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Monday, September 19, 2016

Putting Our Hoes Down For Now - A Question For Fellow Farmers

  


“I don’t have any great ambition. I just want to be an organic vegetable farmer.”
 – Todd McDonald, 2001

My husband Todd and I were –are– first generation farmers. This means we started our operation from scratch. Starting in 2007 we slowly built up equipment, knowledge, and infrastructure that included systems for growing, harvesting, and selling. Each season we supplied 100–250 CSA members with a weekly share of our crop, harvesting twice a week June through October. Last season (2015), one that the federal government officially declared a Disaster in our county, we decided we had to stop. 

We were out of money and energy and had forgotten why we started farming to begin with. For years we had lived in a state of constant stress that comes with the unpredictability of farm expense, seasonal labor, and weather. 



In more hopeful times, I’ve called this business of organic farming gratifying, because we supplied our members with organic food and were part of a movement that felt –feels– big and important. As a Community Supported Agriculture farmer, I felt like a grassroots activist. I hosted “awareness-spreading” events in the city, spoke about the significance of CSA in interviews, and even cofounded a CSA Coalition. I am still a fan of both CSA and organic food production. The ongoing issues of chemical pollution, the state of organic seed, and global corporate control of food are still big concerns of ours. We have just realized that martyring ourselves is not the way to go.


“I was living my dream. And it was a nightmare.” 
–Todd McDonald, 2016

I will now let you in on a dirty little secret among first generation [organic] vegetable farmers. I think it should be made public. The secret is this: This is not an idyllic life. We are not making money to sustain our families. In fact, we are losing money year after year, investing our own savings or using money generously donated by other family members only to discover we may not be able to wait long enough for those investments to pay off. Many of us receive Medicaid. We will be paying off debt for years to come.


SO, as farmers, is it “sustainable” if not one of us says out loud, “This sucks. This isn’t working”? In our silence do we perpetuate the myth of the idyllic family farm? Picture a wholesome couple working side by side along smiling goats and baskets of perfect heirloom tomatoes in trim, abundant rows. Their white farmhouse gleams while a rooster crows in the gentle breeze. With this beautiful picture firmly in place in the minds of new farmers, the cycle begins afresh. New farmers begin their businesses, struggle to convey the picture of idyllic farm life for the sake of their customers, run out of money, use up all their credit, and finally quit. Just in time another new farmer steps up – having been told only of the beautiful myth – and falls into the same trap. Again and again until the system appears to be working. But it’s not. I know a lot of farmers like us. I am not making this up.

Why did our farm lose money? Did we not love it enough? Are we not skilled or smart or tough enough? Is the problem in our country so deep it is unfixable? Is it a question of reorganizing farm subsidies? Controlling monopoly within the food industry? Educating consumers?  Educating farmers? Is it just a regional problem? Climate change?

My husband and I are smart. We wrote a business plan. We went to Farm Beginnings classes. Between the two of us you’ve got a high school valedictorian, a college graduate, an experienced gardener, a Master Gardener, a self-made fine woodworker, a mechanic, a carpenter with experience building houses, two creative problem solvers, an extrovert, an introvert, a good planner, a fast reactor, and the former captain of an award-winning flag corps. We have an extraordinary tolerance for chaos, dirt, and debt. We are also these things: an artist, a musician, a snowboarder, yoga teacher, massage therapist, husband, wife, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, and two people that want a little basic comfort in life.



We are looking for answers to the question of how to keep being farmers without losing all the other pieces of ourselves. Personally I still can’t talk about kale without my eye twitching, but I do want this conversation. Farmer friends, what is your reaction? Can we stop what I perceive as a cycle of martyrdom while continuing to farm? Or…am I wrong in my perception?

In the meantime, here is what happens when we put down our hoes. Labor Day Weekend 2016:







































19 comments:

  1. I have said to aspiring farmers for over 20 years: "Only farm if you have to. If you farm because, way down inside, you know it's your path, you know it's your only choice, you might then be able to endure the suffering, the sacrifice, the worry, the debt, the storms, the pestilence..." I applaud you for your raw honesty. Farmer John Peterson

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    1. Thank you. You are an inspiration to us. I have definitely considered that maybe it wasn't our path, because we do have other things pulling us in other directions. I just hope it is the right path for more people.

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    2. 10 years as a csa owner, farmer, etc. Now my farm is up for sale. Whole Foods, Trader Joes, have deceived the public to think they sell organic. They do not. My friends deliver to them from the Cleveland food terminal. Produce is from Mexico or South America and Ohio is one of the largest organic produce states. Go figure. People say they want to eat healthy but they are kidding themselves and their children.

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  2. Indeed, thank you for this honest portrayal of your journey and struggle! I agree that more farmers should not sugar coat their experiences, and instead tell it like it really is. And while I would never dare to contradict Farmer John, whose film, btw, was my first exposure to CSA and inspired me greatly in my decision to become a farmer, I do think one of the most important things we can do for ourselves is get out of the martyr mindset. I've found that simply prioritizing my own needs, and not being willing to sacrifice my well-being for the sake of the farm has made a tremendous difference. I think the answer to your question is definitely, "Yes," you can be a farmer without being a martyr! It's still going to be a very tough and low-paying gig, but it doesn't also need to be self-destructive. Best of luck! - Nathan Moomaw

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    1. Thank you for your comments here and in the Facebook CSA Farmer Discussion group. You are one of the proud and the few and I hope there are many more of you out there!

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  3. Wow. Thank you! Your narrative is important and timely for farmers and eaters to hear. The reality for the vast majority of farmers, whether conventional or organic, is that someone has to bring an off-farm income to make it work. Direct markets like CSAs and farmers markets provided a way for many small and beginning and organic farmers to enter into agriculture over the past thirty years. However, direct markets are now "soft" or declining in many regions of the country, including here in the Upper Midwest and Chicago "food shed", making it ever more difficult to be one of the farmers who finds a way to sustain the farm. I tell our staff for the Farm Dreams course that we are successful when 90% of the participants decide NOT to farm. In our last cycle of Farm Beginnings, a third of the class of farm families decided NOT to farm when they took a good hard look at the numbers. For those who still insist on giving this a go, we need to find a way to make it work for farmers, eaters and the land. I'd like to share your post with the national Farm Beginnings Collaborative, the north american CRAFT farmer alliances, the USDA Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers, and with the 10 or so farmer alliances of the "chicago food shed" who will gather this December to look for how we can face the facts individually and collectively about our current reality. I hope you might consider coming to the gathering. Your story needs to be told. (Tom Spaulding, Angelic Organics Learning Center)

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    1. Yes, please! We need a reality check!
      I love what you are doing now with Farm Dreams. Your comment has stirred the memory of our own Farm Beginnings experience (same program?) and is making me reflect. Thinking about it now, in this instance, I'm not sure we would have been ready to say no to the dream even with numbers pointing the other way. The farm dream is truly exhilarating and hard to turn away from. Despite our debt I can't actually say I regret the experience, but I wish the food system was more supportive and, until that changes, farmers should be well aware of how much they will sacrifice.

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  4. Somehow I just want to make a comment without representing any organization or farm. I want to just send my love, to you and Todd, even though I think we've only seen each other half-a-dozen times, tops. LOVE to you both, and thank you, for all of your effort. All of your effort! It was not wasted. I wish you both the best as you continue to make the world a better place. I have great faith in your impulse. - Sheri Doyel

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    1. Thank you so, so much for this and for YOUR efforts, too!

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  5. Most people who get into farming do so with generational connections, family equipment and land to cover the huge infrastructure costs, and also labor from the older generation to help out and keep costs in check. But practically all of them are conventional farmers, be it row crop grain farmers or mixed vegetable crop farmers. And almost all of them have an extra income, or two, to make up for the shortfalls and bad crop years. And all of these young conventional farmers work the same long hours as organic farmers.

    And they have no control over input costs or market forces, so they are at the mercy of big ag and are squeezed to a bare minimum net profit at the end of the year. The middle man, the brokers who sell to and buy from - the big ag companies like Cargill, ADM, Conagra, DelMonte, Pepsico, General Mills - control so much of what the average young farmer has to deal with that he is at their mercy. But these conventional farmers are generally BIG, getting what they can in protection from the economy of scale and diversity of land base.

    And still, a whole lot of these younger conventional farmers incur extreme debt, perhaps averaging $1million, to upgrade equipment and finance operational costs of seed and fertilizer, putting up land and equipment as collateral. So even some of them don’t make it financially when the banker comes calling after a bad season.

    So I am not surprised at how many young organic farmers burn out, go broke, or both, especially since we now have middlemen selling us fertilizer, seed, and other inputs. And now, more recently, we have for-profit “distributors” squeezing us with price negotiating tricks, making a profit, or trying to, by brokering what we can grow at scale, when we can no longer afford the time to sell direct.

    Yes, I too love the CSA concept, and product, but I question whether it is sustainable as a business except on a very large scale, such as Angelic. And personally, I wouldn’t want to go there, for the simple reason that I’d rather actually do the farming than be a personnel manager with that large a payroll and workforce to administer.

    And with Whole Foods and now WalMart selling so called “organic” food from who knows where, and all the ag biggies getting into “organic” production, mostly by importing from other countries, how can the little guy, like you and me, make it or ever hope to?

    As an aside, before giving you all my best guess (if you want it) on what the answer is, I too agree that Farm Beginnings and similar programs are woefully errant in not making all this clear to the bright-eyed neophytes. Sure it’s gruesome to have to talk about this, but it’s the only way to stop the mashing of good young people to a pulp with the current three- to five-year burnout cycle.

    John Breslin
    Breslin Farms
    Ottawa, IL

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  6. Thank you, John, for chiming in. You are definitely an important player in this saga! I don't know what the answer is but I do know that people like you and others in this thread are smart and thorough and hard-working and practical. And then some of you (us) STILL can't make it work. I agree with you that this is a problem on a larger scale. I don't think it is an issue of what today's farmer needs to do. Yes they need knowledge and grit and physicality and business smarts. But I think this is more about what the country needs to change on a policy level.

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    1. agreed its at they policy level. The cheap food policy has led to health, environmental and economic issues. Phase out the grain subsidies and our health improves, there are fewer dead zones in the ocean and more people are employed in rural settings.

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  7. I think the answer is, Yes, "the problem in our country so deep it is unfixable" We are all going to need to grow our own food and share in our local neighborhoods.

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  8. The key, I feel - is the consumer.

    Unless or until they stop thinking that it's all equal - that food harvested weeks before something is ripe, stored in some warehouse or shipping container, gassed to ripeness and then put on the store shelf for sale - is the same thing as something picked ripe, rinsed and handed to them fresh - it will continue to be an uphill struggle.

    We are not non-profit urban farms or community gardens providing 2nd chance opportunities for people turning their lives around sustained by grants and land and equipment donations, etc.

    We're individuals trying to keep our heads above water, often consulting and helping those just getting into this, and trying to make it all work for all of us.

    But we need people to shop FIRST with CSA's, fill in with market farmers, then a local indie grocer, a point and click co op, and then your grocer.

    There's enough to go around - we just have to re-think our priorities and habits. And thank Goodness for those who get it and do help support us.

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  9. 1st Gen, 6th Season, 2 acres leased, hand cultivated, Portland, OR

    This season will determine if there will be another. I will be saying this the rest of my farming life. It’s an anxiety I’m willing to live with because the alternative to me is so soul crushingly worse! I don’t know if there is anyway around the “cycle of martyrdom”. We have chosen not just a job but a life-style career and like you, I too often lament “doing stuff”. The sacrifice is immense I agree, but the gifts we earn in return can not possibly be matched by doing anything else. To stay sane financially at the end of the season I add in everything I did not have to pay for to the farms net income and it looks a lot better. Like the $8000 in food we ate, the 2 pant sizes I dropped without a $500 gym membership, the sunsets I watched instead of paying $30 for us to go to the movies and the $500 worth of salmon I traded for. To even have the opportunity to befriend a Chinook Indian fisherman is a gift few other jobs would allow for! Hang in there, scale back, specialize, raise your prices and find the market willing to pay for it, they are out there.

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  10. We all have to determine our short-term solutions and adaptations as we try to survive as small farmers or put our energies elsewhere. But long-term? The solution is a political one. We must vote and be activists/advocates that government subsidizing big ag morphs (quickly) to support/subsidy for local, lasting value: small holders who feed their communities.
    And if you are about to whip out a rebuttal saying hell no you won't take government money, save it. If you are trying to make a mortgage payment and feed your family and feed the animals and a thousand other expenses, like we all do everyday, don't tell me you won't take a subsidy check if you qualify for it.

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  11. I agree that the farm subsidy system needs to be reorganized to support farmers that grow vegetables for food. Yes!

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  12. My first inclination/solution is that marketing is and has always been the primary bugaboo in this business, going way back. So getting rid of the middleman that is taking our profits and giving us a pittance is the first order of business to improve our profitability. Cooperative marketing, where the farmers own and control who amalgamates and distributes and sells to end users, is the first step we need to perfect. Look at Organic Valley for a model that has been working for farmers. Look at the Lentil Underground for another. So it is doable, but nobody will do it for us, and it will take work and capital by dedicated farmers who are willing to work together to get it up and running.

    I’m pretty sure that nobody can make money growing 40 things, so each of us has to concentrate on growing a few things that suit our situation and knowledge best. And then we have to market it without getting all the profit sucked out of it by some middleman/distributor who’s not concerned with whether we are around to grow food a year or three years from now.

    Look at the OTA, for example. It has absolutely no interest in us or our survival. They are all for importing “organic” from China, Romania, Turkey, Korea. It keeps their prices down and the hell with us.

    Some of the CSAs that work together are examples of this, and it just needs to be expanded to get to a critical level to serve commercial/bulk markets. Tom Rosenfeld had a plan to form an operation to do some of these amalgamation tasks, but he didn’t get a grant to get the infrastructure done and carry it till it took off.

    Personally, I loved working farmers’ markets, whether it was with Mike and Clare or with our own product, but the time consumed – time away from farming – was a killer to the farm work.

    Anyway, that’s enough of a start for now. Continued discussion is needed and then a group who are interested in action plans.

    John Breslin

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