Calling ALL Farmers

As a farmer’s business expands available time for advocacy and education may need to contract.  This is potentially one reason why farmers at every scale have a hard time with food policy work.  It's almost too much to ask of them to make meetings at a time when they should be getting ready for bed, many times on their rural homesteads, distant from where most food policy council meetings are held.

 

One particular statement from a food policy council member continues to stick out in my mind when she wrote about her perspective as a "producer" and her continued attendance, "...the presentations, while interesting, do not compel my presence."

Obviously it's imperative that a food policy council makes space for farmers (or “producers” as we sometimes call them, which implies everyone else consumes) to share their concerns, but we can't expect them to be involved when their needs aren't being met.  They have a hundred more urgent farm-things to attend to.

In addition, farmers aren't necessarily concerned with low-income food access or nutrition issues – we can’t expect them to be.  Discussions around food policy tend to cross many boundaries.  Maybe too many, and those who grow food are not social workers, chefs, labor organizers, school administrators, or public health educators…they’re farmers.  They're probably more likely to be concerned with getting healthy food into schools and institutions if it means they'll be able to sell more product.

If the dialogue and actions of food policy councils does not directly affect the bottom line of farming, in an economy that rewards quantity over quality, then how will more farmers become active in the national conversation around how we source our food and what’s in it.

 

I've said this in not so many words to various food justice and policy groups:  if there is going to be long-term success by way of food policy work, not just a "social hour" as one farmer put it - but instead the sort of success that actually changes our food landscape - those of us organizing around food issues need to go knocking on farmer's doors and have one-on one-conversations with them to identify those who understand the issues, and those who need food policy councils to advocate for them.

The experience of real farmers is needed for a correct perspective in terms of land ownership, land use, real costs, and resources.  Not reaching out for their input risks too much.  By not seeking their involvement, without having to say a word, the message of a food justice group becomes, “You aren’t farming how we want you to farm, and what you’re producing is not good enough for us.”  The foodies then become too much of the idealist who doesn't understand the business of farming, and are therefore ignored.

And what about the question of how social justice issues overlap with food justice?  Can we expect the average farmer to dedicate time to thinking about the deep history of the land they are growing on?  Can we expect decision makers to install subsidies that simultaneously provide fair wages to farm workers and farmers for what they grow while keeping the cost of locally grown food low so that low-income families can afford better nutrition?  If the answer is "maybe not", then it’s also likely we would either frustrate or confuse these actors with attempts to include social justice issues within the same conversation rather than talking about farming issues affecting their business today.

As it stands now, I would hesitate to think that real farmers (the kind supplying the basics by the ton, bushel, or hundreds of gallons) would see food policy and food justice organizers as realistic or balanced since the real economics of feeding massive populations from a more local base of growers is either not understood or not being addressed.  Until the supply and demand economics of food and resources force a change that encourages these two groups to work together - be it by shortage, war, or climate change - local food producers will continue to be stuck with CSA's and farmer's markets, and large scale farmers will continue using the short cuts that allow them to stay viable as a farm in the global market. 

A huge divide persists between those of us who farm a few acres without chemicals for our neighbors, and those of us who feed the rest of the world.  At this point very few seem to have the time, desire, and courage to cross that chasm.

There continues to be a lot of conversation amongst us (the "foodies") yet it's largely one-sided.

 

The Language of Politics

This month marks the second year of a long wait.  The FDA's Food Safety and Modernization Act is in the home stretch of becoming law and potentially changing how we grow, process, and move our food from place to place - regardless of whether you are a tiny family or industrial farm.

Please note: this applies to both regular food and "good food" as some have officially defined.

Our local food policy council is just now trying to decipher what this means for small rural and urban farmers alike, including everyone they serve.

For the record, I applaud any effort that attempts to improve the quality and safety of our food, and encourages everyone involved in our food system to be a little more organized and cautious.  I like things to be organized - makes me feel like I'm in control of things I really have no control over.  Maybe this 2.0 version of our food system will do just that - give us the control we've been longing for all this time.

I thought nothing of the wording used to label the FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act, until I actually had to write it down for the twentieth time today.  You have to admit, it's a pretty slick and professional sounding title - FOOD SAFETY AND MODERNIZATION - one that sounds powerful and carries with it an aura of authority.

But reflecting on it a bit more I became confused.  What do they mean by the word "Modernization"? 

I thought our food system was already "Modern"?! 

Heck, I can have individually packaged slices of cheese and eat pineapples in the desert ANY TIME I WANT! 

Maybe this time around, this "act" (did you catch the pun?) will be extra-Modern, and we'll finally get it right with this super-duper, extra heavy-duty, deluxe version!  Everyone knows by now the one we have is so third-world.

I'd like to propose we call this what it is...the "FDA Food Safety and Pretending To Fix Our Screw-Up and Getting Our Act Together....For Real This Time...Act".

Yes, I admit this title's a bit long-winded.  Maybe that's why they just settled for "Modernization".

There's an unrelated issue to all of this though.  The new "act" seeks to provide "coverage" (yes, that's the word used to describe this) to food handlers in the food chain, almost regardless of size, including the ones that haven't caused illness, or who can't afford to be inspected to ensure they have a safety plan in place.  The new "act" takes a step towards widening the umbrella of who is monitored and regulated, and a bigger umbrella will undoubtedly require a larger budget to hold it up. 

The rhetoric over the last few months has already been churning to prepare us for what would have to be a new legion of federally mandated state officials to keep track of the new and improved food system.

I guess that's what they mean by "Modern".

"The times...they are a changing."

Our Esteemed College of Agriculture

In response to this email heading and a link to an article titled "UA Partners with Saudi Arabia to Create Sustainable Farming Systems" my sarcastic enthusiasm and hope for our collective future was renewed:

Thank God for the UA College of Ag and Life Sciences....our saviors!  Where else on earth would we find sustainable solutions to our problems if it was not for them!

Fortunately for me they are still working tirelessly to "feed the people" - I'm one of those. 

But I wonder...if one day they see the need to look beyond the walls of academia and high technology to help the people feed themselves...to whom will they turn?  Will grassroots solutions then be repackaged under doctoral approvals with a promise of more research funding and shiny new labs?

Any day now, I'm sure, a new solution for the systemic problem of Colony Collapse Disorder will emerge out of all the microscopes and papers feverishly written on the subject.  This, without the need to change our methods.

Long-term regenerative solutions do not exist in laboratories...they're in our back yards and sanctuaries.

Unfortunately for many, the cost and profit to replicate them is extremely low by comparison.

The Value of “Hard” Work

I’ve been wanting to write for a long time and the ideas are constantly overflowing.  Many times they make their way onto small slivers of scrap paper.  On the back of receipts, invoices, or junk mail.  Even scrap pieces of wood if I’m in the middle of building something to house a swarm I caught three days ago (bees start to rebel after being cooped up for too long).  Sometimes these ideas become script when driving, or while scampering from one place to another dropping off eggs, picking up animal feed, or buying irrigation materials for that project that always seems to get pushed to next week, and the week after.  And then there’s this idea, the one that I’m reading about now, that although has never been written down in some unintelligible scribble like all the others, it’s the one that I’m constantly reminded of daily.  I’m reminded of it in this way – as I sit here writing I’m doubtful I’ll even have enough time to actually complete this paragraph.  At any given time we have a few pages of unwritten chores, repairs, prototypes, experiments, cleaning projects, advertisements, and trips to check off in order to maintain a slow but steady course towards making our farm a place where a livelihood can be realized and can manifest itself by letting us work a little less away from the home.

At this very moment, I wish I was finalizing a proposal to our local coop showing all the details about how we can work together to supply them with product.  This too may have to wait since something has to finally be written about why it’s so much easier to go the 9 to 5 route and squeeze a steady paycheck than providing many families with some of the most basic uncontaminated necessities for life – "good food".  At the heart of the issue is this…we are like most farming families: it’s still necessary at this point for us to have outside income and simultaneously, not only sustain our farm, but improve upon it.  If I had the time, I’d do some solid research and add a nifty little graph of the percentage of farming families with at least one partner working an outside job to support the farm.  Alas, that will also have to wait for another time.

You see, there’s a double standard for farmers or those who wish they could farm some day.  Not only are they expected to produce more food with less inputs than ever before in history, they are expected to do it for only what it costs to produce a crop or for even less.  At a recent conference Dr. Ricardo Salvador stated that 17% of every food dollar goes to farmers for the raw products necessary to produce all the other foods we are accustomed to.  In addition, he stated that given all the other links in the chain required to make innumerable food choices available at an instant and on a whim, that percentage is justified.

Unfortunately, trying to divide the food dollar pie into ever more slices to match expectations that food and unlimited variety should be available at a moments notice strains an already stressed revenue stream.  Today's expectation that food should be cheap (roughly 10% of average income) does the opposite of keeping farmer’s at home where they belong.   When we do not value our most basic necessities and are trained by a market-economy that food should be cheap, and when it’s true production cost is constantly obscured, we destroy the potential for making a living from farming.

Here’s an interesting little story from a past weekend farmer’s market:

A man in his 50’s, possibly touching 60, walks up to our table in shorts and sandals, casually taking in our story among the informational displays.  His facial expressions and body language as he read the signs didn’t really register as cynicism or frustration at the time, until he came back some time later.  Anyway, we spent a few minutes with him talking about our peppers, squash, and eggs.  Finally, we mentioned our honey and asked if he’d like to try some.  He answered shortly with, “You ever hear of diabetes?  I can’t eat it.”  So rather than going into the mechanics of how the body readily absorbs the dextrose and levulose of honey in a benign way compared to all other sugars that tax the bodies digestive system and liver, I decided he wasn’t in a pleasant mood this morning, and by asking him if he’d like to try a sample of honey, I may have struck a sensitive nerve or two.  So we helped the man to make his purchase of two heads of garlic so that he could be on his way.  We placed the two perfect little heads into a large thin plastic bag and in exchange the man handed us $2.00.

We were happy!  We charge $1.00 for the large heads and $0.50 for the small ones.  Although we haven’t checked with all the other vendors, this is a price we arrived at by talking with a few farmer friends and by looking at prices for locally grown garlic.  But also bearing heavily on our decision was the fact that we knew how much effort actually went in to growing this garlic.  Myself and two volunteers spent an entire morning hunched over 100 linear feet of garden bed planting these little guys.  There was the prep work of fertilizing the soil with heavy compost that had to be produced or hauled.  There was also the purchase of the seed garlic from another farmer with similar growing ethics to ours.  Out of that seed we further selected one by one, the best cloves for planting, breaking the heads open with our own hands, and choosing as though each one was a magic bean and had the potential to make the most delicious gigantic head of garlic we had ever seen.

The potential of that possibility is always half the satisfaction for me as a farmer.  And then of course there was the mulching, weeding, and watering for several months from November to May before harvest.  An early summer forced an early harvest that took another several hours of being hunched over this same bed digging in 100 degree weather and carefully placing the fragile heads into darkened crates for drying.  Another month later each one was trimmed by my better half and by an unpaid volunteer who appreciated a break from being cooped up in front of an office computer.  For her effort in seeking this hands-on education, she received a cut needing a band-aid and probably numerous bruises since she arrived a few weeks earlier.  As you can see, the sweat of five people and even some blood went into this garlic.
 

Now, this farmer’s market is new, and small, and because it’s summer it’s also a little slow.  However, somehow the man who purchased our precious garlic was still shopping a half hour later.  Amazingly, he hadn’t purchased anything else except two other heads of garlic.  He strolled up to the same edge of our table as I was helping another customer, and widely extended his arm holding our bag of garlic.   

I heard him say as my customer continued to chatter away in front of me, “I’d like to return this.  I got two heads for fifty cents over there.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have done the same if that garlic came out of his garden, or if he had ever tended a garden of his own.  I wanted to ask, but it didn’t seem worth it since it seemed to me this man may have been on a mission, and perhaps even unintentionally.  You see, we’ve all been trained from an early age to wield our power - that currency in our pockets - in a way that creates competition and drives prices down ever further among producers of Things.  That’s capitalism…the path to a “strong” economy.  In the act of returning our garlic this man believed he came out ahead by a buck-fifty and found a better deal.  More seriously, it is also possible that he may have felt confused and cheated as a result of these fluctuating garlic prices.  Afterall, garlic is just garlic, and eggs are just eggs right?  No matter who produced them.

Sadly, we are no longer trained to appreciate good work and industriousness.  Few of us can recognize it these days.  Afterall, when was the last time you made hummus in a Tarahumara bowl created by a master woodworker, or held a clay Mata Ortiz pot with a one of a kind design never again to be duplicated by the potter who trained their entire life in the pursuit of perfecting the work on which the life of an entire village depends.  Most of what we own these days is planned for the waste bin before it’s assembled and has a finite amount of useful life before it even sees the shipping container bound for the USA.  We throw most everything away eventually, and cherish little in our transient lives based in Things rather than soil.  What will you leave to your children?

Our inability to recognize good work and industriousness fooled this man too that Saturday morning.  You see the “…over there.”, our customer was referring to was another vendor who didn’t actually grow the garlic he sold.  In fact, he grew nothing on his table.  Half of his items were out of season or impossible to grow within 1000 miles without cost prohibitive methods out of reach for many of us smaller scale family farms.   Compost never touched the soil those vegetables grew in.  By the way, if you ever see grocery tags on the veggies at a farmer’s market, ask yourself, ‘who are you really supporting?’.

To many of us still, it appears that not even the food we put into our bodies is worth $2.00 of hard work to our neighbor willing to farm desert land without chemicals.  If this moral dilemma is something we are not willing to recognize and shine a spotlight on, then farmers will always struggle a little harder each year to make their livelihoods from the land they gratefully pour their lives into.  

Fortunately farmers continue to farm in spite of this dilemma, because agrarianism and the act of farming represents a hope that at some point we’ll once again value hard work and industriousness, as an expression of our culture.

What'll It Be?

A lot has happened since the last post. Worm bins are on the verge of tripling in population. A chicken enclosure is being completed amongst twenty-eight eight-week-old Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpinton, and Barred Rock hens. Several hundred feet of irrigation line connecting the rainwaterharvesting system to the existing groundwater well lines is underway. Over 2000 lbs of alder, pine, and oak sawdust along with other hardwood odds and ends and pallets have found a new home in our resource pile, courtesy of a local woodworker who was tired of seeing this resource end up in the landfill. Ten raised garden beds have been constructed and are also nearing completion. My new role as a project certification reviewer on behalf of the USGBC is also beginning to take root which may allow me to stay home and work on more important things like creating biochar and compost from all this sawdust.

The intent of this project is to provide an answer to living in the midst of pending energy resource scarcity, and provide a transitional path towards building a regenerative environment to sustain some semblance of life. Yet underlying all these efforts is an increasing sense of urgency mixed with feelings of futility. The economic turbulence of 2008 has been an eye opening example of how our society is hardly prepared to change direction on a moments notice, or even a decades notice. Every day now is a question. Will everything fall apart or will the market rebound a few hundred points, buying us a bit more time and access to the resources we need to make this work…hopefully? Most of us haven’t even begun to prepare for other scenarios. If General Motors is too big to fail then obviously, so is industrialized society, but the reality is that our global economy, which is dependant on stable energy prices to do work, is like a concrete pond that is in need of total reconstruction, not a patch job, and to top it off we don’t have enough cement to do the job. Disappointingly, we are so pressured by our egos and fear of loss that we ensure the cogs of this gargantuan economic machine keep turning. This leaves little to no time to consider a plan B.

It’s this that I worry most about: the effort currently being expended here on the ‘farm’ comes at great cost. By the time the major portions of our projects are complete we will have spent about $8,000 to $10,000 and approximately 30-40 hrs per week on top of our other responsibilities, over the course of a year, to make this happen. All this after I spent many months during 07’ involved in ‘thoughtful and protracted observation’, planning, and design. So the question becomes, who and how many in this small community with limited resources have been working towards these same ends? If I consider myself to be only half way towards a safe transition point, what will become of the 95% of those people in my community that haven‘t had the time, resources, foresight, or will to adapt? If one of the more realistic scenarios unfold how will the contours of society change in relation to those of us on the fringes?

At this moment I’m reminded of an insight by an NPR radio show interviewee in Great Britain where the interest rate on savings accounts has been dropped to the lowest rate in the last 50 years…3%. Speaking and writing letters on behalf of historically diligent savers such as himself, he complains that the interest that he and his wife were once able to live comfortably on has dropped to 50% over the past year, and that they will most likely have to consider working again in the face of continued interest rate cuts. He pondered the ironical state of affairs saying, “There are many of us who have diligently saved our whole lives, and now our reward is that those who have not saved will be rewarded by interest rates cuts aimed at getting them to borrow and spend. Why are the savers being punished and the non-savers being rewarded?”

I see a troubling pattern solidifying in this observation and I hope I‘m wrong once more: that no matter how much I diligently plan and work at building this regenerative system, in effect saving future energy costs through stacking functions, in the end it will only be lost to those who have done nothing at all to help themselves. After all, without much research I would venture to say that the proportion of savers to non-savers on this planet is extremely low, and when push comes to shove, without significant resources it’s hard to deny millions of non-savers access to your hard earned cash or crop of fresh vegetables. Especially when they are starving. Environmentally speaking, the non-savers who have spent the health of our common assets such as air, soil, and water quality, may have already rendered our future climate inhospitable to even the most robust regenerative system anyone can imagine.

What then is the solution? Perhaps it’s to stop looking for solutions, become a non-saver, and enjoy the rest of your days at your favorite bar sipping gin and tonic? But if you’re following this blog I’d venture to say that answer doesn’t sit well with you either.

Day One…Or Shall I Say Year One?

Wow...three easy steps to blogging? Wish I knew it was this easy before. It wouldn't have taken me two years to start.

I guess I'll start off by introducing this blog. The purpose here is to track ongoing progress, or lack there of, of a monumental project in the Desert. Yes I meant to capitalize Desert. Sort of how spiritual individuals capitalize God - I do it out of respect. I'll explain.

The Desert, the Sonoran Desert to be exact, is where I'm located. About 20 miles west of Tucson, Arizona and 6 miles west of the intersection of Manville Rd. and Anway Rd. (Google Earth it) in a region known as the Avra Valley. I have great respect for the Desert as it can be the most unforgiving environment. My goal is to develop a working model of a retrofitted sustainable food producing system from basically nothing in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. I guess I like a challenge, but more importantly I understand the people and the climate here more than other places I have lived. The sunsets and multiple growing seasons also tend to offset the negative benefits of the scorching midday heat and destructive monsoon storms.

After a year of protracted and thoughtful observation and planning, this project is now 6 months old. I'll go into the details of it later as the notion of creating this blog comes at 3am and in 4 hours the garden needs to be watered. Sleep is a luxury these days, but the work is rewarding.

Why write a blog about a crazy food security project in the desert? I guess, like many before me and around the world, I have a message. The best way to convey it is by showing something tangible to those that live around or near me. Something they can feel with all their senses. This soon to be farm in the Desert is that message. A message that says there's something else to look forward to if you're not too proud and you're willing to work hard for it. And hard work it is. Fortunately, if things go as planned, it gets easier over time. After all, this is essentially a study of Energy. Use it wisely in all it's forms and you'll be rewarded. Ignore it and the Desert either conquers or consumes you.

Lastly, this project serves as a way to reflect on, study, and record the workings of a rural community as it relates to industrialized civilization. How these entities interact to resolve or in most cases ignore the constraints put upon them by problems that are global in nature attests to our human character and calls into question our ability to reign in the ego. Controlling the impetus of greed that seems to dominate our motivations then becomes the central most fundamental problem inhibiting progress or healing of a society. Farming The Desert is then an attempt to open a door to a new path of interacting with our environment including others around us. The fight over a disproportionate amount of resources has always been a central them in human history. However, we were all, in the not too distant past, much more dependent on each other for survival.