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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Small Farm Renaissance
  • Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:03:51 -0700


Small Farm Renaissance
by Chuck Burr
13 March 2009
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id
=354&Itemid=66

The economic crisis has a bright side; it will be the catalyst for the
rebirth of the local small farm. These will be the kinds of farms that we
need: diverse, organic, and educational.

Diversity is the Key

The new generation of small farms will be more diverse than the previous
generation. During the era of cheap fuel and other inputs, large-scale
farms were profitable. However, input prices are rising and commodity or
crop prices are falling. Corn and soybean prices per bushel have fallen 30
to 40 percent in the last year respectively. Milk prices have plummeted 35
percent in the last two months. Right now the price of milk barely covers
the cost of feed alone.

Diversity in niches not competing with big agribusiness is the key to
success. Here are a couple examples of this new model. The Seven Seeds Farm
in Williams, OR grows certified organic vegetables, fruits, berries, seeds,
sheep for wool and lamb and poultry, offers Community Supported Agriculture
(CSA) shares, and the owner, Don Tipping is one of the leading educators in
the region.

Mark Shepard at Forest Agriculture Enterprises grows hazelnuts and
chestnuts using permaculture techniques in Viola, WI; he even sells the
trees. Note the diversity and niche items such as organically grown nuts
and seeds. Remember too that they have a much longer shelf life than
produce.

The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute located at 7,200 feet
above sea level in Basalt, CO offers a variety of permaculture design
courses, edible landscape design consulting and nursery stock, plus organic
herbs to local grocers. I took my permaculture design course (PDC) there in
2004. I highly recommend that anyone interested in learning some farming
skills to get their PDC.

Permaculture will teach you how to build soil and diversity using
indigenous cultural practices. Perennial polycultures including fruits,
nuts, and berries are combined with beneficial plants such as nitrogen
fixers or nectaries using the model of a forest. You learn how to create a
low maintenance edible landscape around your home.

The local food scene is changing. Produce buyers are making an effort to
buy local. CSAs like the Village Farm in Ashland, OR are using new models
that lower annual member dues through work exchange, and at farmers markets
you are starting to see more diverse products such as mushroom spawn and
even worm culture.

Start out Renting

Land prices have come down significantly. Residential real estate prices
are down between 20 and even 30 percent form their high in 2006. Last year
was the first time since 1988 that farm values have dropped.

I still believe that real estate prices have another 20+ percent to drop
until much of the land speculation inflation has been eliminated. Land
values in suburban areas are still greater than their agricultural economic
value. Today, you still cannot make enough money farming to pay the
mortgage on suburban land, and as land values drop so does the purchasing
power of the dollar. The point is that land is still expensive, so small
diverse farms with “stacking functions” have the best chance for
success.

My good friend Reg Vinkemier who has been a Minnesota farmer for 55 years
suggests “Rent land to get some kind of cash flow and to look at more
second hand equipment.” Don Tipping offered, “My best suggestion would
be that if you had farming skills, befriend an older family who owns land
but is unable to care for it—sort of a lease option to buy arrangement.
So that you can get farming now without having to own.”

If you use the CSA model, you may have more leverage to buy land as a coop
than as an individual farmer. The most famous example of buying land as a
CSA was farmer John Peterson. The movie about his life The Real Dirt on
Farmer John will turn every idea you ever had about what it means to be an
American farmer, or an American dreamer, on its head.

Local Food Movement

As peak oil’s effects arrive, for most local communities it will be a
necessary to restart local small farms. Non-rural communities such as
Ashland, OR are starting to hold their first Food Security Conference.
It’s goal, said organizer Lisa Pavati, editor of the Wellness Guide,
“is to stimulate action among individuals and groups to dedicate more
land, water, seeds and workers toward growing food locally.”

Cuba has already experienced petrocollapse when the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1990. Today more than 50 percent of the vegetable needs of Havana’s
2.2 million people is supplied by local urban agriculture. In smaller
cities and towns the rate is between 80 to 100 percent. Farmers are now
among the highest paid workers.

A new book called A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on
American Soil, is nothing short of a call to arms for local food
proponents. Co-authors Aaron Newton and New York writer Sharon Astyk call
for a grassroots-led agricultural revolution that would result in 100
million people becoming farmers and millions more becoming home cooks.

It is important that this be a local grass roots movement, but it needs to
be more. Local and state governments need to shift their emphasis away from
the now defunct model of endless suburban sprawl and large agribusiness.
Pouring more stimulus money down the drain after the single largest waste
of resources in the history of the planet, as James Howard Kunstler has
termed suburbia, is foolish.

President Obama would probably make significant progress in his effort to
reverse the recession by creating millions of new jobs right at home on
small farms. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the USDA every
year benefitting agribusiness should be redirected to family farms and
CSAs. Agricultural state Universities and extension agencies need to shift
their mind-set away from large to small farm economics. Extension agency
offices should have staff dedicated to permaculture.

Urban Agriculture and Usufruct

Farm extension offices should be opened in cities to promote urban
agriculture, and local zoning and land use codes modified to encourage
urban farming. Organizations like the Detroit’s Garden Resource Program
Collaborative need more funding. Detroit could become the Midwestern
Havana.

As long as private property rights trump community interest, they will get
in the way of community benefit. If anyone wants to farm, they should be
given tools, seeds, and a plot of land with water in usufruct. Vacant lots
should revert to the community. The highest and best use for vacant urban
land should be to give healthy food and secure jobs to those who most need
it.

Unemployment Highest and Lowest in Farm Country

An interesting revelation coming out of the recession is that unemployment
is lowest in the Midwestern farm belt but highest in the California central
valley. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching
from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. The
highest rate in the country is in El Centro, CA due east of San Diego in
the desert of California’s Inland Valley, experiencing a depression of
22.6 percent unemployment.

I am trying to draw a conclusion from these interesting statistics. The
California central valley has been hit especially hard by the drought. For
the first time in 15 years, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said
parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to
completely stop surface water deliveries for at least a three-week period
beginning March 1.

The drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion dollar loss in
agriculture-related wages and eliminate as many as 40,000 jobs in
farm-related industries in the San Joaquin Valley alone this year, where
most of the nation's produce and nut crops are grown.

The conclusion to draw is that we must start growing more of our food
locally whether for peak oil or for global warming caused drought. We are
seeing the end of 3,000-mile fast food.

Don’t Forget About Overpopulation

Whenever I talk about food, I have to remind people that humanity has been
running a food race ever since the start of the agricultural revolution
10,000 years ago. Whenever we produce more food, we are producing more
people. Which brings me to the reminder that no matter what your cause, it
is a lost cause unless population is reduced.

The first pillar to local food security is fewer people, then protect your
agricultural land and grow your food locally. I have written extensively in
this column and in Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of
Earth Culture about overpopulation, so I will not belabor the point, but is
bears remembering. Our culture has to reverse overshoot if we are ever
going to have real local food security.

This ties into my previous essay about the Free Nature Movement to start
giving back what we have taken from the other species by reducing our
population and consumption. We won’t have to turn rainforest into soybean
and grazing fields if the demand is not there. Give a fair part of the
Midwest back to the buffalo.

Inspiring New Farmers

I want to inspire new farmers. Even those who have never even been on a
farm before or never gardened. Start thinking about it. Go to your local
farmers market and talk to the growers. Visit their farms; ask questions.
Volunteer for a work party. Tell your kids they can keep what they get for
selling food to the neighbors. If you feel inclined, get involved in local
politics to make some of the changes you want to see happen. Watch the new
Permaculture for Beginners DVD when it becomes available later this year.
In the meantime, read Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by
Toby Hemenway. Plant a fruit or nut tree and some berries in your backyard.
Read seed catalogs.

You would be surprised how many people are starting to think about growing
some of their own food this spring. It can be as easy as planting green
side up [as opposed to roots up!]. Good growing—here comes the sun.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about the book Culturequake and
the online blog. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC




  • [Livingontheland] Small Farm Renaissance, Tradingpost, 03/13/2009

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