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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Family farms look to rake in profits as food prices rise
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:04:02 -0600


Family farms look to rake in profits as food prices rise, Small growers
thinking big
San Joaquin CA June 20, 2011 12:00 AM
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110620/A_NEWS/106200308/-1/a_news14


SAN ANDREAS - As world food prices rise, so do the hopes of growing numbers
of small farmers in the Mother Lode. Many of them are home gardeners wanting
to ramp up production, or the owners of historic ranches who want to restore
their pastures and orchards to profitability.

On a recent Friday, more than 40 people showed up in Jackson for a daylong
University of California Extension workshop that organizers had tried to
limit to 40 participants. They all stayed, however, taking notes during talks
that had titles such as "Don't plant it unless you know who is going to buy
it."

"The number who want to get into it commercially has grown exponentially in
the last two or three years," said Cindy Fake, the horticulture and small
farms adviser for the UC Extension in Placer and Nevada counties.

Fake, who gave the "Don't plant it unless ..." talk, said the good news is
that there is robust demand for fresh local food and other farm products.

But she also advised that farmers need to have "stamina and good health" and
that they will have to build relationships with customers.

"At the scale you guys are at, it's the face-to-face," Fake said.

A wide variety of Lode residents have been acting on that advice in the last
few years.

Pamela DiBasilio, owner of Goat Head Farms, has been raising crops
commercially for only three years.

"I hadn't really sold before. It was just for friends and me," DiBasilio said
of her produce, flowers and goat operation in Wallace.

Last year, however, she started selling cut flowers at farmers markets. She
found the demand was more than she could fill, so she's expanding.

"This will be my learning year for the larger supply," DiBasilio said.

DiBasilio does not live off her farm earnings. Her husband is employed in law
enforcement. But she says she's on a course to profitability.

"I think we will break even this year. I start everything from seed and
seed's a lot cheaper," DiBasilio said.

Farm experts and small farmers agree that getting the product to customers is
a key component of making a farm work. And they say that farmers markets are
a big help.

The markets, which are held weekly during the summer in towns such as Angels
Camp, Jackson and Sutter Creek, allow small growers to sell at better prices
and with much less bureaucracy and regulation than they would face if they
tried to distribute through conventional grocers.

JJ Gonsalves, a Mondavi Winery soil scientist, planted his first trial row of
blueberries at his Calaveras county near Burson in 1999.

"That went OK, so I expanded it to about 700 plants now, planted in 2000. My
first crop was in 2001," Gonsalves said.

As a backup, Gonsalves had an agreement with a conventional packing operation
to sell his blueberries there, if needed. But it turned out that farmers
markets, including the one in Angels Camp, were a good outlet.

The relationships that Gonsalves has built at the markets were so strong, in
fact, that now his customers come to him.

"I rarely have enough fruit to take to farmers markets anymore because I get
sold out every year," Gonsalves said.

That's a path Julie Hollars of Vallecito hopes to follow. After finishing a
20-year career as an aviation mechanic in the U.S. military, she's now living
and working on a farm that's been in her family since the 1850s.

Hollars said that 70-year-old trees drop more apples and walnuts than her
family can distribute. She plans to start taking figs, walnuts and other
items to the Angels Camp market.

"I'm sure there's people out there that want them. We just have to find those
people," Hollars said.

Shelby French, manager of the Fresh Fridays farmers market in Angels Camp,
said the market is evolving to do more and more to help create personal
connections between growers and their customers.

This year, for example, she has invited a different chef to come on the first
Friday of each month to give a market tour and discuss which produce he or
she is buying and how he or she will prepare it.

Among other things, French encourages farmers in her market to have displays
with photographs showing family members working on the farm.

"I direct my farms to be there every week," French said. "People wan t to
see. They want to develop a relationship with you."
----------
Start farming

For more information on starting and operating a profitable small farm in the
Mother Lode, go to:

• The Cooperative Extension Foothill Farming program at
ucanr.org/foothillfarming

• The UC Small Farming Program at sfc.ucdavis.edu/docs/publications.asp

• Books on possible crops and techniques from the Natural Resource
Agriculture and Engineering Service at nraes.org





  • [Livingontheland] Family farms look to rake in profits as food prices rise, Tradingpost, 06/20/2011

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