Ruth, like most of the farmers in Western NY here, had a heck of a summer that didn't ever really feel like summer, and some of her crops struggled for it. She also stepped up to the daunting task of setting up a 300+ member CSA farm from scratch on a raw piece of land. Land which had been growing weeds for ten years. Besides all the work of setting up the infrastructure to run that kind of operation (water, electric, roads, parking lot, greenhouse, sheds, walk-in cooler, fencing), she carved ten acres of 200-foot-long garden beds out of a hilly clay-loam. And then had to grow the vegetables. Looking at the produce she and the crew are putting on the tables, I consider her a bit of a miracle worker, and a darn good farmer.
I wish that she hadn't had to move the whole farm this year. But so it goes, especially when you're farming in Victor, NY, the most rapidly developing suburb of Rochester. I have seen a lot of prime agricultural soil turn into housing developments just in the few years that I farmed here. In 2008, when I first found the land to rent from an organic-friendly 84-yr-old farmer, the land adjacent to his still looked like a hay field on google maps. When I started plowing, it looked like this:
No chance for this young farmer to expand production into that field. The land around the corner, that I passed every morning and evening on my way from home to work, also succumbed to the bulldozer, turning into this in a mere six months:
I would push back tears as I drove by, as week by week I watched the big equipment first push the trees into big piles, then scrape the rich topsoil off and haul it away, then roll out the roads and utilities, then the construction crews put up those cookie-cutter houses. I know people have to live somewhere. And people like to live in the country. But if you build houses all over the fields, does it still feel like the country?
I could go on and on with these stories. I've cried while speaking in front of the town planning board on more than one occasion. The place I used to U-Pick Pumpkins from as a kid turned into the subdivision below. There is still a huge pile of topsoil sitting there next to the road, the soul of past and future ghost pumpkins, the lifeless mineral remains of a place that was once a growing jungle of vines. Holding its screened-topsoil-for-sale sign like a strange and desperate hitch-hiker. I guess in these fast times, everyone is moving around, even the ground itself. And what does this new community of houses feel like to its new human inhabitants? Does it miss the faint smell of sweet squash, the footsteps of friends wandering and enjoying the color and ripeness of another autumn's abundance?
When I first drove by that field-pushed-into-mountain pile, and the trucks and machinery doing their "thing" on my old U-Pick pumpkin patch, I didn't cry, I yelled. It felt personal.
But then, of course, the most personal happened -- we got the boot off our land too. It went the way a lot of nice fields, especially those close to cities, go:
- The farmer gets old, as all of us do.
- The farmer's kids don't want to farm, as many of us don't.
- The farmer's kids need the money to pay for things like medical bills, as all of us do when we get old and ill.
- The farmer never made any money because he was competing with today's global market of industrial-produced food (more on this later).
- Developers will happily pay top dollar for the farmer's land, because they make a lot of money selling houses to people who want to live in the country.
- Anyone who might be around wanting to farm the land can't pay anywhere near what the developers can pay, so the young landless agrarians move on.
And there are a lot of us young and landless. The National Young Farmers Coalition's vision is "a country where young people who are willing to work, get trained and take a little risk can support themselves and their families in farming." When they did a survey a few years ago of 1,000 beginning farmers, land access came up as the No. 2 challenge, number one not having enough financial capital.
The good folks at Agrarian Trust, a newly formed non-profit project aimed at tackling the challenge of connecting young farmers with land, says it quite well:
"Farmland Access remains a keystone issue for the next generation of farmers in the country and for farming as a whole. In historical terms, the ‘agricultural use value’ and ‘real-estate value’ have never been more polarized. In other words, the value that you can earn from production on the land is far below the value of the land in the marketplace. As a consequence financing of land adds to the the high capital needs of a start-up farm business ( restoring barn, cooling, greenhouses, fencing, pasture upgrades, equipment etc) along with inevitable life and operations costs: healthcare, gasoline, housing. In a cheap-food economy earning enough to pay for these four costs : 1.) land, 2.) infrastructure, 3.) working capital, 4.) living expenses presents a major challenge for new farm operators. Add on to this high perishability, high labor costs, un-predictable weather and a perishable product, you can see why it takes a brave soul to enter agricultural entrepreneurship."
Yet this movement is not lacking brave souls. They are training up in internships all over the country, working for nothing or nearly nothing, even with mountains of college debt. They are living off wild rabbits and potatoes, savoring the dirt under their fingernails, and the pride of contributing something meaningful and real to their communities. They are learning how to take care of the land, while taking of each other too. What is lacking is a good system in place to help these eager apprentices take the next step of having their own farms that provide them with a meaningful livelihood and financial stability.
The reality is, even though an explosion of young energy is entering the agricultural arena, still farmers 65 and older outnumber farmers 35 and younger by a factor of 6:1 (USDA census)!
American Farmland Trust reports that NY State has been losing the equivalent of one farm every 3 1/2 days. Just in my lifetime living in this state, a half a million acres of farmland turned into subdivisions, strip malls, big box stores, and scattered development. And a lot more farmland is about to change hands in the next few decades as older farmers retire. This is a crucial time for us to decide what we want, if we care about our food security and local economies. Is it worth saving that phenomenon of the "family farm" that created our quaint all-American villages, or is this just nostalgia from the past?
New York City has a "Foodshed Conservation Plan" which tallies up the surrounding farmland, decides which land is most critical to save, how much it will cost to protect it from development, and what are the steps to save it. They are concerned about feeding 8.3 million people, in the context of the grand changes that might have to happen when we reduce our carbon footprint (ie. less trucks bringing food from across the country). It kind of makes sense to keep some good soil nearby.
If NYC has one of these plans, why not Rochester? We have over 1 million people in the Greater Rochester Area, and I bet most of these folks eat food.
The Genesee Land Trust is an awesome local resource, with a mission of protecting natural areas for wildlife and people to enjoy, and farmland too. They are doing a lot to make sure there's still some green left in the county, and they would be doing more if they had the funds. Investing in our local open-space is a wonderful gift for the future residents of the area.
I have a bumper sticker from on my car that says "No Farms, No Food." As much as I dislike using a double negative, and would rather say something like "small local organic farms yay!", I think it's about time the local food movement realizes that we have to get serious. If we don't protect our local soil somehow, then local farmers will go elsewhere.
This would truly be a loss.
We have some of the best agricultural soil in the world. Even the Seneca people knew it was good corn growing ground, and they farmed it for probably longer than us European invaders. What would they say if they saw what we were doing to these fields?
What would you say to a young person who actually wanted to labor in the fields all day to produce food for a living to feed her community, but couldn't do it because the land wasn't there?
Yes, I've heard it said before: there is plenty of land out there. It's true. Out there. But for the next generation of farmers, living and working close to a city is often important, not only for marketing their produce, but for social life as well. (Stay tuned for next week's essay: “No Farmer, No Food -- Personal Sustainability of the Body, Mind, & Soul.")
By the way,
;)
I am looking for 10+ well-drained tillable acres, within 20 miles of Rochester. If anyone knows of a lead, pass it on! Honeoye Falls area looking most enticing right now. Can't wait to get my hands in the dirt again. Thank you!
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