Hi, this is a SPECIAL president’s report for me! For the first time since 1936, Kansas is hosting the National Farmers Unions’ annual convention! It will be March 14 through the 17 in Wichita at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Kansas Farmers Union was awarded the opportunity to host the national convention several years ago and [...]
By Tom Parker If population continues to increase at its current pace, the world will tip the nine billion mark by 2050. That’s up from seven billion now, a number that during most stages of human development would have been unfathomable. The big question now being asked is how to feed them while coping with [...]
By Tom Parker When it comes to agriculture, there are few places in the state of Kansas more applicable to the phrase “thinking outside the box” than GreenFin Gardens, James Sperman’s blue tilapia, fig and banana aquaponic operation located west of Wamego. Which was why several dozen Kansas Farmers Union members visited the place on [...]
By Tom Parker Thinking Outside the Box, the theme for the annual Kansas Farmers Union convention held in early December, focused on alternative, if not visionary (and occasionally contrary, at least to the status quo) approaches to food production and distribution, livestock management and water conservation. Cole Cottin, program coordinator for the Kansas Rural Center, [...]
Lavern Potuzak was awarded the prestigious 2014 Ruth Hirsh Award during Kansas Farmers Union’s annual convention banquet held Friday, Dec. 5 in Manhattan. Potuzak, who farms near Agenda in Republic County, joined KFU in 1974, served as a KFU board member from 2006-2011, and has been the organization’s vice president since 2011. He is [...]
The good news is, Kansas consumers spend $7.2 billion on food each year. The bad news is, $6.5 billion of it comes from beyond the state’s borders, obesity is on the rise, 56 percent of Kansas farmers require secondary income and only eight percent of Kansans have healthy diets, according to a 2010 survey by [...]
By Tom Parker When the High Plains Food Cooperative in Atwood opened for business in May of 2008, its first shipment of 21 orders totaling $785 in products fit in the trunk of a car. Since then the cooperative has grown at the rate of almost 40 percent per year and now consists of nearly [...]
Upcoming workshop to assist Kansas goat and sheep producers in exploring dairy enterprises By Tom Parker For 65 percent of the world’s population, the answer to the advertising jingle, “Got milk?” would be a resounding yes. The milk in question, however, is not from cows. In the United States, milk and products made from milk, [...]
By Tom Parker “What if we could create a new system?” Missouri rancher and farmer Cody Holmes asked members of the Kansas Farmers Union and the Kansas Beginning Farmers Coalition during their annual convention in early December. His question wasn’t merely rhetorical. Holmes had asked himself the same question a thousand times, but answers remained [...]
By Tom Parker As the storm intensified, the sky grew darker, the driving rain stung like buckshot and a small herd of cattle outside of Bennington sought shelter behind an L-shaped windbreak. In ordinary conditions it would have been a likely place of refuge, but this storm was anything but ordinary. A deep-throated roar swallowed [...]
