Pickled asparagus has helped rural Lawrence residents John and Karen Pendleton remain on their farm for the past 20 years.

Karen Pendleton said their atypical product was a classic example of value-added agriculture, and now she hopes to help other Kansas farmers do the same. She recently was named coordinator of a new Kansas Rural Center program designed to help farmers incorporate value-added projects into their agriculture operations. The program is called the Guided Exploration of Value-Added Enterprises Project.

Pendleton hopes the program, which is funded by a $95,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will help spread awareness of value-added products as a new source of income for Kansas farmers.

That’s how the Pendletons, who own Pendleton’s Country Market at 1446 E. 1850 Road, started. About 20 years ago they converted some of their farmland into an asparagus patch.

They soon learned they could grow more asparagus than they could sell during a growing season. As a result they decided to pickle the product so it could be sold year-round.

Karen Pendleton said that’s what value-added agriculture is all about  taking a crop that you currently grow or could grow and then finding a way to get more money out of it.

“That’s the advantage of value-added farming,” she said. “You get a little more of a chance to set your own price. When you are just raising commodities, you take whatever the elevator is paying that day. And that can get mighty painful when they are paying $1.65 for corn and it costs you $1.90 to produce it.”

Coming up with a plan to add value to a crop, however, isn’t always easy. Karen Pendleton said she learned such a lesson when the farm began trying to pickle its asparagus crop. An unexpected hurdle was finding a kitchen that met the state’s sanitary guidelines for commercial food products. The couple searched nearly two years before they found a facility at Kansas State University.

The program is designed to give interested farmers an idea of what to expect before they begin the process.

“We hope to create a network so people don’t have to make the same mistakes over and over again,” Pendleton said.

The program’s first event will be an eight-week seminar beginning in November to help farmers create a business plan for their value-added ventures.

And they have plenty to consider, Pendleton said. For example, farmers who want to sell a product in a grocery store must consider how to obtain a UPC code so grocers can scan their items, how to secure product liability insurance and how to market their products so people will be interested in buying them.

The program will try to address some of those issues through field trips to retailers and grocery stores. It also will pair participants with farmers who have successfully developed value-added products.

The Pendletons fall into the success group. They still have the asparagus crop, plus more in the barn that they’ve converted into a country garden store. They estimated their specialty crops and value-added products provided them with 50 percent of their total income. Today they sell a variety of items, including farm-grown flower arrangements, salsa made from their tomatoes and peppers, and even corn kernel earrings.

“Look at that,” Pendleton said while walking in her shop. “Ten dollars for two kernels of corn. That’s a good example of adding value.”

She said there are plenty of farmers looking to do the same. Initially she expected only 15 people to be interested in the eight-week seminar. But after 10 people signed up on the first day of registration, she believes attendance will be much higher.

“Everybody is looking for something to save the farm,” Karen Pendleton said. “You have to. When you are getting less than you were in the 1950s, you have to figure out another way.

“Farmers have been living on the same income for a lot of years but yet their price for equipment, for fuel, for supplies have all went up,” she said. “But the fact there are a lot of people who want to do this shows how important it is to people to stay on the farm. They’re willing to change their farm to stay on it.”

Dan Nagengast, executive director of the nonprofit Kansas Rural Center, said the organization believed it was important to provide this type of training to interested farmers. He said studies by Kansas University researchers show a potential $100 million market for organically grown and locally produced food items in the Kansas River valley, which includes Lawrence.

The center, based in Whiting, focuses on helping farmers grow environmentally friendly products. He said demand for such products is growing.

“There was a big jump after 9-11 for locally grown products,” Nagengast said. “The term that is thrown around a lot is ‘food security,’ and that means more to people today than it used to.”