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Harvesting chaos; other news
(Monday, May 16, 2005 -- CropChoice news) -- 1. American Young People Go Back To The Land 1. American Young People Go Back To The Land By Sarah Schweitzer BURLINGTON, Vt. -- There were no glitzy PowerPoint presentations, no
assurances of high-tech riches. But they came by the dozens to a student
center, young women with cat-eye glasses and young men sporting
sideburns, to learn how to finance a John Deere tractor and market a
crop. Farming is cutting edge, even hip, among a growing corps of
ambitious 20- and 30-somethings. ''It's totally the new thing," said
Samantha Tilton, a 25-year-old Mount Holyoke College graduate who
attended a recent conference to prepare for buying land to till. ''There
is this sense that we don't have to do investment banking or IT and work
in a cubicle all day. We can live a more hands-on life." As family farms are swallowed up by corporations and housing developers,
young men and women, some from suburban backgrounds and families with no
agricultural ties, are filling the void. They are opening small niche
operations in Vermont and elsewhere in New England to grow hydroponic
tomatoes and raise free-range chickens. Some are going back to the land
to escape corporate culture, farming specialists say. Some of the young
farmers and farmers-to-be say they are motivated by a sense that farming
can save the world or at least some corner of it. While Peace Corps volunteers of decades past sought to aid African
countries facing famine, these young people see a dire state of
agriculture in the United States. Many of the young farmers and college
students studying for a life in farming said they worry that as family
farms are sold to large agribusinesses, food has been corrupted by
chemicals and produced with exploited migrant workers. They also say that
sales of onetime farmland to housing developers are worsening sprawl and
that with small-scale farming they can begin to reverse those trends. ''You hear about all these terrible things in the world, and you're told
to go out there and change them," said Ian Irwin, 22, who plans to raise
cattle after graduating from the University of Vermont. ''This is an
enjoyable way to do our part." But if they are idealists, the young
farmers are also business-savvy. They toss around corporate catch-phrases
such as value-added and diversified. They have business plans and have
taken accounting classes. Unlike farming of another generation, when
producing and getting a crop or animal to market were primary tasks, the
smaller enterprises require more of their owners. Because they often
operate without middlemen or employees, the farmers must oversee
production, marketing, sales, and distribution. Jason Pappas, 26, a onetime music major at Goddard College in Plainfield,
Vt., who grew up in Tenafly, N.J., and Dave Demarest, 25, a graduate in
environmental science from the University of Vermont who grew up outside
New Haven, have become minor specialists in any number of agricultural
and business fields. The pair joined forces two years ago to grow Reishi
mushrooms that they use to brew an earthy-tasting iced tea, which is
flavored with maple syrup and cranberry or lemon juice. They call it VTea
and hope to sell 50,000 bottles this year in Vermont. They work on
Demarest's property, 51 acres he bought three years ago in the town of
Underhill, near Burlington. They prepare the mushroom seeds in a sterile
lab, planting them in hemlock logs laid cross-hatch style under tree
cover. But they also prepare and bottle the tea. They market it. They
seek prospective buyers on the Internet. They deliver it by truck to
local stores. And they sell it at farmers markets and fairs. The infusion of young people into farming is a trickle compared with the
mass departure of family farmers. The average age of American farmers
rose to 55 in 2002 from 50 in 1978, according to the US Department of
Agriculture. Just 5 percent of farmers in 2002 were between the ages of
25 and 34, government numbers show. The aging of the American farmer,
agriculture specialists say, is due to global trends that have made
middle-sized farms, the sort operated by families throughout much of the
20th century, unprofitable compared to bigger, more efficient operations.
Many young farmers are entering the agricultural market at the other end
of the spectrum, with small enterprises that sell products directly to
local stores and farmers markets, rather than to wholesalers. The
products they grow tend to appeal to a relatively small but growing group
of health-conscious, educated, and well-off consumers who will pay more
for organic lettuce, low-spray apples, and locally produced milk. The entry into small-scale farming by young people is evident on both
coasts. But Vermont, with its limited land mass and tendency toward
smaller farming plots, is at the forefront of the movement. Enrollment in
agriculture classes at the University of Vermont is up, particularly
those aimed at teaching business skills. The Vermont Youth Conservation
Corps -- a nonprofit that traditionally assigns workers, ages 16 to 24,
to woods restoration of state parks -- will establish a farming component
next year in response to demand. Young people crammed the recent
conference in Burlington entitled, ''Young Entrepreneurs in Agriculture
and Local Foods." The movement is different from the 1960s swell of back-to-the-earth
hippies who piled into Vermont to escape urban unrest and the Vietnam
War. The new ranks of farmers, specialists say, are not dropouts from
society, but rather seek closer connection to society through farming.
''These are young people who are interested in community development,"
said Jane Kolodinsky, who heads the College of Agriculture and Life
Science's department of community development and applied economics. Many
are helping one another. There is a growing network of small-production
farmers who band together in ventures known as community supported
agriculture that lock customers into purchases before harvest. Some share
distribution, bottling, and other facilities. Farmers are also aligned with activists behind other causes, such as
conservation, ecological repair, and fair trade. Nonetheless, the rigors,
many know, are daunting, and failure rates are high. Tilton, for one, is
conscious of the challenges. She is quick to point out that she has no
land, little money. Yet asked what sort of farming she plans, she rattles
off: ''Organic, well-diversified, no meat." Farming holds her future,
said the daughter of an interior designer and oncologist, a product of
the Delaware suburbs. ''It's a rejection of Seven jeans and the Ugg
boots," she said referring to the designer jeans and footwear of the
moment. ''And that's OK. You can also be pretty hip with dirty
fingernails." Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com. 2. Harvesting Chaos By Jason Mark Farmers in the US and around the world are likely to face serious
challenges in the coming decades as new kinds of weather test their
ability to bring us the food we all depend on. Most keyboard jockeys would die for the view from Orin Martin's
office window: apple trees in blossom, lines of citrus, dozens of
varieties of flowers and neat rows of peppers, garlic and potatoes.
Martin is a farmer in Santa Cruz, Calif., where for last 30 years he has
been an instructor at the University of California's agro-ecology
program, one of the nation's oldest organic agriculture curriculums. Strong, stout and built like a tree trunk, with sun-bleached cornsilk
hair, thick hands, and deep crowsfeet around his eyes from years of
working outdoors, Martin loves farming, and it shows whenever he starts
to talk about his craft, as he will happily do for hours on end. In recent years, however, something has been amiss in Martin's
idyllic setting. The weather is changing in strange ways. And for a
farmer that's bad news. "I don't know if you can talk about predictable weather anymore,"
Martin said on a recent walk through his three-acre plot. "Each of the
last ten years has been anomalous in one way or another. The weather
here used to be like clockwork. Around March 15 it would stop raining.
But all through the '90s we had rain into April, May and even June. If
you talk with farmers and gardeners, oh yeah, they think there's
something off." Martin is right. From New England to the Midwest to California,
farmers and scientists are noticing that once-dependable weather
patterns are shifting, and concern is growing that those changes will
have a significant impact on our agriculture system. Farmers in the
United States and around the world are likely to face serious challenges
in the coming decades as new kinds of weather test their ability to
bring us the food we all depend on. The culprit is climate change, caused by society's burning of fossil
fuels. When it comes to global warming, farmers - who are more attuned
to weather patterns than most people - may be the proverbial canaries in
the coalmine. "Some of the changes in weather are consistent with climate change
predictions, and that's real troublesome," says Michelle Wander, a
professor of soil science at the University of Illinois. Wander recently
published a report with the Union of Concerned Scientists which
predicted that within 25 years Illinois summers may resemble the hotter
climate of Arkansas. "By the end of the century, I think we will really
be suffering." The weather changes underway differ by region. In California, which
has a typical Mediterranean climate with a wet winter and a dry summer,
rainfall is stretching later and later into the spring. New England is
experiencing a warming trend, with average temperatures up 1.8 degrees F
over the last century. Winter warming in the northeast is even more
pronounced; temperatures between December and February increased 4.4
degrees F in the last 30 years, according to a study by the University
of New Hampshire. In the Midwest, the springs and summers have become
unseasonably wet, while the summers get hotter and drier. "What we're experiencing is rather abnormal," says Dave Campbell,
who farms 225 acres of oats, wheat, corn, soy and hay in Maplepark,
Illinois, land that has been in his wife's family since the 1830s. "It
just keeps raining and raining. Last year, from May 10 to June 21 we had
13 inches of rain. Normally we have 38 inches of precipitation the whole
year. Last year we had real trouble with our wheat crop because it was
so excessively wet. We just get dumped with rain." The weather, of course, has never been exactly dependable - farmers
have always been at the mercy of the vagaries of sun and rain. But
general weather patterns have at least been broadly predictable,
allowing farmers to know when to sow their seed, when to transplant,
when to harvest. As weather patterns become less reliable, growers will
be tested to develop new rhythms and systems for growing crops. For a city dweller who thinks that food comes from Safeway, rain may
seem like an unqualified benefit when it comes to growing food. Farmers
know better. Too much rain at the wrong time can make it difficult to
plan or harvest crops. Above-average rainfall also contributes to fungi
and insects that can dramatically reduce crop yields. Too much warmth is
equally problematic. Some plants require a certain number of frost days
each year in order to thrive the following spring. As temperatures warm,
farmers who are accustomed to growing, say, blueberries in Maine or
soybeans in Indiana may find themselves having to either shift to
different crops or actually move their operations to new locales.
Unreliable weather will make it harder for farmers to be as productive
as we have come to expect. "When it comes to the weather, we expect the unexpected," says Henry
Brockman, 41, a vegetable farmer in Congerville, Illinois. "It's not as
predictable as it used to be. It used to be that the ground was frozen
all winter. Now in the winter it freezes and thaws, freezes and thaws.
Some of the models show this part of the country getting very dry, and
that would be a big problem. If the weather got any drier, I wouldn't be
able to farm as I do." Climate change is likely to impact different parts of the world in
vastly different ways, climatologists and agronomists say. Scientists at
a recent international conference in London reported that warming
temperatures could lead to substantial harvest reductions in major food
crops such as wheat, soy and rice. And for years the World Bank and
others have been warning that climate change will be especially
burdensome on poor countries in the tropics, where soil quality is
generally inferior. According to a study conducted in the Philippines,
for every one degree C increase in temperature, there will be a
10-percent reduction in yields for rice, a staple crop for billions of
people. But here in the U.S., most observers agree, it's doubtful that
climate change could cause a food security crisis. The U.S. food system
- though highly concentrated in terms of ownership and control - is
geographically very diverse, which means that crops could be shifted to
other areas if necessary. Also, the U.S. produces so much surplus grains
for animal feed and food processing that it would take enormous crop
failures to create real food scarcities. At least for residents of the
U.S., a climate-change induced famine is unlikely. The uncertainties wrought by global warming, however, could be
make-or-break for many already-struggling farmers unless they are
prepared to adapt to new conditions. "For farmers, climate change is yet another darkness in the night,
another stress for farmers facing uncertainties," says Bill Easterling,
director of Penn State's Institutes of the Environment and a longtime
researcher into climate change and agriculture. Farmers are a famously adaptive lot, well accustomed to reacting to
forces beyond their control. The worry among scientists is that if the
agriculture establishment does not take climate change seriously enough,
it will become much more difficult to respond effectively when weather
disruptions hit. Easterling says the window for farmers to successfully
adapt to new weather conditions is about six to 10 years - the time it
takes for researchers to breed new seed varieties suited for specific
conditions. "What would worry anyone is if climate change starts to exceed the
system's built-in adaptive response," Easterling says. Among farmers and researchers, there is disagreement about which
types of growers climate change will impact most - large agribusiness
growing operations, or smaller, family-run farms. Some agriculture
industry observers says that the bigger farmers will have an advantage
in coping with weather changes, as they will have more resources to
switch to new crops. Others says that since family farms usually grow a
wider range of crops, their biological diversity will make it easier to
cope with whatever changes occur. "A large corporate potato farm may be more vulnerable because they
have all of their eggs in one basket," says Vern Grubinger, a berry
specialist at the University of Vermont. "It's very hard to find small,
family farms that have only one thing. They may have 100 or so species.
You won't be in nearly as bad a shape if you were growing only one or
two crops." "When you have a real diversified profile with what you're planting,
you know that at least something will do well," says Santa Cruz farmer
Martin. "And that's an advantage." What all agriculture experts agree on is that farmers need to start
preparing today for climate change. Growers ought to be thinking about
what warmer temperatures, fluctuations in precipitation, and an increase
in extreme weather events will mean for their farms, and how they can
respond. "This is change; it's not necessarily disaster," says Grubinger.
"The disaster will come if people aren't prepared." 3. Opposed to Bill Norfolk Daily News Neligh - Independent Cattlemen of Nebraska (ICON) is not opposed to a checkoff on beef but is opposed to the passage of Legislative Bill 150. ICON has four areas of concern: Who's required to pay for a checkoff? Why does the bill contains such a complicated refund procedure? Who benefits from this structure? Who receives the funds and decides how the money is spent? Why is a checkoff fee only levied on the sale of live cattle? Shouldn't every entity profiting from the sale of beef (the final product) participate in promoting the product? The rancher now receives less than 50% of the total beef dollar . Isn't it time that those making more than 50% pay their fair share? LB 150 contains refund language, but mandatory fees are still collected. The producer is then required to file forms quickly if he wants is checkoff money return. Our concern is that the onus of supporting the checkoff will ultimately fall on the producer who can least afford it because the larger producers will have a greater incentive to ask for and received a refund. The bill specifies that the director of the Department of Agriculture decides how the funds are spent the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) has been in charge of the existing checkoff since its inception. Our current ag director has a very close relationship with NCBA. NCBA's efforts to open the Canadian border to live cattle is in the opposition to the 1989 protocols on BSE developed by the World Health Organization and NCBA's opposition to mandatory country of origin labeling demonstrates to ICON that NCBA no longer represents the grassroots cattleman. Therefore, we will not support a bill that could continue funneling our own money to an organization which, we perceive, is destroying the independent cattle producer. We're not talking about a small amount of money here. In fiscal year 2004, Nebraska collected nearly $10 million in checkoff fees. Just over 6 million of that was ultimately sent to NCBA's checkoff division. Only $1,231,474 remained in Nebraska. That's our "tax" money going outstate to support jobs in other communities. Is this what Nebraska's cattle producers want? Again, ICON does not oppose a checkoff. We believe that good has come from the promotion of beef. But let the producer decide at the point-of-sale whether he wants to help promote his product or not. We want a checkoff where every entity pays its fair share, a checkoff which is independent of political interests and solely dedicated to the promotion of beef, and a checkoff which will promote Nebraska beef as the best and safest beef in the world. David Wright
4. Demand for Organic Foods Soaring by Rick Callahan, Associated Press, 05/09/05, http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0509-10.htm Dairy cows munch lazily on a grassy hilltop overlooking Traders Point
Creamery as 23-year-old Marc Murnane strides into the organic
creamery's store in search of chocolate milk — lots of it. In short order, he loads 12 one-quart bottles, at $3.50 each, into a
box bound for Chicago, where his girlfriend's father is among the
growing number of Americans who've developed a taste for organic foods. "He just loves the chocolate milk — and it really is the best stuff
I've ever had," Murnane says, describing the rich blend of sweet milk
from grass-fed cows, organic sugar and cocoa. The farm northwest of Indianapolis is part of a nationwide move to put
organic foods in consumers' reach. Nationwide, the market for organic foods has soared from $3.57 billion
in 1997 to $10.38 billion in 2003, according to Organic Trade
Association. The group predicts sales will reach $14.5 billion by the
end of 2005 as Americans buy everything from radishes to beef grown
without conventional pesticides and fertilizers, biotechnology,
antibiotics or growth hormones. Indiana was late to join the organic food movement, which arose in the
1960s in response to modern chemical farming, but the state is starting
to make up lost ground, said Cissy Bowman, executive director of
Indiana Certified Organic, LLC. As the state's only government-approved organic certifier, she has
given the stamp of approval to more than 50 Hoosier organic farms and
expects that to double this year. Herself an organic farmer, Bowman said the organic market has undergone
incredible growth since she began raising organic vegetables 20 years
ago on six acres near the Hendricks County town of Clayton. "Any food you can think of, you can buy an organic version now. It's
not just that bag of whole wheat flour on the store shelf anymore," she
said. Traders Point Creamery delivers to about 70 area stores, with weekly
shipments to Chicago-area stores, but demand often outpaces supply,
particularly during the winter and summer. "The cows can't keep up. We sell pretty much everything we produce,"
said David Robb, the creamery's manager of business development. Cathy Greene, an agricultural economist with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's Economic Research Service, said the retail market for
organic foods continues to grow about 20 percent each year. Most people buy organic out of health concerns, she said. Some want to
support environmentally friendly farms, but for others, it's a quest
for food with superior taste and nutrition. "Whether the food tastes better or not is kind of subjective, but
whether it's more nutritious is something researchers are just starting
to study," Greene said. According to the USDA, certified organic cropland in the United States
grew nearly 75 percent between 1997 and 2001, the last year for which
figures are available, and accounted for more than 2.3 million acres in
2001. The USDA found an estimated 4,175 acres of certified organic cropland
in Indiana in 2001, but Bowman said the 54 organic farms she's
certified in the state account for only about 2,370 acres. Barbara Haumann, a senior writer with the Organic Trade Association,
said there is no clear gauge of the nation's organic agriculture
industry. "The numbers are quite hazy," she said. "The government just
needs to do some better tracking." Although organic foods can cost two to three times more than their
conventionally raised alternatives, Corinne Alexander, a Purdue
University assistant professor of agricultural economics, said people,
herself included, are willing to pay. "I like the idea that right now the organic farmers are being rewarded
with premium prices for their hard work. It's really backbreaking
work," she said. Traders Point Creamery's 140 acres of pastures are planted with a mix
of grasses and meadow plants that make its milk superior to that
produced by grain-fed cows, said Robb. The pastures are enriched with natural compost and by tilling under
cover crops. The nutrient-rich droppings from the 60 Brown Swiss dairy
cows also help green the fields, he said. The fields thrive, Robb said, because they work in concert with nature.
"The soil is a really a living entity, and chemicals kill all the good
things in the soil when what we really need to be doing is stimulating
those," he said. 5. Support from city folk takes root on the farm By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY A new way of farming is quietly sowing seeds of change. It has brought new
life to family farms in Illinois, let city dwellers cultivate deep
relationships with the people who grow their food in Rochester, N.Y., and
allowed new farms to sprout up in Tulsa. The ultimate harvest may be the
preservation of the family farm. Community-supported agriculture - CSA - has grown from a few pioneers in the
late 1980s to as many as 1,700 farms that feed about 340,000 families a
week, according to Local Harvest, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Web site that
tracks CSAs and farmers markets. Here's how it works: For $13 to $25 a week, a family buys a share of a
nearby farm's yearly harvest. Each week the family gets a box of vegetables
- and, at some CSAs, fruit - either delivered to the house or a designated
drop-off point. Though CSA farmers take their shareholders' likes and
dislikes into consideration when they're buying seed, once it's in the
ground, there's no changing the menu. What's ripe is ripe, and that's what's
in the box. The number of CSA operations is only a tiny fraction of the 2.1 million U.S.
farms counted in the 2002 Census of Agriculture. But they represent a new
way of keeping small farmers on the land in an era of agricultural
consolidation. Every year, CSA farmers figure out how many shares their
harvest can support - anywhere from 25 to 1,000. Once those are all spoken
for, the CSA is sold out until the following year. Jim and Diann Moore were on the verge of losing their nearly 100-year-old
farm in Watseka, Ill., when the Prairieland CSA in Champaign-Urbana came
looking for a new farmer in 2003. "My husband was working road construction,
I was working in a grocery store (and) we'd spent our boys' savings
accounts," Diann Moore says. Then in December, the CSA checks started to come from the group's 60
members. "It's been a lifeline," she says with a catch in her voice. "Spring
is when we need the money. It's when we buy the seeds. It's there when the
propane bill comes for the greenhouses." Farmers often have had to take out loans at the beginning of the growing
season and pay the money back with interest when the crops come in. But CSAs
turn that age-old pattern on its head. "I get my money upfront," says Leigh Hauter, who has run a CSA out of his
family's Bull Run Mountain Organic Farm in The Plains, Va., for 12 years.
"With the CSA, people join up in the spring, and that pays our expenses." CSA shareholders pay in advance. Some pay monthly; others pay for the season
with one check. Either way, the money's in the farmer's bank account when
it's needed. Today the Moores' farm has 143 members who each pay $405 for 33 weeks of
vegetables. Though Moore says the family income "is still probably below the
poverty line," they're earning enough that they've been able to quit their
off-farm jobs. Best of all, their oldest son, Wes, 17, will get his wish and
be able to farm with his family when he finishes school instead of leaving
for a job in town. The Moores feel blessed to have their shareholders, who have become like
family. "We get Christmas cards. We've gone to people's funerals. If it
weren't for this group of people, we wouldn't still be farming," Moore says. 'Rude awakening' for some Not that CSAs are right for every farmer, says Greg Bowman, editor of
NewFarm.org, a Web magazine. "It's been rather a rude awakening for some farmers, going from selling by
the ton at a local feed mill to growing things by the pound for people who
believe they have a stake in deciding what you're going to grow," he says. But when it works, it's great for both sides, says Kathryn Jensen of
Rochester, N.Y. She has been a shareholder in Peacework Farm for 10 years
and says she's in tune with the seasons and the struggles of "her" farmers.
"Supermarkets have almost completely isolated the consumer from the natural
food production cycle," she says. And that's why CSAs are "a revolution in agriculture," says David Ward,
director of the Rodale Institute, a non-profit educational and research
organization in Kutztown, Pa., that works to promote sustainable farming. "Just the act of going and picking up a box puts the consumer much more into
the mind-set of 'Where is this food coming from?' and 'Why is it available
now?' " It has been a huge shift in the Jensen household. Her sons now know that
asparagus is available in the spring and strawberries in the summer, and
neither will be on the table in December. They're also much more
adventuresome eaters, she says. "My older son, who's 10, loves kale, collard
greens and Brussels sprouts," she says. "I tell people that and they're
floored." Donna Camp joined the Moores' CSA a year ago. It has taken her Urbana, Ill.,
family a while to get used to eating things she didn't know existed before,
such as the green, knobby ball called kohlrabi, a mild member of the
broccoli family. "We didn't know that cabbage could taste that good," Camp says. "It's really
made us question what we have been eating before." An idea is born The CSA movement got its start in the USA in 1986 from farmers who had spent
time on Swiss and German organic farms. In those countries, the idea of
producer-consumer alliances was inspired by the co-op movement in Chile in
the 1970s. The first CSA farms in America were the Great Barrington CSA
Garden in Massachusetts and Temple-Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire. Today, not all CSAs are alike. There are farms on which the shareholders
work a certain number of hours each season. And there are others in which
shareholders just leave the farmer a house key so a driver can drop off the
food. The harvest itself is growing more varied. CSAs began as vegetable farms,
with some fruit thrown in. Today there are all kinds of shares that include
flowers, herbs, milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, poultry, eggs and meat - often
lamb, pork and sometimes beef. Anecdotes and recipes One thing as crucial as sun and rain to a thriving CSA is a newsletter. It
gives members weekly updates on what's in the greenhouse, the ground and the
reaper. Hauter has been writing a newsletter for the 400 members of his Virginia
farm for nine years. Each week they get a dispatch on his ongoing battle
with a bear over who controls the beehives, an update on an errant billy
goat and some musings on farming. It has become so popular that his members
are pushing him to turn it into a book. Newsletters also provide another piece of the CSA puzzle: recipes. CSA
customers, especially new ones, can find themselves with unfamiliar
vegetables in quantities they'd never buy at the market. So almost all
newsletters include recipes for that week's vegetables. (Hints: Rutabagas
make great oven fries, and even kids like kale when it's cooked with raisins
and pine nuts.) CSA also are a way into farming for young people just starting out, because
the certain income gives them a safety net. It's how Emily Oakley and Mike
Appel, both 27, have made it on a 2-acre spread on leased land in Tulsa. The couple met more than eight years ago in their first college course on
agriculture, Oakley says. After apprenticing for three years on CSA farms,
they moved to Oakley's hometown with $20,000 and a dream: to start one of
their own. It has been a struggle. The first year they lost peppers to torrential rain,
lettuce to heat and broccoli to hungry cabbage looper larvae. But even so,
they were astonished at how much they could reap. "One week in July we harvested 1,000 pounds of tomatoes," Appel says. They
had 10 members their first year, drawn by postcards sent to everyone they
knew in town. "Our dentist had fliers up in his office," Oakley says. This year they're up to 35 members who pay $15 a week each during the
20-week harvest season, which brings in about $10,500 a year. In addition,
they sell about $25,000 a year at the farmers market and another $6,000 to
restaurants and wholesalers, bringing their total yearly gross income to a
whopping $20,750 each for the privilege of doing back-breaking labor 52
weeks a year. But they wouldn't have it any other way. "I'm sure people look at those
numbers and think 'Holy crap! That's not enough money for two people,' "
Oakley says. "But it's sort of a choice you have to make." Oakley and Appel are examples of CSA farmers who diversify, selling at
farmers markets, to restaurants and to wholesalers to add income without
having to work off the farm. After all, "we want to be farmers," Oakley
says. "But that CSA cash flow in the winter is critical," says farmer Judith
Redmond of Full Belly Farm outside of Guinda, Calif., north of Sacramento.
Full Belly makes about 25% of its income from its CSA, about 25% from
farmers markets and 50% from restaurants and wholesale sales. Truly a family operation A growing CSA customer base is made up of parents who want to give their
children a sense that food doesn't just sprout out of the supermarket
vegetable case. At Full Belly Farm, Redmond is one of four partners who grow food for the
farm's 1,000 shareholders. "We especially get a lot of people with kids who
really think it's important for them to get connected to where their food
comes from," she says. Like most CSAs, Full Belly fosters its community by holding yearly potlucks
in the spring, with tours, tractor rides and chances to see cows, goats,
sheep and chickens. But to the Rev. Mike Mulberry and his flock at the Community United Church
of Christ in Champaign, Ill., there is a larger constituency. To them, the
CSA is a kind of Christian ministry unto itself. The parish buys three shares of the Moores' CSA and donates the food each
week to a local food pantry for the hungry. As Mulberry sees it, the Moores support the community, the parish supports
the Moores, both support the social service agencies and everybody "is
transformed." | |
