Asher Valley dairy cooperative builds its own cheese plant
Forty-one family farms have pooled €9.5m to turn part of their milk into hard cheese and butter, aiming to earn more per litre than selling it to large processors.
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Harvest season: rice pours into a waiting trailer
Paddy streaming from a combine’s unloading auger quickly filled the trailer at the edge of the field.
Combines side by side in a wheat field: the harvest from above
Drone footage shows two combine harvesters unloading grain into a moving tractor trailer.
Tea gardens: green terraces on the hillsides
From Sri Lanka to Vietnam, Rwanda to Japan, the rhythmic green patterns of tea plantations.
Pick-your-own pumpkin farm draws families to the Asher Valley in its busiest October yet
A farm that once grew only cereals now plants 14 varieties of pumpkin and squash, and turns its fields over to visitors for four weeks every autumn.
Asher Valley grain growers lock in prices with millers through three-year contracts
A shared online platform run by the growers' cooperative has matched more than 80 farms with regional mills on fixed-price deals, offering both sides shelter from swings in the commodity market.
Asher Valley wheat harvest beats five-year average despite a wet spring
Farmers in the Asher Valley have brought in a wheat crop well above recent averages, figures from the Growers' Cooperative show, after a dry, warm finish to the summer rescued fields that were waterlogged at sowing.