A pair of food and agriculture podcasters from across the country got a taste of Berks County, thanks to Reading Area Community College’s Miller Center for the Arts.
The theater at 4 N. Second St. recently hosted Discovering Ag podcasters, Natalie Kovarik and Tara Vander Dussen.
The partners, who bill themselves as millennial farmers, influencers, speakers and agriculture trailblazers, offer a weekly overview of the latest trends and innovations at the intersection of agriculture and culture.
The event at RACC was their first live podcast.
The women learned about Berks agriculture from Pamela Menet, county director of community and economic development, and sampled foods made by local producers as well as Menet’s homemade Dutchy staples and treats.
“We’d been thinking about having a podcast event, but we weren’t sure which podcast to select,” said Anthony DeMarco, RACC’s vice president for college advancement and executive director of the Miller Center.
Miller Center Advisory Council member Alex Goodman recommended Discovering Ag, he said.
Menet, who also is on the council, loved the idea and encouraged DeMarco to pursue it.
“Considering Berks County’s strong agriculture base and the many connections we have to pop culture, it seemed like a good fit,” he said.
Before the main event, Kovarik of Nebraska, a fourth-generation cattle rancher turned social entrepreneur, and Vander Dussen of New Mexico, a fifth-generation dairy farmer and environmental scientist, visited Oley Valley High School to speak with some of the students involved in the area FFA chapter.
“I was absolutely blown away today by how robust that FFA program is, what the people are doing, what they (the students) were exposed to,” Kovarik said. “They are really fostering youth to set them up to be very successful in agriculture for themselves and the state.”
Once settled onto the stage of the theater, the women had plenty of questions about farming in Berks. And Menet, who oversees the county’s department of agriculture as part of her job, was the ideal person to provide answers.
“The agriculture sector in Berks County directly contributes about $1.45 billion to the local economy,” she said.
Menet said the county’s 1,800 farms, totaling 208,000 acres, account for 43% of the county’s land mass. And with 828 forever farms, totaling 79,046 acres, Berks is a leader in agricultural land preservation, ranking third in nation.
While much of the audience was made up of area farmers and others who work in agriculture, there were plenty of lay folks, too, and nearly everyone learned something about the county’s diverse ag industry.
Top outdoor-grown crops in Berks include sweet corn, pumpkins, tomatoes, apples, peaches and grapes, Menet said.
Mushrooms dominate indoor production, she said, noting family-owned Giorgi Global Holdings is the largest single-location mushroom farm in the world, producing more than 180 million pounds annually.
Berks’ top commodity has moved in recent decades from dairy to poultry and eggs, Menet said.
“This county eats a lot of chicken,” she said. “We also have Jurgielewicz Farms, Tasty Duck, which with 27 contract growers, produces 6 million of the Pekin breed each year.”
Dairy and beef also make up a large part of the county’s agriculture, Menet said.
Vander Dussen said her research on the county showed Berks also produces flowers, trees and other plants in its nurseries and greenhouses.
“And I thought this was interesting: Christmas tree farms,” she said.
There are more than 20 Christmas tree farms in the county, Menet said, and several promote the growing agri-tourism business with cut-your-own options, wagon rides and Santa visits.
The county’s diverse Latino population also is having an impact on local agriculture, she said.
About 23% of the Berks population now identifies as Latino or Hispanic and the county’s restaurants are reflecting that, Menet said, noting at least 10 different styles of South and Central American traditional foods are served locally.
“Our crop farming community is responding to this diversity,” Menet said, “and we are seeing more variations in crops — like peppers — being grown locally to meet the market demands.”
After the interview segment, the visitors sampled locally produced bolognas, cheeses, mustard, iced tea, ice cream and more. They also got a taste of Berks’ comfort foods and snack foods, such as county-made cheesesteaks, pretzels and potato chips.
Menet put together a traditional Dutch platter of ring bologna and cheese for the women to sample. Naturally, no such platter would be complete without red beet eggs, so Menet made a batch.
Kovarik and Vander Dussen were a bit hesitant before biting into the pickled eggs. Both showed greater enthusiasm when tasting Menet’s homemade shoofly pie and asked for the recipe.
The audience also got to sample county-produced yogurt, teas, processed meats, cheeses and other foods in the lobby before and after the show.
Source: Berkshire mont
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