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 [...]
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 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 [...]
By Tom Parker 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 [...]
Kansas Farmers Union members adopted five special orders of business during the state convention, held Dec. 4 through 5 in Manhattan. Resolutions on Beef Checkoff Reform, USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration, Kansas’ Corporate Farming Law, Hydraulic Fracturing, and National Farmers Union’s Educational Center were among those discussed and voted on by county delegates. [...]
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 [...]
Tom Giessel is a farmer in Pawnee County near Larned, Kansas. He raises wheat, corn, milo, and alfalfa in partnership with his brother, Jay. Tom has been active in Farmers Union all of his life, serving as vice president of the Kansas Farmers Union for nearly two decades. He has also served Farmers Union on [...]
The Kansas Beginning Farmers Coalition (KBFC) invites beginning farmers and ranchers of all ages to its third annual meeting, Saturday, December 6, 2014 at Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, KS. The event is being held in conjunction with Kansas Farmers Union’s annual convention which takes place December 4-5. Cody Holmes of Rockin’ H [...]
Jim Richardson, National Geographic photographer and Kansas native, will serve up a vast visual journey: the Neolithic dawn of agriculture, today’s world farmers working in relative anonymity, and the challenges of feeding an ever-more hungry planet through 2050 at Kansas Farmers Union’s (KFU) upcoming annual convention. Richardson, who has photographed agriculture at home in Kansas [...]
Cody Holmes left home in 1975 at age 17 with his high school 4-H project of seven cows. That project has grown into what the Rockin H Ranch is today: a 1,000-acre cow/calf operation, on-farm market, cowsmilk and goatsmilk dairy, and cheesemaking operation. Cody and his wife Dawnnell operate an agri-tourism business on top of [...]
