Visits from foreign buyers play a role in sustaining certain agriculture markets in the Midwest. Plus, educators, designers and engineers team up to try to fund the next big innovation for small farms.
Carolyn Scherf, a farmhand from the Iowa City-area; Troy Washam, co-owner of a small farm near DeWitt, Iowa; and Grant Schultz, co-director of Farm Hack Iowa, stand in the University of Iowa Garden at the conclusion of the first Midwestern Farm Hack.
"Hack” isn’t a word usually associated with agriculture, but that might be starting to change. A group of small farmers across the country has started to come together to pool their ideas for solutions to small-farming challenges, just like computer hackers working together to solve computer issues. They call it Farm Hack.