By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
As a part of Utah’s transition to the Organic Partnership Program, Utah State University Extension is preparing to host an Organic Crop School to assist producers in navigating the ins and outs of organic growth on Tuesday, Oct. 7. Steven Price from Extension joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss the event.
“This is part of Utah’s transition to the Organic Partnership Program, which is really geared toward getting producers to understand more about organic production and learning different ways that you could potentially transition to organic production,” explained Price of the event.
He added, “A lot of people are maybe more interested in organic production – one from maybe a societal or environmental side of things, but also profits. There are certain organic practices that you can adopt, which may ultimately lead to higher profits, benefiting both local producers and the environment. So we’re just trying to bring together people, organizations, different agencies and producers, so we can have a conversation and have a learning experience for everybody.”
Price also discussed what has led to the shift toward organic produce: “I think a lot of people were for a long time when we talked about agricultural production, it was very much focused on yield, and that is still somewhat the case. It’s just how much food I can produce on my given acres with the resources I have. But as people have started to become more interested or more concerned about what they’re putting in their bodies, where their food’s being sourced, there’s a growing public interest in organic products, especially a lot of niche organic products.”
As for what to expect from the crop school, Price shared,” We’ll have a few different agency speakers that will talk about different programs out there to kind of help in organics, how to get signed up to do organic practices, how to get certified for organic production. And then we’ll have a couple of talks there that are more of our traditional sort of topics for crop schools, where we’re actually talking production practices, the how-to sort of things.
The event is free and open to the public. However, registration is required. Registration is available by contacting the Carbon County extension office at (435) 636-3233 or online here.
Closing our conversation, Price shared,” If this is something you’re interested in, please contact your local Extension office and come for dinner. You might learn something on your way through Organic Crop School.”
The USU Extension Organic Crop School will be held at the Carbon County Events Center on Tuesday, Oct. 7, beginning at 5:30 p.m. To keep up with what’s happening at Extension, visit the group’s Facebook page.
