The Year Of The Family Farm
January 10, 2014 
Did you know that 2014 is the International Year of Family Farming? In case you were not aware, this initiative is promoted by the World Rural Forum and supported by more than 360 international organizations.
According to the family farming campaign website (www.familyfarmingcampaign.net), “This worldwide celebration, declared by the United Nations General Assembly, aims to become a tool to stimulate active policies for sustainable development of agricultural systems-based farmer families.”
What is the campaign’s end game? The short answer is to feed people.
The production of vegetables in the U.S. has been built on family farms — from small growers with just a handful of acres to large ones such as those on our Top 100 list, to those in-between like this month’s cover subject, Ken Corbett Farms in Lake Park, GA, (see page 8). The goal of these growers is the same one promoted by the family farming campaign — to feed people.
For example, Ken Corbett Farms, which produces about 1,000 acres of vegetables each year, now includes Ken’s two sons and his daughter, all of whom are in their 20s. The next generation of Corbetts is getting prepared to, one day, run the farm. From what I learned after speaking with their father, they have a great teacher.
This operation, in particular, knowing that the plan is to be in vegetable production for the long haul, took the necessary steps to stay ahead of the Food Safety Modernization Act and recently had a state-of-the-art packing shed constructed. The Corbetts knew that to produce the safest produce possible — or be sustainable — they needed to go above and beyond to satisfy their customers and the law.
AVG wants to help the next generation of Corbetts, and others like them, continue what their parents and grandparents started. That is what our GenNext Growers program is all about. (For more information on GenNext, go to GenNextGrowers.com.)
As most of you have mastered production, or have excellent teachers, we want to help you in other areas such as advocacy and public speaking and discuss topics that will be instrumental to enabling you to move forward, promoting agriculture and having a better business sense along the way.
What’s our goal? We want to ensure the viability of the produce industry for generations to come so you can continue to reach the simple, and yet sometimes complicated, goal of feeding people.
So 2014 is not only the year of the family farm, it is the year for the next generation of growers, too.
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