PASA Award Winners

Every year at the Farming for the Future conference, PASA presents awards to those who have led the way in the sustainable agriculture community with their innovative ways, outreach and influence.

The Sustainable Agriculture Leadership Award and the Sustainable Agriculture Business Leader Award honor those individuals and businesses that are the most notable sustainable ag leaders and promoters in Pennsylvania and beyond.

In the fall of each year the PASA Board of Directors looks to the PASA membership for recommendations of worthy award winners. If you know a person or business that you believe should be considered for an award, please contact PASA headquarters at 814-349-9856.

Presenting the 2010 Sustainable Ag Leadership Award Winners: Hope & Roy Brubaker of Village Acres Farm in Mifflintown, PA

By Gayle Morrow, PASA Member

What do you do with a couple that has “odd ideas” about food and farming? The lady half of the couple has been known to “rescue old growth seedlings” from the compost pile and, much to their delight, plant and nurture them on the farm.  She will remove the “not so bad” canning tomatoes right out from under the snouts of the farm’s pigs, much to their dismay. She is “relentlessly on the side of the unfortunate, the abandoned, and the infirm.”

The gentleman half, described as a “life-long educator and an inveterate tinkerer,” is a rescuer as well – turning “cantankerous and obsolete tractors” and “downer” greenhouses back into useful and working equipment. He is quick to make the time to “thoughtfully share his knowledge and perspectives about sustainable agriculture” and also has the enviable ability to “vanish, somehow stealthily, on a tractor.”

What can you do with people like Roy and Hope Brubaker of Village Acres?

You can honor their contributions and dedication to sustainable agriculture by giving them PASA’s annual Sustainable Ag Leadership Award. The award is, in PASA Executive Director Brian Snyder’s words, “a greatest hits” of sustainable agriculture players. It is given to those who have made substantial leadership contributions, are supportive and cooperative in their relationships, who show a dedication to supporting sustainable  agriculture practices and offering educational opportunities, and are recognized by their peers and others as role models, attracting interest in sustainable agriculture.

Thanks to a bit of subterfuge, the Brubakers were on hand for the Friday evening banquet at the 19th annual Farming for the Future conference, and were characteristically reticent about accepting any honors.

“I would say we are humbled,” said Hope Brubaker. “We have enjoyed working with the young people and helping them. We are grateful to share what we have with others. The farm was a gift to us from his sister … so we have felt like we have a gift to share with others.”

“It is a community honor,” Roy Brubaker said. “We feel an indebtedness to the previous generation. We also gained this honor through work with the Tuscarora Organic Vegetable Cooperative. Our farm became more financially viable with a CSA. Our success is entwined with success from others.”

Micah and Bethany Spicher-Schonberg are two “others” who maintain that their success is directly the result of their apprenticeship under the Brubakers. In their letter nominating the couple for the Ag Leadership Award, Micah Schonberg wrote that his and Bethany’s “unfair advantage” in the ag realm is “that we apprenticed under and continue to have a friendship with Roy Brubaker.”

“There are many different notions about what success in agriculture looks like,” Micah continued. “I am certain that if Roy had to explain his idea of success, it would be ‘having the time and resources to help your neighbors.’”

And sharing your successes with your neighbors. As Roy Brubaker said when he and Hope accepted  the award, “the honor is also yours.”

Village Acres, which began in 1982 with 15 acres of “abused, hard-packed clay and a creek bottom loam so stony there were two rocks for every one dirt,” is today a thriving CSA that provides healthy, sustainably-produced food along with education and learn-by-doing opportunities. The Brubakers are continuing to work with their CSA members to expand the farm mission of “connecting people to the earth, food, and each other.”

Past winners of the Sustainable Ag Leadership Award are:

Preston Boop
Tim Bowser
Terra & Mike Brownback
Hope & Roy Brubaker
Jerry Brunetti
Herbert Cole
Moie & Jim Crawford
Ron Gargasz
Sheri & Steve Groff
Paul Keene
Kim Miller
Anne & Eric Nordell
Cass Peterson & Ward Sinclair
Robert Rodale
Joel Salatin
Lucy & Roman Stoltzfoos
Kim Tait
Linda & Don Weaver

Past Sustainable Ag Business Award winners are:

East End Food Cooperative
The Fertrell Company
Kimberton Whole Foods
Lady Moon Farms
White Dog Café