hello my name is Kate Stephens and today I'm going to explore how we can bridge the gap between
farmers and consumers to explain the importance of sustainable agriculture the peat of just a
few Acres Farm YouTube it's such a fun Channel I try to make it that way so could you explain
to me a little bit about your YouTube channel and what you do yeah we have a small farm it's
only 45 Acres which is small for a livestock Farm around here and we sell all of our products direct
here at the Ithaca Farmers Market that's very incredible and why do you think it's important
for people to know where their food comes from oh my gosh food's what sustains us right and
if you go to the supermarket a lot of the time you have no idea how your food was grown or even
where it was grown places like this you think of farmers market you know exactly where your food
was grown because if you sell it here you have to grow it yourself so people can ask the details
about how this steak was grown you can make that connection that's pretty much impossible at the
supermarket yes and would you say it's important to convey the message of sustainable agriculture
I do I mean that's kind of a part of what we grow certainly and I think that a lot of farming has
gotten a bad rep with the public lately because of what they read in the news about farming's
impact on the environment it's really important to sort of walk the walk with what you're eating
by helping to support Farmers that are improving the land and lessening the emissions that their
operations create yes absolutely would you see that a lot of your viewers knew about agriculture
and where their food comes from before watching your channel no my world is all about farming so
I just assume that the public knows you know what we knew and we grew up on a farm and you know we
know how things work uh being on YouTube it's amazing sometimes I'll read comments to videos
and things like that and think wow you know these folks really think that meat is grown
on the supermarket shelf or in the back room and there's a whole side of it that they don't see so
education is a big thing and thinking of you know farmer versus like real people that have their own
struggles and they're trying to do the best they can and still make a living out of making it real
to people that's a huge part of doing YouTube well thank you so much I really appreciate this you're
welcome Kate thank you Kate for giving me the opportunity to to talk about the importance of
family farms and why we need to support them you know here in Montana we have many farms that are
operated and worked by multi-generations well let's let's take the Stephens farm for example
okay you're working with your your dad your uncles your your grandpa dad and I are here at lunch and
also Grandpa and I bet you many times your your family discussions talk about what's important
to the farm what happened to the farm last year that we could do better and today I'm giving you
a wheat update and grandpa will say well we tried that 30 40 years ago and talk about what went
wrong with that and how maybe it could be tried again and improved these are what the lentils
look like different colors there's green lentils red lentils yellow letters black lemon this is
making the farm sustainable so now I'm going to step outside the combine and show you how bad
this sawfly damage really is this is where it's important to keep families on these Family Farms
to make sure we have a secure food supply that is being sustainably produced from one generation to
the Next Generation now I'm over at the 13 bins part of the original Homestead and here is planted
lentils the Family Farm is feature neighbors it feeds the world I'm now here with Thor Ochsner
an organic farmer from Newfield New York could you tell me a little bit about your offering so
I've been farming for 35 years here and uh we farmed 1200 Acres of organic certified grain
crop and we grow a lot of different cover crops to build soil and fix nitrogen and do some different
things that help make our farm more sustainable and why do you think sustainable agriculture is
important because if we don't start changing the way we do agriculture we are rapidly running out
of fossil fuels the herbicides that we're using the plants are becoming resistant to them and I
feel like we need to grow food in a manner which more closely resembles nature than what most of
industrial agriculture is doing right I mean I started out as a conventional farmer and I
made the switch through looking at my practices and deciding that if I'm going to spray poisons
on my crops poisons are going to end up in the groundwater neighbors are going to drink the
groundwater I'm going to drink the groundwater the ground rotors going to go into the stream
which I fish in and eat the fish all those different things sort of what a light in my
head saying that this cannot go on forever without us creating a huge problem how can we produce our
food going into the future so that the next time I think it's honorable what you're doing actually
it's also a lot of fun well that's just those are knock on pluses thank you so much for watching bye