Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Editor's Note: Growing demand for fresh, locally produced foods and a desire 
by consumers to know where their food comes from are feeding the growth of 
small-scale farming. Policy that supports the localization of food production 
is multifunctional in that it tends to be easier on the environment than 
industrial farming, creates employment and keeps money within communities.
New York Times
September 21, 2004
Sell in Bulk, Lose Farm. Sell Locally, and Watch Revenues Grow.
By KEITH SCHNEIDER

ALKASKA, Mich.

ONE of the truly good-news stories in American agriculture, and one with 
meaning for small businesses of all kinds, is what's happening on Tyler Road 
here at the Shetler Family Dairy.

Not that long ago, George and Sally Shetler were small fry in an industry 
dominated by big players, producers of a bulk commodity in which prices 
essentially had not budged for 20 years. Continuing to supply the 
conventional fluid milk market, the Shetlers concluded, would take them down 
the same bankruptcy path that the Department of Agriculture says claimed 
almost 400 farms a week from 1974 to the mid-1990's, most of them small.

So in 1995, the Shetlers decided to try a more entrepreneurial approach. If 
the markets they could reach through conventional channels were 
unsatisfactory, what new market could they tap?

The one right around them, as it turned out - bottling and delivering their 
milk directly to stores in Traverse City, 25 miles away, the center of a 
five-county region with 165,000 residents and growing faster than almost any 
place in the Midwest.

The couple, who raised five children in a 90-year-old farmhouse with one 
bathroom and a lot of wallpaper with cows, sent a survey to local markets and 
learned that proprietors were eager to sell fresh food produced by local 
growers. They then sat at their dining table and wrote a straightforward 
business plan on one page of unlined white paper - "Start small within 1995. 
Action to be taken: Pray!!" - that accurately described the fast-growing 
business they and several of their children operate.

Today, the milk from its 38 cows is bottled in a $140,000 microcreamery the 
family built and stocked with used equipment. The dairy ships 1,300 gallons 
of milk and dairy products twice a week to 50 stores in the Grand Traverse 
region. Their truck has a set of Texas longhorns bolted to the roof of the 
cab, a black-and-white Holstein pattern and a slogan: "From Moo to You."

The result? Revenues have grown fourfold, and the farm now has seven 
employees.

"You know what this has done for us? Every other weekend now I get off and 
don't have to milk," said Mr. Shetler, 53, who bought his 180-acre farm 25 
years ago.

There are other examples of how the adage in agriculture to "get big or get 
out" is being turned on its head by growers who are staying small, and 
getting much more profitable. Mike and Tina Werp, for instance, produce 
specialty baby vegetables for 15 restaurants in Traverse City, Detroit and 
Mackinac Island, one of the state's top tourist destinations. They have an 
80-acre farm in Grant Township, which is south of Traverse City, but do most 
of the cultivating in greenhouses and fields on just 10 acres. Their total 
annual revenue is $150,000, or $15,000 an acre.

Revenue, moreover, is growing steadily and is enough to employ three 
full-time and three part-time workers. By contrast, conventional corn growers 
in the region are fortunate if they earn $300 an acre. "The idea is to do 
things intelligently," said Mr. Werp, an engineer who was raised in Detroit 
but migrated to the region in the mid-1970's to manage the farm, which was 
owned by his grandparents. "I'm not trying to do what Ford, G.M. and Chrysler 
try to do. I don't need my vegetables to be in every community."

Entrepreneurial farms are largely invisible to government and economic 
development agencies, said Bill Palladino, a small-business development 
specialist in the Traverse City region. "We know it is a core economy for our 
region," Mr. Palladino said, "but we don't know how big it is yet. We want to 
know. The value-added ag economy is based locally, uses local resources, and 
takes those resources and extends them to the marketplace here."

The success of Shetler Family Dairy, Werp Farms and dozens of other small 
growers in northern Michigan has attracted the attention of the Traverse City 
Area Chamber of Commerce. The chamber's foundation joined the W. K. Kellogg 
Foundation in Battle Creek, Mich., which co-sponsored the publication of a 
regional food guide, prepared by the Michigan Land Use Institute, to link 
small farmers with local customers.

The basic idea of putting buyers and sellers of homegrown food together, of 
course, is not new. Farmers' markets have existed as long as the republic. 
But farmers' ingenuity in tapping new markets, and consumers' eagerness for 
farm-fresh foods, are both on the rise, according to the Department of 
Agriculture. And local and state governments and the business community are 
doing more to support the trend, recognizing that small farms are linked to 
other useful economic, environmental and cultural outcomes.

For instance, Douglas Luciani, the president of the Traverse City Area 
Chamber of Commerce, , said that farms provide scenic open space that helps 
attract tourists and puts a brake on some of the unmanaged development and 
sprawl.

Similar views are expressed in dozens of fast-growing urban and suburban 
communities nationwide. The number of farms that are 10 to 49 acres actually 
increased to 563,772 in 2002 from 530,902 in 1997, according to the latest 
farm census by the Department of Agriculture. Some of those farms are in 
Community Supported Agriculture programs, known as C.S.A.'s, which sell 
shares to customers during the winter for a portion of their summer 
production. There are now more than 1,700 C.S.A.'s, according to an article 
on NewFarm.org, a Web site of the nonprofit group Rodale Institute.

Farmers are driving the innovation in new markets. In Lincoln, Neb., earlier 
this year, a group of 10 farmers opened what most authorities think is the 
only grocery store in the nation owned and managed by growers. The 
5,000-square-foot Centerville Farmers' Market in the historic Haymarket 
district occupies the first floor of a renovated steam-tractor factory. John 
Ellis, a farmer and the store manager, said the store was intended to operate 
year-round featuring homegrown, mostly chemical-free fruits, vegetables, 
meats (including buffalo, ostrich and emu), dairy products and other foods 
produced by 31 growers. It cost $75,000 to prepare the space, and business 
has been brisk. "We're attracting some attention and we're developing our 
market," Mr. Ellis said.

Consumers are not the only people taking an interest in locally grown food. 
State governments are beginning to see small family farms as an asset capable 
of generating jobs and slowing suburban sprawl. In Massachusetts, for 
instance, the Farm Viability Enhancement Program has helped 139 family farms, 
or 2 percent of the state's total, stay in business by making grants to farms 
for new marketing projects.

Last year, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm introduced Select a Taste of Michigan, a 
program to promote asparagus and nine other fresh market crops. Rick Oomen, 
49, a vegetable farmer in Hart, credited the program with raising prices. 
"The last two years, we've enjoyed the best fresh market prices I can 
remember," he said.

Such optimism is striking in an industry where bad news is generally the 
norm. Not so for many of the state's 52,000 farms, including the Shetlers'. 
Though there were days when the Shetlers thought they might lose the farm, 
those have passed. "Before we started bottling milk it was always at the back 
of my mind - do something," Mrs. Shetler said. "We did and it's working out."

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