Healthy Foods, Local Farms Conference Oct. 13

The 13th annual Healthy Foods, Local Farms Conference in Louisville will feature such speakers as author-farmer-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry, Goldman Prize winner Lynn Henning, Environmental Protection Agency water administrator Nancy Stoner, and Dennis Dimick, National Geographic's executive editor for environment.

The conference will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13 at Kentucky Country Day School in eastern Louisville. The registration fee is $40 and includes meals with locally and sustainably grown food. Scholarships are available. For information email or call Aloma Dew at 270-685-2034. A pre-conference Harvest Party on Friday evening, Oct. 12, at the Bashford Manor B & B, is $45. For information email or call  Joan Lindop at 502-836-3853.

Inspired by Wendell Berry, successful farmer has remade his family's farm with the future in mind

Will Harris III, owner of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Ga., may seem like a typical rancher: Stetson hat, gruff voice, beat-up Jeep he uses to drive his more than 1,000 acre farm. But, he "doesn't always sound the part," John Kessler of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. For example, he quotes George Washington Carver on the order of nature, and Michael Pollan on the dangers of industrial agriculture. He's immensely proud of his farm's organic certification and of the new solar panels he's installing. (AJC photo by Brant Sanderlin: Harris inspects chicken)

"Row by row, Harris is breaking the mold on farming in Georgia," Kessler writes. His organic grass-fed cattle are slaughtered in ways approved by animal welfare advocates. Steaks from his farm are sold in Atlanta's finest restaurants, and Whole Foods features White Oak Pastures' beef in its stores. But 15 years ago, Harris' farm was a far cry from organic. The fourth-generation farmer had to reverse decades of damage to the land perpetrated by his father, who "pushed the farm as far as he could, pumping any and all chemicals into the earth and into the animals," Kessler reports.

Harris is a first-generation college graduate, with a degree in animal science from the University of Georgia. But it wasn't a book he read for one of his classes that made him want to change the family farm; it was Kentuckian Wendell Berry's 1977 book, The Unsettling of America, that left a great impression on him. The book "argued agribusiness was destroying the cultural and family context of farming," Kessler writes. Harris said it "made him wonder what kind of system his father had prescribed to, and what kind of legacy he was leaving" to his children. It was the spark that Harris needed to change the direction of his farm. (Read more)

UPDATE: Wendell Berry had this to say about Harris, and farmers like him, in a letter to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues: "[Harris] represents at a very high level what is going on all over the country: Local citizens, both rural and urban, who have seen something that needed to be done and have simply set about doing it, without official advice or approval or help and without writing a grant application. If the world lasts long enough, these people will find the real solutions to our problems. I think this is the great story unfolding now everywhere in our country, but only occasionally does some journalist notice that it is happening. So far, no politician of consequence has noticed it." 

Farmers use more direct access to consumers to build relationships and explain their practices

Farmers are having direct contact with their consumers more and more as a result of farmers' markets, the local food movement and community-supported agriculture, in which consumers agree to buy farmers' produce. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers' markets have increased by 9.6 percent, to about 8,000 markets, since last year. More direct conversations are happening between farmers and consumers, and this can strengthening the relationship between them.

At the farmer's market in Lafayette, Ind., beginning farmer Neil Moseley, right, is able to educate shoppers about his organic farm practices and address concerns they might have about "big agriculture," which his brother practices, reports Sarah Gonzalez of Agri-Pulse. He can also tell shoppers about pesticide and herbicide use, and evolving conservation practices that maintain soil quality, protect sensitive land and preserve water quality. "The best part of what I do is getting that interaction with people," Moseley said.

Direct interaction with customers is a vital part of public relations for Moseley's farm, Gonzalez reports. He's also utilizing social media to interact, reaching more than 2,200 Facebook users. "We didn't realize we'd have to do these things when we started," he told Gonzalez. "There's so much to the marketing side of this it's baffling."

Gonzalez's article is a good example that could be replicated almost anywhere in the U.S. Agri-Pulse is a subscription-only newsletter, but offers a free, four-week trial here.

Vilsack warns drought will worsen, raise prices; organic stock get a double hit as pastures dry up

The worst drought in decades is getting worse and will mean higher food prices for consumers, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at a briefing in the White House Press Room yesterday. He also said the suggestion of waivers from ethanol mandates on oil companies isn't necessary because it's not affecting the price of corn, as some farmers have suggested.

Vilsack said an additional 39 counties have been designated as primary natural disaster areas, raising the total to 1,297 in 29 states. Here is the list. Russ Blinch of Reuters reports. Vilsack urged Congress to work with the administration to improve aid to farmers, something the new Farm Bill could do. The House has stalled on voting on its version of the bill. Peter Baker of The New York Times reports. Vilsack said more than three-quarters of U.S. corn and soybean crops are in drought-affected areas, and more than one third of those are now rated poor to very poor.

Corn prices have risen to almost $8 a bushel, making it difficult for livestock producers to buy animal feed. This will likely cause the price of beef, poultry and pork to rise late this year or early next. Iowa Pork Producers Association President Bill Tentinger told The Gazette in Cedar Rapids that high corn prices would force many pork producers out of business, and the new Farm Bill would only help crop farmers, not livestock producers. Analysts predicted a 4 to 6 percent increase in beef prices pre-drought, but Hibah Yousuf of CNNMoney reports consumers could see 10 percent increases if the drought and high corn prices continue.

Meanwhile, Bob Meyer of Brownfield reports, "The drought presents a particular challenge for organic livestock and dairy producers. Organic standards require a portion of the ration to include pasture, and when pastures have dried up that is a problem. Another problem is while the price of conventional corn and soybeans hits record highs, the price of organic corn and soybeans is even higher." For Meyer's eight-minute audio interview with Harriet Behar, outreach coordinator for the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service, click here.

Studies: In drought conditions, organic farming methods give crops better water-holding capacity

Corn in the legume-based, left, and conventional plots six weeks after planting during the 1995 drought. The conventional corn is showing signs of water stress.
Rodale Institute photo  

As the Midwestern drought has hung on and more states are reporting damage to their impending corn crop, Tom Philpott of Mother Jones reflected on a recent Nature study that found that industrial agricultural methods were found to produce higher yields than farms that used organic methods. (He notes he was not convinced by the study but he continues on that, in any case, "under conditions of extreme weather, things absolutely change. "Soils managed with organic methods have shown better water-holding capacity and water infiltration rates and have produced higher yields than conventional systems under drought conditions and excessive rainfall," Philpott reports. In other words, he explains, organically managed soils deal with water better -- both in conditions of drought and heavy storms, the frequency of which is also expected to increase as the climate changes. Soil rich in organic matter  -- well-decayed remnants of plants and other living creatures -- bolster soil in weather extremes by helping store water in times of scarcity and by holding together and not eroding away during heavy rains.

And why would organically managed soils contain more organic matter? It quite likely, Philpott writes, that this has to do "with the ways conventional and organic farmers feed the soil. If you're a conventional farmer, you probably fertilize annually with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the form of anhydrous ammonia. This is isolated plant food, free of any organic matter. (It's the equivalent of taking a vitamin pill—pure nutrients without actual food.) The only organic matter your soil gets comes from the crop residues that you leave in your field. This brings the advantage of convenience—crop nutrients come from tanks that can efficiently be sprayed on to fields. And it also gives crops a quick jot of ready-to-use nitrogen. If you're an organic farmer, you don't have the luxury of blasting your soil with straight nitrogen. To replenish nutrients, you have to have physical stuff that contains nitrogen bound up in organic matter—think compost and manure. You can also grow legume cover crops that trap nitrogen from the air and deliver it to the roots of plants in a form that can be taken into the soil. In this case, too, you're adding a nice dose of organic matter along with nitrogen, in the form of the plants that rot in the ground when the cover crops does. And, like conventional farmers, you get the benefit of crop residues left in the field. As a result of these difference, organically managed soils trap more carbon in the soil—and all of that carbon allows these soils to hold in water and nutrients better. (Note that carbon stored in soil in a stable fashion is carbon that isn't in the atmosphere trapping heat and causing the planet to warm. So organically managed soils don't just help farmers adapt to climate change—they also help help mitigate climate change.)"

The oldest U.S. tests plots comparing organic and conventional farming, the Rodale Institute's fields in Pennsylvania, bear this out. (See the institute's latest report here.) In the latest report on its side-by-side experiment, which started 1981, Rodale found that "organic corn yields were 31 percent higher than conventional in years of drought." Researchers theorize that this is because the organic fields continue storing more carbon year after year, while the conventional ones have "shown a loss in carbon in more recent years." Another long-term study, Iowa State University's Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment, found similar results.