SMALL FARMS ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE AND PROFITABLE

Let’s take another look at small farms. The localization of our food supply will offer many positive opportunities to our youth, to our sense of place & community, and also to the quality of health and well being we each take from our daily meals.

American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it.

For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.

• A 1,000 acre U.S. corporate farm growing genetically engineered crops nets an average of $39 an acre.
• In contrast, a four-acre family farm nets, on average, $1,400 per acre.
• Small organic farms are proving to be even more profitable. With oil prices on the rise, growing food without petroleum-based pesticides/fertilizers, and delivering that food to local markets will quickly prove to be the most affordable food available.

I love eating the fresh greens that come in my weekly CSA basket, everything was just picked, and is organic and as fresh as possible. Why not look online for your local Farmer’s Market or CSA ( Community Supported Agriculture) and start getting the best food for your family and for your money right now!

Source: Solving the Food, Health, & Energy Crisis: Local & Organic Production on Smaller Farms

* Change We Can Stomach
By DAN BARBER
The New York Times, May 11, 2008
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12216.cfm

Local Food Rant

Eating avos in winter? Lettuce in the heat of summer? Here’s the hard truth! We have gotten so off track on local food in just the last 30 years we don’t even realize what that means to our footprint.

~ I love world market foods, give me a Thai Green curry any day… But, let’s take a look at this addiction to variety, to exotic tastes…

In my childhood, (1960′s) hardly one had ever eaten an avocado or artichoke in the Midwest, and international food was a dream that was only real when you ate pizza (either in a restaurant on special occasions – or from a box mix)

This regionalfood style  was also unrelieved by hot new restaurants. Mostly people ate at home, in fact – they hardly ever ate out, except for church socials or community potlucks…this all a world from the past, from our rural heritage, and certainly a world that did not know what they missed…

Fast forward to today – where Trader Joe’s brings us Israeli cheese, Italian olive oil, and such things are very available in any corner market in the USA. We have gotten everyday habits that are going to be hard to break. Do we need to break the imported food habit? Is the 1500 mile salad, the supermarket dinner sustainable? To complicate things – we have gotten used to spending only 11% of our income on food, unlike most of the world – and getting the huge choices, big super sizes of everything as well!!

Yikes – time to reassess. Can we find happiness chewing on locally grown potatoes, broccoli in season, waiting for the peaches to come ripe? I say – YES! This is what local food means – grown nearby and in season. Your CSA shows the way – they give you a basket of whatever is ripe and ready to harvest in the garden. Try the Farmers Market for a great selection of timely foods, picked recently and by people you get to talk to while you handle their life’s work! Either is a simple and fun way to begin eating local.

Even more directly connected is your own garden, imagine how much more local can you get – than a 20 foot away dinner rather than a 1500 mile dinner! Check out your own slow food connection as you eat tomatoes that you grew – right off the plant, now that is a 1” dinner….the most local of all…now if only I didn’t need my hands at all – how much closer can I get? Mmmmm, a no-hands lunch! Ok, I am over the top – but you get the point… if I eat that tomato, ripe from the sun , my mouth filled with its just picked sweetness, I have just lowered my carbon footprint by a a factor of a thousand. Yay team! Let’s eat the imports, with grace and appreciation for their amazing availability, occasionally – as befits such luxury. Here’s to your health…please pass the spinach!

Check out this site for a localization conversation-locallectual

Also the movie – The Real Dirt on Farmer John!