Orono - 36 Denmark residents are on a special tour of the Northeast. They're travelling to farms in Maine, Vermont and Quebec to learn more about sustainable agriculture.

"We have farmers, a few students, a few consumers and quite a few of my colleagues with me too, so we are here to have a look at what family farming in Maine is like," said Christian Petersen, an organic farmer from Denmark.

A few years back, some agriculture specialists from the UMaine Cooperative Extension visited their farms in Denmark. Petersen suggested that the Americans play host next.

"He had enjoyed so much the exchange that we had and learned a lot from us while we were there about our agricultural system in New England and he felt like there was a lot of interest in learning about that from his group," said Ellen Mallory, Sustainable Agriculture Specialist at the UMaine Cooperative Extension.

Folks at UMaine organized the tour, focusing on organic farms and the methods used to grow organic crops. It's something that farmers both here in Maine and in Denmark are doing.

"What we like a lot is this 'Eat local, buy local,' so we think it's nice and quite skilled. It shows us too that we think we are on our right way, so we're not the only ones who are thinking like that," said Petersen.

They're learning about how we grow these crops, but also how we market them.

"Some of the things I've heard them talk about is the unique marketing we do, the direct to consumer marketing that they don't have so much over there, so the farmers markets that we have, the community supported agriculture," said Mallory.

Although there's an ocean in between, there are a lot of similarities between climates and the kind of crops that both groups can grow. The Maine farmers and Danish farmers have found out that there's a lot to learn from one another

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