Ag summit reviews age old issues

MOUNT VERNON — The age old problems of family succession, product promotion, water supply, innovation, costs, communicating with the public and, of course, weather were session topics at the fifth annual Skagit Ag Summit Jan. 31 at Washington State University’s Northwest Research Extension Center on Memorial Highway.

Mike Hughes, of Hughes Farms with land in Conway and Mount Vernon and Alan and Ben Mesman, of Mesman Farm on Chilberg Road near La Conner, shared their experiences of multi-generational farm ownership and management. Hughes returned to the farm after college to be the fourth generation participating. He said cousins coming up will be the fifth and sixth generations.

Alan Mesman recounted that his family bought near La Conner in 1942, after the Navy purchased their Whidbey Island farm. The family has reorganized after each of six deaths. Son Ben is the fourth generation now farming.

The younger farmers agreed that technology and planning push management changes in their family. Alan noted that “jumps in technology attract the next generation to the farm.”

Skagit County Extension Director Don McMoran, in his opening remarks, said the U.S. needs 21 million more farmers. Now he shared that farms are getting both larger and smaller “but losing in the middle,” that the traditional family farms are becoming rare. Hughes sees a “huge opportunity for small truck type farms . . . They can make small acreages work growing vegetables.”

Mid-afternoon Blake Vanfield, Skagit Genuine Valley marketing coordinator, championed the one year old branding strategy for promoting Skagit Valley farm products, telling the group “Our job is to move your story. We go to farms and open up the hood.” Genuine Skagit Valley’s purpose is operating as the promotion arm for area agriculture, to get the word out on the over 80 crops produced by valley farms up and down the I-5, from Vancouver to Portland.

The program’s two markets are farmers and their customers to whom they are promoting their products, she said. The goal is to grow from the 40 members who joined the first year to 200 members, that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” she said.

Vanfield can be reached at 360-336-3727 and [email protected].