Around 700 farmers of all kinds recently came to Franklin for the annual Pick TN Conference. The Pick Tn Conference features growers that grow agriculture products in Tennessee, and also has sessions on new trends and practices in growing food.

Thomas Capps
Pick Tennessee product growers coming together. Hello and welcome to Tennessee Home and Farm Radio. I'm Thomas Capps.

Amy Tavalin
If you're a small time farmer or large farmer, there's something here at this conference for you.

Thomas Capps
In it's eighth year the Pick Tennessee Conference brought 700 farmers of all kinds together in Franklin. The conference highlights pick Tennessee products which are products grown in Tennessee. It also has several sessions covering topics to help people start, grow, and evolve, growing and producing agriculture products. That's what conference Executive Director Amy Tavalin says it's all about.

Amy Tavalin
As agriculture and homesteading gets more popular, our mission is just to provide sustainable agriculture for Tennessee. We're trying to get young farmers in who are interested in becoming farmers. So the classes that we offer span young and old, small and large businesses.

Richard Brown
Melissa and Buddy Hand live in Bedford County and are just now getting into homesteading, but they hope to grow into something bigger.

Melissa Hand
We want to take that to the next level and become you know, for profit farmers. We love being here because we are exposed to so many different ideas. We know what we love, but we also are looking at these new things now, because we've now been exposed to those things and learn more about them here at this conference. And it's been amazing.

Buddy Hand
For new farmers, it's fantastic because you really don't know what you don't know. And you can take a large variety of classes from experts, you know, governmental people that are there to help you learn your county extension agents and what not, the Farm Bureau I mean just a lot of things that are assets that we never knew we had.

Thomas Capps
The Pick Tennessee conference is driven to bring new people into agriculture and teach them to grow their own food, keeping that industry alive even with more urban sprawl in our state. For Tennessee Home and Farm Radio. I'm Thomas Capps.