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  • From: Koreen Brennan <cory8570@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] [might be spam] Re: NYT morons at work: Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers - NYTimes.com
  • Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 19:23:46 -0700

We have better stories out here. There is a one acre CSA that is making money
in my home town, selling to restaurants and individuals. The chefs love her
so much they do a special cook out for her yearly. We have an urban farmer
team selling via the "locally grown" web site and one farmer is making a
living, the rest have day jobs, and are making extra income out of their
backyard garden, not really trying to make a living. A woman I just met at
the Financial Permaculture event is expanding her operation of being a
distributor to organic farms in Central Florida. There are several successful
organic farms south of us and a couple of hydroponic farms that are making a
great profit, selling to restaurants. So it is far from all grim out there.
Farmer's markets are not the way most of the farmers sell their main produce
- it is either CSA, chefs, or high wholesale prices via a single distributor.
Or LocallyGrown which is a very nice system because you only
pick what you pre-sell, it is on line, there is one delivery spot, not
unlike a farmer's market but you pre-sell. Another CSA here just keeps
expanding - they are up to 20 acres I believe, in an urban area. They
partnered with a 100 acre orphanage to grow food on their land and they give
some to the orphanage I believe. They are a huge success story - Sweetwater
Farms. All organic and they have a successful farmer's market. Another man
here grows food in other people's front yards and makes a living doing it.
There is a can do attitude here and maybe because of tourism, restaurants are
more dependable but it doesn't seem to be a problem. Of course, you have to
pay attention and be smart about where you put your resources. 

I was just told about one guy who makes $60K in four months growing basil
hydroponically and selling it to restaurants.  I did a research paper on
urban agriculture a year ago and found some great examples of successful
urban farms. 

I think the potential is huge and is only going to get better as the old
system falls apart. Of course, the big farmers get subsidized and we dont',
which makes for a very unfair system but yet some people are making it and
doing well. 
 

Koreen Brennan
www.growpermaculture.com
www.northamericanpermaculture.org






On Monday, August 11, 2014 6:13 PM, Bob Waldrop <bob@bobwaldrop.net> wrote:



The Oklahoma Food Cooperative has about 100 active producers, of that
number, 59 of them are growing food or raising poultry or livestock. 
About half our producers are women owned or women managed operations.

All of the "newer farmers" of our 59 have to have an off-farm job in
order to support their "farming habit".  The only ones that don't have
off-farm income are long-term established farmers, many of those are
parents and their kids as the labor (older kids, often starting their
own families).

Of course, this isn't necessarily restricted to organic or other forms
of alternative agriculture.  Years ago, some farmers in southwest
Oklahoma went in together and bought a bunch of Texas lottery tickets. 
They won.  One of them was interviewed by an Oklahoma City television
station, and he was asked what he was going to do with his share of the
winnings (several hundred thousand dollars).  He said, "Well, I reckon
I'll just keep on farming until it is all gone."  Hoots of laughter were
heard around the state, but it was kind of a bitter laughter.

I dated a girl in junior high and later in life was back home for a
family event and we were catching up and I asked about her, and there
was a sudden silence around the table.  Finally my grandfather cleared
his throat and said, "Bobby Max, I forgot you used to date her.  Their
family was losing their land to a foreclosure, and her mother committed
suicide."  She laid herself down on the burning trash pile behind their
house and burned and asphyxiated herself to death.  It was written up in
the NY Times.  This was during one of the big waves of farmer
bankruptcies over the last 30 years or so. I forget the numbers but that
year I believe there were several hundred farmer suicides.

Sales here at the Oklahoma Food Cooperative have been declining slowly
for two years.  We got started in 2003 and spent the next few years
running to keep ahead of the demand, and then we topped out in
2012-2013, having sold $5.8 million in locally grown and made food and
non-food items in ten years, and it has been a slow downhill grind since
then.  The three year drought certainly hasn't helped things at all. 
We have less vegetables for sale now than we had three years ago, but
part of that is that when we got started, there were maybe 4 or 5
farmers markets in Oklahoma County, now there are 30, so there are more
places for farmers to sell their produce.

One of our more established farmers, who has been with us since our
first year, called me up last year and asked, "Is it time to give up
yet?"  My heart was chilled when I heard that from her because she's
from a multi-generational farm family, all organic operations, certified
Animal humane operations, certified naturally grown, produces a diverse
mixture of crops and livestock/poultry for sale and everything is sold
direct to the public. Plus she makes a line of body care and household
cleaning products.  She has a traveling grocery store on an old school
bus with a regular route, and she sells through us.  It's her and her
family, at least one daughter and a son are involved with the food
production.  If she is edging towards despair, I'm worried.  She appears
to have gotten a second wind though and has now opened a store in one of
our larger regional cities.  So I'm glad about that but I hear similar
laments from other producers.

Alternative farming as we know it is hard and all the cards are stacked
against these folks.  At one point I proposed to the producers that the
Coop start a oklahomafoodbtob.coop to facilitate sales to businesses. 
Not a single coop producer was interested --

(1) They didn't want to sell what they had at a wholesale price. "That
just means less money for us."
(2) They said there was zero chance the restaurants would actually pay
us on time.

They set their own prices when they sell through the Coop, and each
producer functions as his or her own brand.  Members order items from
specific producers. The customers pay us a commission for buying through
the Coop and the producers pay a commision for selling through the Coop,
so the bottom line for our producers is that they get 77.5 cents out of
every Coop grocery dollar, except for the sales tax.

Most of them had had very bad experiences with local chefs.  The Coop
pays our producers when they bring in their orders, "same day payment"
has always been our rule.  We can do that because (a) we have working
capital built up from the sale of member shares, and (b) we pay the
farmers the same day our customers pay us.  And our customers do pay us
or they don't get their groceries.

So we ditched that idea.

It's not a surprise that it's an unsustainable system, and this is what
it looks like when a system is accelerating towards collapse.

Bob Waldrop
Oklahoma City


So it's an unsustainable system out there.
On 8/11/2014 6:43 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
>
> There was a time in this country where you could support a family from a
> farm, but that is no longer the case because of the cheap food system
> which was intentionally setup to concentrate all the profits in the
> system
> in the hands of the processors.
>
> Pete
>
> Exactly, in the 1930's a farm laborer could feed his family for a week
> from the proceeds of one sheep fleece (just wool). I saw recently
> sheep being sold for 25 cents per head.
> Prices for farm produce have been deliberately driven to near nothing
> since 1945.
> John
>
> ---
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>From defrey@bioshelter.com Mon Aug 11 22:37:25 2014
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Subject: Re: [permaculture] NAPC: Scarcity?
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Well, i know we should let this thread drop, as per tones of
reconcilliation are in the air,..... but I do not believe anyone is
being asked to camp. Camping is offered as a low cost option. Staying
in a motel and commuting is also an option. I think at the momemt i am
appreciative of the camoing option due to my present budget.
Darrell

Darrell E. Frey
Three Sisters Farm
defrey@bioshelter.com
www.bioshelter.com

Author; Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm. New Society
Publishing, 2011

On Mon, 11 Aug 2014 12:04:30 -0700, Toby Hemenway
<toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote:
On Aug 9, 2014, at 5:02 PM, Koreen Brennan via permaculture
<permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to interject that it sounds like there is an assumption
> that there is a problem with this event. None of the organizers is
> complaining about not being paid. We plan to put on a fantastic, blow
> your socks off event. So what problem are we trying to solve,
> exactly? This thread got started--and I know it's hard to remember
> with all that's been said--by my reply to Skeeter's post in which he
> asked us to imagine how much tickets would cost if they paid people
> for their work (and my frustration at how little it would actually
> be!). One of the other organizers had made a similar remark to me
> privately. I took that as an indication that more than one presenter
> was not happy about not being paid for working at their profession.
> There were also statements about the organizers feeling overwhelmed
> and not having time or help to do things that could have added to the
> event. So we were working on how to develop more resources for them,
> and not necessarily money.
>
> It sounds like the organizers would like more sign-ups, so that's
> part of it. (BTW, many of my Canadian friends tell me they heard
> nothing about this event). Also, I have heard from some permies who
> live more middle-class lives that they are not going because they
> were put off by the camping and the probability that they would be
> asked to hold hands in a circle and sing. (relevant story: When I was
> doing a workshop in Minnesota years ago (where NAPC will be held), I
> joked to the class that if we were in Northern California, I would
> now ask them to hold hands, but instead would just ask that they
> stand near their group-mates. Someone said, "Here in Minnesota, we
> don't even like to stand near other people." When in Rome . . . let's
> remember local culture.) So those seemed like "problems" worth
> solving. And then there were the whole "scarcity in permaculture" and
> "free is not sustainable" pieces as larger issues triggering all this
> that go beyond NAPC. Those REALLY seem like problems worth solving,
> because they are huge limitations.
>
> That we are tackling both site-specific and larger issues that are
> now constantly cropping up for us is, I think, why this has been such
> a great thread.
>
> For a first-time event, I think the organizers have done a very good
> job. And there is always room for improvement, and room for gleaning
> knowledge from the collective mind, especially from other people who
> have (also) put on lots of events.
>
> Given the resources made available (especially in the form of
> talented people), I am sure that NAPC will be a terrific event--or
> else I wouldn't be going.
>
> And now, having fired off a spate of quick emails, I will return to
> my first real vacation in ages, at awe-inspiring Yosemite.
>
> Toby
>
>
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> How to permaculture your urban lifestyle
> http://www.ipermie.net
> Avant Geared http://www.avantgeared.com
> https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
> Permaculture: -- portal to an expanding global network of landtech
> pioneers practicing and teaching permaculture
> while designing ecological, biointensive land use systems with
> integrated elements for synergy, sustainability, regeneration and
> enhanced nature-compatible
> human habitat --
>
>





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