When I went to Farmer Market downtown last Sat., it turned out that there weren't many vendors/farmers. And I was told that there might be some potential subjects in the farmer market on Wed. Alright, it stops right there. I'm going to the Wed one next week.
Then I ended up talking with the girl in the Wheatsville Co-op which is a community-focused full service grocer in Austin. They have a good relationship with many local farmers in Austin. Indeed, she said that the local farming business is really an important part of Austin economy, and some of the farmers are effected by the drought but she's not clear how many.
Although I didn't get the information as much as I expected, at least my imagination has sort of connection with the reality.
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Hi I-Hwa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting your update. It sounds like you're having trouble connecting to specific characters and need to amp up the search. The wheatsville contact is a good one, so pursue that, and keep going to farmer's markets. There are also some local farms that are open to the public like Boggy Creek Farms and San Gabriel Farms, which are more organic suppliers. Another avenue is to start to read articles that have appeared in the paper about the drought, see if they have specific characters, and then either track down those subjects directly or via the journalist who wrote the piece. Here's something I found just by googling "austin drought statesman farmer":
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/04/0704farmdrought.html
It has some promising characters in it already. The beekeeper would be a really interesting direction because there are additional issues/problems with honeybees disappearing, which would wreck havoc on our food system.
But the semester is moving by quickly, and we need to jumpstart the process for you so that you can start shooting. I mentioned that my friend runs the Capital Area Food Bank, so I'll see if he has any leads, can perhaps put you in touch with their communications person. Keep pressing on, and you'll locate something.
One other thing, I-Hwa. It just occurred to me that you should just contact the local extension agent for Travis or Williamson County. Their whole job is to be in touch with farmers and ranchers. Google
ReplyDeletetravis county extension office
and you'll find their information.