Yesterday I attended the Minnesota Sustainable Farming Association’s (SFA) annual conference at the College of Saint Benedict. It is only a mile from me and brings together small farmers from all over the state. Last year it was at this conference’s seed swap I picked up a few seeds for Cool Old Squash, a big winner in last year’s garden.
I’m happy to report there were a lot, maybe even a preponderance, of people under 40 attending this conference. Lots of young farmers with dreams of running CSAs and selling wholesale and living off the land. I met one young man who has 15 acres out near Alexandra where he, his wife, and one of their high school friends, are farming. His friend is into horses and does some plowing and cultivating with teams of horses.
Last year’s conference
Everyone had on farm-related t-shirts and Carhart knit caps. There were babies and small children. But these weren’t hippies. Oh no. Closer to hipsters, but not even really that. Well, yes, there was a couple with a large green thermos passing a cup of hot Mate back and forth in its gourd-like cup with a bombilla (straw). (Don’t worry if you don’t recognize this– it’s an Argentinian thing. Without a friend from Argentina, I would have been clueless.)
Over the lunch hour we watched a short film, “Grow,” that followed young people who came to the Fergus Falls community college for a short-lived program in sustainable agriculture (2010-2013). The goal of the program was to teach skills to young people who wanted to move back to rural areas and work in sustainable farming to some degree. They ended up in various professions: CSA farms, a mobile chicken processing operation, food preparation and production. The program succeeded very well, but also didn’t fit into a proper academic setting– being mostly hands-on and project-oriented. The SFA has taken over some of the workshops.
I learned about food hubs. I’ve heard a lot of buzz about these but didn’t really understand them before. Basically, they’re part of a movement being encouraged by the USDA to get small and medium-sized vegetable producers to come together in order to distribute to bigger markets. Think schools, hospitals and nursing homes getting organic, local food on a regular basis. Think local warehouses with tons of professional equipment for processing 100-200 lbs of lettuce and greens an hour, packaging and storing large quantities of food and delivering it fresh to large grocery stores and other clients. A food hub in Mankato has received $100,000 in grants and you should see the facility they’ve designed! (In addition to farmers, the other major participants were young people in all sorts of cool nonprofits related to alternative energy, sustainable food production, etc. These folks were in general better dressed and more urban looking.)
One thing I had been concerned about in moving (maybe– baby steps!!) toward growing enough produce to sell was market saturation. I don’t want to step on other farmer’s toes. Well, I learned yesterday there is absolutely no need to worry about that. Not even a fraction of the market is being reached.
But partly this is because of all the hard work it takes. That same farmer with the friend who plows with horses? Well, he seemed kind of discouraged. They are not loving doing a CSA. After attending the “post-harvest food handling and packaging” workshop, I can totally see why. You have to grow a huge variety of produce, all of which needs to be cleaned and stored differently, packaged differently, some cooled some left outside the cooler but not too long, etc. All of it degrades (respirates) at different rates. You need to get it into a beautiful box that will make your customer gasp with delight every week– and do that for 30, 50, 80, 200 people a week!
How much better would it be for the farmers of 3-15 acres to grow one thing at a time, maybe 5 crops a season (greens, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes) and deliver a lot of it as it is harvested to a food hub, where other farmers are bringing something different (say beets, green beans, basil, zucchini, winter squash) and the CSA is there with giant coolers and bagging operations for packing the boxes. Or better yet, people can order what they want and come in and pick up their order each week.
Because, as with any farming, the investment seems intense to me. Food washing stations, packing stations, packing materials of many types, hand washing stations in the field and near the packing area, different things for hauling in the produce, cold storage and that equipment, etc. I came home and immediately shopped online for a 5-gallon salad spinner. They generally run from $125–$300! No wonder so many small farmers just wrap their greens in mesh bags and spin it around by hand.
When I came home, I couldn’t really think. But today I felt sort of inspired. It is unclear whether anyone can make even a meager living doing this. Maybe the best you can do is a kind of homesteading where you provide for your own food with minimal investment each year.
But things are happening. I see two major areas of development: community-building and market development.
On the one hand, you have to rebuild farmer communities that support small- and medium-scale farming:
- teach the skills to a generation who left rural areas (or whose parents did)
- provide land, equipment, and expertise to help them succeed
- encourage cooperation over competition to make it work
And on the other hand, you have to educate and develop consumer communities (markets) to support the farmers:
- continue to educate consumers about local and organic
- encourage grocers to display and offer local and organic
- encourage communities to develop food hubs for distribution to larger clients
For example, there are no regulations on selling fresh produce (not processed) to institutions. There are a lot of regulations on selling meat, dairy, and processed foods. But nursing homes and hospitals and schools are free to buy fresh produce directly from farmers, and farmers just need to use best practices around harvesting, cleaning and storage to ensure food safety. Did you know that? I didn’t.
These two areas were reflected most clearly in the final session I attended, an attempt to begin a network of people who want to build and operate deep passive solar winter greenhouses. We broke into two discussion groups: “finances”– can this be viable? with one group of mostly farmers; and “markets” with another large group, a combination of farmers and nonprofit types who wanted to talk about getting the produce into the communities.
collage from last year’s sfa festival of farms