RUTLAND, Ohio – In late September, 50 participants gathered at the United Plant Savers Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary in Rutland for the 2023 Southern Ohio Forest Farming Conference (SOFFC). The event was produced in collaboration with the Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmers Coalition and Rural Action.

Rural Action’s Sustainable Forestry program works with private landowners, government agencies, and non-profit partners to promote the development of sustainable, innovative, and integrated forest management strategies with a focus on the production and marketing of high-value non-timber forest products.

Experienced and novice participants interested in forest farming and sustainable income sources learned about multiple forest farming topics and strategies including site selection, plant propagation, grafting, elderberry production, harvesting, post-harvest handling, processing, and business planning, as well as medicinal plant walks.

“Forest farming is what we would refer to as an agroforestry practice, a coupling of agriculture and forestry, where you are conducting agriculture amongst trees and shrubs,” said Andrea Miller, sustainable forestry program manager at Rural Action in Athens, Ohio. “Agroforestry has gotten a lot of attention recently because of climate change.”

Forest farming, practiced around the world, utilizes natural conditions to intentionally cultivate edible or medicinal crops under a forest canopy. The agroforestry approach provides additional income opportunities for farmers and landowners through ecologically sound practices.

“You’re using the forest that’s already in existence to grow these things with very minimal disturbance and you could grow a variety of native understory species,” Miller said.

“The species that we primarily work with are American ginseng, black cohosh, golden seal, and ramps,” Miller said. “Forest farming can also include paw paws, persimmons, or even log-grown mushrooms.”

Operational scale is an important factor in determining how labor-intensive a forest farming endeavor might be. “For example, if you wanted to go out and plant 100 pounds of golden seal rhizomes, that’s pretty labor intensive,” Miller said. Other factors affecting man-hours include site distance, conditions you have to traverse to get to your planting site, slope steepness, and what sort of invasive species might you have to clear in your understory in order to plant. “We always recommend that folks clear out invasive species before they plant, that way it’s something you don’t have to deal with at a later time,” Miller said.

Executive director of United Plant Savers, Dr. Susan Leopold, headlined an experienced list of presenters with deep roots in Appalachia and vast expertise in bio-diversity, herbal medicine, agroforestry, production and marketing.

In addition to leading a session, Miller was also one of the individuals responsible for orchestrating the third-year event and developing a conference program designed to meet the experience levels of the attendees and provide a variety of relevant topics.

“We know some of the people that come to this conference come every year, so we don’t necessarily want it to be the same every time,” Miller said. “This year we put a spin on marketing. We really wanted to focus on marketing your forest botanicals and also processing and drying them.”

The Appalachian Beginning Forest Farming Coalition, an organization funded through a USDA beginning farmer/rancher development grant, funded and subsidized the first two SOFFCs. “When we wrote that grant in collaboration with all of our partners across the region, led by Virginia Tech, we had two grant deliverables which were to host two Southern Ohio Forest Farming Conferences,” Miller said. “We decided to host a third because it seemed like people really liked the first two and it was very popular.”

Conference participants ranged from beginning farmers to those who have mastered the technical aspects of forest farming. “I would say it’s a pretty good mix of both,” Miller said. “The folks that we’re providing technical assistance to fall within that beginning farmer and rancher category. However, the USDA defines a beginning farmer as someone who’s farmed for under 10 consecutive years. So even folks that I would consider experts might still be considered beginning farmers by the USDA because they’ve been doing so for less than 10 years.”

Knowledgeable and experienced attendees are tapped as mentors, workshop leaders, and conference speakers.

Rural Action is grant-funded with a focus on forest farming in Ohio’s Appalachian counties, and beyond. “If someone calls me from Columbus of course I’m going talk to them, but we wouldn’t be able to conduct a site visit on their property,” Miller said. “I provide virtual and technical assistance to anyone who needs it. People have called me from Arkansas, Maine and Pennsylvania. We don’t serve those areas, but we’re happy to talk to those folks.”

Rural Action’s partnerships extend throughout Appalachia. “We have partners all over the region,” Miller said. “If someone reaches out to me and I can’t provide boots on the ground, or technical assistance, I’ll point them in the right direction to one of our partner organizations.”