Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

But he IS a large industrial grower, Don. Being organic doesn't define large 
or small; methods and scale define large or small. Row farming on that scale 
with tractors and special machinery, paying labor and buying inputs is 
industrial type farming. You say he's farming 170 acres, paying labor, buying 
manure or compost, taking the middleman's price for some of his produce, and 
having a hard time financially.  Is he familiar with principles of cost 
accounting? Of course he's having a hard time. So wouldn't you say it's time 
for him to rethink his whole operation?

There are growers who can retail from two to four acres without paid labor, 
with minimum machinery and without buying inputs, and still clear enough to 
live on given good retail markets. But not if labor is eating you alive 
harvesting salad greens. And 170 acres isn't nearly small enough; it's still 
"get big or get out" mindset. I also suspect his wholesale and specialty 
restaurant sales are costing him too much for what they bring in. Or he's 
paying for land at inflated prices. Or he's forced to pay too much for labor 
with the immigration problems. Labor is a cost we can't control or rely on 
and survival may depend on being small enough to avoid paying labor. I envy 
his year round climate. Based on what we can grow and sell from one-sixth of 
an acre in a hard climate, and based on my age, I'd project we could make a 
good living on one or two acres if I were thirty years younger.

This is not some theory I dreamed up. I've adapted methods from Jeavons and 
from Rodale books like Hi-Yield Gardening and How To Get The Most From Your 
Garden, and from Salatin's You Can Farm. Run them through the cost accounting 
filter and see what methods turn out most efficient. Nor do I claim to know 
everything; I'm having some germination problems right now. But you don't 
have to know everything and have fifty years experience to find what works in 
your own climate and market. Bottom line: organic and sustainable, fine. But 
if it doesn't pass the cost accounting test, it won't sustain YOU.


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/30/2008 at 10:15 AM Don  Bowen wrote:

>But those rising prices hit industrial agriculture and most small growers
>can get around it with local manure and compost. I do. And those of us who
>have better sense than to sell to China-Mart set our own prices. The old
>mantra of "get big or get out" has bankrupted millions. Meanwhile, I'm
>raising prices to keep up with the supermarkets. But my costs are NOT
>rising. Gross minus costs = profit. Inflation is a two way escalator. We
>can
>be on the downside or the upside. We saw this coming two or three years
>ago
>and we decided to get on the upside.
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>I am not speaking of a large industrial grower but a relatively small
>commercial organic farmer.  Heirloom Organic Gardens is a commercial
>organic
>farm selling mostly to specialty restraints and at various farmers markets
>about the Bay area of San Francisco.  He does sell to a couple of
>wholesale
>companies but by far most of his business is farmers markets.  He is also
>a
>grower for Seeds of Change.
>
>His local manure and compost prices have risen dramatically as have
>delivery
>costs.  He has to set prices within the marketing environment around him
>to
>move product.  Costs are rising as fuel costs and labor eat away at his
>ever
>thinner margins.  His sole income is from farming and there is not much of
>that in these trying times.
>
>He farms about 100 acres in the Hollister California area.  He also farms
>about 70 acres in a valley between Hollister and the Central Valley, all
>are
>strictly organic as defined and audited by the state plus he tends to do
>more out of his respect for the future.  Mostly vegetables and salad
>greens.
>With his climate he can grow almost year round and has something to sell
>every day of the year.  He is trying to make a living this way and it is
>difficult.  I have spent most of the last five months fixing machinery
>around his farms.  Within the next few weeks I am heading to the Missouri
>Ozarks to help build a shop and fix a house on a small self sufficient
>homestead.  That may well be where I spend the rest of my years.
>
>Don Bowen      KI6DIU
>http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html