APRIL/MAY 2009

Creating Community Prosperity
Crystal Arnold

Re-Localizing Capital
Jeff Golden

How Unlimited Interest Rates
Destroyed the Economy
Amy Goodman interviews
Thomas Geoghegan

Honoring the Duh-Design Principles
Shaktari Belew

Stimulating Local Agriculture
Jody Woodruf

Fresh Food From Small Spaces
R.J. Ruppenthal

Small Farm Renaissance
Chuck Burr

Where Are the Seed Growers?
Don Tipping

Try it On Everything!
The Healing Power of EFT
DVD Review by Jill V. Mangino

A Naturopathic Perspective
on Vaccination Choices
Michael H. Shuman

Safety and Protection
Peter Moore

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

Small Farm Renaissance

By Chuck Burr

There is ample reason to believe that the new generation of small farms will be more diverse than the previous generation. During the era of cheap fuel and other inputs, large-scale farms were profitable. However, input prices are rising and commodity or crop prices are falling. Corn and soybean prices per bushel have fallen 30 to 40 percent in the last year respectively. Milk prices have plummeted 35 percent—right now the price of milk barely covers the cost of feed alone.

Diversity in niches not competing with big agribusiness is the key to success, like Seven Seeds Farm in Williams, Oregon which grows certified organic vegetables, fruits, berries, seeds, sheep, poultry and offers Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares. Co-owner Don Tipping is also one of the leading educators in the region. Mark Shepard at Forest Agriculture Enterprises in Viola, Wisconsin grows hazelnuts and chestnuts using permaculture techniques—he even sells the trees. Note the diversity and niche items such as organically grown nuts and seeds. Remember too that they have a much longer shelf life than produce. The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, Colorado offers a variety of permaculture design courses, edible landscape design consulting and nursery stock, plus organic herbs to local grocers. I took my permaculture design course there in 2004 and highly recommend these concepts for anyone interested in learning some farming skills. Permaculture techniques build soil and diversity using indigenous practices, including perennial polycultures which combine fruits, nuts, and berries with beneficial plants to create a low maintenance edible landscape around your home based upon the model of a forest.

The food scene is changing—produce buyers are making an effort to buy local, CSAs like the Village Farm in Ashland, Oregon are using new models that lower annual member dues through work exchange, and at farmers markets you are starting to see more diverse products such as mushroom spawn and even worm culture.

Although land prices have also changed (last year was the first time since 1988 that farm values dropped), and you probably won’t make enough money farming to pay the mortgage, small diverse farms with “stacking functions” have the best chance for success.

My good friend Reg Vinkemier, who has been a Minnesota farmer for 55 years, suggests “Rent land to get some kind of cash flow and to look at more second hand equipment.” Don Tipping offered, “My best suggestion would be that if you had farming skills, befriend an older family who owns land but is unable to care for it—sort of a lease option to buy arrangement, so that you can get farming now without having to own.”

If you use the CSA model, you may have more leverage to buy land as a co-op than as an individual farmer. The most famous example of buying land as a CSA was farmer John Peterson. The movie about his life, The Real Dirt on Farmer John, will turn every idea you ever had about what it means to be an American farmer, or an American dreamer, on its head.

As peak oil’s effects arrive, for most local communities it will be a necessity to restart local small farms. Ashland recently held their first Food Security Conference whose goal, according to organizer Lisa Pavati was “to stimulate action among individuals and groups to dedicate more land, water, seeds and workers toward growing food locally.”

Cuba experienced petrocollapse when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990 and today more than fifty percent of the vegetable needs of Havana’s 2.2 million people is supplied by local urban agriculture—in smaller cities and towns the rate is between eighty to one hundred percent. In Cuba farmers are now among the highest paid workers.
A new book called A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil, is nothing short of a call to arms for local food proponents. Co-authors Aaron Newton and Sharon Astyk call for a grassroots-led agricultural revolution that would result in 100 million people becoming farmers.

It is important that this be a local grass roots movement, but it needs to be more. Local and state governments need to shift their emphasis away from the now defunct model of endless suburban sprawl and large agribusiness. President Obama could make significant progress in his effort to reverse the recession by creating millions of new jobs right at home on small farms. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the USDA every year benefiting agribusiness should be redirected to family farms and CSAs. Agricultural state universities and extension agencies need to shift their mind-set away from large to small farm economics and should have staff dedicated to permaculture. Farm extension offices could be opened in cities to promote urban agriculture, and local zoning and land use codes modified to encourage urban farming. Successful organizations like Detroit Michigan’s Garden Resource Program Collaborative and Growing Power in Mil-waukee, Wisconsin could provide so much more for their communities were they to receive additional funding.

An interesting revelation coming out of the recession is that unemployment is lowest in the Midwestern farm belt but highest in the California central valley. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. The California central valley has been hit especially hard by the drought which will cause an estimated $1.15 billion dollar loss in agriculture-related wages and eliminate as many as 40,000 jobs in farm-related industries in the San Joaquin Valley alone this year, where most of the nation’s produce and nut crops are grown.

I want to inspire new farmers. Even if you have never even been on a farm before, or even gardened, start thinking about it. Go to your local farmers market and talk to the growers. Visit their farms; ask questions. Volunteer for a work party. Tell your kids they can keep what they get for selling food to the neighbors. If you feel inclined, get involved in local politics to make some of the changes you want to see happen. Watch the new Permaculture for Beginners DVD from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia when it becomes available later this year—this 72 hour course has been reduced down to just over 90 minutes with all the essential points covered. In the meantime, read Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (Chelsea Green). Plant a fruit or nut tree and some berries in your backyard. Many people are starting to think about growing some of their own food this spring, it can be as easy as planting green side up (as opposed to roots up!). Good growing—here comes the sun.

Chuck Burr teaches permaculture in Ashland, Oregon His latest book is Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. Contact info@culturequake.org; visit www.culturequake.org

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