Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Sustainable market growing

     Market growers who take advantage of every technique that works can
survive financially. Each of these cost cutting, production raising methods
practices has been demonstrated by growers and researchers. 

The soil

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, rotations,  and composting free materials or
what's produced onsite. 
3.  The resulting crumb structure needs much less irrigation, drains
better, and makes crops more resistant to weather and pest problems without
chemical inputs.
4.  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.
5.  Intelligent, no-till techniques and mulch can slash cultivation
equipment costs, energy costs, and labor. Weed control can be done with the
proper  timing of the right cover crops, some labor, mulching, and avoiding
bringing up seeds by cultivation. Herbicide costs money, depresses soil
biological activity, and is highly persistent as well as dangerous to
wildlife and humans.

The growing

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. Companion planting and succession planting can raise yields from a given
growing area. Perennials like berries or asparagus avoid annual planting
labor and costs. Vertical growing with stakes or trellises save ground
space. All this calls for diversifying crops, not monocultures.
Diversified growing also provides healthier variety in the diet and more
opportunities for food storage and preservation out of season. 
8.  Season extension techniques can grow more and longer, producing more
for the space available without increasing all other costs.

The bottom line

9.  With your available space much more productive, and with lower input
costs, you get that wider profit margin on more produce volume, and this
yields tastier, more saleable produe. 
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).  Plus you're not at the mercy of the middleman. 

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

     Putting it all together points a way 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. And techniques will continue to improve as more and more people
learn how to live better and more financially secure on the land.

     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 many around to grow sustainably in the
first place. How many market growers today have to work in town just to
keep the farm? 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 a couple bad years, bad weather, poor markets, and
you're history. The bank owns the farm and you're nothing but a
sharecropper. 

     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. 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, rising fuel and fossil fuel fertilizer and spray prices will
make a new playing field for local organic producers. 


paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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