Perhaps no one represented the American work ethic more than the dairy farmer. Early morning hours and hard physical labor, often conducted in solitude while ankle deep in muck. Families working together to get the job done. They have long proudly supplied a demand for their community, and like most farmers, are clearly not in it for the money.

Today however, the American dairy farmer also represents the frustration and economic hardship evident across our nation. Increasing volatility in the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain, organic milk farms scaling up, and questionable government policies all have farmers shedding a few tears. The life is so unappealing that the number of American families remaining in milk farming has plummeted from roughly 165,000 20 years ago, to less than 50,000 today.

Behind the innocent glass of milk lies an intriguing story that’s not so black and white: Many farmers are losing money, organic milk is in short supply,  anti-trust lawsuits have been filed, and legislative reform is on the agenda. Farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers are engaged in conversations like never before. And cows. Don’t forget about the cows.

Please join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at 18 Reasons, as we discuss the current state of the organic dairy industry.

When: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: Food and drink at 6:30. Discussion from 7 – 8:30 pm
Where: 18 Reasons (3674 18th St., San Francisco, 94110)
Tickets: $10 Brown Paper Tickets. NOTE: A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7 pm on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Leslie Butler, Department of Agricultural Economics at U.C. Davis. Leslie holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University. He regularly testifies at state and national hearings regarding dairy policy, and has published numerous articles on dairy production and economics marketing and policy.

Mike Griffin, West Region Pool Manager, Organic Valley. Mike was born and raised in Petaluma, CA. After his first year of college, he began his journey into farming, and never looked back. His vast  experience over 30 years at Clover Stornetta as a truck driver, distribution foreman, plant manager and in public relations, ultimately led him to Organic Valley in 2011, the nation’s largest cooperative of organic farmers.

Richard Hughes, owner Westfield Jersey’s in Bodega, CA. Richard was a self-proclaimed “city boy,” until he turned 15 and a 4-H project began his life long journey and commitment to dairy farming.  In 1976, Richard and his wife purchased a 182-acre ranch just outside of Bodega. They currently have around 100 Jersey cows, have completed the transition to organic farming, and provide milk to Straus Family Creamery.

Bob McGee, CFO/COO Straus Family Creamery, Marshall, CA.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

When Jesse Kuhn started Marin Roots Farm at age 28, he already had dirt under his fingernails. He’d studied ag in college, managed a student farm, and worked as a landscaper. But when it came to succeeding financially in the farming business, he had a long way to go. “I was charging up my credit cards like crazy and bouncing balances back and forth,” he says. “I almost had to declare bankruptcy during the first year.”

Almost 10 years and many lessons later, Marin Roots is a well-established organic specialty produce business. “It’s a lot of people’s dream to live off the land, but the reality of it is, you have to have a plan for how you’re going to pay the bills,” says Kuhn.

His journey is not unlike that of many beginners who are eager to try their hand at farming but don’t yet have all the necessary skills and resources. In a recent report titled Building a Future with Farmers, the National Young Farmers’ Coalition (NYFC) surveyed 1,000 young and beginning farmers across the US and found that access to land, capital, health care, credit, and business training posed huge challenges.

“What’s different for young and first-career farmers is that they don’t have a lot of equity,” says Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a young farmer in New York’s Hudson Valley who is also co-chair of NYFC and director of The Greenhorns, a film and nonprofit organization that advocates for young farmers. “You see a lot of student debt. Farming is a high-capital industry—an industry that really needs us, but we’re walking in without any cash.” 

Green Thumbs To Greenhorn

Kuhn’s path to farming started as a child in San Geronimo, where he had little exposure to agriculture but picked up a passion for gardening from his grandmother. “She had two green thumbs for sure, and I learned from that,” says Kuhn. When he went to Humboldt State, he joined their new agriculture program and studied permaculture on the side. He also took time off from school to work at an organic soil company and contemplate career paths.

After college he started farming a small one-acre plot, using the model he’d learned on the student farm, but realized the operation was more like a hobby farm than a viable business. So he worked as a landscaper while farming small plots in friends’ backyards, which eventually helped him build the courage to take the leap into full-time farming.

He took out a “land wanted” ad in the Press Democrat and, after receiving a number of responses, settled on a 15-acre agricultural plot on a goat dairy ranch near Petaluma. But there were setbacks infrastructure-wise, such as having to install a new irrigation system, and Kuhn began charging up his credit cards. Right when he was about to declare bankruptcy, a low-interest beginning farmer loan through the USDA Farm Service Agency came through. He was able to buy a tractor, a delivery truck, and seeds.

Through much experimentation, Kuhn found his niche growing organic specialty crops such as baby greens, roots, beans, and summer squash for farmers markets and grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesalers. “A lot of the products I was selling weren’t standardized because I was doing open-pollinated varieties, but there was certainly a market for that,” he says. He now employs a handful of full-time market and field staff.

Kuhn has had to learn much through trial by fire, particularly the organizational side of growing a successful business. He’s found support in his family (his mother helps with accounting, and his father is on call as farm mechanic), as well as in other Marin farmers and the Bay Area farmers market community. “It’s definitely tough farming,” he says. “The farmers market has been a great support network for me, meeting up with the other farmers every week, bouncing ideas off each other, seeing what they’re bringing to market, and getting their advice.”

Growing Roots

Kuhn is still a young farmer by national standards, which place the average farmer at 57. The USDA estimates that 500,000 US farmers (about one-quarter) will retire by 2030, leaving a large gap for the next generation to fill. “We have ever older farmers and ever fewer people who are growing our food,” says Fleming. “I think young farmers are especially well poised to address food security and the re-regionalization of our food system.”

As a result of the Building a Future with Farmers study, the NYFC has proposed a policy agenda including recommendations such as improving credit and savings opportunities, addressing land access and affordability issues, legalizing farm apprenticeships, and expanding training programs. (For more about legal issues related to apprenticeships, see The Farm Intern Conundrum.)

The NYFC study underscores the viability of direct marketing as a start-up strategy for new farmers, with 61 percent of their respondents selling at farmers markets and 49 percent through CSAs. “Helping young farmers means reorienting our food systems so that we’re not just supporting producers who are growing commodity crops and abandoning the small- and medium-scale producers who are more than likely selling directly to the marketplace,” says Fleming.

For aspiring greenhorns, Kuhn recommends getting a job or volunteering on a farm in order to get to know the business. When taking the plunge into starting your own farm, he emphasizes finding the right piece of land, with infrastructure already in place, and developing a niche.

But despite the challenges he’s encountered along the way, Kuhn loves what he does. “Being able to wake up on the farm is incredible,” he says. “And it’s rewarding to go to the farmers market and meet the people who are going to be eating my food.”

Photo: Gary Yost. Chart by the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Originally published on CUESA

I will always remember the moment I realized I had to become a storyteller. More specifically, the moment when I knew I had to tell these stories. It was when I realized I could never eat okra the same way again; At least not in the blissful, greasy ignorance which I always had. Biting into that green, fried deliciousness now, I know that its tiny, easy-to-miss seeds have a long, hard-to-swallow story.

Ripped from the earth and clenched in tight fists, my seeds once sat hot and mixed in with the sweat and blood lining the palms of my ancestors.  Crushed in their hands as they boarded ships, my seeds were gathered in sheer panic, maybe a bewildered desperation to bring a piece of home, but mostly in a sole attempt to stave off starvation.

Braided in the hair of strong African women, my seeds traveled across the ocean to this land. Once planted back in the earth, resilience manifested their growth and these seeds fed my people in secret all over slave plantations in the South.

Today many Black farmers still grow acres of okra (or Gumbo from kingombo in Bantu languages) to feed communities and sustain the agriculture that has been in their blood for generations.

This is just one example of one seed’s story. One of thousands of stories that tells the history and reveals the culture that really lies behind our agriculture.

So I haven’t stopped at okra. I can’t eat anything now without thinking about these stories; these deeply woven stories of race and food that make up our agricultural system.

This is how I came to start the COLOR of FOOD: a photographic documentary telling the stories of farmers of color.

As a brown girl farming myself, I am drawn to exploring not only the stories behind our food and the farmers that grow it, but also the concerning direction I can see the food system and subsequent food movement heading: down a path leaving these untold stories behind and the voices of Black farmers, Indigenous farmers, and Latino and Asian farmers out of the dialogue.

This will only perpetuate the injustice in our nation’s history.  It already has, as we can see today in the large gaps of disparity around food access and health in communities of color. Not to mention the land loss and discrimination farmers of color have had to bear for decades.

This thread runs through the stories of farmers of color around the world and throughout history, with accounts of land grabs, corrupt trade agreements putting farmers out of work and farm workers enduring modern day slavery.

But I am not a glutton for pain and suffering. I don’t just cry tears into my okra for all the struggles of Black and Brown farmers around the world.  I shine in the resilience of my people.  I am striving to preserve, share and amplify the knowledge, tradition and successes that farmers of color carry, while also working to connect and highlight farmers and food leaders of color across the globe.

The COLOR of FOOD includes the documentary as well as a directory and mapping initiative which lists and locates farmers and people of color that have been holding it down in their communities. These folks have been working to revolutionize the food system before “food justice” started trending on Twitter, so I’d say it’s about time they were heard loud and clear.

I am currently fundraising on Indie GoGo to make this documentary a reality. Please donate now to help make these voices heard. It takes a community.

To the entire beautiful rainbow of farmers, thanks for inspiring me…and making my food taste that much better.

Watch a clip from the film here:

Three years ago, Marissa LaMagna started Bay Area Green Tours, a nonprofit, shoestring operation now headquartered in the David Brower Center  in Berkeley, California (and largely staffed by eager, eco-conscious, unpaid interns) because she wanted to showcase the best sustainable farms and food, buildings and businesses, energy practices, and employment opportunities in Berkeley and beyond.

The green tour business with a biodiesel bus takes people from near and far to see for themselves and hear the stories behind successful sustainable enterprises in the area, whether it’s Gather restaurant in Berkeley, Knoll Farms in Brentwood, or Nicassio Valley Cheese Company ranch in Marin. In addition to public programs, the group has led private tours for Whole Foods, Kaiser Permanente, and Berkeley High’s Green Academy.

LaMagna, who owns a home close to downtown but lives in Oakland with her beau, brings years of experience as a community organizer to her latest business venture. (In previous lives she’s been a private natural foods chef, organic farmer, food coop organizer, school teacher, yoga instructor, film editor, and sound producer.)

In 2004, she founded a green-certified wellness center, Studio Rasa, in downtown Berkeley, which closed when she lost her lease.  At 62, she’s a poster gal for what a green lifestyle—a whole foods diet, yoga practice, and a love of nature—can do for a person’s vitality, health, and youthfulness.

LaMagna’s tour group has several upcoming events including a farm visit to Brentwood on October 8th, and a walking tour of San Francisco’s green waterfront businesses and a moveable feast in Berkeley featuring sustainable restaurants Five, Gather, and Revival on October 11th to coincide with the Slow Money 3rd National Gathering.

Also on the agenda: An Organic Cheese Tour on October 12th in West Marin in collaboration with The Commonwealth Club, and a Berkeley Food Sovereignty tour (think food justice and access) on November 5th during the Community Food Security Coalition‘s annual conference, a national event held in Oakland this year.

Find tour details and ticket information (tours start at $65) on their site.

On September 20th, LaMagna talked food tours over a bowl of organic grapes at the Brower Center.

Have you always been interested in food?

Yes, ever since I was a little girl growing up in New York City with a single mom, in a flat so small we shared a bed. We lived with my great-grandmother and grandparents too. Everybody worked and nobody could cook. Grandpa, who was German, made the meals and they were terrible: always stewed chicken or tongue, frozen vegetables, and old potatoes. But we sat down at the table for dinner every night, which is something that I still do. And when my mom started dating a man who liked good food, he’d take me down to Hell’s Kitchen to see all the food vendors’ stands. That was my first experience seeing and tasting real, live food. I’ve loved farmers’ markets ever since.

When did you learn to cook?

As a young adult I got a job at a pizza parlor in a small town in Vermont and there was nothing to do during the week. I was so naive, I didn’t realized that the place got crowded on the weekend because the owner came up from Massachusetts in his Rolls Royce to sell cocaine out the back. So I taught myself to bake from The Tassajara Bread Book and it sold really well. Then an alternative school asked me to cook there. I didn’t know anything about cooking really, I was a baker. They gave me The Joy of Cooking and I started making food for 50 people.

What are some of the challenges of running a green business in Berkeley?

People who live here take a lot of what we have for granted. I just came back from the midwest. In some ways it’s purer there: There’s one farmers’ market and so everyone goes then. It’s a big deal. Here it’s like if you miss one day there’s always another market in a day or two. We’ve gotten a bit jaded.

Sometimes I think people forget how much green businesses need support from the community—Amanda’s Restaurant closed and she was doing all the right things on the sustainability front.

It’s also a struggle to keep up with all the changes in the sustainability movement because there’s so much going on all the time and things are moving quickly.

What do you most enjoy about the green tours?

I like to connect people, I’ve always been a conduit for people, a matchmaker, and an advocate for building healthy communities. It’s the teacher in me. I get a lot of satisfaction when people learn in an experiential way.

We have students who go to an urban farm, touch the soil, and make the connection between healthy farms and good food. I’ve seen adolescents change their diets just by showing them an alternative way of eating, not telling them what they should and shouldn’t do, but by presenting a different model.

We have taken people on farm tours who have never stepped foot on a farm, including people who have lived in Marin all their lives. They just drive by and never think to stop. And they’re moved by the experience. At a recent cheese tour there was a dead cow on the property and the farmer didn’t even seem to notice but everyone else did. I asked him if he would address it and he explained, quite rightly, that the cow was at the end of her life, death is a part of farm life—of any life—but we often shield ourselves from such things. It wasn’t as pastoral as people might imagine but it was real.

What’s next?

Securing sponsorships and partnerships to make this a sustainable business. I launched this right when the economy was tanking. It’s tough. But there’s so much around me that’s inspiring: great resources like UC, the Ecology Center, and people in this building, who are innovators who think outside the box.

I just got my first grant from Cal to show students where they can buy sustainably in their own backyard. I’m hopeful that as people get to know us more funding will come our way.

Photos: Bay Area Green Tours

Originally published on Berkeleyside and Lettuce Eat Kale.

Good Humus Produce has been in operation since 1976 and is now a 20-acre organic farm that produces fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Over the past 10 years, the Mains have been working on an easement initiative, the goal of which is to preserve a sense of place, post-retirement. When word eventually spread in the community about the Mains’ easement project, Sacramento locals who have come to rely on Good Humus Produce did not allow the couple to carry their initiative alone.

An easement strategy is not a standard conservation method. It utilizes a land trust to purchase and oversee the use of the farm. The trust buys an easement from the farmer for the amount of the development value while a new farmer may buy the land at the agricultural value. After the farm is passed to the next owner, the land trust ensures that the new farmer maintains certain land and residence standards. The farmers, the land, and small-scale agriculture, are all protected in this approach, which ultimately leads to the growth of safeguarded farms. In 2009, an organization known as One Farm at a Time was formed, in collaboration with the Davis Food Co-op and Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, to spearhead fundraising and outreach for the Good Humus easement.

One Farm at a Time will complete conservation work on Good Humus and then continue on to other local farms, using the same easement model to uphold small-scale agriculture. An envisioned network of local, long-standing farms must involve many partnerships that strengthen the larger objective to create sustainable and economically viable local ownership of agricultural land.

Alongside contribution from co-ops, the Mains have worked with a host of different organizations to spread their words of concern. At the launch of the easement initiative in 2001, Equity Trust, Inc., a national non-profit that works with individual farmers to secure land ownership through purchase options, led the Mains through their first round of fundraising. Since their founding in 1991, Equity Trust, Inc. has worked on many land preservation cases spanning New York to California. The Mains have also worked with California Farmlink and Yolo Land on the actual writing of the easement. Organic Valley and Straus Family Creamery help to sponsor the initiative.

Easement strategy is not a new concept specific to the Mains’ predicament. In the state of Washington, an organization known as PCC Farmland Trust does similar work for the American agriculture stage. Like the One Farm at a Time tale, PCC Farmland Trust originated in 1999 in reaction to the impending development sale of a 97-acre farm adjacent to the land of Sequim farmer Nash Huber.

PCC Farmland Trust emerged to rescue Nash’s Organic Produce, which now leases the 97-acre Delta Farm and continues to produce over 100 varieties of produce, meat, and grains. Since the organization’s first farm preservation, a total of nine organic farms and 865 acres have been saved, and both farmer and consumer rights have been protected. The fight to preserve, support, and produce on locally protected farmland is a campaign that depends upon many voices and a tremendous amount of collaboration.

On a hot July morning, farmer Annie stood with a group of high school girls at the opening of their workday on her farm. She looked from one volunteer to another and said, “We have a small voice. We want you all to be our voices, because when you hold a place in your heart, you defend it.” The girls, dressed in hiking boots and a thick layer of sunscreen attentively listened to the description of Good Humus Farm before they dispersed to weed and compost. From farmer, to worker, to consumer, Annie’s words resonate.

With the help of land trust organizations which value preservation, local ownership, and long-term investment, many family farms have managed to make themselves heard. These defended farms, still standing, confirm that their voices are loud enough.

In December of 2010, I bought the farm.

Clearly I mean this in the literal, not euphemistic, sense. (Although I’ve spent some time pondering why the phrase “bought the farm” means “to die,” but I digress.)

According to the legal survey, my farm is “12 acres, more or less,” meaning the surveyor measured off 12.006 acres and called it good. It has a cute farmhouse that I love living in, six strong outbuildings, a grove of trees on the north and west sides, and 4.6 acres of ground formerly planted in a corn-soybean rotation that now has grass seeds sprouting in it.

I live in northeast Nebraska, where a “farm” is usually much bigger than 12 acres, and a “farmer” is typically a 59-year-old white man who grows corn and soybeans and/or raises cattle for a living. Folks around here would call my place “an acreage.” But I aim to grow enough food to feed myself and others in my community. Isn’t that what a farm does? I’m calling it a farm, even if there are those who would object.

Buying this farm is a plateau in a pursuit that started for me as a wide-eyed college student reading My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It dawned on me that the most rebellious, independent act I could commit against an unjust social and economic system would be to grow my own food. I was pretty into rebellion then, but even as I’ve aged the idea doesn’t lose its shine.

Luckily I met a partner who didn’t think growing things was a crazy idea, and soon we were causally farm shopping. We were pretty picky–we wanted a sturdy house and barn, 10-20 acres, nice land with a grove of trees and a commuting distance of no more than 5 miles to work.  I really wanted hardwood floors, but I think I would have settled if everything else fell into place.

We made offers on a few places, all the while friends and neighbors told us about a perfect place exactly 5 miles from our office. The first time I saw it, I fell in love. I held it up as the gold standard to every other house we looked at, even though it wasn’t on the market because the son of the owner wouldn’t sell “until Dad died.” I wasn’t going to hope for that, so we kept looking.

When our banker called to say that the owner of “that perfect place” had passed on at age 97, I could only hope that his son listed the house at a price we could afford and with enough acres to satisfy us. He did, and so in the dead of the worst winter in 30 years (according to my neighbors, but we’ll see what they say next year), we moved to the country.

The legacy of those previous owners lives in the apple trees, raspberry bushes, rhubarb patch, daffodils, and grape hyacinth that my partner and I now enjoy–as well as the surprises that keep popping out of the ground even 18 months later.

We’re now finishing up our second season in the garden, and it’s been delicious. The peas, onions, kale, and broccoli have taught us about storage, moths, and frost. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that got their start as seedlings in a room upstairs with a big south-facing window have helped us experiment with pressure canning, low tunnels, and mulch.

We’ve also planted 350 tree seedlings we ordered from our local Natural Resource District. Deciding which trees to order took a long time–we took stock of what we have in our grove and what we lack, what purpose we want the tree or bush to serve, and how much room we have. In the end, we got lilacs and dogwoods for a hedge to protect the garden from road dust and pesticide drift, red cedars for a living snow fence, Colorado blue spruce to fill in the shady gaps, and cottonwood and honey locust for firewood.

The red cedars and dogwoods came to us looking robust, while the blue spruce and honey locusts were hardly more than twigs. Fingers crossed that most of them make it, despite my tripping over them in the dark on the way to the chicken coop.

I’ve already learned a lot about owning a farm in the few months I’ve been here, like how to drive our 1960s Farmall 460 tractor and what the proper distance is to stand from a chain saw operated by someone else. (Answer: if there’s sawdust in my eyes, I’m too close.) I’ve found that grain bins look an awful lot like space capsules on the inside, and that baby chicks are only adorably cute for the first week.

We have laying hens that give us a rainbow of eggs most days, about 10 or 11 different breeds. This spring they got sick, and we had to learn how to make the tough choice to cull when nothing we did helped them recover. Our Katahdin sheep have so far given us lambs as well as laughs, and a few lessons in midwifery along the way too.

We’ve been busy.

I have big plans for this farm, though they’ve been tempered by a dose of reality: A full time job makes part-time farming hard to balance. But I’ve gotten to the point where I believe I’m at least a part-time farmer, and my home needed a name.

Welcome to Thistle Root Farm!

Originally published on Grist

*Editor’s Note: Title change from “Kansas” to “Nebraska.”

The U.C. Santa Cruz Farm & Garden Apprenticeship changed my life. In the winter of 2005, I was burning the candle at both ends and burning myself out. I was working too hard, moving too fast, and my doctor had warned me that I was at risk of chronic fatigue. Then, that spring, I found myself living on an organic farm perched above the waters of Monterey Bay.  Before I moved to the farm, my to-do list as an environmental campaigner had been packed with conference calls, protest organizing, and press conferences. After arriving at the farm, my biggest priorities became keeping the onions free of weeds, thinning the young fruits on the apple trees, and waking up early to cook for 35 other aspiring farmers.

The switch blew my mind. As I worked in the fields and the orchards I could suddenly see the myriad interconnections that knit together a farming ecosystem; ecology went from an abstraction to a visceral reality. Perhaps more important, living with a few dozen other industrial society dissidents gave me a new appreciation for the ideals of solidarity and the practice of community. The time I spent at the UCSC Farm & Garden deepened my hope that farming, done right, could help heal a battered environment and perhaps even remedy some of the world’s injustices.

So I was horrified when I learned last month that, due in part to state and federal budget cutbacks, the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture (as it’s formally called) may be forced to double its tuition—a move that would put this invaluable program beyond the reach of many people and set back efforts to educate a new generation of organic farmers.

Founded in 1967 by an eccentric British gardener named Alan Chadwick, the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is the oldest organic farming education program in the United States. It is one of the few organic farming apprenticeships that combines in-the-fields, hand-on instruction with science-based classroom lectures and also one of the few that provides a certificate upon course completion. Demand for this unique curriculum far outstrips what the Apprenticeship can supply: For the 2011 season the apprenticeship received more than 150 applications for 36 openings.

The Apprenticeship is like a greenhouse for the organic farming movement, a place that (if you’ll excuse the extended metaphor) helps germinate crop after crop of passionate farmers and gardeners. Here in Northern California, the names at the farmers market stands and on the menus of farm-to-table restaurants are like a Who’s Who of Apprenticeship alumni: Dirty Girl Produce, Blue Heron Farm, Freewheelin Farm, Dinner Bell Farm, Pie Ranch, Blue House Farm, and the organic nursery Sunnyside Seedlings are all run by alums. And the ripple effect stretches far beyond California.

In New York City, alum Karen Washington is an instructor at the Farm School NYC. In Missoula, Montana, alum Josh Slotnick runs the innovative PEAS Farm, which combines a stellar CSA with agricultural education for University of Montana undergrads. Jones Valley Farm in Birmingham, Alabama is run by an Apprenticehip alum, as is Persephone Farm in Washington and Full Sun Farm outside of Ashville, North Carolina. For my part, I doubt that I would have the confidence to co-manage San Francisco’s three-acre Alemany Farm were it not for the instruction I received at the Farm & Garden.

Now, the austerity measures sweeping the country are jeopardizing the apprenticeship’s ability to continue its important work.

After a while, the budget battles and debt talks in Washington can come to seem like capital clownery. As a committed progressive, I understand that the debt crisis has been manufactured; the country isn’t “broke” so much as it’s been impoverished by a class of people who have resisted paying their fare share in taxes. Still, even a political junkie like me can start to zone out: The details dissolve into abstractions, and from there into absurdities. But with the announcement of the Farm & Garden tuition increase, I saw the government austerity measures threaten something I intimately care about. And now I’m pissed off.

What’s especially galling about the impending tuition increases is that the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship itself is fiscally solvent and has been for many years. It is suffering now because of how fiscal cutbacks have cascaded down from the federal government, the state government, and the broader University of California system to this one little (but highly effective) program.

The financial details of interlocking institutions are confusing, but here’s the story in brief: The Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is technically housed within the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), a research group within UCSC that was founded in 1997. In the last year, the center has lost more than half of its state funding ($167,000), as well as a $335,000 annual U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. To make up for the shortfall, CASFS staff has had to dip into the Apprenticeship coffers. At the same time, the entire UC system is in belt-tightening mode and looking to reduce costs or increase revenues. Suddenly, the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship is being asked to pay more for some of the services it receives from the main UCSC campus.

The upshot? Tuition for the six-month program is expected to increase from $5,300 this year to $12,800 in 2013. Next summer, the tuition will technically be $8,500, though apprentices will pay $6,000 thanks to an anonymous donor who gave a special $100,000 gift to blunt the tuition increase. When I was an assistant instructor at the Farm & Garden in 2006, the tuition was $3,250. If the tuition does increase to $12,800, the admission price for this unique farming curriculum will have nearly quadrupled in just seven years.

And that, say longtime Apprenticeship staff, would be disastrous for efforts to educate a diverse group of farmers and gardeners. “Most of the people who go through this program are working adults, so typically they are not the highest wage earners out there,” said Christof Bernau, who has been an Apprenticeship instructor since 1999.

Bernau himself was an apprentice in 1994 and he worries that few people will be able to pay $12,000 for a six-month program that prepares one for a career in farming, hardly the most lucrative profession. “They come to gain more training, and go back out into a field or profession that by and large is not the highest paying,” he said. “They are giving up their jobs, and if they have a family they have to find a way to support their family while here.… It’s a leap and a commitment to come here.”

Big deal, I can hear the bean counters saying, why should the government be supporting farmer education in the first place?  Well, for starters, because the average age of the American farmer is 57-years-old, and the largest cohort of farmers are 65 and older. Within the next decade this country is going to experience a wave of farmer retirements. We desperately need new growers to fill their places, and the Farm & Garden Apprenticeship has a proven track record of giving people the skills they need to become successful organic farmers.

As Bernau points out, the impending tuition increase is yet another example of how government austerity measures fall hardest on an already struggling middle class. If tuition skyrockets to more than $12,000 a summer, the elite will probably still be able to afford the program, and some half dozen of the poorest applicants will still receive scholarships. But everyone else will be turned off by the high prices, bad news for a sustainable food movement already struggling to shed the image of being the exclusive project of the affluent. “If you keep raising tuition, we are going to be pricing people out,” Bernau told me.

I know I couldn’t have done the program at the $12,000 price. I doubt very much that my buddy Matt McCue, who now runs Shooting Star CSA , could have swung that tuition. McCue had finished a combat tour in Iraq before coming to the Apprenticeship and his Army wages wouldn’t have been enough. Same with Robyn “Rose” Hosey, a working class gal from Pennsylvania who now works at Morning Glory Farm, one of the most successful organic farms in Massachusetts. Thinking about the alternate universe in which Hosey or McCue couldn’t have afforded the Apprenticeship is like imagining the agrarian version of “It’s a Wonderful Life”—only in this case the bastard Mr. Potter triumphs and the world is the worse off for it.

The way Bernau sees it, the tuition increase isn’t just a threat to farming education, but is also an assault on the broader principle of public education. “I believe the cost of education cannot and should not be borne entirely on the students’ backs,” he said. “The cost of educating an apprentice is $13,000 per student per year. So the tuition for 2013 is supposed to be $12,800. Even at elite, private universities, the full costs of education are not borne by the students. And certainly at a public institution there is a public role and a public responsibility to bear some of those costs, because the benefits from that education are accrued by all of society.”

In the case of the Apprenticeship education, the benefit is obvious and tangible: Real food, grown by people with a commitment to environmental stewardship and social justice. For more than 40 years, Apprenticeship alumni have been at the forefront of the movement to create sustainable food systems. Surely that’s a public good, one that deserves to be supported by the public purse.

Click here to make a donation to support the farmer education at UCSC.

Photo 1: Carolyn Lagattuta, Photo 2: Courtesy of UCSC

Many New York State farms have experienced devastating losses in the wake of Hurricane Irene. Wind and subsequent flash floods destroyed late summer crops and vegetables, while others have reported drowned cows and washed away barns. Many more farms are without power and, because of washed out roads, countless more do not have a means to distribute their milk.

The flood is particularly brutal because it comes at the height of harvest, which means it is not only a financial disaster, but also an emotional blow. In addition to losing direct sales through farmers‘ markets and grocery stores, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members might not receive further produce for months, since waterlogged produce is illegal to sell.

“Community Supported Agriculture is a partnership,” wrote Just Food’s CSA coordinator Paula Lukats in a recent newsletter. She added that investing in a CSA implies that you are taking a risk with the farmer, though Irene presents the most extreme example of what could happen. “No matter how skilled a farmer is, no matter how hard she works, no matter how hard he’s planned, there was nothing they could’ve done to prevent the severe flooding.”

Lucky Dog Farm in Hamden, New York, an organic vegetable operation that provides a local CSA and has a wholesale vegetable business, lost most of it’s summer vegetables. Scenes of waterlogged vegetable fields seem to be found all over the state, with the Schoharie, Mohawk, and Hudson Valley all experiencing extensive damage, along with the Catskills and Long Island. The black dirt area in Orange County, a region prized for onions and vegetable cultivation, sustained significant losses. “The whole region is under water and most of the harvest destroyed,” said farmer Cheryl Rogowski. “We need to get the word out, this region needs help.”

“There is widespread damage to the best cropland along river valleys in the Catskills and Hudson Valley,” said farmer Ken Jaffe, from Meredith, New York, who was quoted in a Village Voice piece about the impact the flooding has had on upstate New York. “Transportation is under lockdown in most Catskill counties, and will be slowed indefinitely by numerous bridges that have been washed out, and roads that are literally gone. There are major losses to farmers who are literally underwater, and often under evacuation.”

The Schoharie and Mohawk valleys were hit hard by flash floods, where there were reports of drowned cows and destroyed barns. Unfortunately, confirmed reports are scarce because of the nature of the disaster–many are with out power and have limited access to open roadways. Darrel J. Aubertine, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, told the New York Times, “Clearly, it’s not good. I’ve been involved in agriculture my entire life, and there have been times when the weather has wreaked havoc on livestock and farms, but I don’t think I have ever seen anything on this scale here in New York.”

The fact that so many vegetable and dairy farmers have been washed out by the storm speaks to the unique topography of New York, which is an important vegetable growing state. Schoharie County farmer and author Shannon Hayes explained in a recent blog post that the best soil for vegetable crops is generally located in floodplains. She also wrote about what the loss means for farmers’ businesses. “Vegetable producers around here make most of their annual income from July through October,” she wrote. “In addition to the incredible damage to their homes, they’ve also just lost half the year’s income, and an unfathomable amount of topsoil and accumulated fertility.”

The timing of the flood makes this particularly hard for dairy farmers, since the winter depends on a successful summer harvest of hay, corn, and alfalfa. The Albany Times Union reported on the devastating effects at one farm: “The water flattened a corn field, ruining $500,000 worth of feed for the farm’s 375 cows.” There have also been reports of barn fires because of wet hay.

The New York Farm Bureau has been compiling damage reports across the state and working with state and federal agencies with disaster designations. They also confirmed that many animals have been lost and barns destroyed.

Challey Comer, the Farm to Market Manager at the Watershed Agricultural Council, is helping to coordinate efforts to help farmers in the watershed area. “We have people going out to farms to access the impact the storm and flooding has had and to help farmers connect to available funding,” she said. She noted that the local extension agents are armed with information to help farmers with flood related issues, like what to do with water logged hay and damaged crops. She also compiled a list of resources and fundraising activities to help area farms.

If you have photos, stories or fundraising information please share them in the comment section.

“You’re farming in Alaska?! What can you possibly grow there?” This was a common response when I told people I was moving to Alaska to be an AmeriCorps VISTA at Calypso Farm and Ecology Center in Ester, Alaska. To be honest, I myself wasn’t quite sure what to expect. When I arrived in April, the ground was still covered in ice, the fields covered in snow. Three months later, I’ve discovered the shocking truth. In Alaska, a food revolution is brewing, and it’s led by 12 year olds.

Calypso Farm and Ecology Center (Calypso), founded in 2000, is a successful educational, working farm located near Fairbanks, Alaska. Calypso’s mission is to promote local agriculture and environmental awareness through hands-on education in natural and farming ecosystems. They provide educational programs for children and adults, reaching thousands of individuals annually. Programs include: farm field trips, farm and garden workshops, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), farm apprenticeships and an extensive school garden network–the Schoolyard Garden Initiative (SGI). Through all of its programming, Calypso works to provide food and education access for low-income members of the community.

The SGI is an innovative community food program which creates organic school gardens that function as youth-operated food gardens during the summer months and experiential learning environments during the school year. This program responds to the need for locally grown food for the community, a gardening, nutrition and employment connection for youth and hands-on educational opportunities in the schools.

Fairbanks, Alaska is a community driven by the seasons. There can be snow on the ground from September through April. This climate makes food accessibility paramount. If you drive past the grocery store on a wintery evening it isn’t uncommon to see several taxis lined up in front, taking people without cars to get their groceries. If it seems difficult to get food within the state, it is even more difficult to get food to the state. Food often travels thousands of miles from the lower 48 to make it into the grocery aisles. It is said that if Alaska were to be cut off from the lower 48, Alaska’s supermarket food supply would be gone in three days.

The students in the SGI program have taken matters into their own hands. There are currently six schools in the program. These Student Gardeners (aged 12-18) plant, maintain, harvest and sell vegetables throughout the summer. They will also assist in teaching home gardening workshops to aspiring gardeners in the community and garden lessons to younger children in the fall. In exchange for their work, each Student Gardener takes home a weekly supply of vegetable and receives a monetary stipend at the end of the season. For most, this is their first job experience.

School Garden produce is available to the public through CSA’s and at weekly Farm Stands. Each garden offers a small number of CSA shares and operated a weekly Farm Stand on site. All produce is available for purchase with Food Stamps, WIC and Senior Coupons. Five of the six schools are within walking distance of low-income housing and two of the schools are federally recognized as Title I Schools (serving low-income students).

The Student Gardeners aren’t just farmers in training. They are agents of positive change, cultivating a new food culture. With pitchforks in hand, they shout “I love kohlrabi!” from the rooftops. They prefer vermiculture to video games. They don’t just finish their vegetables, they grow them. This is farming in Alaska.

I accepted an invitation from Derrick Kiyabu recently to visit MA’O Organic Farm where the path out of poverty starts with a walk down the farm’s vegetable rows. On the west side of the island of Oahu, just past Honolulu’s ocean view condos and the Pearl Harbor Naval Base I found myself on Highway 93 where a sign saying “Now Leaving Paradise, Welcome to Poverty” would be placed if tourist officials chose to acknowledge such things. But lacking what many vacationers are looking for in a tropical getaway, the Wai’anae Coast, as it is commonly known, can only offer fast-food joints, scruffy commercial buildings, and residential housing that rivals the worst of third-world Asia. Perhaps this is why the Lonely Planet guidebook refers to the region, almost quaintly, as “a little bit of Appalachia by the sea.”

My pre-farm tour reached a crescendo when I saw a homeless encampment cobbled together along a one-mile stretch of state beach. Late model cars – many rusted and in states of disassembly – jerry-rigged shelters, and a mish mash of makeshift camping and cooking gear presented such a scene of utter destitution that even knuckle-dragging conservatives would advocate for immediate relief.
As I moved inland a couple of miles, the landscape and my impressions changed. Small sections of dry, flat farmland intermingle with vast tracks of military land – securely fenced and sporting giant arrays of submarine-tracking sonar towers. It is here though, amid palm and banana trees, that you’ll find the peaceful acres of MA’O Organic Farms, armed with nothing more dangerous than wholesome organic produce and 40 or so farm interns between the ages of 17 and 24.

Like almost all the interns and staff, Derrick is wearing the farm’s “No Panic, Go Organic” t-shirt. Noting some of the underlying principles of the program, he reminds me that “pre-contact” Hawaiians were 100% food self-reliant and that their traditional farming methods were totally organic. In a more pragmatic vein, he also explains the program’s business model: “Organic produce generates the most revenue from our customers such as Whole Foods, natural food stores, CSA members, and Honolulu’s high-end restaurants.” As a self-described social enterprise, the non-profit farm generates 40 percent of its million-dollar-plus annual budget from produce sales. This is how they support the youth development and leadership program that is at the core of farm’s mission. Promoting food security in the surrounding region is secondary to the need to generate funds for instructional needs, community college tuition, and stipends for the workers.

Without a doubt, the produce is top-notch. The packing sheds – two retrofitted chicken coops – are filled with interns washing and packing perfect heads of green and white bok choy, glowing red radishes, and gorgeous greens. A big whiteboard lists all the customers and the number of units each will purchase that day. As the young people pack each order in custom boxes and load them on to the refrigerated delivery truck, pride is evident in their smiles; after all, they grew it, picked it, and packed it. From the sales revenue, they’ll be paid a monthly stipend by it. It will also help send them to college.

But MA’O isn’t just another scheme to reconnect kids to land, food, and a little income. According to Kamu Enos, MA’O’s Social Entrepreneur Director, the farm is a training and leadership development program designed to overcome the poverty and social dysfunction that was so evident on my drive in. He tells me that “this region of Oahu has the highest concentration of native Hawaiians on all the Islands. We also have a 20% poverty rate, which is disproportionately higher for Hawaiians. Over 40% of our kids drop out of school and only 10% of our graduating high school class goes to college, and many of those leave during the first year.” Derrick puts the problem more succinctly, “Our public education system has ripped off our kids.”

When I noted the unusually high number of very heavy people I saw in Wai’anae, Kamu explained that, like other Native American communities, the ravages of Spam, loss of land, and the decline of traditional practices have taken their toll on peoples’ bodies as well as their souls. “The root problem,” said Kamu, “is the disconnect between our land, people, and economy. Instead [of controlling these things], we exist under the predatory practices of the military.” Not only does the Defense Department control most of the land in the region, military recruiters find local Hawaiians easy targets for enlistment because good civilian job opportunities are so few.
Getting control of land, especially for farming, is a daunting challenge for Hawaiians – there’s not much affordable, arable land that developers don’t already have their mitts on. But sugar daddies do show up, and they are not always the kind that operated sugar cane plantations. In MA’O Organic Farms’ case, the sweet guy is none other than Pierre Omidyar, founder of E-Bay. He generously dropped a cool million on the program, which, with assistance from the Trust for Public Land, bought the 11 acres that are now the heart of the farm.

Pua, 21, is a MA’O youth leader and the first member of her family to go to college. She recently received her associate degree from Leeward Community College and is scheduled to start at the University of Hawaii at Manoa this August. She tells me that high school didn’t prepare her for college, but with her mother’s encouragement and MA’O’s help – counseling, remedial instruction, and peer support – she’s overcome some personal hurdles and is now ready for bigger challenges. While she’s not likely to pursue farming as a career she credits the program with giving her the emotional tools she needed to succeed. “The farm experience is an inspiration. Like college, it’s hard work. The farm grounds you because you have to manage your time, you have to work as a team with others to succeed, and you have to face the consequences of your actions.”

Sending worthy young people to college is admirable, but almost more importantly the program cultivates the interns’ state of mind. Other young people like Pua, start to eat better and lose weight. One youth worker, Kainoa, lost 130 pounds by exercising and changing his diet. Disempowered, brought up with low expectations, some homeless, these interns stared at a future that promised little but a swift descent into diabetes and a life in the unemployment line. Now the steps out of poverty are more visible.

To grow and sell a half-million dollars of organic fruits and vegetables every year is no small feat. But to raise dozens of young leaders who can challenge the dominance of the condo kings and restore the economic and physical health of their people would no doubt bring a smile to the ancient kings and queens of Hawaii.