Specialty Crop Block Grant Recipients for Fiscal Year 2013

  1. Kansas City Community Gardens - to improve gardening knowledge, increase access to healthy food, and increase fruit and vegetable production for Kansas City, Mo., area low-income urban gardeners by providing education, greenhouse production of high-yield food crops for transplant, cost-saving bulk seed, plant, and fruit tree purchases, technical assistance, and community garden space - $29,600
  2. Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture - to provide learning opportunities that enable new farmers to learn about growing Mid-Missouri specialty crops in a hands-on, skill-based series of internships - $8,650
  3. University of Missouri, Center for Agroforestry - to expand acreage of chestnut orchards in Missouri and reduce overall harvest costs by demonstrating a mechanical chestnut harvester to Missouri growers; conducting a "time-and-motion" study to quantify the labor saving benefits of a commercial harvester; creating, demonstrating, and releasing a Chestnut Financial Decision Support Tool; and providing advanced financial and market information to enable growers to profitably sell their chestnut crop - $40,491
  4. Hammons Products Company - to reduce black walnut harvest costs for growers by re-engineering a modified pecan harvester and a specialized black walnut huller into one machine that will collect and hull the nuts in a streamlined, single-step process, and then convey the hulled nuts into an easily-handled transport container - $24,500
  5. Missouri State University - to identify the best primocane bearing raspberry varieties for production in grow bags rotated in and out of a high tunnel with vegetable crops and increase the number of people affected by this new knowledge by disseminating project results - $9,500
  6. Urban Buds, LLC - to enable small-scale Missouri cut flower growers to compete with imported flowers by determining the best varieties and crop mixes for efficient cut flower production within a high tunnel to extend the growing season by four months, while producing high quality cut flowers not commonly grown in Missouri such as Lupine, Ranunculus, Anemone, and Mathloia for the holiday markets. Information generated by the trials will be transferred to producers through field days and other outreach efforts - $21,281.41
  7. University of Missouri, Grape and Wine Institute - to assist wine grape growers in making good harvest and management decisions to increase fruit quality by expanding basic analytical testing - $33,811
  8. Missouri State University - to expand environmental and economic sustainability by improving fungal disease resistance in the Norton grape through the development of the first genetic linkage map for the Norton that will serve as a foundation for future breeding of new cultivars - $59,976
  9. Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture - to reduce the environmental and financial implications of excessive fertilizer applications by assessing the benefits of using mycorrhizal fungi to take up soil nutrients more effectively in tomato and cucumber crops. Results will be shared with vegetable producers through farm tours and speaking engagements - $3,345