Sep 4, 2017

Val Farmer to keynote EXPO farm marketing program

Val Farmer will make the keynote presentation for the farm marketing program at the 2017 Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO. This year’s EXPO will be held Dec. 5-7 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Farmer is a well-known clinical psychologist and syndicated columnist, specializing in rural mental health and family relationships. Besides his work with marital relationships and rural mental health issues, Farmer has developed mediation and conflict resolution consultation services to family businesses, particularly farm and ranch families in business together. Several national farm publications have carried his ideas on how to integrate a business and family perspective into a viable business structure and the communication/organizational skills involved for successful team building. The keynote address will be in the morning farm marketing session on Tuesday, Dec. 5.

Farmer will also make a presentation in the farm marketing business management session on Wednesday morning. On Thursday morning, he will lead a workshop focused on farm succession planning.

Ron Goldy, senior Extension vegetable educator, and Bob Tritten, Extension fruit educator, are again heading up planning for the farm marketing program.

“The number of farm market owners and employees attending the EXPO has grown significantly,” Goldy said. “Last year, 516 farm marketers from 35 states and two Canadian provinces attended the EXPO. Our challenge is to continue offering a program that is interesting and informative to this large group of farm marketers.”

A pre-expo bus tour of regional farm market operations will again be featured as part of the program planned for farm marketers. The bus tour will be held on Monday, Dec. 4, the day before the EXPO opens. It provides a great opportunity to learn best practices from successful farm markets, as well as to network with other farm marketers. Last year, 160 participants boarded four buses for the full-day tour. New markets and different areas of Michigan are visited each year. For information on this year’s tour, visit www. vegetablegrowersnews.com.

Morning and afternoon farm marketing sessions will be offered on both Tuesday and Wednesday at the 2017 EXPO. These sessions will offer a number of interesting and informative presentations, including a session, “Say Cheese! Establishing Your On-farm Photography Policy,” by Barb Pachulski. There will also be a “show and tell” presentations by successful farm marketers. A farm marketers’ roundtable session to share successful marketing ideas will again be held on Tuesday after the trade show closes. This is always a popular session.

On Thursday, several in-depth workshops covering bakery ideas, farm marketing basics, and use of social media are being planned for farm marketers, in addition to Farmer’s farm succession planning workshop.

The Michigan Greenhouse Growers EXPO will again be held in conjunction with the Great Lakes EXPO. For farm marketers who operate greenhouses, this will offer another educational opportunity. Greenhouse education sessions will be open to all attendees. There will also be greenhouse product exhibitors in the trade show.

Farm marketers will also be interested in the crop information provided in more than 25 fruit and vegetable education sessions planned for Tuesday and Wednesday at the EXPO. This includes the fruit variety showcase on Tuesday, which will display and discuss some unique apple and other fruit varieties that have been successful at farm markets and U-pick operations. In addition, a number of general interest topics will be covered in other sessions, including food safety, labor, hoop houses and low tunnels, chestnut production, soil health, biological control of insects and diseases, and pollinators and pollination.

Other educational opportunities for farm marketers include a sweet cider session on Wednesday and a hard cider session on Thursday. Thursday’s schedule also includes a full day of programming for organic fruit and vegetable growers and sessions for those interested in farmers’ markets.

As program details become available, more information on the farm marketing program planned for the 2017 Great Lakes EXPO will be available at GLEXPO.com. You can also get news about the EXPO at Facebook.com/GLExpo and Twitter.com/GLEXPO. Registration information will be posted on the EXPO website in September.