Small-farm event offers ideas for growing food, making money

Learn how to farm with little or no equipment at the “Bringing Back the American Small Farm” conference, March 8-9 at the West Plains Civic Center.

Small-acreage  and backyard farmers can learn how to grow food and make money, says University of Missouri Extension business specialist Bronwen Madden.

Topics include no-till farming, farming with little or no equipment, winter food production, how to build a greenhouse, understanding USDA meat grades, soil nutrition, butchering small farm animals and more.

Oscar “Hank” Will III, editorial director of Mother Earth News and Grit magazine, speaks on “Low to No Equipment Farming.” He tells how to take make a small-scale farm operation into a high-cash one. He markets beef, lamb and poultry products, as well as native perennial plants.

Patrice Gros, operator of the 6-acre, USDA-certified organic Foundation Farm near Eureka Springs, Ark., also is a keynote speaker.

Sheila Long of Cabool Kountry Meats gives a session on butchering farm animals and meat cutting.

Other speakers include MU Extension horticulturist Patrick Byers; Dan Hill, ag market reporter for Missouri Department of Agriculture; Jamie Kurtz, Natural Resources Conservation Service; Charlie Potts, USDA agricultural market reporter; Touria Eaton, extension horticulturist for Lincoln University; and Norman Kilmer, Morgan County Seed.

There will be a trade show held with the conference.

The West Plains Daily Quill newspaper, Ozark Farmers Co-op and Ozark Radio Network sponsor the event. Other sponsors include Missouri State University at West Plains, MU Extension’s Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Centers, the city of West Plains, Small Business Administration and Ozarks Small Business Incubator.

For more information, go to www.AmericanSmallFarm.com or call 417-293-0590.