The three-year, $213,000 grant will fund several student researchers during the summers and will help farmers identify ways to diversify their revenue, a practice called pathway diversity, and connect with consumers. They\u2019ll also create a network among the farmers so they can learn from each other, according to Courtney Quinn<\/a>, a visiting research associate in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Sustainability Sciences.<\/p>\n \u201cFarms provide more than just food,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cThey can be a livelihood as well as habitat for biodiversity, soil sequestration, agritourism and a community hub.\u201d<\/p>\n Pigs enjoy life at Rambling Rosa Farm.<\/p><\/div>\n Quinn; Karen Allen<\/a>, assistant professor of earth, environmental and sustainability sciences and anthropology; and John Quinn<\/a>, associate professor of biology; are the principal investigators. They are members of the Coupled Human and Ecological Sustainability Solutions (CHESS) lab, which fosters faculty interdisciplinary research. Students working on the project are Marchant Harris \u201922, Gracie Bartel \u201922, Holly Brown \u201923 and Ashley Razo \u201924.<\/p>\n This past summer the group used a tool created by John Quinn called the healthy farm index to measure the farms\u2019 diversity and sustainability, ecologically and economically. They interviewed farmers, those in the research group and others (including politics and international affairs assistant professor Brittany Arsiniega, who co-owns Rambling Rosa Farm), about developing models for diversifying their businesses to become more sustainable. They also looked at the farmers\u2019 relationships with each other, as well as with related non-profit organizations and businesses, and they prepared a consumer survey for existing farm customers. Small farmers who aren\u2019t part of the study cohort were also interviewed, and will get to share in the results.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to understand the relationships between farmers and consumers to better equip farmers to take advantage of pathway diversity opportunities in order to create a more resilient local food system,\u201d Quinn said.<\/p>\n In coming years, the data will be used to test methods for how farmers with the five-farm cohort connect with customers and communicate lesser known practices of promoting biodiversity and habitat preservation, and they\u2019ll survey the general public about their willingness to pay for those practices, Quinn said.<\/p>\n The folks at Oak Hill Caf\u00e9 and Farm are excited about working with the researchers.<\/p>\n \u2018We think it\u2019s a very important topic to branch out the links between farms and customers,\u201d said David Porras, a co-owner and chef at Oak Hill Caf\u00e9 and Farm. \u201cOut of this research we can get information we can use to attract more people to healthy eating, and minimal mileage or zero emissions\u201d for either food or diners to travel.<\/p>\n Haley Disinger \u201920, a farm manager at Oak Hill, says one of her goals for the research is to find out if consumers value regenerative farming. She talks with customers about their practices, but says there are many people she doesn\u2019t get to reach. She wants to make the farm an educational space.<\/p>\n Lori Nelsen, a co-owner of Oak Hill, hopes the research leads to a farmer\u2019s coalition in which they can share growing methods and other helpful information. She also hopes the information will help consumers realize that spending a little more on healthful food can mean spending less on health care. \u201cIt\u2019s preventative,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited to see what\u2019s going to happen in three years,\u201d Porras said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Consumers generally know about the \u201cfarm-to-table\u201d movement, but do they know about regenerative and permaculture farming the restaurants are often practicing, and are they willing to pay a little more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":389,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,71,19,37,1],"tags":[1073,1074,1075,1076,207,694,287,208],"class_list":["post-9566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-anthropology","category-biology","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-anthropology","tag-farm","tag-farming","tag-student-research","tag-sustainable-agriculture","tag-sustainable-farming","tag-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/news.furman.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/LoverFarms_Sustainability-Pig-7.21.jpg\")
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