Plowing Toward Utopia
Christopher Styler reports on the efforts to transform the American farm into a model of environmental enlightenment, community good, impeccable ethics, and, yes, gainful employment.
| More 'Food Faces Change' articles in this issue |
| The Price Is Fright Is America's reliance on cheap food over? Looks that way, as an onrush of complex factors unloose a perfect storm of spiraling costs. Agriculture policy and World Bank veteran August Schumacher Jr., recipient of this month's Silver Spoon Award, scrutinizes the spinning weather vane with an eye to the future. |
| The Price of Purity Convinced that an ever greening public is willing to pay a little more, a young Argentine restaurateur is determined to take his organic concept national. |
| Seed Capital Heirloom tomatoes are much more than a menu item du jour or a glorious still life at the local farmers' market. They are part and parcel of preserving our agricultural heritage. Katy Keiffer reviews the definitive new book on the subject. |
| Awake at the Switch At a conference in Spain assessing the effects of global warming on wine production, Alan Tardi discovers that what's bad news for some is good news for others. |
| In for the Short Haul Careening fuel costs and demand for eco-friendly product are causing sharp swerves on the food distribution highway. Katy Keiffer spots some green lights at the end of long-distance tunnels. |
| Staving Off Extinction Biodiversity is more than a catchword, a liberal conceit, or a sentimental love of nature. It's a matter of life and death. Pulitzer Prize winning science editor Holcomb B. Noble reviews the new definitive work on the subject. |
| Massing Links Judith Weinraub speaks with environmentalist and social activist Paul Hawken about offtrack food practices and policies and what can be done to reverse them. |
| Weather Watch Agriculture savant Frederick Kirschenmann assesses the potential effects of climate change on farming in the United States and ways to ensure adequate food supplies in the future. |
| Silver Spoon August Schumacher Jr. |
Your farm is organic? How quaint. Sustainable? So five years ago! The new new American farm embraces both these ideologies, as well as the services of Google Earth and farm consultants, fealty to humane animal practices, and a commitment to leaving a carbon footprint no larger than toddler size. They are also, we hope, on the road to becoming more profitable. Really.
Annie Farrell, dubbed "Queen of the Back-to-the-Landers" by a friend in the early '70s, has come by her farm-designing credentials honestly. "I moved to upstate New York from New York City, bought land, built a stone house, and started growing my own food. What I've learned, sometimes the hard way, over the past 30 years informs how I think about a farm." Instead of going from the ground up to design a farm, Farrell starts from the sky and works down, as she did three years ago for Betsy and Jesse Fink's Millstone Farm in Wilton, Connecticut (www.localharvest.org), and Lisa and Mark Schwartz's Rainbeau Ridge in Bedford Hills, New York (www.rainbeauridge.com). If no aerial photo exists of the property she has been asked to design, she will commission one or use images from Google Earth. Armed with an overview of the big picture, Farrell starts the process: where might pastures go, or horse trails and poultry houses? Next comes a walking tour of the land to identify the unique features of the future farm: where erosion could be a problem, for example, or wetlands that should be preserved. (Millstone Farm is home to a 35 acre wetland preserve, which Farrell describes as one of the most unusual ecological zones in the area. The boardwalk that wends its way through the wetland area sees regular visitors and was built by Farrell's son from regional lumber harvested from managed land according to best management practices [BMPs].)
Farrell then draws a plan based on the hopes, dreams, and wishes of the client, coming up with "a Chinese menu of choices," as she puts it. Icons standing for various farm features—portable poultry houses, hoop houses or greenhouses, or paddocks—can be moved around the landscape map for the optimal arrangement, and the farm starts to take shape.
The map for any farm that Farrell tackles includes best management practices for all undertakings, arrangements for erosion control, soil testing, and a program for bringing that soil back to peak health. The needs of grazing livestock are taken into consideration, as are plans for protecting any streams that run through the farm. For the former, Farrell prefers portable paddocks enclosed by easily moved, solar-powered electrified fences (as do many farmers who raise pasture-fed animals); for the latter, she includes riparian buffer zones—a border at least 30 feet wide on both sides of the stream that's planted with water plants, grasses, and "trees that like wet feet." The buffer zone prevents the contamination of groundwater by animal waste.
By the time Farrell and Betsy Fink planted a single seed at Millstone, they had already spoken with the chefs at local restaurants. "What do they use that we might be able to supply?" Farrell asks. A connection with restaurant chefs is but one way for a small farm to make it, albeit an important way. "With a farm like Millstone," Fink explains, "you can take several approaches: sell through a farmers' market, local markets, or even a farm stand. But we quickly learned that chefs are very supportive of local farms because they care about where the food comes from. They're happy with the quirks: one pound of peppers this week, 20 pounds next week."
One of those chefs is Andy Pforzheimer, who together with his partner Sasa Mahr-Batuz oversees a mini empire of five Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bars that covers the region of western Connecticut from West Hartford to Greenwich. He's also uniquely positioned to take advantage of the ever changing crops from Millstone Farm. "We're pretty lucky to be a part of the New York metro area and have such direct access to a working organic farm," Pforzheimer says. "Our menus change every day, and each restaurant has a chef and crew who can adapt according to what Millstone has for us that day." (The only steady menu item is a custom mix of baby greens that Millstone provides for the five restaurants on a year-round basis.) During growing season, Wednesday is chefs' meeting day. Together the group's chefs go through the box of new arrivals from Millstone to see what inspiration they may draw from it. "There are always surprises," notes Pforzheimer, citing last autumn's delivery of "candy-sweet" baby tomatillos, candy cane beets, and other specialty specimens—like padrón peppers—that can't be obtained from conventional purveyors.
To Farrell, designing and running a farm isn't a hit-or-miss affair. "I leave enough material behind that people can do this in my absence," she says, referring to her practice of compiling a farm-specific guide to caring for the livestock, plants, and land from month to month; Excel spreadsheets that outline which crops and how much of each was planted and their profitability; profit and loss statements; and a slew of other material. "We aren't just skipping through the roses here. We're preserving not only the land but the skills."
"Local," as it pertains to produce and animals raised for food, has gone beyond being a faddish term to designating a firmly entrenched set of practices. Chefs who were the earliest to adopt a local approach to their menus were also the first to receive a break from the steadily spiraling cost of shipping in food from California, Israel, Mexico, and elsewhere. Lately, sharply escalating fuel prices have triggered a sense of urgency among foodservice professionals, who are also being hit with the soaring price of essentials like wheat and dairy products. As is often the case with human nature, a swift kick to our collective wallet was what it took to prod some chefs to recognize the economic, if not the ecological, benefits of buying local. What defines "local" is open to conjecture. "Who knows what 'local' means?" asks David Jackson, whose 80 acre Enterprise Farm in the western Massachusetts town of Wheatley turns out lettuce, cooking greens, slicing cucumbers, and 20 or so other crops. Some people don't consider it local unless it grows in their own bed. Other people say it's local if it's less than a day's drive away. For my purposes, it's local if it's within 100 miles of the Connecticut River."
About a decade ago, Jackson became one of the founders, along with chef Michel Nischan (currently a partner with Paul Newman in the Dressing Room restaurant in Westport, Connecticut), August Schumacher Jr., and Food Arts' Michael Batterberry, of the New American Farmer Initiative. Among other things, NAFI formed an allegiance between area farmers and restaurateurs interested in superfresh, usually organic produce. (In this case, "area" meant the farmers of western Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley and New York City chefs.) "NAFI just sort of petered out after 9/11," says Jackson, who supplied many Manhattan eateries. "Business was really off, and there was a feeling among Manhattan chefs that they needed to be more loyal to their regular city vendors."
But Jackson learned important lessons during the NAFI years, when Enterprise was an "anchor farm," one of the farms that not only grew produce but also rounded it up from neighboring farms too small to ship their own goods. Beginning in the summer of 2006, Jackson reprised his role as farmer-aggregator, this time when a consortium of food co-ops approached him with a proposal that they work together. "They were sick of the way the system was working," Jackson recalls. "They didn't want to be at the end of a long and convoluted distribution cycle that started at the farm and wound its way through New Jersey or who knows where to end up 10 miles away from the farm that grew it. They just wanted to buy from the farms." Jackson started Farm to Farm (www.farm2farm.org), an organization that works with area farms to collect produce at a central location and ship it directly to 11 co-ops across the Connecticut Valley, from New Haven to St. Johnsbury, Vermont. They also supply one Whole Foods store and, in the case of #2 tomatoes (not quite prime specimens), salsa manufacturers and restaurants. Jackson and cohorts send out five tractor-trailers full of produce in an average peak-season week. "When we started NAFI, none of us knew that local would become what it has become. We were looking for a way to save struggling small farms and get better produce into restaurants. I was looking for a way to save on distribution costs because even in a good year we were taking a beating." The model Jackson uses in Farm to Farm turns the distribution marathon into more of a sprint. He reckons, correctly, that he is vastly reducing the amount of fuel needed to get produce from farm to table. Into the bargain, he's cutting out the middleman and dropping a little more to the bottom line. (In the winter months, when New England farms lie idle, Farm to Farm concentrates on bringing in produce from farther down the Eastern seaboard. Not exactly local, admits Jackson, "but, hey, 1,200 miles is better than 3,000 miles.")
Jackson has always farmed using organic and sustainable practices. In his view, organics are here to stay, but that's not to say it's been a smooth ride lately. According to Jackson, the same affluent people who helped buoy up the market are showing a real disdain for "big box" organic. "They don't feel that they're getting what they're paying for," he explains. "At the same time, the artisan truck farms that built the market are getting shut out." Jackson feels that the move toward local can benefit both disgruntled camps. Farmers—who won't have to pay distribution and exorbitant fuel surcharges—can hand off their quality produce directly to the people who appreciate it the most and see more money as a result. A smaller carbon footprint and fresher veggies on his neighbors' tables are just gravy. While Jackson's work with the Connecticut Valley's food co-ops may not have much to do directly with the chefs and restaurateurs of the area, it will—perhaps more important—most certainly have an effect on what restaurant diners imagine when they think of "local produce."
To Jackson, the current small-farm boomlet seems like déjà vu. "When I started in farming, there were fuel and environmental crises and concerns about our health and food safety. None of that has changed, except I think this fuel crisis is going to be a lot worse." Jackson, who has been quoted as saying, "More guys make it in the NBA than do in farming," must be doing something right. He has been as busy as a Vermont beaver, even in the dead of winter.
An important part of the "local" message that often gets lost, to Jackson's dismay, is the economic and community-building aspects of buying and producing locally. "We are really trying to get people to understand that local produce is tied completely to the local economy," he says. "We're keeping dollars in the community."
Farrell and Fink, too, see farms as increasingly embedded in the community's affairs and economy and the other way around. They have developed kits to encourage people to try backyard chicken raising and gardening and have helped get the Fodor Farm Community Garden off the ground in Norwalk, Connecticut. "Low-income families will have access to the gardens through public transportation," Fink says. "It isn't exclusive to people with cars."
One direct link from farm to community—and a good source of working capital for start-up farmers—is community-supported agriculture (CSA). CSA farms sell their harvest to area residents before the planting season starts. There is the obvious benefit to the farmer in the form of up-front cash and the security that his harvest will be sold. Community members share a feeling that they are helping preserve land and becoming more in touch with their food. An excellent example of a deeply embedded farm is Thanksgiving Farm CSA (www.thanksgivingfarm.org), a part of the Center for Discovery (www.thecenterfordiscovery.org), located in Sullivan County, New York. The farm (and The Center) is a privately operated not-for-profit agency providing educational, social, and creative-arts experiences to individuals with a broad range of disabilities. The 300 acre farm has a CSA program that currently supplies produce directly to 150 local families. In addition, much of the farm's output of more than 100 types of fruit, vegetables, and herbs forms the core of the menu that feeds The Center's 200 residents/ students and over a thousand staff members.
Chef Cesare Casella, dean of The Italian Culinary Academy at Manhattan's International Culinary Center and chef/owner of Maremma restaurant, is intimately involved with Thanksgiving Farm. He offers cooking classes for The Center's staff and was instrumental in bringing one of the few herds of purebred Chia nina cattle (of bistecca alla fiorentina fame) to the States. They are raised at Thanksgiving Farm. Casella's passion extends also to pigs. In Italy he partnered with professors from the Università degli Studi di Perugia and local pig breeders from Lucca and Parma to develop a perfect pig. Back at Thanksgiving Farm, the actual breeding was handled by Rob Thompson, the farm's head herds person, and his crew. Casella was and remains intimately involved in everything to do with the pigs' diet and exercise regimen and the environment in which they're raised. Meat from the cattle ends up on Maremma's menu, while the meat from both the pigs and cattle goes to other restaurants, as does some of the farm's produce. "I have such respect and love for Thanksgiving Farm. Working in cooperation with them is so rewarding," Casella says. "In Italy, having your own pigs, cows, and a garden is almost commonplace. But to be able to serve authentic dry-aged Chianina and knowing that the beef is coming from my own cows—cows that are raised with such dedication—the experience very special."
The humane raising and slaughter of livestock and poultry is another issue that is shaping practices on the new new American farm. That many farms raise animals under abhorrent conditions is not news; the growing number of chefs who are working to bring attention to the issue is news. One longtime advocate for the humane treatment of animals—cows in particular—is Colorado State University professor Temple Grandin. Born with Asperger's syndrome before there was a diagnosis or a term for it, Grandin theorizes that great similarities exist between her autistic mind and animals' thinking; hence her success as a designer of feedlots and systems for bringing animals to slaughter.
Grandin is a legend in both of the worlds her life has straddled. Her moving and inspirational lectures, books, and interviews dealing honestly with the challenges she has overcome as an autistic child and adult have made her a favorite on the lecture circuit. Her work with animals—captured beautifully in a documentary called The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow, which aired in June 2006 on Horizon, the long-running BBC documentary series—has won her worldwide notice.
While she is known best for her work with some of the largest processors of beef in the country—Wendy's and McDonald's among them—she believes that the basics of animal management work on any farm. "Behavioral principles and the humane handling of livestock apply to farms of all sizes," she says. "Flight zones, point of balance, and two main emotions—curiosity and fear—are common to livestock no matter where they are raised." Her new book, Humane Livestock Handling, which started as teaching notes from her classes, is due out from Storey Publishing later this year.
Grandins approach is very straightforward. "To judge what condition a farm is in, I use measures that are easy to count. If I'm on a dairy farm, huge or small, I ask myself, 'How many skinny cows are there here? How many cows with excessive cuts and swelling? How many lame cows are there?'" Grandin refers to some of the objective guidelines that she developed for a paper entitled "Survey of Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef, Veal, Pork, and Sheep Slaughter Plants." She conducted the survey with funding from a USDA grant in 1996 and updated it in 2002. It is, as Grandin points out, still used by the American Meat Institute as its industry guideline. "I like numbers," Grandin says, in her matter-of-fact tone. "They are easy to understand and clear. If you hold a client to a numbered scoring system, they are less likely to backslide."
Echoing the commonsense solutions that small farmers apply to energy efficiency and community relations, Grandin's suggestions are easy to follow. They are also low in cost but high in impact. "Try to use the animal's natural behavior instead of force to get it to do what you want," Grandin advises. "If a pig sees you once in its life—just before you take it to slaughter—of course it will be high strung and squeal like the dickens." To improve the situation costs nothing: "Take a walk through the pens at least a few times a week, taking a different route each time."
Grandin states that much of this quantitative information is out there; she has developed quite a bit of it herself. It's just a question of getting it into the right people's hands, helping them to implement it, and making sure they have the means to do so. Grandin's Web site alone (www.grandin.com) features 22 articles under the "Guidelines for Auditing Welfare in Slaughter Plants, Beef Feedlots, and Dairies" link. "What I want people to understand," Grandin concludes, "is that big isn't necessarily bad and small isn't necessarily good. If your farm is overtaxed, overloaded, understaffed—that's bad." She sees a future with perhaps 25 percent of the overall market devoted to livestock from small farms and another 25 percent to that from the large stockyards. Grandin has spent much of her career helping both types of farms raise animals in a more humane fashion.Jennifer Hashley is typical of the new new American farmer in her approach to humane animal husbandry. Hashley was a vegetarian for nine years, a course she pursued because of her feelings about the mistreatment of animals. It may seem a strange choice, then, that Hashley, along with Pete Lowy, chose to start Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds (www.peteandjensbackyardbirds.com), an operation based in Concord, Massachusetts, whose main source of revenue is the raising of chickens (for meat and eggs) and pigs. "I wanted to raise animals in a humane way from start to finish," Hashley says. "If I didn't raise the animal and didn't know how it was killed, I didn't want to eat it."
All the animals on Hashley and Lowy's farm graze on open pasture with plenty of space. They are fed on organic grain and moved from place to place frequently. Business at Pete and Jen's is booming; in fact, they can't keep up with demand. "We're not getting rich, but we're not losing money either," says Hashley. Next up for Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds is the introduction of rabbits into the mix and a grant from Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education that will allow them to bring in sheep to graze on a neighbor's fields while they lie fallow—another example of practical small-farm smarts: Hashley and Lowy will feed their sheep on land that otherwise would produce nothing, while their neighbors will be saved the expense and time of mowing fields that, without sheep "mowers," would go to seed and weed.
As the demand for local and sustainable produce, meat, poultry, and dairy becomes stronger and meeting it becomes more profitable, so will the call for more new new American farms get louder. Reclaiming, conserving, and converting the land for farms and recruiting, assisting, and educating a new generation of farmers is the mission of many agencies and organizations.
Among those private agencies that fight the good fight to conserve land for farming, the American Farmland Trust (www.farmland.org) arguably wields the most clout nationally. The AFT, founded in 1980, works with communities, other organizations, and individuals to conserve farmland and promote sustainable agriculture. Other, smaller land trusts—and their success stories—dot the national map. According to the Land Trust Alliance's Web site (www.lta.org), 2000 to 2005 saw a tremendous upswing, of 32 percent, in the total number of land trusts in this country. Not all this land is earmarked for farms, but the trend bespeaks a larger national desire to stem the tide of overdevelopment.
On the governmental side of the equation, the recent track record of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection is truly an inspiring story. Substantial spending on the part of the NYC DEP over the past 11 years has purchased or secured the development rights for some 59,000 acres of land throughout the city's watershed, which covers parts or all of three New York State counties and a small swath of Connecticut. In some cases, owners of the land who have sold development rights may still own the land itself (some may even harvest and sell timber and other products), while the city will pay their tax bill in perpetuity. A full 8,000 of the above mentioned 59,000 acres have been conserved as or restored to farmland. (For an engrossing look at how government spending can actually help, visit the NYC DEP Web site: www.nyc.gov/dep.)
As Farrell puts it: "Do we protect the watershed by conserving the land and helping farmers with best practices, or do we want to shell out $12 billion for another water purification plant?" She is pointing to just one way in which a local government—albeit a very large local government—can help.
Hashley's farm experience extends to areas beyond Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds. As project director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (which has its roots at Tufts University and branches throughout the area), Hashley heads up outreach efforts to recruit individuals and families with limited resources who would like to farm on land in Massachusetts. "NESFP has been around for 10 years but really got off the ground in 2002," Hashley says. "We're focused on commercial agriculture, not big gardens. Our farms are here to be moneymaking ventures. Our funding will help to produce the next generations of farmers."
NESFP offers these farmers the tools they need to start and maintain successful farms. "I've worked with immigrant and refugee farmers almost exclusively until this year," Hashley notes. "Last year that started to change. We're seeing a newer crop of college-educated people, without families, who are eager to become farmers." Hashley's approach is tailored to the individual. If immigrant farmers cannot speak or read English, or if they're not computer savvy, NESFP will take a hands-on approach in the fields. "Many immigrants come to this country with a background in farming and end up in factories. So much of our outreach is to let these folks know that these opportunities exist."
Once Hashley and the NESFP hear of farmers-to-be, they set about finding land for them to farm through their Farmland Matching Services program (http://nesfp.nutrition.tufts.edu/resources/matching.html). "Many of the farms in the Boston area that have been saved under the aegis of the NESFP are farms that people in the community want saved," Hashley says. This gives her a leg up in raising funds and working through any red tape. Hashley and the NESFP can help with finances, too. "If farmers come to us with little or no money, we try to hook them up with loan programs," she continues, citing Farm Services Agency and other USDA loans as a good starting point. That leaves the sizable issue of farm equipment, which, according to Hashley and in keeping with farmstead traditions, can be "borrowed, bartered, shared, or hired."
"Even at a small level these farms can be profitable," concludes Hashley. "We're still climbing the peak, but we're seeing a lot more opportunity." Whatever the creative solutions to the problem of finding more land and the people to farm it, the spirit of forging new relationships between farms and their communities seems to have taken flight. It's hard to believe—given the hard work, passion, ingenuity, and pluck shown by contemporary farmers—that the tide has not already turned in favor of the new new American farmer.
