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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Sustainable market growing
  • Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 22:11:31 -0600


Sustainable market growing means first of all making money to sustain
the grower. It's simple. If the organic grower can't survive without a 9 to
5 to live on, then there won't be anyone to grow sustainably in the first
place. How many market growers today have to work in town just to keep
growing? How many millions of family farms have gone under in the past half
century? How many dairy farmers are working themselves into an early grave
just to break even?

Living on the Land refutes the tired myth of "get big or get out". I
am convinced the death of small family farms has been the mistake of
playing by the big boys' rules. Buy or lease more land. Buy more equipment
and inputs, chemical or otherwise. Go in debt up to your eyeballs. Only
raise what the middleman wants from you, and put all your eggs in one
basket. Then comes one bad year, and you're history. The bank owns the farm
and you're nothing but a sharecropper.

It never had to be that way. There are strategies to reverse the
downward spiral and loss of farms and farm families. But few of us can
start with humus-rich, virgin soil. If we can't take a year or two to start
building soil, and spare some of the land for cover crop rotations, and
treat it like a business, then we'll be out of business. We don't
romanticize here. Market growing is a business, and 90% of all startup
businesses in general fail for lack of capitalization and market savy. Not
everyone should try to farm, or go into drycleaning or selling popsicles.
Not every climate and market will work either. On the plus side, energy
prices and deadend economics will guarantee a new playing field for local
producers.

Here's what we know, for starters.

1. Building healthy soil can double or triple production for the same or
lower input costs and labor.
2. You can achieve healthy, humus-rich, productive soil at much lower cost
with the right cover crops and/or composting free materials or what's
produced onsite.
3. The resulting healthy soil needs much less irrigation, drains better,
and makes crops more resistant to weather and pest problems without
chemical inputs.
4. Intelligently used, no-till techniques and mulch can slash equipment
costs, energy costs, and labor.
5. Permanent layout of wide rows or raised beds concentrates inputs in the
growing areas instead of aisles you walk on. No monster tractors needed.
You don't waste money fertilizing or weeding ground you walk on. This
layout alone can double production or better.
6. Best selection of crop seed and varieties for the climate and market
improves chances of having good crops and selling them. This is a hard
lesson for those who think they know what they want to grow. It may not be
what people want to eat in Peoria or Tuscon.
7. Cutting the cost of inputs and labor with sustainable practices means a
wider profit margin, healthier plants, and tastier, healthier eating.
8. Season extension techniques can grow more and longer, producing more
for the space available without increasing all other costs.
9. With your available space more productive and lowered input costs, you
get that wider profit margin on more produce volume.
10. Of course selling direct to regular customers gets you the retail price
without wasting time at a farmers market (though it's a good place to
locate regular customers).

Go back and count how many of those points mean higher profits for the
market grower.

Each of these practices and results has been demonstrated beyond
question by growers and researchers for decades, and in third world
countries where the latest John Deere is unheard of. While many organic
growers realize the benefits of some of these practices, few see the big
picture. Two or three of these cost cutting methods are used by many
organic growers, but they don't get the financial return they need to
survive without pushing the envelope and taking advantage of every method
appropriate to their situation. It takes time and study - and manual labor.
And from what I've seen they don't teach this in college (at least not
forty years ago at TX A&M). Last I heard they were claiming it takes a half
million dollars or more just to get started in farming. With their methods
you can lose a half million dollars in one year.

Putting it all together points to the revival of the family farm as a
viable way of making a living and providing affordable healthy food for
all. This is realistic and necessary. This is the old way before chemicals,
only better. We have the benefit of far more knowledge and networking today
than the isolated homesteader over a century ago. We can work smarter
instead of working harder. What we can bring about is nothing less than a
complete revolution in agriculture. The urgency is not debatable. The fine
points will be worked on; many growers and researchers will improve on what
we know now.


paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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