Agritourism Adds Extra Spice To Family Farms

Sep 26, 2022

By Maggie Edwards

A big dream and a sunflower seed sparked the idea for agritourism at Cornutt Farms LLC in Boaz.

“I had an interest in sunflowers after visiting a sunflower patch with a friend,” said Cara Cornutt, 26. “I saw how popular this was and came back to pitch the idea to family.”

The newly minted Auburn University alumna Cara was headed back north, ready to carve out her place on the Marshall County row crop and cattle farm operated by her parents, Rickey and Connie; Rickey’s brother, Chris, and his wife, Kelli; and Chris’s son, Nathan, and his wife, Anna

In 2018, the multi-generational farm incorporated a U-pick sunflower field and, over time, added a pumpkin patch packed with interactive games and stations.

Nathan brought a wealth of knowledge, too, after graduating from Auburn with a crop science degree in 2020. With a vast understanding of crops and agronomics, Nathan has played a pivotal part in overseeing pumpkin planting and upkeep.

Auburn crop and soil science graduate Nathan Cornutt has helped his family fine-tune their ability to grow pumpkins and sunflowers in Marshall County

Auburn crop and soil science graduate Nathan Cornutt has helped his family fine-tune their ability to grow pumpkins and sunflowers in Marshall County

“We normally start planting pumpkins around the first of July,” said Nathan, 23. “Pumpkins must be taken care of constantly and are sprayed every week to help combat insects and high humidity.”

While Nathan has expertise with crops, Cara taps into her degree in agricultural economics to market the booming business

“We started with a 3-acre pumpkin patch,” Cara said. “When we expanded to 15 acres, we knew it was time for us to start taking the pumpkin patch more seriously and step up our game.”

They welcomed 200 visitors to the farm at the start of their U-pick journey. Between midweek field trips and Saturday visitors, they now entertain 7,000 visitors annually, thanks to a short driving distance from nearby urban areas.

In addition to taking home fun-filled memories, each guest at Cornutt Farms carries out a festive pumpkin.

Cornutt Farms strives to implement new attractions each year. Through research and experiments, the Cornutts have successfully added a hayride, basketball activity, petting zoo, corn maze, corn pit and other exhibits for kids of all ages. They’ve also built special infrastructure to satisfy their guests, including a new event building with permanent restrooms.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”