by Rich Cohen

Created on: June 01, 2008

We're looking at how farmers can profit from farrow land. With ever growing interest in supporting US farms, along with the rapid increase in awareness of climate change and reducing our impact on the earth, an opportunity exists to promote use of US-based farrow land for developing alternative products.
Our company, Distant Village Packaging (www.distantvillage.com) works with communities to provide work, income, and pride in making paper and packaging from natural materials such as tall wild grass, abaca, mulberry, and other natural fiber. Currently, we are working with rural areas in foreign countries. Our market has been growing consistently and we're more and more interested in how we can serve US market with US product. A friend of mine has a family farm in Iowa and he presented and idea which I think is quite intriguing, and I hope to get some feedback.

We think working with US farmers is possible for this initiative. We hope farmers may be able to use their farrow land to produce plants to be used for paper making, while retaining the environmental benefits of farrow land use. This way they can continue to farrow land and also generate some revenue in the process.
The way it would work is that farmers would grow plant based material without any fertilizer or pesticide (organic, yet not necessarily certified as such), and then harvest this crop for use in a paper making process. We must yet try different crops for this paper, and we'd like to better understand which crops produce the best quality paper, as we will use this paper for packaging. The crops will be processed by paper making machines to create rolls of paper which will then be used to produce beautiful sustainable bags and boxes.
This is an early concept which we're wanted to learn more about. The first step is to learn more about if there are crops which could be used to make papers, and if they also help farmers during the process of farrow land use. If we can get that answer resolved, then we'll develop some test sheets of papers using those crops. I know that clover can sometimes be a good crop for farrow land use, are there others you may suggest?
There are farmers on this site and they have a lot more experience than I. I am interested to hear your impressions and ideas. Would this be supported by farmers?
If anyone has other ideas or suggestions that are different than this original concept I am please to hear them.

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