Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News

Address any questions or comments regarding this newsletter to the individual authors listed after each article or to its editors, Nathan Johanning, 618-939-3434, njohann@illinois.edu or Bronwyn Aly 618-695-6060, baly@illinois.edu. The Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News is available on the web at: http://ipm.illinois.edu/ifvn/. To receive or be removed from email notification of new postings of this newsletter, contact Nathan Johanning or Bronwyn Aly at the phone numbers or email addresses above.

In This Issue:

Upcoming programs (listings for beginning and established growers)

News & Announcements (Local Foods, Local Farms, Local People)

Regional Reports (St. Louis metro east, southern Illinois (Murphysboro), southern Illinois (Waterloo), Dixon Springs)

Less Seriously

University of Illinois Extension educators and specialists in fruit and vegetable production and pest management

Upcoming programs

See the University of Illinois Extension Local Food Systems and Small Farms Team’s website at:
http://web.extension.illinois.edu/smallfarm/ and the calendar of events at http://web.extension.illinois.edu/units/calendar.cfm?UnitID=629.  

• The Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable & Farm Market Expo (GLEXPO) is returning to its traditional face-to-face format, and will be held December 7-9, 2021 at the DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Registration for the program itself will be coming at a later date, but you should make your room reservations now as hotels near the conference site tend to fill up quickly.  Visit their website for additional details as they become available at https://glexpo.com/expo-schedule/ or visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GLExpo/
• 2022 KY Fruit and Vegetable Conference will be held January 2-4, 2022 in Bowling Green, KY.  Registration and conference information can be found at https://kyhortcouncil.org/2022-ky-fruit-vegetable-conference/
• 2022 Illinois Specialty Crops Conference is also returning to a face-to-face format January 5-7, 2022 at the Springfield Crowne Plaza.  Our program team is well on their way to providing another great program, so we should have program details available in the coming months.
• Great Plains Grower School (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa) will be held January 7-8, 2022 in St. Joseph, MO.  Registration and conference information can be found at https://www.greatplainsgrowersconference.org/

News & Announcements

Local Foods, Local Farms, Local People – The brand new blog kicking off this month from the University of Illinois Extension Local Food Systems and Small Farms team starts with the article below.

Homework, teamwork, and passion power the real food for real people operation of central IL farmer

It was a strangely mild, pleasant, and cloudy day in early July when I visited with Jeremy Zobrist of Rock Creek Farms and sister company, Top Fox Snacks, based in Danvers IL, west of Bloomington-Normal. The topography, while approaching the Mackinaw River valley, is surprising. Yes, hills in central Illinois! –. Jeremy comes from a long line of cash grain farmers but is now growing pumpkins. This may seem really “out there” to those who don’t know that Illinois grows more than 90% of the country’s pie pumpkins. However, Jeremy has almost 1000 acres of pumpkins, not grown for pie filling, nor Jack-o-Lanterns, but for delicious, nutritious pumpkin seeds— Rock Creek Farm’s primary product.

Folks around here are used to the sight of acre upon acre of corn and soybean; therefore, it’s jarring to see a several hundred-acre field of pumpkins in central Illinois, but exciting too. Jeremy works with a handful of area farmers to achieve the acreage and scale necessary to justify mechanized pumpkin harvesting and processing equipment. One of these contract farmers explained that he really appreciated the opportunity to diversify his rotation away from cash grain to pumpkins. Jeremy elaborated, “contract growing of specialty crops is on the rise because farmers want and need more diverse rotations to avoid a buildup of pest pressure and other problems. They are looking for ways to steward their land better by reducing soil degradation, and this opportunity helps fulfill that goal. Additionally, grain farmers are taking pride in having stuff grown on their farm and showing up on stores shelves, especially if it’s a healthy food product.”

Specialty crops products being grown for farmers markets, small groceries stores, co-ops, and CSAs is not really a new phenomenon, even in the Midwest.  Local foods and small farms production has taken off over at least the last decade, and shows no signs of slowing down. However, most of the farm products fueling this trend are from agricultural production, like honey, vegetables and fruits, mushrooms, flowers, and nuts. Only a small percentage of those products are value-added, where primary ingredients are combined and processed to achieve a greater value to the customer at a price premium friendly to the producer. Generally speaking, value-adding can be a challenge.
That said, Jeremy Zobrist is certainly not afraid of a challenge, and he’s overcome a few to get where he is today. He grew up a farm kid, on a farm producing corn, soybean, alfalfa and hogs. “So very much so I come from a traditional ag and farming experience. But I had a dream to do something beyond that. I knew I wanted to grow real food for people, I just didn’t know how I was going to get from Point A to Point Z.” But he put one foot in front of the other, got to work, and pursued the dream.

In a past life, Jeremy was a Certified Public Accountant; shortly after, he became part of the food industry by purchasing a stake in a food company, but his farm dreams were always in the back of his mind. So, he conducted a market analysis, to try to turn the company in a new direction, and back towards the farm dream. Jeremy saw it like this, “We wanted to do something different; we asked ourselves: what crop grows well in Illinois, that we can add value to, that would yield a product that consumers already buy at scale, that there is a domestic supply chain need for?” The answer is pumpkins, for pumpkin seeds.

Currently, the U.S. imports tons of pumpkin seeds per year from China. Jeremy saw that the need was there, and to help close the gap domestically would be an added bonus. According to Michigan State University Extension, 100g of pumpkin seeds contains almost 6 grams of protein, and almost as much fat and fiber. Additionally, most of the fat in pumpkin seeds are mono and polyunsaturated i.e. healthy fats. Jeremy’s dream to be able to grow something healthy on the farm for direct consumption began to take shape.
Since having that “ah-hah” moment, Jeremy, his wife and team have annually attended “the school of hard knocks, for sure.” But they’ve kept at it— starting with 20 acres of pumpkins, while growing some backup grain crops. This year, four seasons in, they’re growing 1000 acres, and are shooting for almost 2000 acres of on-farm and contract pumpkins next season. Top Fox Snacks pumpkin seed products are now available on Amazon and in local grocery stores as well as chain grocers like Sprouts, Safeway, and Hy-Vee. Check out the “seeds” of their story here!

Jeremy explains the biggest challenge for Illinois specialty crops growers as “always, always marketing, or the market. If you have a really strong demand for your product, a lot of the other problems will get figured out pretty quick.” But do your consumers want or need what you’re selling, at a price you can make a little money at? Jeremy offers sage advice for farmers seeking new markets: “It’s always sexy and exciting to plant a new, cool crop, but if nobody will buy it (when they figure out what it is and what they should do with it), then you have at best a hobby and at worst a losing proposition. That’s brutal, and nobody in the local foods movement wants to hear that, but it’s real. There’s a psychological component here: is what I’m doing even worth doing? But if you’ve done your homework, trialed some products and you know you have a market and you know someone will pay some amount that will allow you to profit, even a little bit, you can deal with the day-to-day psychology. Otherwise, it’s not worth it and burnout, disillusionment and pain will follow.”

 As for the future of the operation, in addition to scaling up the acreage, Jeremey is working on improving their business marketing their agronomic systems to make their crops more climate change-resistant; and their harvest, drying, cleaning, and packaging techniques. Jeremy attributes their day-to-day success to “building the best team possible. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets done without a great team.”

Borrowing from the late Chris Blanchard and his Farmer to Farmer Podcast, I asked Jeremy these last two questions.
Favorite crop to grow:
“My first love was and always has been corn. There’s a unique smell of corn dust in the field during harvest on a nice fall day with a chill in the air. Then there’s the sights and sounds of 250 bushels of corn and the auger wagon struggling to keep up with the combine. There’s something romantic and visually appealing about how it grows all year, EVEN IF it doesn’t make you any money some years. Practically, though, the answer to your question is pumpkins.”
If you could go back in time and tell your beginning farmer self one thing, what would it be?
“Have faith! You’ll figure it out!” As long as you’re willing to be humble and hungry and build a good team. Be grateful for the school of hard knocks, because that’s where you will learn the most.”

Fall pumpkin harvest on Rock Creek Farms, 2020; Photo Credit: Jeremy Zobrist

Integrated Pest Management at the University of Illinois
Department of Crop Sciences
Illinois Natural History Survey

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