Project Overview
FNE99-289
Project Type: Farmer
Funds awarded in 1999: $4,100.00
Projected End Date: 12/31/2002
Region: Northeast
State: New York
Project Leader:
Dori Green
Oak Grove Community Farm
Creating a Demonstration Agroforestry Field
Commodities
- Fruits: berries (other)
- Additional Plants: herbs, ornamentals
Practices
- Crop Production: agroforestry, intercropping
- Education and Training: demonstration, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research, technical assistance
- Farm Business Management: whole farm planning, budgets/cost and returns, feasibility study
- Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, habitat enhancement, hedges - woody
- Production Systems: agroecosystems, integrated crop and livestock systems
- Sustainable Communities: public participation, sustainability measures
Proposal summary:
Many Northeast small-holders struggle with an overabundance of poor, rocky fields. Some can buy better growth places at the bottom of the hill, but those spots are becoming harder to find and still harder to afford as they continue to be built up into apartment complexes and shopping malls. More farmers will be encouraged to grow market vegetables on their rocky hillsides rather than just cutting hay off them year after year– or putting them into rotations that send too much of their remaining topsoil into the rivers at every spring rain– if they can visit demonstration plots to see the advantages and techniques needed for use of permanent beds and trees.
