Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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A Growing Trend: Small, Local and Organic
Popularity of Farmers Markets, Natural Grocery Stores Helps Cultivate a
Rise in Niche Farms

By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 6, 2006; Page D01

This is where Michael Pappas farms: not in the great wide fields of Iowa or
in California's industrial salad bowl, but in Lanham. He is eight miles
from the Washington Monument, three or four turns from the Beltway, at the
end of a long road in a residential neighborhood. He's growing crops on 2
1/2 acres with 2 1/2 employees.

How's life? "Lately, it's really pretty good," Pappas says, in the middle
of his fall harvest at a place he calls Eco Farms. He points out some lemon
verbena, which he sells to chef Michel Richard for his D.C. restaurant,
Citronelle, considered one of the country's best. Nearby he has a little
patch of wild arugula for chef Johnny Monis at Komi. He's also got mesclun
salad, basil, peppers, radishes, carrots, beets and pineapple sage, not to
mention plenty of customers at a co-op, other restaurants, local grocery
stores and a gourmet caterer.

Pappas has, on this hilly field, created what few people thought was
possible in the age of industrial farming: a small organic operation that
is both environmentally and economically sustainable. Like dozens of other
farmers across the region, he has leveraged the
grass-roots-turned-mainstream popularity of farmers markets to expand the
market for locally grown produce to restaurants, caterers, grocery stores
and even college dining halls. Pappas, who is single and has no children,
typically can't afford to eat at Citronelle, but he says he's making a nice
living.

It's not just nostalgia for a quaint notion of local farming -- or fear of
E. coli in spinach -- that drives Pappas's success, though those are
important components. He's also benefiting from the heightened
sophistication of Whole Foods customers and their ilk, people who want to
feed both their bodies and their social consciences, and who ask
themselves, "What good is eating organic if it's been trucked 3,000
gas-guzzling miles across the country?"

"The whole trend for the past 100 years was to get bigger or get out, but
in the 1970s and '80s people started to get smaller," said Lynn Byczynski,
editor of the Growing for Market newsletter, whose 5,000 subscribers are
mostly small farmers. "Now it's about attention to detail, about getting
retail pricing and having relationships with customers. People are making a
livelihood out of this."

The trend toward smaller farming can be seen locally in farm Census data.
While the number of farms in Maryland has fallen from 39,000 in 1950 to
about 12,200 in 2002, the number of niche farms of 10 to 49 acres grew from
3,979 in 1992 to 4,412 in 2002. In Virginia, such farms grew from 10,361 in
1992 to 14,082 in 2002.

"This has really been happening all over the country," Byczynski said.
"People are managing to make a go of it."

The increased demand for local produce was enough to help Brett Grohsgal, a
former chef, succeed in a third career as a farmer. At first, it certainly
didn't seem like he would be a much of a hit. In 1997, when he started
Even' Star Organic Farm on about 100 acres in Lexington Park, in Southern
Maryland, he generated $8,000 in revenue, for a salary of about 23 cents an
hour.

"That was pretty tough," Grohsgal said. But last year, his revenue was in
the low six figures, and he is expecting 20 to 40 percent growth this year.
He has relationships with several D.C. restaurants, and his biggest
wholesale customer is a catering service for American University, Gallaudet
University and St. Mary's College. "Life is good, man," he said. "Life is
really good. It's a seller's market if you are at the high end of the
product stream. Sales are not a problem."

Even larger local farmers are benefiting from the push toward local
produce. John Lewis, who farms about 1,500 acres in Virginia's Northern
Neck, said his crops fetch good prices with his main customer, Giant Food.

"They try not to beat down the farmer on price, and that makes them
different from the general produce market," Lewis said. "They are trying to
get good produce at a reasonable amount where the farmer can survive and
not cut the farmer's throat."

Whole Foods recently announced a heightened focus on buying local produce,
including a $10 million budget to promote local agriculture, following
pressure from author Michael Pollan, who has called into question the
wisdom of industrial organics. Of course, nothing is ever truly easy in
farming territory, particularly when it comes to the increasing development
of houses, each bigger than the last one. Grohsgal understands his land is
worth more to developers than it is to him as a farm. He turns home
builders away anyway. "I know it's worth a fortune," he said, "but if we
always sell to developers, our nation will just stop growing food."