Nourishing The Future

Nourishing The Future

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

The 39th annual Tilth Producers of Washington conference will be held at the Yakima Convention Center November 8 - 10. This year’s event titled “Nourishing the Future: Cultivating Our Farming Legacy” will include twenty-five workshops. Tilth Producers Executive Director, Michele Catalano, highlights a few of those.

CATALANO: One will be specifically geared towards beginning farmers - there’s crop planning, weed management, reduced till for cover cropping. We also will have a Spanish track, which is always very successful, and we have several topics being covered for that. There will be food safety compliance, which is currently a popular need for many folks. We have an opportunity to have folks come to us with “What’s Bugging Your Farm?”, is the title of that one, to look at insect and disease problems and have an opportunity with specialists to learn what might be happening and what they might be able to do to alleviate that.

Other workshops topics cover seed growing, leasing land, fire blight, renewable energy, draft horses, and farm financing. Preceding the conference on Friday will be the “Small Scale Livestock and Poultry Production” symposium hosted by WSU, and a high tunnel tour of three Yakima Valley organic farms. The conference also includes the annual organic wine tasting, auction, dance, and awards banquet where Tilth Producers will honor a Farmer and Advocate of the year. The conference wraps up on Sunday morning with the annual meeting and board elections.

CATALANO: This is an opportunity for our membership to hear what the board and staff have been up to for the year and to ask questions, and also for folks to run to be on the board.

Be sure to register for the conference early by visiting tilthproducers.org. October 21 is the deadline to avoid a late registration fee.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.