease resistance of bell pepper varieties to bacterial spot,
• the feasibility for growing and marketing soft white winter wheat (used for specialty bakery items such as flat breads, cakes, pastries, crackers, and noodles),
• blackberries for fresh and u-pick operations, and
• producing and marketing novel soybeans, such as edamame and varieties that produce better-tasting soybean products.

In addition, the Center is funding projects that investigate landscape plants and native plants that have landscape potential and programs for producing and marketing them. A controlled water table irrigation system for greenhouse production of bedding plants, potted plants, and vegetable transplants is being evaluated in commercial greenhouses.

Success Stories

Sometimes, we know of a crop that would be a real
money maker for Kentuckians, but there’s just a small glitch with it and our scientists will find a way to overcome that glitch,” Ingram said.

Take bell peppers for example. Bell peppers were a profitable crop in the 1980s for a few Kentucky farmers but their good fortune with raising them was generally short-lived. It wasn’t a marketing issue that caused almost all bell pepper farmers to abandon production. In fact, Kentucky had a pretty good marketing system in place—buying stations where farmers could deliver their peppers for grading and sales were located close to production areas. What dissuaded farmers from growing them was bacterial spot, a disease that could reduce a promising harvest to “not worth picking” status in quick order.

But thanks to research by horticulturists and plant pathologists associated with the New Crop Opportunities Center, bacterial spot is a manageable issue now. Many producers have once again begun producing bell peppers, using varieties developed in the mid and late 1990s that can return between $900 and $1,000 per acre for land and management. (Farmers who provide their own labor can add the cost of labor to their profits.)

Photo - David Van Sanford

“Our research was unique. Not only did we assess different varieties’ abilities to withstand disease pressure, we also evaluated their desirability for marketing. Even if a variety showed great resistance to bacterial spot, if it didn’t produce peppers with excellent market characteristics, we didn’t recommend it to farmers,” said Bill Nesmith, plant pathologist.

The New Crop Opportunities Center is also funding scientists to evaluate blackberry varieties for Kentucky and to develop production and marketing protocols.

“Blackberries can be quite profitable for producers who can wait a few years for a patch to come into full production. In fact, a fully mature patch of blackberries has the potential to return somewhere between $1,500 and $1,800 per acre,” said Tim Woods. Woods is an agricultural economist who has conducted marketing feasibility studies for a variety of crops new to Kentucky.

And several small to mid-sized packing companies in Kentucky and in neighboring states are interested in buying blackberries for freezing if growers can provide a volume sufficient to change their production lines, he said.
“Many of Kentucky’s small blackberry producers find ready markets for their produce at farmers’ markets and in u-pick operations,” he said.

Amber Waves of Grain

It isn’t just horticultural crops that may hold promise for Kentucky’s farmers. The New Crop Opportunities Center also is supporting research for crops suited for larger acreage and less intensive management. Scientists are investigating soft white winter wheat as a specialty crop for some farmers, particularly those who already have the know-how to grow wheat successfully. (Kentucky wheat production is generally of the soft red winter wheat variety— which is often blended with hard red winter wheat, produced in the Great Plains for all-purpose flours.)

Soft white winter wheat is nearly exclusively grown in the Pacific Northwest and Michigan, where the climate is quite different from Kentucky’s. (Wheat grown in the Pacific Northwest is used for Asian noodles; that grown in Michigan generally ends up in cereal products.) But because wheat has been adapted to different climates for centuries— it was first grown in Mesopotamia in ancient times— it may be possible that a variety of soft white winter wheat can be developed to fit Kentucky’s growing conditions better. That’s what wheat breeder David Van Sanford is working on.

Millers prefer the soft white wheat over soft red winter wheat, which is traditionally grown in Kentucky, because they can mill a little closer to the bran without fear of introducing the bitter taste of bran into the flour.

This past year saw soft white winter wheat production double— to about 1,500 acres, all being grown by producers who contracted to deliver it to a Hopkinsville miller at a premium above September future prices.

Van Sanford, who is also co-director of the New Crop Opportunities Center, is working on developing a new wheat variety, especially adapted for Kentucky, that will be resistant to vomitoxin and sprouting in wet weather— two problems with current varieties. (Vomitoxin results when a fungus, Gibberella zeae, invades the kernel of grain. It gives the grain an off-flavor, has an adverse effect on dough products, and can cause sickness in high doses.)

“If we can develop a wheat cultivar that can be grown in Kentucky that is resistant to both sprouting and to the fungus that causes vomitoxin, we can help Kentucky farmers increase their profits from growing this specialty wheat,” he said.

A Soybean by Any Other Name...

Sally Ellis, Sara McNulty

Even new and sometimes novel crops may hold a
place in the panoply of commodities that might help Kentucky farmers replace lost tobacco quota income.

Take edamame (ed-ah-MAH-may), an edible green soybean that can be boiled, shelled, or eaten as a snack, or tossed into salads and other dishes, and whose nutritive virtues are legend. The market is such that it may hold some potential for a few producers in Kentucky right now and perhaps more later, should the market for the bean expand.

Sara McNulty and Sally Ellis, two Daviess County farmers, are experimenting with the crop— with help from the faculty cooperating in the New Crop Opportunities Center. In 1998 and 1999, McNulty produced edamame in test plots. She harvested some of the beans at the green stage and marketed them in specialty stores in Owensboro and Louisville. At the green stage, the beans are slightly oval to round, a bit greener than peas (but not as dark as green beans) and taste just a bit richer and nuttier than butterbeans.

In 2000, McNulty teamed up with Sally Ellis, a neighboring commercial vegetable producer, to increase the scale of production. That harvest was marketed in Lexington, as well as Louisville and Owensboro. McNulty coordinated sales for two other producers from Shelby County whose beans sold through the Louisville Farmers’ Market, where health-conscious consumers scarfed them up at $4 to $5 per pound. The edamames sold out every weekend at that market.

Tim Woods and Extension associate Matt Ernst, both agricultural economists, worked with the two farmers to develop budgeting and marketing information for their crop— about an acre all totaled last year.

Woods’ budget indicated that the potential for edamame for the frozen market might be $300 return for each acre grown— which compares favorably with some other more traditional crops, but not with tobacco. But after a year’s experience in growing edamame, the two farmers believe that the return can be between $1,500 and $1,800 per acre, if certain post-harvest issues can be worked out; namely, the beans have to be chilled quickly in the field and then delivered to the plant post haste so they can be flash frozen to keep them from turning sour.

And if a large enough fresh market can be developed, McNulty believes that growers can wholesale them for about $3 per pound. Harvest can be up to 9,000 pounds per acre. (Fresh markets require that growers mind their p’s and q’s at harvest. Just like those for the frozen market, the beans have to be picked by hand, quickly chilled either in the field or right after picking, and rushed to market to be sold in a couple of days to avoid the beans turning sour, McNulty said.)Larger acreages might mean that machinery can pick and sort the beans.

In other soybean work, UK agronomists are assessing comparative yield and quality characteristics of several types of novel soybean varieties, including some with high protein, tofu, natto (for fermenting), and high sucrose qualities that will bring a premium in niche markets.

“These projects are just the beginning. Our faculty will continue to explore new opportunities for farmers and to provide research and Extension support for these new initiatives,” Ingram said.

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“The center isn’t really a place at all— it’s a virtual or conceptual center comprised of College of Agriculture faculty from a variety of disciplines. It was developed to provide a systematic evaluation of both the production and marketing of crops that haven’t been a major component of Kentucky’s traditional mix of farm commodities,” said Dewayne Ingram, chair of the department of horticulture and co-director of the New Crop Opportunities Center.
Marketing is as fundamental to profits as producing the crop itself, he said. Thus, the faculty, staff, and student teams are concentrating on both at the same time.

“A farmer can grow bumper crops of Jerusalem artichokes, for example, but if there isn’t a market (as there wasn’t in the early 1980s when the Jerusalem artichoke was touted as a panacea for rural America’s troubles), then it is useless to plant them,” Ingram said.

Promotion is the Art of the Possible

Can two part-time farmers whose names are Cynthia and Cynthia compete with the likes of Ernest and Julio Gallo, not to mention haute-cuisine French labels?

“You bet, provided you market the wine around tourism,” said Cynthia Bohn, an entrepreneur who’s more than dabbling in wine production at her Woodford County farm, Equus Run. Bohn, an IBM executive by day and farmer by weekend and evenings, started her 35-acre vineyard, or as she calls it, wine boutique, in 1998 near Midway, Kentucky, whose major industry these days is the block-long strip of boutiques and antique stores.

The idea of the winery business came to Bohn while she was at a Harvard Business School management class, studying the Mondavi and Gallo (wine producers) case studies.

“After a year of planning and fine tuning, I called my college best friend (Cynthia Hall) in the banking business and asked for her input and financial review of the business plan. She joined the company as a business partner and financial retail manager,” Bohn said.

Raised on a tobacco farm near Elizabethtown, Bohn describes their enterprise with a large dose of romantic language. Their web site refers to the vineyard as set “amidst picturesque stone fences, thoroughbreds and the quaint charm of Midway” and “gently wrapped by the banks of the Elkhorn Creek.”

Their idea is working and the two Cynthias are indeed profiting from it— and they hope to profit even more in years to come as Equus Run Vineyards becomes really popular. The operation produced 4,100 cases of wine last year with the goal of 10,000 cases in the next few years.

Equus Run has a tasting room, which is emerging as a tourist attraction— last year more than 15,000 people stopped and tasted wine and bought at least one bottle of Equus Run wine. And special wine-tasting events held throughout the year and which include such ambiance boosters as soft music from a jazz combo— set the stage for success in marketing wine at $4.50 a glass. (The wine glass, with the Equus Run logo, is a take-home item— a memento of a glorious day in the country that helps customers recall the pleasure of the day they enjoyed.)

Equus Run also markets wine through nine restaurants and retail shops.
“We have a waiting list for our wine distribution— as soon as we make more. We look forward to using more Kentucky-grown grapes as other vineyards across the state continue to mature,” Bohn said.

Bohn and Hall worked closely with several College of Agriculture faculty, including horticulturists John Strang, Jerry Brown, and Dewayne Ingram, to get the vineyard up and running.

“The university has been gracious in responding to the recent growth and changes in the Kentucky grape and wine industry. We are moving forward in funding additional academic and Extension support because of their valuable help in making our enterprise work,” Bohn said.

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