Maine Agricultural Trades Show this week
The 75th annual Maine Agricultural Trades Show, the largest of its kind in the state, starts Tuesday and runs through Thursday at the Augusta Civic Center.
The free show includes more than 100 exhibits and three days of sessions, and attracts thousands of people. Admission is free and open to the public.
The first day focuses on developments by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
Maine has a reputation for bucking a long-term downtrend of farm growth across the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture census found the number of farms across the country fell 4% to 2.1 million, but in Maine, the number of farms rose by 38 and the acreage by more than 100,000 from 2007 to 2012. In addition, Maine's crop value rose 24% during the five years to about $773 million. Maine leads New England for the total number of farms, with 8,174 in 2012, followed by Massachusetts (7,755) and Vermont (7,335).
The show is put on by the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, the state’s lead agency dealing with all aspects of the food system from the field to the table.
According to the Morning Sentinel, the newly minted Maine chapter of the Farmer Veteran Coalition will be a feature of the this year’s show, providing time on Thursday in the Somerset Room for networking for veteran farmers, a panel discussion to introduce veteran farmers to non-veteran farmers, marketers and agricultural service providers and other industry professionals, and a chapter meeting, which is open to the public.
Chapter organizer Jerry Ireland told the paper the expo is an opportunity to expand the reach of a program that’s intended to attract veterans to agriculture and to raise the profile of the Homegrown By Heroes branding program.
Over the next decade, an estimated 100,000 farmers will retire. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense is expected to retire twice as many veterans. Ireland is hoping some of them might consider agriculture.
“To hold [onto] the farms, we have to create 100,000 new farmers,” he said.
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