Who’s your Iowa farmer?
Author
Published
12/12/2018
Farmers’ market season ended months ago, and walking up and down the aisles of a grocery store can feel pretty impersonal. But rest assured, there’s a farmer behind every food item and Beth Baudler wants you to meet them.
Baudler, a young Iowa livestock and crop farmer, works with a small team to introduce us all to farmers, events and initiatives in the state through a Facebook page called Who’s Your Iowa Farmer? She’s helping us meet farmers — like the multi-generational Kralik Family Farms, who raise cattle and grow crops in southwest Iowa and the Bentley family, who raise pigs in southern Iowa. Baudler sees it as part of her personal mission to connect consumers of all ages to the faces who raise and grow their food.
Iowa agriculture, as Baudler shows, is lot more diverse than most people in the state think. And delivering food to the supermarket also requires people who do the processing and transporting.
Baudler, who was recently recognized at the Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual meeting as an outstanding young farmer, has a diverse farm herself. She and her family raise crops, cattle, sheep and a few goats on her farm near Fontanelle.
So check out Facebook page Who’s Your Iowa Farmer? And if you have burning questions about how food is grown; just ask! Baudler and her team interact with their followers and want to make sure you have the correct information about how your food is produced.
So, the next time you visit the grocery store, you’ll think of the farmers who help produce the food you enjoy at home. You’ll be able put the Kralik family’s name and face to the steak you buy at the meat counter. And that’s pretty personal.
Bethany is commodities writer for the Iowa Farm Bureau.
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