Buckwheat Field Day in New York

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New York Buckwheat Farming Field Day 2015

Learn about commercial buckwheat grain production and meet other buckwheat growers at the Northeast Annual Buckwheat Field Day. There will be information valuable to old hands as well as new or prospective growers. Buckwheat tends to have a somewhat different place in conventional and organic rotations, but the production of the crop is essentially the same. We will speak about how buckwheat fits into organic field crop rotations where it has value for soil building and weed suppression.  We will see how effectively it addresses the weed concerns on this farm, which are mainly foxtail and Canada thistle. We will evaluate crop progress to anticipate what the yield might be, whether plant vigor is in the desired range and how to do those evaluations on your own farm. There will be excellent opportunities for farmer-to-farmer learning.

Don Hatfield is hosting the field day. He has been producing grain near Owasco Lake for many years, and has been Certified Organic since 2006. This is the second year of buckwheat production, so Don has a lot of keen observations about how it has (or has not) met his expectations and management needs.

Thomas Bjorkman is a professor in the horticulture department at Cornell. He has worked closely with the organic community in New York since the early 1990s, largely on issues related to organic vegetable production. He has also been the leading authority on Eastern buckwheat production for the same time, and has been holding the annual buckwheat field day since 1994.  Information about buckwheat production as well as previous field days can be found online at www.hort.cornell.edu/bjorkman/lab/buck/.

Title:                    Northeast Annual Buckwheat Field Day

Date/Time:       Wednesday, August 26^th, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Location:             Hatfield Farm, 2137 Rte. 38A, Moravia,  NY 13118

Registration:      Free to public. No registration required.

This event is produced by NOFA-NY and Cornell University with support from USDA/OREI.