Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Tim Marshall <Tim@tmorganics.com>]

In the permaculture movement we often talk about 'livings' rather than 
conventional 'jobs'.

Many farms can make room for young people to operate a portion of the 
property, or an enterprise that carries on alongside, and even enhances the 
primary activity. This will help young people to get started.

An example would be a young person working portable chicken houses on a mixed 
enterprise farm, to integrate with pest and weed control and fertility 
management, while retaining income from the birds. Honey, or a small but high 
value vegetable operation are other options on many farms.

This can provide a living for a young farmer while they find appropriate 
land, gain experience, gather some financial data to help convince banks to 
lend etc, and they can provide some relief labour for farmers, so the 
landowner can get a rare holiday for instance.

Many farmers would be prepared to facilitate a keen young person from their 
community to get back to the land.





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Today's Topics:

   1. Young Farmers Find Huge Obstacles to Getting      Started (Tradingpost)
   2. Home-grown food in schools for a green economy (Tradingpost)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:04:41 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Young Farmers Find Huge Obstacles to
        Getting Started
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org,
        OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
Message-ID: <201111201104410723.14DC5F4C@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"


Young Farmers Find Huge Obstacles to Getting Started
Saturday, November 12, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20111112/ZNYT02/111123010

Emily Oakley, who had worked on an organic farm in California, moved with her 
husband, Mike Appel, to Oaks, Okla., in pursuit of cheap farmland. But even 
though they had $25,000 saved, the couple could not get a bank loan. When 
they applied for a government loan, the loan officer threw back his head and 
laughed.

?He?d never met anybody coming in for a loan for an organic vegetable 
production,? Ms. Oakley said. ?He thought, ?These are young, na?ve, romantic, 
idealistic kids who didn?t know what they?re getting themselves into.? ?

Similar stories prompted the National Young Farmers? Coalition, a new group 
that has grown out of the Hudson Valley in New York, to survey more than 
1,000 young farmers nationwide in an effort to identify the pitfalls that are 
keeping a new generation of Americans from going into agriculture.

?Everyone wants young farmers to succeed ? we all know that,? said Lindsey 
Lusher Shute, who oversaw the survey. ?But no one was addressing this big 
elephant in the room, which was capital and land access.?

Ms. Shute?s husband, Benjamin, runs Hearty Roots Community Farm in the Hudson 
Valley, which delivers seasonal produce to 500 families. Ms. Shute said she 
hoped that the survey results, released on Wednesday, would demonstrate to 
the United States Department of Agriculture and to Congress that young 
farmers, although passionate, have needs that must be addressed.

The obstacles are formidable. At Quincy Farm in upstate New York, Luke Deikis 
and Cara Fraver say they are living their dream, harvesting cabbage, sweet 
potatoes and carrots on a 49-acre property on the Hudson River. Still, even 
after three years of farming, Ms. Fraver, 30, waits tables, and Mr. Deikis, 
31, moonlights as an engineer in the film industry, occasionally driving 
three and a half hours to Manhattan to pay the bills.

Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, appears to have championed their 
cause. The 2008 Farm Bill included a program for beginning farmers and 
ranchers, and over the past year, the Agriculture Department has allotted $18 
million to universities and extension programs to educate beginning farmers.

Speaking at the annual national convention of the F.F.A., or Future Farmers 
of America, in Indianapolis last month, Mr. Vilsack said: ?The future of 
agriculture is bright and will present the next generation with incredible 
opportunities to pursue. Young people should continue to engage in policy 
that affects them, but they shouldn?t be limited by it.?

Mr. Vilsack has often noted that the average age of the American farmer is 
57, and that that age is rising. He has said he hopes a younger generation 
will emerge, not only to replace retiring farmers, but also to reinvigorate 
rural areas. Last spring, his deputy, Kathleen A. Merrigan, toured colleges 
and cities to encourage young people to farm.

Six miles outside of Knoxville, Iowa, Ethan Book, 31, chose to raise 
livestock, as his family did 60 years ago. A former youth pastor, Mr. Book 
became a farmer because he had high cholesterol and had read that 
pasture-raised meat was healthier to eat. ?In my mind,? he said, ?our animals 
are doing what they were created to do, eating the way they were created to 
eat.?

Although Mr. Book does not regret his decision to farm, he discourages others 
from entering the business. ?It?s going to tear you down financially, even if 
you make no mistakes,? he says.

Data from the Agriculture Department support his warning ? only 22 percent of 
beginning farmers turn a profit their first year. The National Young Farmers? 
Coalition found that 73 percent of young farmers must work away from the 
farm; Mr. Book, a father of four, works 40 hours a week at a farm store.

When he looks out the back window of his small farmhouse, he sees a 
3,000-acre corporate farm and machinery worth four or five times as much as 
his operation. ?People are demanding cheap food, they?re demanding a lot of 
it ? corn for fuel, soy for diesel,? Mr. Book said. ?It does have an impact 
on us in the sense that we?ve seen land prices skyrocket in Iowa. It does 
make it difficult for a beginner to get into the game.?

>From 2000 to 2010, the price of farmland doubled nationwide, to $2,140 per 
>acre from $1,090. For Mr. Deikis and Ms. Fraver, buying property required 
>creativity and research. In 2007, they were tending their garden on Quincy 
>Street in Brooklyn when they decided to become farmers. First they met with 
>landowners through a land link program that pairs agricultural landowners 
>with farmers to pass along land, but the land that appealed to them was too 
>expensive.

While they continued their search, they apprenticed on established farms, 
which they realized later was crucial for their success. Seventy-four percent 
of respondents to the National Young Farmers? Coalition said that 
apprenticeships ? unsanctioned in many states ? are the most important 
programs for beginning farmers.

When Mr. Deikis and Ms. Fraver found a scenic spot for sale on the Hudson, 
across the river from where the Battles of Saratoga were fought, they 
conjured a plan with two conservation groups to create an agricultural 
easement on the property, which lowered its value. The couple closed on the 
farm in April.

?We are in a wonderful spot in rural America, even if there aren?t hip bars 
with good beer on tap,? Mr. Deikis said.

Ms. Oakley said young farmers rarely discussed that lack of community, adding 
that she had seen the isolation break up marriages. At their Three Springs 
Farm, she and her husband, both 34, grossed $60,000 by their third season ? a 
reason to celebrate by most standards ? but they wished they had more company.

?It was just the two of us, every job we did together,? Ms. Oakley said. 
?It?s intense. We would gladly trade a little competition for more community 
and collaboration.?




------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:40:57 -0700
From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] Home-grown food in schools for a green
        economy
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org,
        OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
Message-ID: <201111201240570414.15348093@mail.lobo.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"


Home-grown food in schools for a green economy
by Kei Otsuki on November 18, 2011
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/home-grown-food-in-schools-for-a-green-economy/

As next June?s Rio+20 summit on sustainable development approaches, 
discussions about how to effectively establish a green economy are surging. 
But as a recent conference of the United Nations Institute for Social 
Development emphasized, the green economy is not simply about the economy and 
environment. Rather, it requires a deeper restructuring of economic and 
social processes including people?s relationships with food and agriculture.

Debates on food safety, which arose at the end of the 1990s due to the 
controversies over bovine spongiform encephalopathy, avian flu and 
genetically modified crops, as well as health problems associated with modern 
eating habits (such as obesity), have propelled interest in healthy local 
food in both developed and developing countries.

The safety and quality of food used in school meals has drawn particular 
attention because the primary consumers of the service (children) cannot 
evaluate the quality of the food they are eating.

Photo by Judy Baxter.

A study published earlier this year in the United Kingdom shows that, in 
addition to health benefits, the quest to improve the quality of school meals 
(led by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver) has contributed to improving test 
scores and decreasing absenteeism.

And a recent International Food Policy Research Institute review of food for 
education illustrates how securing adequate quantity and quality of food for 
school meals is vital to achieving education for all, because in many 
developing countries, the school meal is the main ? if not the only ?  meal 
of the day for many schoolchildren. Good quality school food guarantees 
school attendance and good educational outcomes.

Home-grown elements and localisation

The Home-grown School Feeding Programme is an international initiative led by 
the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and shows a unique institutional 
experiment in promoting a green economy by linking public sector food 
procurement to sustainable agriculture.


WFP?s focus on promoting ?home-grown? elements in school meals is innovative 
because it intends to link people?s concerns about the quality of school 
meals and education to sustainable agricultural development. In particular, 
the programme aims to promote ?localisation? of food production, distribution 
and consumption, and significant empowerment of consumers (such as parents 
and teachers) and local farmers so that they can start to negotiate with 
local authorities to procure local produce for school meals. From an 
environmental sustainability perspective, localisation is also recommended 
given that it reduces food?s ecological footprint.

Japan, for example, has been promoting localisation ? known as 'chisan 
chishou' (literally, local production and local consumption) ? in its 
national school feeding program.

A lesson on local vegetables in an elementary school in Japan.

Japan, for example, has been promoting localisation ? known as chisan chishou 
(literally, local production and local consumption) ? in its national school 
feeding program. This system has worked to connect schools to local farming 
or fishing communities, and it is intended to nurture children?s familiarity 
with local culture, food industries and the environment.

A model from Brazil

Brazil is considered to have an exemplary home-grown school feeding 
programme. It has successfully rearranged public and private institutions in 
such a way as to empower social actors like consumers, farmers and public 
authorities at various levels to define their own terms of engagement to 
improve the quality of school meals.

Initially, the national school feeding programme in Brazil was a highly 
centralized program. Starting in the 1950s, the central government procured 
food for schools, mostly non-perishable cereals and powdered milk. It stored 
the food in warehouses in state capitals from where it was distributed to 
interior areas. However, due to the precarious transportation and storage 
facilities at the time, even the non-perishable and processed foods often 
spoiled before they reached children.

In 1997, decentralisation saw budgets for school meals transferred from the 
central government to municipal governments, enabling local authorities to 
procure food for public schools. In 2006, under President Lula da Silva?s 
Worker?s Party regime, which has kept close contact with landless and 
family-based small farmers? movements, the National Food Security and 
Nutrition Programme started to promote the idea that secure access to a 
sufficient quantity of good quality food was a human right to be protected by 
the government. This idea was rapidly linked to the concept of ?food 
sovereignty? underpinned by appreciation of local food culture and 
family-based agriculture.

Then in 2009, a new law came into effect to fully implement the ?home-grown? 
school feeding by obliging every municipality in Brazil to spend at least 30% 
of its allocated budget to procure local produce directly from family farms. 
Since then, about half of the more than 5,500 municipalities in Brazil have 
their own designated School Feeding Committees, which consist of the 
municipal and state secretaries of education, town councillors, and 
representatives from local Parents and Teachers Associations.

These school feeding committees are now taking the lead in local food 
procurement and ensuring school menus reflect the voices of local children 
and their parents. In relatively developed municipalities in the south and 
southeast of Brazil, various channels have been established to include 
locally procured fresh vegetables and fruits in the menus.

For example, in 2008 in the municipality of Campinas in the state of S?o 
Paulo, the school feeding committee partnered with the municipality?s central 
wholesale market to provide 164,000 children from 500 schools with school 
meals using fresh vegetables, fruits and milk, which are procured from local 
farmers. Today, the municipal market employs 10 nutritionists who are 
responsible for helping schools to develop menus.

In Brazil, outstanding localized school feeding practices are recognized 
annually by the government-backed programme known as Zero Hunger Action (A??o 
Fome Zero). Over 30 municipalities are nominated each year, providing 
incentives to improve the quality of school meals. This year, the 
municipality of Quixaba in the northeastern state of Paraiba, one of the 
poorest regions in Brazil, has been short-listed for the award, as its local 
committee started to use local produce procured from family-based small farms.

Since many small farmers, especially those who had been recently given land 
as a result of agrarian reform, do not have access to infrastructure for 
effective commercialization of their produce, the school feeding programme 
provides an avenue to boost local agricultural development and help alleviate 
rural poverty.

Localisation of Brazil?s national school feeding programme has led to a 
flexible form of national governance that connects local citizens, including 
producers and consumers, and various local organizations to municipalities 
and then to multiple national authorities.

Rather than dictating top-down, one-size-fits-all policies from the capital 
Brasilia, the central government today acts as a duty-bearer who monitors the 
transparency of local school feeding committees? financial operations and 
compliance with federal guidelines. For their parts, the local committees can 
always demand that the central government improve basic infrastructure and 
extension services for family-based small-scale producers and distributors to 
be able to regularly supply quality foods.

Perhaps as a first step to ensuring that a green economy takes into account 
social equity, we need to start with the notion, taking shape in Brazil and 
other countries, that we all have the right to fair and transparent 
governance that guarantees good quality food.




------------------------------

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