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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Winter growers get some love from the USDA
  • Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:37:07 -0700


Winter growers get some love from the USDA
Tom Laskawy 17 Dec 2009 12:15 PM
http://www.grist.org/article/draft-winter-growers-get-attention-from-usda/

It’s tempting to hear the news (and watch the video!) telling us that the
USDA will study winter gardening and wonder why the USDA needs to study
something that Eliot Coleman, a farmer in Maine, has been doing
successfully—and writing about—for decades and something that Will Allen’s
urban farming company Growing Power is doing commercially right now. But to
do so misses a crucial point.

While what follows is a bit of an oversimplification—hey, this is
agricultural regulatory structure we’re talking about so give me a
break!—it’s important to remember one crucial aspect of the “deal” among
stakeholders that defines the broad outlines of how the USDA operates:
California, through powerful lobbying groups like the Western Growers
Association and along with its large Congressional delegation, gets to
dominate vegetable and fruit growing. Yes, fruit and veggies are grown in
many states, but fully 50 percent of the nation’s fruits, vegetable, and nut
harvest comes from California. As a result, when it comes to vegetable and
fruit growers, reform pretty much means whatever the WGA and California reps
in Congress decide it should mean (which, on another subject, is why we may
get the controversional and deeply problematic National Leafy Greens
Marketing Agreement whether we want it or not).

Back to the main point, California obviously has nothing against the idea of
hoop houses. But the USDA looks at agriculture through the lens of regional
specialization. Produce from California, grain, meat, and dairy from the
Midwest. And again, we’re really talking about regulatory influence, i.e. who
calls the shots, not about absolute agricultural output. What interest do
California agricultural lobbyists have in supporting efforts to extend
growing seasons elsewhere in the country—they already have a ten month
growing season. And they just move to Arizona and grow there for the other
two months. There simply hasn’t been an infrastructure in place at the USDA
(other than the bully pulpit, which Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack gets on now and
then) to encourage or invest in re-establishing regional diversity.

The USDA has been taking baby steps in that direction with the “Know Your
Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative. And while there isn’t “new” money in it,
the fact is that small farmers and food co-ops and the like will get funding
through it that they may not have otherwise received.

But another step for a massive bureaucracy like the USDA is making particular
techniques “official” and publishing guidelines and factsheets and growing
maps that farmers and, more importantly, USDA extension agents can use. So
what the USDA means when it announces something like this:

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new
pilot project under the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative for
farmers to establish high tunnels—also known as hoop houses—to increase the
availability of locally grown produce in a conservation-friendly way…

“There is great potential for high tunnels to expand the availability of
healthy, locally-grown crops—a win for producers and consumers,” said
Merrigan. “This pilot project is going to give us real-world information that
farmers all over the country can use to decide if they want to add high
tunnels to their operations. We know that these fixtures can help producers
extend their growing season and hopefully add to their bottom line.”

The 3-year, 38-state study will verify if high tunnels are effective in
reducing pesticide use, keeping vital nutrients in the soil, extending the
growing season, increasing yields, and providing other benefits to growers
...is that it intends to bring winter gardening into the USDA mainstream.
Once it’s been analyzed, categorized, and defined by USDA researchers, it can
then be embraced by USDA extension agents and ultimately (hopefully)
Congressional appropriators. Atul Gawande in the New Yorker has a fascinating
piece on the history of agricultural extension agents and their ability over
time to propogate powerful change through complex, decentralized systems. He
uses them in the context of an analysis of the health care system to
illustrate the power of pilot projects and government intervention—and
there’s no question that USDA extension agents, along with billions and
billions and billions in federal subsidies, have remade agriculture over the
last hundred years, for good and ill.

But if in the end the hoop house inititative takes off, won’t California
lobbyists just kill this threat to their current winter veggie monopoly
before it gets too big? Well, it’s looking more and more like California’s
going to struggle to keep up their own production levels thanks to pervasive
long-term drought—and that means the potential for price spikes. There’s
nothing that spurs the USDA (not to mention Congress) to action like the fear
of spiking food prices—I have a feeling farmers are going to be very thankful
for hoop house research in the coming years. Climate change, I’m afraid, will
succeed where we have to this point failed in re-remaking agriculture in this
country. Let’s hope we’re ready.

Tom is a media and technology professional who thinks that wrecking the
planet is a bad idea. He twitters madly and blogs here and at Beyond Green
about food policy, alternative energy, climate science and politics as well
as the multiple and various effects of living on a warming planet.
http://weaversway.coop/blog/




  • [Livingontheland] Winter growers get some love from the USDA, Tradingpost, 12/24/2009

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