In December, the Atlantic published “The 10 Biggest Food Stories of 2010,” a list that ranged from restaurant trends to food truck and butchery trends, with a smattering of food policy in between. In response, the Daily Yonder (motto: “Keep It Rural.”) ran The (Real) Important Food Stories of 2010, pointing out that the Atlantic’s list included “no mention of either the people or the places that produce food,” and that it was “heavy on New York City.” (Both true.)

Klein refers several times to “rural subsidies,” once referring to the “raft of subsidies we devote to sustaining rural life.” But Klein does not explain what he means by “rural subsidies.” And when he quizzes Vilsack on what justifies subsidizing rural people, Vilsack doesn’t challenge him to unpack it.

That results in a critical gap in the conversation.

If by “rural subsidies” Klein means farm commodity subsidies, that should be isolated and taken head on. Klein is right to question and challenge the current structure of farm commodity subsidies. Current farm programs provide unlimited benefit to the largest farm operators.

It cannot be said, however, that these subsidies are devoted to sustaining rural life. In fact, the system is literally undermining the economic and social foundation of rural communities.

The subsidies accrue to only a small portion of the rural population. A 2007 report from the Center for Rural Affairs, Over Subsidizing and Under Investing, shows how badly skewed USDA investment is toward very large farm operators and away from investing in programs that build a future for all of rural America.

The report found that the USDA spent nearly twice as much to subsidize just the 20 largest farms in each of 13 leading farm states examined as it invested in rural-development programs to create economic opportunity
for the three million people living in 1,400 towns in the 20 most-struggling rural counties in the same 13 states.

Current policy encourages big farms to get even bigger. Fewer farmers means fewer people in rural America. As farms consolidate, the population in the countryside declines. As the farm population declines, small towns also decline as less farmers need supplies and services. Rather than sustaining rural life, the current farm commodity system subsidies the
decline of rural life.

All other USDA rural development programs combined (rural broadband, rural small business, value added market development, etc.) account for a mere a fraction of one percent of all USDA spending.

The Center for Rural Affairs is proposing a modest investment of $100 million per year for rural development in the 2012 farm bill. That would be a several-fold increase over current investment in non-farm rural development and would still represent less than one-half of one percent of farm spending allocated by the farm bill and one-sixth of one percent of total funding allocated by the farm bill.

In addition to attacks on the broken farm commodity system, it has also become popular to attack other investment in rural areas as unfair subsidies. Spending on roads in rural areas is a popular target. In a later post, Klein takes just that jab. But the argument there is not much stronger.

Certainly, we invest in roads located in rural areas. Those roads are used often by urban people driving from one urban center to another; the mere physical location of the road in a rural area says very little about who benefits.

We also invest in infrastructure in urban areas, including rather expensive airports, stadiums and rail lines. And there is an entire federal department dedicated to urban development.

But the entire debate quickly becomes vapid when viewed in these terms. I don’t begrudge New Yorkers or Chicagoans their infrastructure. And it does little good for them to begrudge my community’s basic infrastructure needs.

It is better to focus on the type of development and the sorts of values we should incentivize. We live in a nation that ought to invest in building strong communities and healthy and sustainable economies that benefit the people who live in them. Different communities have different needs.

Incentives that drive the consolidation of wealth and limit opportunity for everyday people ought be avoided. That is as true of farm commodity subsidies that accrue to people in rural areas as it is of misguided financial policy that enriches investors while leaving working class people in Philadelphia or Miami stuck in an unaffordable mortgage.

Incentives that create economic opportunity for everyday people and help us to become more sustainable ought to be supported and pursued. Again, that is as true of federal programs that support soil and water conservation on farms and wind power development in rural areas as it is of investment in mass transit it more urbanized communities.

In his final post on the topic, Klein expresses surprise at the debate his initial post has stirred. But it is not surprising. The underlying narrative that everyone should live in cities because that is most efficient or is what will make us richer or smarter is a neoliberal analysis that rests on too many unchallenged assumptions about what is best for people,
communities and our democracy.

In an attempt to explain what seems to be the seed of a cosmic shift in how farming is practiced and portrayed in America, I offer you my story:

I’m 26 years old, and after a three year stint working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and navigating the concrete jungle, I needed out.

I was interested in much more than a career change. My mind, my body, my immune system, my belief system, my soul, my skin, and my fingertips—every piece of me began aching to evacuate the city immediately.

Without any major physical ailments or health concerns to speak of, my ill feelings inspired me to reexamine what I, as a human being, truly needed to get by. All the things I felt I needed—fresh food raised naturally, exercising and sweating in the sun, getting dirt under my nails, breathing fresh air, walking on earth, feeling accomplished by my labor—these very personal things I craved were being hustled, bustled, and trampled on by my own over-stimulated, under-satisfied, never-sleeping, big apple life.

Exposed to organics, local farmers, and the flourishing Brooklyn farm-to-table restaurant scene, I had gotten a taste of what was possible and there was no turning back. I was hooked—something from deep inside me began to slowly bubble towards the surface.

As I looked around me–whether it be America as a whole, a particular state I was in, the strangers sitting across from me on public transit, or even my closest loved ones–I’ve seen that we are becoming a sick people. Fat and obese people everywhere, widespread learning disabilities amongst children, and cancers riddling away entire family trees are now cultural norms.

Finally there came a point in time (about a year ago to the day) when I refused to continue going along for the ride. There are wrongs—serious wrongs—being committed to our land, to our people, and to our freedoms on a daily basis at the grocery checkout counter. The expression “you are what you eat” is no old wives’ tale, it’s pure truth. At any given second our cells are dying and new ones are being reproduced using whatever we put in our mouths. Do you want to replace your dead cells with nutrient dense vegetables and healthy, well-balanced animal fats—or processed and packaged toxins?

Organics pioneer, Sir Albert Howard, wrote in his 1943 book An Agricultural Testament, “artificial manures lead inevitably to artificial nutrition, artificial food, artificial animals, and finally artificial men and women.” This cycle is an ever-worsening situation for our country, and it realizes an unholy amount of cash flow for the nation’s worst perpetrators against the public health and well-being.

Young people everywhere are living with these effects first hand. The drastic changes, consolidations, short cuts, and widespread use of drugs and chemicals in conventional agriculture have all taken place right under our grandparent’s noses. Food did not used to be like this, and the older generation is our witness. While old timers can cheerfully reminisce about the days when they had chickens out back, or picked berries with their papa, people my age are first beginning to bear the true consequences of industrialized food. Young people can see it in their broken families, in their autistic sisters, and in their asthmatic cousins who survive on diets of fruity pebbles and Ritalin. We see it, and we want to change it.

For the first time in many generations there is an uprising of young men and women stepping onto America’s fields, digging into earth, and making a sustainable and satisfying life for themselves. We are doing it not only because we want to, but because we need to. We are passionate, we are educated, and we are on a mission to heal our communities, our families, the land, and ourselves.

And so, from Wall Street one day, to rural Georgia the next, I am currently farming under the tutelage of farmer/restaurateur Jason Mann.  Through our vegetable wing, Full Moon Farms, and our pasture raised meat cooperative, Moonshine Meats, we feed the community through a successful community supported agriculture (CSA) program, as well as supplying Jason’s two farm-AND-table restaurants that please both mouths as well as minds (Farm255 in Athens and Farm Burger in Decatur).

I’d like to close this post with a quote from a fellow young farmer, and good friend, that I think embodies the spirit of our movement. This was the closing to a farewell email he wrote on his departure from our Athens community: “It may not seem like it all the time, but our paths are both humble and righteous, and we cannot go wrong.”

“Our [struggling] economy is making a compelling case that we shift toward more local food,” said Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis. “The current system fails on all counts and it’s very efficient at taking wealth out of our communities.”

Meter spoke at the annual conference of the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) held recently in La Crosse, Wisc.

The bank bailouts have stabilized the crisis but they haven’t addressed wealth in local communities, he said. It’s likely that change may come through food because it is the third largest household expense (12.4 percent or $6,133) and $1 trillion nationally. The average consumer spends $49,638 per year with housing the largest expense (34 percent or $16,900), transportation number three (17.6 percent or $8,753) and insurance number four (10.8 percent or $5,336).

“Everyone needs to eat and a local food economy forces us to think differently,” said Meter.

Meter shared figures from his study of southwestern Wisconsin where 106,000 residents earn a total income of $2.7 billion. However, 30 percent of the people live below the poverty line. Out of 6,804 farms, 586 farmers sell less than $10,000 per year while 11 percent sell more than $100,000. Only 382 farms sell directly to consumers and 133 farms are organic. Such disparities result in lop-sided and unfair policies that need to be changed to meet everyone’s needs, Meter pointed out.

The past 40 years have seen rising sales and new markets for farm products, he said, but the expense of running these operations is mounting faster than the income. In fact, there has been a steady decline in income every year since 1969 except during the OPEC crisis in 1973-74. That’s the year former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz ramped up production and sold wheat to the Soviet Union.

However, overproduction eventually led to the farm credit crisis in the 1980s, which resulted in much pain over family farm foreclosures including over 913 farmer suicides in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. For example, since 1969, farmers in southwestern Wisconsin made $166 million less despite the fact that they doubled their productivity. Meanwhile, they spent $429 million more equipment and chemical inputs.

“A community-based system of agriculture is all about relationships,” said Meter who predicts that “over time, communities will choose organic food…because they know the farmer is taking care of the land.”

Meter believes that in general, community-based organic farms make four major contributions: good health and nutrition for the population; a fair distribution of wealth among farmers; connections between people since food is so central to American and ethnic cultures; and the capacity for farmers, not corporations, to decide what foods to produce.

Government subsidies keep the industrial food system afloat because farmers are paid to produce below cost, said Meter. In southwestern Wisconsin, it took $434 million to raise $404 million in produce per year. Subsidies amounted to $21 million, which left a $10 million loss. Farmers made up this loss in off-farm income (89 percent of farm family income), renting out land, and other money-making ventures. Since 2002, 53 percent of farmers reported losses after subsidies, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“This is not a healthy farm economy especially since $135 million in food is purchased outside the region,” said Meter. “We need to cut down that $135 million by sourcing food locally.”

As it is, the national average of buying local is only .8 percent and the effect is insidious. Wisconsin made $2 billion less on its farm products than it did in 1969. In 2009, it made the same income—adjusted for inflation—as it did in 1932.

“This is a startling reality the general public is not thinking about because it is so far removed from farms,” said Meter. “These are losses in the breadbasket of America! This is not a lucrative way to farm.”

To further advance the notion of a regional food system, a recent Iowa State University study found that farmers in six Midwestern states — Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — could raise 28 crops in quantities large enough to meet local demand. Sales could generate $882 million in crops, create more than 9,300 jobs and raise about $395 million in labor income.

And it wouldn’t take much land either. One of Iowa’s 99 counties could meet the demand for all six states, said Rich Pirog, associate director for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State.

The study included apricots, asparagus, mustard greens, bell peppers, onions, broccoli, peaches, cabbage, pears, cantaloupe, plums, carrots, raspberries, cauliflower, snap beans, collard greens, spinach, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, strawberries, garlic, sweet potatoes, kale, tomatoes, watermelon and lettuce — both leaf and head.

Crops such as pumpkins, apples and cherries weren’t included in the study because the Midwest already grows enough of them to meet local and regional demand. Corn, as well as soybeans, are considered grains, not produce.

However, the prospects for a regional food system won’t happen as long as the industrialized food system continues with its commodity payment programs, refrigerated trucks, interstate highway system, and subsidy policies.

It won’t be easy now for farmers to switch to other crops either, said David Swenson, the Iowa State economist who conducted the research. Expertise in the Midwest tends to be in livestock or commodity crops such as corn and soybeans, not produce. The states don’t have policies to encourage expanded fruit and vegetable production, and many consumers don’t think much about where their produce is grown.

The best opportunities for local production of fruits and vegetables are near metropolitan areas where there is a demand for locally grown food.

High gas prices could change everything, said Michelle Miller, associate director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, which helped fund the ISU study. California, which produces most of the country’s fruits and vegetables, relies heavily on water and transportation subsidies to ship these products all over the country.

It would also take buyers committing themselves to invest in organic and locally-grown agricultural products, said Meter. People would have to understand how such a strategy would benefit them and their community at the same time. It would require a sense of community or ownership over a place where people were unified on the basis of trust, mutuality, and support and not just a shared geography.

For example, if people in southwestern Wisconsin bought just 25 percent of their food from local sources, all production costs would be offset and create $33 million in new farm income.

“It is not a trivial thing to source food through local people,” said Meter. “That helps fund communities and their schools.”

Meter cited several examples where farmers have been able to invest in local and organic production AND make a difference in their communities.

Organic Valley started out in 1988 with $0 in sales and last year it made $532 million.

“This is a stellar example of a farmers cooperative where the price is fair and farmers work to make it good for all” said Meter. “It is strong, sensible thinking.”

Black Hawk, Iowa, created 475 new jobs in fruits and vegetables totaling $6.3 million in income for the community.

Will Allen started out with earthworm compost and has reduced Milwaukee’s cost of garbage dumping significantly.

A factory shut down in Viroqua, Wisc. and moved its operations to another state. City leaders confronted the company and asked what it would do for the community. In response, the company ended up selling its 100,000 square foot building, which allowed the city to create a regional food processing center, a fitness center, a bakery and cafeteria. The building is now 96 percent occupied.

In Eau Claire, Wisc., farmers, the hospital food service, distributors, and truckers teamed up to create the Food Buyers Co-op.

In Burlington, Vermont, a bakery-to-school program was developed where 2,000 extra artisan loaves were sold for $4 with $2 going to the bakery and $2 going to the school. It created a new profit margin for the bakery.

Such arrangements break down self-interest motives to help move everyone in the community forward, said Meter.

In Northfield, Minn., Home on the Range Poultry created a Latino/Anglo cooperative on quarter-acre sites where they raise chickens. There are 30 to 40 sites and the company owns its own processing center.

“The food systems of the future will also involve rethinking our habits of getting our food cheaply,” concluded Meter. “Such change can build wealth in our communities.”

“There seems to be three ways for a nation to acquire wealth:  the first is by war…this is robbery; the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture, the only honest way.”  Benjamin Franklin

The twenty-first century’s uncertainty about the future abounds with predicaments like climate change, depletion of our water resources, and the end of cheap energy.  And farmers are being called upon to assume a new role as innovators and stewards of the land because they know how to produce food.
“Farmers were the true founders of the United States,” said Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, “because they went out into the wild and built the first structures and communities that eventually became our cities and the nation.”  In 1800, 90 percent of Americans were farmers.

She spoke recently at the 21st Annual Conference of the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) held in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

By 1900 after the frontier closed and the nation moved from an agricultural to an industrial economy, the percentage of farmers dropped to almost 40 percent.  That’s also when farmers began to shift in their role from “citizens” to “producers.”

And they have been rebelling ever since over land and crop prices and agricultural policies, said Hamilton.

“They weren’t looking to change the system; they only wanted their fair share of the wealth.”

Meanwhile, other inducements moved them off the farm.

They were perceived to be “hayseeds” and helpless victims of droughts, floods and crop failures.

War in Europe exposed many young men to a more expanded view of the world, including the city’s lures of wine, women and song as expressed in the World War I hit, “How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?”

Economic opportunity and the excitement of the city led to the gradual abandonment of farming as a career choice.  Even during the Great Depression, income was three and four times higher off the farm than on it (as seen in the graph above).  In 2007, the USDA reported that farm income per capita was $28,781 compared to urban income of $40,570.  Today, a mere 2 percent of Americans are farmers.

After World War II, the United States began a program of prosperity and productivity for all. Farmers who grew crops and stewarded the land were cajoled into resembling industrial workers from the city who produced piecework in a complex system overseen by major corporations, said Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs.

Livestock are cared for by “employees” of big corporations rather than by farmers who once took responsibility for their businesses as well as the small communities where they lived.  These were things that gave meaning to their lives.  As a result, small farming towns have fallen into social decay with a disappearing middle class.

Then, the USDA’s “cheap food policy” of the 1970s resulted in giving major food corporations almost total control of the food system.

“What have we wrought over these past 70 years?” asked Hassebrook.

“People yearn for greater authenticity and a genuine search for meaning and significance in life,” said Hassebrook.  “They don’t just want to accumulate things.  They are searching for community and meaningful relationships with people and with the land.  They are yearning for more access to nature.”

The Center for Rural Affairs (CRA), located in Lyons, Nebraska, a town of 980, represents a set of values that reflect the best in rural people, he said:  fairness, widespread ownership, personal and social responsibility and stewardship of the land where it is preserved for the next generation.

“When you look beyond selfish interests, the true interests reflect these values and are tied to community and the common good,” said Hassebrook.

But there is change in the making. Organic farming and the local food movement are capturing the imaginations of people in small, rural towns.  And while it’s difficult to tell where the future lies, Hassebrook urged conference participants to recognize that people need to take responsibility for their own destiny and future.

“We can’t wait for government or corporate America to save us.”

Hassebrook identified five keys that tap farmers’ full potential to create a better future.

1.  Protect authenticity.

The recent clarification of organic standards on dairy products is a vital start that means something to family farmers who want to treat their animals well and consumers who want to believe that their food is safe.

2.  Be entrepreneurial and re-build ownership and a legacy in the family farm rather than subject it to corporate ownership and control.

“There is a great untapped opportunity in grass-fed dairy.  Go after that market,” he encouraged.  “This is a strategy for linking farmers with consumers.”

Cooperatives are a great way to do this.  Spain has developed a cooperative system where they train entrepreneurs and created a bank to finance start-up businesses.

“Emulate that!” he said.

3.  Be mindful of the importance of contributing to the community.

Farms have always had a symbiotic relationship with cities and the organic food movement can rebuild this relationship as people grow more concerned about where their food comes from and who the farmer is that grows it.

In truth, these are quality of life issues, said Hassebrook.  Baby Boomers are retiring and choosing places where they want to live instead of where their jobs take them.  Likewise, people in their 30s are attracted to rural America as a good place to raise their children.

“If they could make a living in small farms and businesses, they would come to our rural towns,” he said.

4.  Protect access to good seeds.

Organic farmers can collaborate with conventional farmers on the issues of genetic drift and improving seed varieties.  Allowing big corporations like Monsanto to have almost total control of seeds is antithetical to good stewardship.

“It pains me greatly that Monsanto received exclusive license through the University of Nebraska,” said Hessebrook who has urged policymakers to prohibit this practice, especially when public funds go to private companies outside our own states.

5.  Reverse the government’s bias toward big corporations at the expense of small and medium-sized family farms.

This practice drives these farms out of business and also drives up land prices.  Conservation of these lands is also an important and essential aspect of stewardship.

These issues are about money, which is one source of power in Washington.  The other power source is people, said Hassebrook.

“When people give up, money fills the void.  When people hold the politicians accountable, they trump the power of money,” he said.  “When we send people to Washington to represent us, we need to remind them who sent them there.”

“We can create a new wave of change in America,” said Hassebrook.  “Organic farming is a big part of this change, but it won’t be automatic.  We have to work for it.”

“Let our inspiration be the pioneers who first settled America.  Those who succeeded were courageous.  They made sacrifices to achieve their dreams.  They were builders and entrepreneurs.  They cared about their communities, which were comprised of a diversity of people with different languages and customs.  They were farmers, carpenters, teachers, politicians and planners.  They were visionaries who worked hard to achieve progress.  They remained optimistic and were open to new ideas.  Our challenge is to go forth and do good.”

In a March 12 letter [PDF] to Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Sam Farr of Carmel, 24 members of the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment called on the lawmakers to reject the Administration’s proposal to cut $500 million next year from conservation programs approved in the 2008 Farm Bill. Feinstein and Farr are members of the Agricultural Appropriations subcommittees of their respective houses.

“The proposed cutbacks will result in a loss of jobs in the agriculture/conservation sector, hitting California’s rural communities hardest. For every conservation dollar cut, two dollars in ‘shovel ready’ projects will be lost,” said the letter, signed by groups ranging from the California Farm Bureau Foundation, the Western Growers Association and the Agricultural Council of California to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Working Group.

The cuts would mean a loss to California next year of at least $30 million promised for conservation programs under the Farm Bill. These programs help farmers implement management practices that deliver critical environmental and public benefits: improving soil, water and air quality; protecting wildlife habitat; reducing energy and water use; and limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

The largest of the threatened programs–the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP–provides vital support for California farmers to adopt less energy-intensive, more sustainable, integrated practices. In 2009, forty per cent of California’s $58 million in EQIP funding went to support four practices–cover cropping, conservation crop rotation, integrated pest management (IPM) and nutrient management–that reduce chemical use and runoff and improve soil and water quality.

The largest chunk, $7.5 million, helped to pay the cost of sowing cover crops on 150,000 acres of California farmland. These are fast-growing crops such as winter rye, clover or vetch, planted between periods of regular crop production to prevent soil erosion, build up nutrients in the soil and control weeds and pests. Benefits of cover cropping include enhanced soil fertility, reduced nutrient leaching, forage crop production, increased water infiltration and retention, reduced chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, and increased carbon sequestration.

A recent study [PDF] by the California Energy Commission found that cover cropping has the greatest potential to reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions of any major farming practice. The threatened funding underwrites a variety of other conservation practices such as nutrient management, composting, hedgerow and riparian buffer planting, and conservation tillage. All are helping farm operations reduce their emissions and sequester carbon in the soil and plants, among other benefits.

For example, planting hedgerows provides valuable habitat to more than 1,500 species of native pollinators and other birds and wildlife. California leads the nation in hedgerow planting, with more than 57 miles of hedgerows, or half the nation’s total, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. That’s a lot of habitat for a small investment of $170,000.

With all the water woes in the state, federal conservation programs have been especially important this year in helping farmers save money and water, with more than $22 million invested in efficient irrigation management. According to federal data, these changes achieved an average 25% reduction in water use.

At a time when farmers are under pressure to reduce their emissions and environmental impact, the government should be investing more, not less, in these valuable initiatives.

Already, demand for conservation funding far exceeds the money available. Last year, more than 6,000 California farmers applied for EQIP funds, but only 1,700 succeeded. Among those were farmers applying for support under the Organic Initiative, a new organic transition and conservation program, established in the 2007 Farm Bill. In FY2009, NRCS was only able to approve 158 out of the 363 Organic applications for a total of  $3.27 million. Due to lack of funds, 205 growers seeking an additional $4 million in cost share assistance were turned away. Still, California led the nation with the most number of contracts signed under the new initiative.

Funding for EQIP has been cut every year since the 2002 Farm Bill was passed. If Congress approves the Administration’s recommendation the nation’s farmers and ranchers will have lost $1.8 billion in technical and financial help promised in the 2002 farm bill to improve the sustainability of their farms and ranches. The sharp cut in funding from what was promised in the Farm Bill will leave thousands more farmers who want to do the right thing for the environment without support.

In a time of scarce resources and serious environmental challenges, we have to make difficult budget decisions. But cutting programs that help farmers, help the environment and provide jobs is not a smart choice.

What happens in Iowa doesn’t stay in Iowa. This is the lesson illuminated in Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney’s latest film, Big River, a companion to their successful film King Corn (made with director Aaron Wolff). In King Corn, Ellis and Cheney grew an acre of corn and followed it to the plate by way of the processing that brings us most of our packaged food and the confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that bring us 99% of our meat. This time around, they follow the top soil, fertilizer runoff, and pesticide residues from the acre they planted into the local water system and further to the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone.

Big River begins during the floods that overtook Iowa in 2007, which lead Ellis and Cheney to ponder the ecological consequences of the farming methods they used on their acre of corn. To discover just how modern farming affects the local community and beyond, they hop into a canoe and move down river to visit the largest nitrate-removal facility in the world — a necessary technology used to clean Iowan’s drinking water; a fertilizer factory, which replaces the land’s natural fertility with a process that uses natural gas to extract nitrogen from the air (the result is nitrates that bind with water and are easily pulled downstream); and  the fisheries of Louisiana, where a 300-mile long dead zone filled with those nitrates is fueling an algae bloom that is killing the fish.

Perhaps the worst legacy of our modern farming system, though, has remained on the farm. The land Ellis and Cheney grew their corn on in Iowa is owned by Chuck and LeVon Pyatt, conventional farmers who have been using pesticides and artificial fertilizers for many years. While they were filming, LeVon succumbed to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a disease tied to pesticide exposure that is all too prevalent in this part of the country. It seems that the system that pushes us to try and grow as much corn as possible no matter the costs might just have human lives on its hands, as the incidences of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma has more than doubled since the 1970s.

Check out the trailer for Big River:

The film is going to be traveling the country this year, where it will be screened at theaters, universities and homes near you. And if its not showing near you, you can go to the website and sign up to host a screening for your community of both King Corn and Big River.

But wait! There is more you can do to promote change in a system that is bad for the environment, the economy and our health: Big River‘s creators urge you to write Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and tell him that Green Payments make a better alternative than subsidies for the next Farm Bill; encourage him to prohibit the use of Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funds for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs); ask him to think about the next generation of family farmers, and help them get access to land, training, and federal dollars that support sustainable agriculture; and nudge him to help farm families test their wells for contaminants, as too many rural residents are exposed to chemical residues. It wouldn’t hurt either if he watched Big River, or hosted a screening at the USDA. The more information, the better the opportunity for improving the quality of life for hardworking, rural Americans.

Greenhorn is a word I expect I’ll hear fairly often in years to come. A greenhorn, according to Severine von Tscharner Fleming, Paula Manalo and Zoe Bradbury – authors of the newly released second edition of The Guide for Beginning Farmers is “a novice, or new entrant into agriculture.” To be precise, it is a certain kind of new entrant into agriculture: one who was not raised to farm and who has no family farm to inherit but who is unconventionally and some would say irrationally choosing to become a farmer, no matter his or her lack of education and resources. Touches of madness are not uncommon among greenhorns. Gutfuls of passion aren’t either.

In the authors’ words, The Guide for Beginning Farmers is “part pep-talk, part institutional index, part career-planning guide” for greenhorns. It is a work in progress. While the authors seek a publishing house willing to expand it into a full-length book, The Guide serves as a “first, early stab” at compiling resources for young people who hear the call to farm but have no place to dig in. The Guide gives them long-ish lists of apprenticeships and mentorships; land trusts and FarmLink programs that help new farmers find land; books on organic cultivation; books on smart business; local, state and federal loans and grants for starting farms; even consumer and food activist organizations that support sustainable agriculture, food access and farmworkers’ rights. There are plenty of places to begin.

Reading through the breadth and number of these lists gives the sense that The Guide is still very incomplete. There must be many more manuals, funding sources, apprenticeship listings and unclaimed parcels of land than the authors have been able to compile. There are people farming wisely and organizations supporting their efforts in every state in this country. It seems to me that programs and policies to incubate new farmers already exist; they’re not extensive, they’re not all tested and they’re not widely known, but they are ideas to try and replicate. Books on how to manage a sustainable and profitable farm are in print. Innovative, successful models of urban and rural food production that meet the specific needs of our time are out there. It seems to me, then, that what we really lack in the movement to create millions of new farmers is awareness. There aren’t too many Americans asking for a Guide for Beginning Farmers. There might be more if city people who condemn corn syrup and demand good food also demand that incentives be put in place to make farming an economically and socially viable profession. Or if they speak up and declare that farming is radical; that farmers, no matter how they do it, are heroes. The first obstacle in creating millions of new farmers is not a shortage of land and capital; twenty-somethings have too little farm experience and too many student loans to buy land anyway. The first obstacle is getting agriculture onto the minds of twenty-somethings before they decide that medicine or banking or pop music or drug dealing is the only way to ensure a “respectable” quality of life.

Hence what I admire most about The Guide for Beginning Farmers is not its references to so many websites but the way it reads, at times, like a Manifesto for Beginning Farmers. In future editions, I suggest the authors play up the joy of growing food and the role of farmers in any sustainable, healthy and just society. They’ve already begun it on Serve Your Country Food, a website The Greenhorns have produced to document, connect and support the work of young farmers. Manifestos are risky, but they’re also exciting. Excitement grabs attention and starts movements. We’ll never know if the existing programs for new farmers or the ones now being proposed are worth their weight if young people don’t demand the chance to try them out.

This post is part of Gordon Jenkins’s Young Farmers Unite series, where he writes and invites others to write on the challenges young farmers face, and how we can support new farmers at their profession.

In his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Barack Obama told us, “America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done… Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save.” The group of about 20 of us who were listening to his speech on a laptop as we got ready for the “young farmers seed swap” about to take place at Slow Food Nation stood straight up and smiled. “Did he say farms? Does he mean that?” As 80 other young activists, students, cooks and farmers streamed into the room, that phrase – “farms to save” – swam circles in our ears. Obama was confirming what we are all beginning to feel is mission of our generation: saving farms, rebuilding the food system, digging back into the land. He didn’t mention what kind of farms we have to save, but he did imply that the future of the economy and of our cities is bound to the future of agriculture and that the security and livelihood of our nation depends on our ability to grow food. That’s an old-fashioned idea, but it’s still a big one—even to young people.

The people in that room knew that if we’re going to save farms, the first challenge we’ll face is finding farmers willing do it. In 2002, the U.S. Agricultural Census reported that the average age of the American farmer is 55. Between 1 and 2% of the U.S. population works on farms; that’s fewer than are in prison. Since the 1950s, agribusiness, with the backing of the U.S. government, has worked hard to put machines, instead of people, on farms, claiming that factory farming produces the cheapest food and frees Americans from the “drudgery” of having to grow and prepare their own meals. As a result, generations of farmers’ sons and daughters have fled the land, seeking jobs and city lives that are marginally more secure. Today, many of the people working on U.S. farms are new immigrant laborers who have no rights, earn below-minimum wages and can’t avoid being exploited. The impression of the people farming the land today is that they’re the people the rest of the country would prefer to ignore.

In a time of concurrent economic, energy, climate and health crises, we’re beginning to realize how badly our country needs to rebuild its food and agriculture system. We should also realize that a food system that is good for us, good for our communities and good for the planet is going to rely on small-scale, diversified agriculture and is therefore going to require a lot more human labor. The U.S. needs millions of new farmers. But right now, that’s good news. Millions of people are losing their jobs this year and millions more need real food. Were we to invest in a healthy food and agriculture system today, we would create jobs at every level that not only boost our economy but also put healthy food on our tables, return money to rural communities and clean up our carbon footprint. (And we should all tell Obama we think so.)

There’s a vanguard of young people taking it upon themselves to find or create careers in agriculture, but it’s mostly idealistic college graduates. Those are the mad young farmers-to-be who gather at San Francisco seed swaps and raise their fists in solidarity when they hear Obama say “farms to save.” (I’m one of them.) As a group, we hope that we’re paving the way for other young people, and we hope we’ll soon be implementing programs and policy that incubate new farmers, but we’re admittedly not a “young farmer movement.” We don’t represent the wide swath of people this country will need to see farming real soon. We’re not going to see that swath of people farming until rural communities can sustain real economic security and provide the nurturing social fabric that makes life livable. “Ordinary Americans” won’t put their hands in the dirt until their neighbors consider farming a noble profession and are proud to shake the calloused hands that feed them. The prospect of jobs may lure people back to the land – or into parks and onto urban rooftops – but they won’t stay unless we train them to grow food and respect them for doing so. To ensure that the next generation of farmers is substantial and serious enough to fix our broken food system, farms will need an economic infrastructure (read: local processing facilities and markets for quality food) and a cultural vitality (read: internet access and things to do on the weekend) that make farm life viable.

That’s a radical agenda; to see it happen, every one of us, farmer or not, will have to rethink the way we interact with the land and with each other. But we will reap its rewards: strong urban and rural economies, healthy communities, a safe and secure food system, a habitable planet. There’s a lot of work to be done in readying the next generation to farm the land, and Obama’s right: we cannot turn back. We have to look forward, and from where I’m standing, the future looks full of promise.

This post is part of Gordon Jenkins’s Young Farmers Unite series, where he writes and invites others to write on the challenges young farmers face, and how we can support new farmers at their profession.

Photo: growing youth project

Last week, while the market experienced a kind of volatility that had nearly everyone drawing parallels with the Great Depression, I had the privilege of participating in the Western Regional Assembly on Farm-to-School, which was sponsored by Ecotrust.  A large group gathered in Portland to share information, develop strategies and network around the issues of good food for schools, institutions and communities.

To many people, farm-to-school, school gardens and attempts to create local food systems are somewhat of a novelty.  Here’s the line of thinking: Sure, it’s important to provide healthier food options to youth, and to teach them about agriculture and the food system…And it’s important to try to eat locally sourced foods as much as possible, for many reasons…But mostly, these activities lie largely outside of the “big-E” economic system.  They are simply too small in scale to make much of an impact.

What I learned last week about this topic shifted my thinking in fundamental ways.  Local food systems – including farm-to-school programs – can mean real money for local farmers, local food processors and local/state economies.

And the state of Montana has an excellent model for this.

Mary Stein, who is on the faculty of Montana State University, shared information about what’s going on in Montana in terms of needs and opportunities.  She described an area of acute poverty that has developed on the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, and in reservation counties.  I did some of my own research over the weekend and was astounded to learn that some of the poorest counties in the United States are in Montana. Rural residents have been struggling there for years.  In one county, the new jobs created in the last six-seven years numbered 42.  Sure these are small counties, but these figures represent poor economic health and growth.  History repeating itself? Perhaps.  While 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression for Main Street America, rural residents had been struggling for nearly ten years prior to that, since the conclusion of WWI.  And too often, rural struggles go unnoticed in America.

Through the 1950s, Montana produced about 70% of the food its residents consumed.  That figure has fallen to 10%, and the state is perilously – I would argue dangerously – dependent upon food that is shipped in, much of it via trucks.  A frequent observation is that Montana is one truck driver strike away from food insecurity.

Like many other states, Montana’s attempts to recreate a more locally sustainable food system have been hampered because of the loss of nearly all the food processing infrastructure in the last fifty years.  When we created a meta/mega food system in America, one of the casualties was local processing.

Montana has become a commodity-based agricultural system, producing mostly grains and beef cattle that are shipped out of state for processing and distribution.  Ironically, Montanans probably re-import processed grains and meat that they produced.

It’s not just a lack of processing infrastructure that hampers the effort to eat more locally sourced foods.  It is also federal school lunch policy.  “With the way the commodities programs are currently structured, there is a massive barrier for K-12 schools to source these commodity products locally,” MSU’s Stein says.  ”Montana is a beef state, and yet it’s almost impossible for our schools to access locally-produced beef, because districts can’t specify local beef within the federal commodities program.”  Nor can they get cash in lieu of commodities to buy local beef.

Grow Montana seeks to change this food system and revitalize the state’s economy.  Grow Montana is a broad-based coalition whose purpose is “to promote community economic development policies that support sustainable Montana-owned food production, processing, and distribution, and that improve all of our citizens’ access to Montana foods.”  The coalition is coordinated by the National Center for Appropriate Technology, which is based in Butte, Montana, and which is also one of the coalition’s partners.

Grow Montana Director Nancy Matheson says of their model, “We’re looking to use the local food movement as a way to transform and revitalize Montana’s economy, specifically the rural economy.”   She is particularly interested in hearing from others who are working on topics central to rural food systems and economic transformation.

Grow Montana works on multiple levels.  It encourages conversations with communities, entrepreneurs, farmers and ranchers, identifying needs and opportunities.

Matheson says, “The message is coming from the grassroots, and we take it on a collective basis to the state level.”  And Grow Montana’s policy work is having real economic impacts, because its members recognize the real opportunities that exist.  Unlocking the Food Buying Potential of Montana’s Public Institutions – Towards a Montana-based Food Economy is a study that provides information about one Grow Montana strategy that impacts farm-to-school programs, and could inform this work elsewhere.

On the ground, Grow Montana’s work is equally impressive.  The organization uses a FoodCorps to accomplish vital economic and human goals.  FoodCorps members – VISTA volunteers – deploy to create and develop farm to cafeteria programs in local schools and colleges. Through these programs, K-12 schools and colleges buy locally-grown food.  This strengthens Montana’s agricultural economy, while also serving healthy and delicious food to youth.

The FoodCorps work is coordinated by Crissie McMullan, who traveled with this year’s FoodCorps (hundreds of miles via a van) to the Western Regional Assembly in Portland.  One of the real “goose bump” moments at the gathering was when the Montana delegation was asked to stand. These incredible young volunteers – who are doing such important and ground-breaking work in sustainable food systems – earned an enormous and sustained round of applause.

Per Grow Montana Director Matheson, FoodCorps also enables the larger organization to “develop strategies that we can test in the real world, on the ground…strategies that inform our policy work.”  Food Corps volunteers track statistics about the amount and value of local food purchased for their programs; valuable information is being gained.  And dollars are staying in Montana because of the program.  The economic impact is real.

In honor of the Montana program, which provides a unique model we ought to consider – and which has inspired me enormously - I’m including their tagline with the Victory Grower tagline:

“Montana Food for Montanans”
“A Garden for Everyone.  Everyone in a Garden.”

Photo: simplesee

Rose Hayden-Smith’s work focuses on providing gardening and food systems education to youth, educators, and community audiences. She chairs UC’s Garden-Based Learning Workgroup, serves on California’s Instructional School Garden Committee, and is a 2008-2009 Food and Society Policy Fellow (FASP). Her personal website can be found at groups.ucanr.org/victorygrower/.