Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

This writer for Rodale Institute (New Farm) says the solutions for more buy
local-eat local lie in local government initiatives. I'm going to disagree
in a further post.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------------------------

Local food networks reflect progress and potential
At the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture's 20th anniversary
celebration, discussion swirls around supporting the blossoming connections
between local consumers and local farmers.

By Darcy Maulsby
Posted August 9, 2007
http://newfarm.org/features/2007/0807/localiowa/maulsby.shtml

Farm-to-institution network facilitator Kamyar Enshayan of the University
of Northern Iowa, one of the presenters at the Leopold Center's 20th
anniversary celebration this summer, is a long-time sustainable food system
advocate. He addressed this gathering at the revered Aldo Leopold Shack
site in Baraboo, Wisconsin, in 2004.

A quiet revolution has redefined Iowa’s food culture, connecting farmers
and consumers like never before. Yet the local-food movement is just
beginning to flex its collective muscles to tackle the next set of
challenges to become a sustainable and consistent part of the food system.

“In the last 10 to 20 years, the focus of local foods has been on
consumers, and we need to celebrate these successes,” said Kamyar
Enshayan, coordinator of the University of Northern Iowa’s (UNI) Local
Food Project. Enshayan addressed attendees at a regional foods workshop
during the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture’s 20th anniversary
celebration recently in Ames, Iowa. “Now we need to help farmers
capitalize on their market power.”

The successes are many, agreed fellow panelist Neil Hamilton, director of
the Drake University Agricultural Law Center in Des Moines. One of the most
visible changes in Iowa agriculture spearheaded by the Leopold Center
includes the local-food movement, which began to take hold in Iowa in the
1990s. “When the Leopold Center celebrated its 10th anniversary, one of
the most memorable events was the meal of locally grown food,” Hamilton
said. “This was the first time the Scheman Center at Iowa State
University had been asked to serve local food. The farmers who raised the
food were introduced, and the whole event was moving and powerful.”

CSAs and institutions lead the charge

In some ways, the local-food movement has become more successful than its
pioneers ever envisioned. Consider community supported agriculture (CSA),
which has been one of the key building blocks. “It’s a huge challenge
to meet the demand,” said panelist Susan Jutz, who owns and operates ZJ
Farm near Solon, Iowa, and Local Harvest CSA, which includes nearly 200
members. “Even five years ago I’d never have believed that consumers
would be so interested in buying local food.”

        "The concept of buying locally just wasn’t out there. People would 
hear
'CSA' and thought you worked for the CIA."

When Jutz began her CSA in 1997 with 18 families, few people knew what CSAs
were. Though she never advertised, Jutz would speak about the CSA concept
to anyone who would listen – including church and civic groups – in
order to educate the public. “The concept of buying locally just wasn’t
out there. People would hear 'CSA' and thought you worked for the CIA.”

A great deal of education was also required to encourage institutions to
buy food locally. When Iowa’s Local Food Project began working 10 years
ago with the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Allen Memorial
Hospital in Waterloo, Iowa, and Rudy’s Tacos in Waterloo, the three
institutions purchased $100,000 worth of local food per year. “This past
year I worked with 27 institutional buyers, including area grocery stores,
who bought $881,000 of local foods from farmers primarily in a four-county
area,” said Enshayan, noting that the 2003 launch of the “Buy Fresh,
Buy Local” campaign helped to make local food and local farmers
significantly more visible.

What’s missing

While the local-food movement has come a long way, it still has a long way
to go. Some of the biggest areas of concern include:

    Labor issues. Many producers depend on their children and/or interns
for their farm labor. “We haven’t figured out how to get experienced,
affordable, consistent labor,” Jutz said. Paying skilled, reliable
workers also creates financial challenges for the farm family. To
compensate employees adequately, Jutz has to sacrifice some of the income
her family needs to meet basic expenses like the mortgage and everyday
living costs.

    Lack of producers to fill the demand. Jutz believes the local-food
movement requires more young people who are able and willing to start
farming, as well as mid-sized farmers who are willing to convert some of
their acres to vegetable and fruit production. The local-food movement also
needs a full-scale program that provides the technical expertise young farm
families need to survive, Enshayan added.

    Inadequate health insurance. While this is a challenge for any
self-employed person, it’s especially a problem in agriculture, where
profit margins can be slim. While it may appear that demand exceeding
supply would be a nice problem to have, solving the issue isn’t as simple
as raising the price of CSA shares, said Jutz, who noted that food needs to
be affordable. Many CSA members are older adults on fixed incomes, and
shares that become too expensive may exclude many working families, as
well. “Even if I raise the price of my shares by $50 or $75 to get them
where they should be, this still isn’t enough to buy insurance.”

    No entity advocating policy change. Despite all the local-food work
going on in Iowa, these low-budget operations are faced with the huge task
of re-establishing a local-food network across the entire state. While some
states, such as Nebraska, have organizations like the Center for Rural
Affairs, there is no similar group in Iowa to serve as an advocate for
policy change. “We have the weight, and now we need to throw our weight
around,” Enshayan said.

    Little evidence of the local-food revolution in local grocery stores.
While the paradigms surrounding food have changed dramatically in the past
decade, there’s still little evidence of the local-food revolution in the
typical Iowa grocery store.

Finding solutions

Although there are no easy answers, Leopold Center panelists agreed that
it’s time to get serious about finding solutions, such as engaging local
governments to invest public tax dollars in the maintenance of local-food
systems. Residents need to see that services providing local food are as
important as water, sewer, police and fire protection services, said
Enshayan, who sits on the city council in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

“The local police chief doesn’t spend his time raising money just to
keep his department going. The local-foods movement spends too much time
searching for money to keep low-budget operations afloat. Also, local
governments spend vast quantities of money on economic development. We
ought to encourage them to consider the importance of local foods to the
economy.”

"If state policy required institutions to buy a certain percentage of local
products, it would be a lot easier for these organizations to buy local."


Policies at the state level could also foster the growth of the local-food
movement, noted audience members. When Iowa State University purchases
local food, currently the buyers must justify spending the extra money.
“If state policy required institutions to buy a certain percentage of
local products, it would be a lot easier for these organizations to buy
local,” said Sue De Blieck of Iowa State University.

Changes in public policy could also result in more sustainable solutions
for farm payments. “I’d also like to see some of the direct farm
payments redirected towards health care and pension programs for farmers,
especially those producing local foods,” said Hamilton, who notes that it
takes time to educate public policy leaders about the importance of local
food and producers’ challenges.

There are also steps producers can take to improve their futures. Sharing
more cost-of-production information, along with best practices, can benefit
everyone, Jutz said. Although it can be hard to find time to leave the
farm, visiting other operations can provide valuable insights, including
exploring new ways to trim some of the biggest production costs in order to
boost profitability. When Jutz visited Seed Savers Exchange
www.seedsavers.org in Decorah, Iowa, for example, she learned a
labor-saving method of working with garlic. Tools like the Iowa Vegetable
Production Budgets developed by Iowa State University Extension (available
online at (www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/html/a1-17.html) also help
producers learn to allocate land, labor and capital to the most appropriate
use.

“The paradigm around local foods is radically changing, and we’ve done
a good job of making this change happen for more than 10 years,” Enshayan
said. “While there’s more to do, it can be done.”

Darcy Maulsby, Granger, Iowa, is a marketing and communications specialist
who was raised on a farm in the west-central part of the state.