Tanana Valley farmers these days are finding success means more than growing lettuce, barley and cows.
They're cultivating personal relationships with their customers, cutting out the middleman and creating new local markets whose needs they can respond to quickly and effectively.
Customer met producer at Knopp's Dairy during the Delta Farm Bureau's annual Farm Tour this month. Fairbanks resident Pat Johnson got to stomp through barns housing the very same cows that generate the milk she stocks in her fridge.
"I didn't realize they had such a huge dairy farm," she said. "That surprised me."
Long rows of black and white spotted Holsteins had just bedded down on fresh cushions of shredded newsprint, the first of three daily milkings complete. Working their jaws through slobbery mouthfuls of hay, they didn't seem to much mind the guests.
Paul Knopp is the second owner of the dairy, which was built in 1984. Each of the 80 cows delivers eight gallons of rich milk a day, which is drawn mechanically from their udders and pumped directly to coolers. The milk is processed at Delta's Northern Lights Dairy, then marketed throughout Delta and Fairbanks.
Along with cows, Knopp raises hay, a product he feeds to his dairy cows and which he sells. The farmer in turn supports other Delta agriculture, purchasing barley that he dishes out six times a day to his barnful of cows.
The symbiotic relationship is often found in Alaska farm country and is one of the things that fosters self-sufficiency in the state.
Farmers first cleared Tanana Valley fields in the early 1900s to provide food for gold seekers and hay for livestock. Commercial production began in earnest in the 1970s, and fluctuated in large part with market availability, said Jane Hamilton, Farm Bureau chapter secretary and state director.
The state, which offered land for farming, had its eggs in the export basket - a market that never developed.
"Now, we have a new group of farmers," Hamilton said. "They've each had to find their own markets. They find their customers, and they grow for their customers now."
Full Story: http://newsminer.com/news/2008/jul/27/farmers-grow-local-markets-alaska-produce/
