The U.S. Department of Agriculture encourages farmers to apply for grants helping them shift to this type of production.
The farm at WVU helps these farmers and teaches students about the benefits of organic farming.
The Organic Farm at West Virginia University sits on more than 70 acres of grassy land.
Looking around, you can see fruit trees, livestock, and farming equipment.
Here, Plant and Soil Sciences Professor James Kotcon and WVU students are experimenting with newer and safer methods to grow crops.
“Organic agriculture is one of the fastest growing sectors of the American food market; it’s been growing at something around the range of 20 percent per year for the last 15 or 18 years,” Kotcon said.
“With that kind of growth in the market, there’s a real opportunity for a lot of West Virginia farmers to capitalize on better prices for their products, as well as a more sustainable way of farming, and we think there’s a lot of opportunity in organic agriculture in the future.”
Kotcon says traditional farming, while it may have short term gains, has a long term negative impact on the surroundings.
“Organic growers believe, and I think our research shows, that finding ways of producing food without applying pesticides and putting out crops without synthetic fertilizers, is going to be better for the environment,” he said.
Kotcon drove me around in his cream colored truck, showing me the farm’s chickens that are being studied for optimum organic egg production.
There are also grapevines, fruit trees, and even a Biofuels Experiment.
“We started a new project this summer to evaluate different biofuel crops, things like canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, as an effort to assist growers who might be interested in evaluating alternative fuels for their farming operation,” Kotcon said.
“The production of biofuels, both in terms of corn for ethanol and soybean for biodiesel has been growing dramatically in recent years.
Our goal is to try and be able to identify systems where we can get optimum yields without using those synthetic chemicals that consume a significant portion of the energy that the crop is intended to save.”
Here at the farm, WVU students study organic farming and conduct experiments.
One of these students is Tiffany Fess, a doctoral student at the university.
Her dissertation compares crop growth in organic and conventional soil systems.
She hopes her project sheds light on how soil plays a part in organic crop production.
“I hope it just really helps industry in general,” Fess said.
“It might be worth the conventional farmer to start putting more effort into maintaining soil quality.”
On August 5, the farm will have a field day for the community where workshops will demonstrate the research done and the public will be able to tour the farm on wagon rides.