College of Agricultural Sciences

Spotlight

Cellar Market to Become Foundation of Unique Horticulture Course

In just three years, the Cellar Market has come to offer Penn State students and residents a diverse selection of fresh fruits and vegetables offered by a knowledgeable and friendly staff of horticultural experts. However, Bill Lamont, professor of vegetable crops and the man behind the creation of the unique program, intends to offer Penn State students more than fresh produce in the coming years.

“ Students buy a lot of products from us, so we want to give something back,” says Lamont. “In the next two years or so, we want to turn the Cellar Market into a summer course on how to both grow and sell produce. We want to teach students not only how to grow tomatoes, but how to address questions such as how much do you sell tomatoes for and how can you make tomatoes appealing to the consumer.”

Lamont’s inspiration for this new addition to the Cellar Market comes from his experiences as a professor.

“ We felt there was something missing in what the students were learning,” he says. “They were learning a lot about fruit, vegetable and flower production, but very little, if any, about marketing the end product.”

As a result, Lamont created the Cellar Market with hopes of turning it into a summer course to teach students about the production and marketing aspects of horticulture, knowledge of which may catch the eye of potential employers after students graduate.

“ I plan on this course being meaningful for students,” he says. “Not only do I want this to be a course that gets students noticed by possible employers, but one that provides them with the tools they need to open and maintain their own business.”

To achieve this goal, Lamont and his colleagues are developing what he calls a unique, innovative and advanced horticulture production and marketing course. Ultimately, Lamont hopes to turn the Cellar Market into an entirely student-run operation that teaches students how to sell their products to the consumer.

Students enrolled in the course will be required to plan, plant, maintain and harvest the fruits, vegetables and flowers they want to sell at the market. Then, to develop marketing skills, the students will be responsible for operating the Cellar Market, determining customer preferences and using income from the market to offset operating and production costs.

Lamont views the new course as a capstone course for horticulture majors. Students taking the course will need to have basic horticultural knowledge in areas such as soils and production techniques. He says the course will be aimed at third- and fourth-year undergraduate students, because by this point in their college careers, they will have developed the basic production skills needed. “The class will be offered for about 15 students, and we will set up a selection process because of the limited size,” says Lamont.

However, Lamont hopes for the course to incorporate more than third- and fourth- year horticultural majors.

“ I’d like to see a lot of diversity,” says Lamont. “I can see the course appealing to people who aren’t currently students, students in other majors, other colleges, and even other countries. What the course offers is unique and has the potential to teach students a lot about marketing, presenting your own product to the consumer, and how to set up a business.”

In fact, Lamont currently has students from abroad interning at the Cellar Market. Sandra Mejia, one of the interning students, believes that the Cellar Market offers the unparalleled learning experience Lamont has envisioned it to be.

“ The Cellar Market offers me a hands-on experience that is totally related to my major,” Mejia says. “It allows me to do research on the crops we grow to see how and when they grow best, which crops have fewer pest problems and so on. This is very important to me and anyone interested in growing crops, because it allows me to deliver produce earlier in the season and longer through the season while using less pesticide to produce high-quality products.

“ And not only do we get the chance to research just about every aspect of the crops we grow, but the Cellar Market has also taught me about marketing, which is a factor that is often forgotten by the farmers, but is very important to anyone interested in selling what they produce,” Mejia adds. “Overall, this internship has provided me with many of the tools I need to be successful when I graduate.”

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