PA

 

Photos from Sunday visit to Gettisburg.

 

 

Gettisburg, one of the many canons on display throughout the battlefield

Old fences that are being restores to the old days when the battle happened

Round Hill, where the 3rd day of the battle occurred and the battle finished. Check out the awesome colour of the trees in the background, the vista was fantastic

There are pumpkins EVERYWHERE for halloween next week!! All shapes and sizes

An orchard that we visited.

Monday we packed up and headed to Harrisburg, the capitol of PA, an hour or so drive.

We firstly met with the PA farm bureau board, to talk about the farm bureau at the state level. The main thing that I took away from our meeting was the huge investment this state farmer group are making in educating children on agriculture. They have brought 6 semi-trailers that they have decked out with ag learning centres. They take them round to schools all over the state with teachers to teach all aged children about agriculture. They also run courses for teachers on how to educate children in agriculture! This is something we REALLY need to be doing in Australia.

 

We then toured the state capitol (parliament house) of PA. A very magnificent building!

 

We went to the Dept of Agriculture headquarters, and met with the man in charge, Secretary George Grieg, and a few more of the ag dept crew. We chatted about a few different issues that PA ag is facing!

 

In the afternoon we visited PennAg industries, a group that has farm agribusinesses as members, rather than the farmers. An interesting point for me was that they represented both organic farmer groups, and also conventional GM growers. Thus creating some controversies within.

 

Jean, our bestest host, had to leave us tonight, so we headed to a great bar on the river for a few drinks and dinner to send her off. We were meant to head out to for Monday night football at a local sports bar, but we all piked out and headed to bed early.

 

Tuesday we headed to Millheim, a town about 2 hours drive from Harrisburg, to meet with the PA Association for Sustainable Agriculture. This was a very good meeting for me. Brian talked to us about his thoughts on the way agriculture should be heading, a little bit different than my own but still very interesting and you can learn a lot from these different attitudes. Their group has members that are organic and sustainable, with the word sustainable meaning economic success, healthy for the environment and social responsibility. An interesting term, as I think it is really hard to draw the lines for these parameters.

 

Brian believed that farming should be aiming for maximum diversification and continuos improvement. Something that no-one would disagree with. However, he also thought that farming and farm trade could be taken back to a regional level, and bulk commodity production was something that perhaps was not as necessary as we all think. He did not support GM, and believed that the onus was on the GM grower to make adequate buffer zones to keep the GM out of non GM farms. I suggested that it should be 50-50, and the buffer should be divided between the two farms. He did not agree, as he believed that the GM crop was affecting the non GM grower more than vv, so it was up to GM grower to create the buffer.

Brian was concerned that GM crops were making our agricultural systems too homogenous, and lacking diversity. I am not sure that it is GM itself that is causing this, but rather the need to grow the crops that are giving us the highest margins. Even if GM did not exist, people would still be specialising more and more into the crops that are making the most money, as sometimes we cannot afford the luxury of diversification.

 

We talked about the legal battles in regard to labelling of GM food in California. Should all food with GM be marked as so? And is it up to the food with GM to say this product may contain traces of GM, or is up to the non GM to do the tests and label theirs as GM free. I am guessing that in our local supermarkets, up to 60% of food will already contain GM products.

 

We also talked about a programme called CSA. Where consumers purchase ‘shares’ in farms at the beginning of the season, and throughout the season the consumers are delivered a basket of fruit and vegies on a weekly basis. So the farmer is getting the money in the bank early before the season starts, and able to use it for their variable costs. The consumer takes on a small part of the risk as if the crop fails, they don’t get it in their basket. Most years though the consumer gets double the value of their shares in fruit and vegie, making everyone happy. A great idea for the connection between farm gate and the consumer, but more based on higher income families.

 

We headed to PENNSTATE university next to meet with  rural leadership group. We had some lunch and a short chat with these enthusiastic people, that are trying to foster the development of young ag community levels. We then had a tour of the Ag facilities of the University with 3 young students. We finished with an icecream from their ‘famous’ icecreamery. They use the milk from their cows on their farm to make the icecream, and yes t was delicious!

We wandered campus for a while, then headed home back to Harrisburg. A night in tonight, we found some free dinner at the hotel, so looking forward to an early night!