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Show Ranchers, Farmers Consider New Ways To Diversify Agriculture At GIDI-Sponsored Tropic Seminar TROPIC Over 40 Garfield County ranchers and farmers intent on diversifying their operations attended at-tended last week's special seminar in Tropic to hear of innovative new projects underway in Utah and to learn of several such possibilities adaptable to the county's resources. Rod Brown, dean of the College of Agriculture at Utah State University, Uni-versity, outlined a new pig project being initiated in Milford by a North Carolina firm. Over 1,200 weaner pigs will be shipped to Mil-ford Mil-ford in February to get the operation opera-tion underway. It promises to make pig production the largest agricultural agricul-tural project in the state. Brown explained how the concept con-cept is becoming a reality for local ranchers within a 75-mile radius of Milford who will be actively involved in-volved in production. The initial investment for the project is $150,000, with North Carolina pig ranchers expecting to pay off their investment in about seven years. Once paid off, their pig production project in Utah is expected to yield them about $50,000. He described another project, potentially for the Fillmore area, that could involve 20-million broiler chickens and a hay industry for Delia to provide hay for marketing market-ing in urban areas in 7-11 stores for as much as $450 a ton. Brown also spoke about meats for the 21st century, citing innovative innova-tive new lamb products, jerky prod- ucts and a unique patent for cooking cook-ing microwave steaks "to perfection." perfec-tion." The new method involves searing the steak on each side for 10 seconds at 2,000 degrees, and then packaging the steak to be cooked later in a microwave oven one minute for well done, 45 seconds for medium and 30 seconds for rare. In addition to the convenience conve-nience benefit, the process also kills all bacteria. Brown's suggestions for immediate imme-diate answers for Garfield County's agricultural economy include raising rais-ing vegetables already proven to grow extremely well in the area such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, cab-bage, etc. He also recommended a hay production project, selling cattle cat-tle through a co-op marketing arrangement ar-rangement and other projects that would take advantage of the enormous enor-mous tourist market in the county. The seminar was sponsored by Garfield Industrial Development, Inc. (GIDI), and will be followed with a survey of local ranchers and farmers to determine their interest in participating in possible agricultural agricul-tural diversification projects in Garfield County. |
