Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Glad someone brought up those points, Jean. Yes, sustainable food production 
must first sustain the producer. Question being, is that happening when we 
have to get volunteers, sponsors, donors, and grants just to keep going? All 
those have cash value, cash we don't have to lay out from our own returns. 
They aren't financially viable any more than the ridiculous ethanol plants 
built on our tax money. Sure we should support hard-pressed food banks. But 
I'd ask for grants to buy at a fair price from a farm to provide below cost 
to end buyers or food banks.

I can relate to the difficulty you and your partner face with affordable 
land. My focus from day one has been getting the most sustainable produce 
from the least land. Chadwick and Jeavons and many others have pioneered 
these methods for many years. I've adapted my own methods to this end, with 
all raised beds, planting intensively, mulching, and succession planting 
where feasible. But I don't have the last word on how to do it. Much depends 
on local conditions, local markets, and what can be profitably grown where.

But there are simply certain crops that probably should not be grown 
commercially on expensive land. I recall Eliot Coleman's approach of setting 
a baseline of a certain level of profit per square foot. By a set standard, 
some crops don't justify the space they take or the time they take in that 
space. I admit there's guesswork involved at best, but I try to nail down the 
crops that are highest value for the space and time they take. Slicing 
tomatoes and carrots definitely make the cut. Paste tomatoes do not - in my 
figures. Nor do salad greens. Why not salad greens? Not because they don't 
produce enough or sell high enough, but because they don't keep well enough 
unless I can sell a guaranteed amount wholesale daily to restaurants. And it 
isn't worth my growing time to go wholesale.

YMMV

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 3/21/2010 at 12:34 PM Jean French wrote:

>The main problem I see with this approach is that it continues to miss
>the main issue my partner and I face at present, which is how people who
>are ready to farm can find and afford clean healthy land, especially land
>that is not too far from people who need food.  Land in Maryland (where we
>live and work now) is usually more than $20,000.00 per acre.
> 
>Depending on federal financial support for transportation of the food, or
>depending on volunteers for labor are weaknesses, since either could
>disappear. 
> 
>The issue of how the farmers can be financially sustained by these systems
>is often not clear.  I did work for a while at a farm owned by the
>Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the CSA we grew for was half-funded by the
>Maryland Food Bank.  Half of the food we grew then went to the people who
>needed the food bank's help.  Transportation of the food to the food bank
>was not always easy to arrange, though.  We had a "normal" CSA for the
>other half of the produce.  We did OK, but did not have to pay a mortgage.
>
>"Becky" Jean French
>
>--- On Sun, 3/21/10, livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org
><livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
>
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:38:59 -0700
>From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
>Subject: [Livingontheland] Produce to the People: Collaborating for
>    Food    Access
>To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>Message-ID: <201003201138590359.007ACD41@mail.lobo.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
>