Out of some 800 nominations from across the country, the employee-owned Vermont company selects 21 "Garden Crusaders" for their work in education, urban renewal, restoration and feeding people who are hungry.

Price could have been awarded in all categories, said Garden City Harvest board member Jodi Allison-Bunnell. She nominated Price in part for his "exemplary" work with the Poverello Center.

Other farmers are constantly impressed by the yield Price gets from the River Road land, Allison-Bunnell said. That farm and the PEAS Farm produced more than 20,000 pounds of food in 2010 for the Poverello and the Missoula Food Bank.

One reason he's successful is Price does a lot of work by hand, and he enlists volunteers to do a lot of weeding by hand, too.

"That tractor doesn't go out very many times a year," Allison-Bunnell said.

Price also knows how to use every last inch of kale. Allison-Bunnell said the farmer used to cook in a restaurant, so he knows how to cook tasty soup out of "tomato butts," and he's a font of information for others.

"He really knows how to stretch food, so he knows food from planting to eating and everything in between," she said.