Farmers

Consumers want more fruits and vegetables from nearby, but Congress has limited Midwest expansion. Local Fair Trade farmer Jack Hedin highlighted the negative effects of federal policy on local production in his New York Times editorial. Now the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune goes deeper.

Check out this interesting new story in the African News Journal about the growing number of immigrant farmers in Minnesota and their attempts to move beyond the farmers market. And Local Fair Trade farmer Rufus Hauke talks about CSA's in the Capital Times.

The new generation of farmers is popping up everywhere, including the Style & Fashion section of the New York Times! An interesting new article explains how the trend towards local foods is creating opportunities for young people to make it as farmers, and how cheese makers are the new rock stars.

by Heidi Olstad, Seward Co-op Meat & Dairy Buyer and LFTN steering committee member

People are calling it the Hundred-Year Flood. The rain that fell in southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin the third weekend of August 2007 was unprecedented in the memory of anyone alive today. Along the Kickapoo Valley, in the area called the Driftless Region, somewhere in the vicinity of twelve to twenty-plus inches fell straight out of the sky in one great gully-washer which raged across farms and fields. Jack Hedin of Featherstone Farm had thirty inches of water standing in his office and coolers. Lakes formed in the fields.

The problem was not just the dimension of that particular rainfall, but the cycle of rain that had been washing in for the six weeks prior to the flood. At the top of August, as farmers were planning their late summer succession plantings – integral to the farm income in the latter part of the season – it was already too wet to work the earth or get in soil enriching cover crops. Tractors were stranded on high spots surrounded by mush. Those critical first weeks of August should have seen salad mixes started along with spinach, beets, etc. for the autumn CSA boxes. Plenty of planting still did go on at Featherstone – they do have seven separate fields they work – dependant upon the elevation and saturation of the different spots.

Excess rain is the farmers greatest enemy. It’s the one factor in a crazily weather dependant enterprise that is almost impossible to control. So when the flooding hit those farms, they were already frustratingly wet.

To get a little feel for the before and after effects of the flood, watch this video. A gut wrenching bit of footage shows Joel Kellum of Avalanche Organics in a field admiring a squash crop and then a few days later in the same field hopelessly surveying waterlogged mush squash. If you couldn’t hear the sound – the slogging and shushing of boots in muck – you would know by the way his body language changes; jubilant on August 17th to sodden and slope shouldered but a few days later.

Jack at Featherstone Farm estimated that they lost a quarter of a million dollars worth of harvest, the greatest loss being in the fields.

It’s entirely possible depending on how soil tests and other factors play out that some previously certified organic fields could also lose certification due to the exchange of wash from and to neighboring farms. And certainly soil fertility could be affected in the upcoming few years. Simply cleaning up the mess doesn’t ameliorate the long-term losses-to-be.

One of the most heart breaking losses immediately caused by the flood was the need to lay off workers – who should have been gainfully employed in what would normally have been a bountiful autumn harvest. Monday morning, August 20th, word spread quickly from the farm to the co-ops of what had happened, who was affected, what harvests were still available, who still had email access, and whose power was out. The energy was frenetic and while reports were horrifying, not hearing was worse. Clearly there was the need to set up a fundraising campaign, but who on earth was going to funnel any money raised directly into the farms that needed it most? And how would that be decided? I can tell you, as a co-op buyer who is passionate about our local suppliers, who talks to them weekly, has visited their homes and met their families and extended family of workers and interns, it was a fraught and calamitous time.

So it was brilliant when the Sow the Seeds Fund emerged as a vehicle for directing money raised straight to the farms. Started up by four forward-thinking folks with a vision aimed at connecting startup farmers with land, Sow the Seeds had been established as a nonprofit in conjunction with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy to disburse money for buying land. Barth Anderson, Research and Development guru from the Wedge Co-op was one of the principals in forging Sow the Seeds and was in the heart of the news as it came pouring in that August from farms and fellow co-op’ers. He managed – in not much more than twenty-four hours – to redirect the mission into flood relief.

Sow the Seeds has become the conduit for fundraising by a local farmer fan base of eaters, restaurants, buyers, Whole Food markets and, most of all, our region’s food co-ops and the National Cooperative Grocers Association’s matching funds.

As of early November, $270,000 has been pledged to the Sow the Seeds fund. The first round of $50,000 was designated to eleven farms quickly and a total of $119,000 was given out to over twenty farms soon thereafter. The idea is to get the funds directly out to farmers as the money comes in. In order to establish a workable need and distribution system, they created an application process and a committee to assign funds, comprised of peers and local farm advocates – people who cook with and/or purvey local farm products with a dampened finger to the winds.

Both co-op buyers and members have found ways to stand with the growers. Co-ops bought up almost any and everything stricken farmers still had to offer – mostly potatos and roots saved just before the flood hit – and sold them in masses at severely reduced margins just to sell whatever could be salvaged for farm income. In addition, maybe three days into the initial flood fiasco fundraising, one singular woman became a member at the Seward Co-op and donated a thousand dollars on the spot, anonymously. I was not alone in standing in tears. Truly, people-- more and more of them-- get the eat local paradigm and invest in it – putting their money where their mouths are. Or as one farmer put it, “God willing and the creek don’t rise” they’ll be there for us – and we’ll be there for them.

By Barth Anderson, Wedge Community Co-op, Minneapolis, MN

Equal Exchange, known for Fairly Traded coffee, tea and chocolate, has introduced a line of packaged snacks in partnership with grocery co-operatives across the country. These “Domestic Fair Trade�? products, including Organic Dried Cranberries, Roasted Pecans, and Organic Tamari-Roasted Almonds, are sourced from family farmers and farmer co-operatives right here in the US.

“Our relationships with these producers are guided by our mission and 20 years experience as a Co-operative Fair Trade Organization,�? said Erbin Crowell, Domestic Fair Trade Program Manager for Equal Exchange.

How much would it cost to pay everyone on the farm a living wage?

One of Local Fair Trade Network’s primary goals is living wages for farmers and farm workers. Many new farmers have trouble figuring out what to charge for their produce, so the nuts and bolts of achieving a living wage are hard to sort out. At this year’s Upper Midwest Organic Food Conference, Greg Reynolds, the farmer behind Riverbend Farm’s luscious eggplants and sweet Russian kale, shared his perspective on the practicalities of paying, and being paid, a living wage.

“To pay $10 per hour, I would have to charge [customers] about 9% more, and to pay $12 per hour (the theoretical living wage in Minneapolis), I would have to charge about 22% more. Of course, if I am paying my farm workers $10 or $12 per hour, I would like to get paid that much too" says Reynolds. When you add in workers’ compensation and unemployment, the price tag could rise 24% at the higher wage.

by Britt Johnsen, Winona Daily News

Hospital food doesn’t usually bring to mind good eating. As in school cafeterias, the food often comes from national distributors and can lack flavor and nutrition.

Some Winona area farmers hope to change that.

They are pushing to get organic and locally-grown food into health care institutions like Rochester’s Mayo Clinic and Winona Health, as well as nursing homes and schools. They see southeast Minnesota following in the footsteps of other institutions in the state and the country doing the same thing.

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