Farm as Classroom

The Farm Classroom Proves a Profitable Marketing Ploy

Feedback from visiting schoolchildren (such as 'This is the best tour our class has been on') inspired Pam and David Bosserd to create a curriculum for their young guests. Photo by Pam Bosserd

To teach schoolchildren two generations removed from the farm about agriculture - and to coax their parents to her retail farmstand - Michigan farmer Pam Bosserd developed a kid-friendly curriculum that gets at that most basic of questions: Where does food come from? With a SARE producer grant, Bosserd created easy-to-conceptualize demonstrations such as a pizza garden featuring tomatoes, peppers, basil, onions, wheat for crusts, a cow for cheese and a pig for sausage. A popular corn maze, shaped like Michigan, contains signs telling visitors what grows in different parts of the state. The school tours have paid off in new adult customers. With 1,500 cars a day passing her farm near Battle Creek, Bosserd had enough customers to double her vegetable acreage each year since she began growing produce in 1997, injecting new profits into what used to be a more traditional row crop and cattle farm. The school tours and seasonal offerings such as a pumpkin scavenger hunt offer a new, dual-purpose strategy. 'We get them out here for entertainment in the fall and hand them a brochure saying we're open for vegetables on May 1,' she says. Bosserd hasn't rested on her laurels; she hopes to expand into direct sales of her farm's beef and to grow specialty vegetables for the Asian ethnic market. For more information, go to www.sare.org/projects/ and search for FNC98-204

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