COMMISSIONER BALL BRIEFS GATHERING

Youth Food Movement

On Center Stage Today

Young Farmers, Restauraters Keynote

Annual Farmers’ Museum Ag Forum

The Leonard sisters, Dana, left, and Kristen, in top photo, co-founders of Origins Cafe on Beaver Meadow Road, Cooperstown, and local exponents of the Youth Food Movement, organized the keynote panel at today’s “Celebration of Our Agricultural Community,” The Farmers’ Museum annual “Conference on Food & Farming,” which continues throughout the day at the Louis C. Jones Center.  Free, and public welcome.  The movement’s goal, as Dana put it, is to explore “the moral implications of what we’re eating” – in nutrition, justice and the fate of the Earth.  More practically, she added, “do any of these moral implications matter if the food doesn’t taste good?”  The two-pronged message was reflected in presentations by organic farmer Jesse Pascale, Rock Hill Farm, Mohawk, Ian Robb of Turtle Tree Seeds, Copake, Cooperstown Farmers’ Market Manager Shannon Kirch and others.  Hannah Savio, an educator with WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), told how one farmer explained why she got involved in the movement:  “It gives me hope.”  State Ag & Markets Commissioner Richard Ball, inset at left, who farms in the Schoharie Valley and runs the Carrot Barn near Middleburgh, began the morning with a “Report from Albany.”  He spoke about “Taste NY” stores, the closest on Exit 13 of the Thruway, on efforts to educate elementary students in growing vegetables, and – most current – the New York Grown & Certified program, which promotes family farms’ produce that is nutritious and is growing on conditions of good nutrient management.  (Jim Kevlin/AllOTSEGO.com_