Issue 2 would establish a Livestock Care Standards Board. It’s about time we had some standards for livestock care! Do you know what horrible things they do to animals on those factory farms?

That’s just the point.  It’s those factory farms that want Issue 2 to pass. They’ve seen voters in California and elsewhere outlaw the use of battery cages so small that the laying hens in them can’t spread their wings and gestation crates that prohibit a hog from turning around for the entire duration of her pregnancy.  Factory farms in Ohio don’t want to have to abide by rules like these, so they’re seeking to preemptively cut off the ability of the voters or the legislature to make any such rules. They hope to do this by creating a board of non-elected political appointees who will have absolute power to make rules related to agriculture in Ohio.

I’m not exaggerating when I say “absolute power.”  This board would be established by our state constitution.  This means that no Ohio court could judge their rules to be unconstitutional. They’d have no direct oversight by the legislature, and the Ohio Department of Agriculture would be obliged to enforce whatever rules this board comes up with.  Issue 2 doesn’t say how the Board is to come up with its rules.  It does say that they shall consider certain things, like food safety and disease prevention, but it doesn’t say that those are the only considerations, or that the stated considerations should supersede all others. That is to say, the Board could declare, “Yes, battery cages probably cause some stress to the hens inside them, but requiring that cages be roomier would increase the cost of producing eggs, and that’s simply unacceptable.”

The board wouldn’t have absolute power. All their regulations would have to be approved by the General Assembly.
Issue 2 doesn’t say that.  (Here’s a link to the actual text of the Joint Resolution from the General Assembly.) It says, “The Board shall have authority to establish standards governing the care and well-being of livestock and poultry in this state, subject to the authority of the General Assembly.”  That doesn’t mean that each regulation that comes out of the Board would have to be submitted for approval from the Assembly.  It just means that the Board has authority to make these rules so long as the Assembly says they do.  In other words, it’s not the standards that are subject to the Assembly’s authority. It’s the Board’s authority that’s subject to the Assembly’s authority. Presumably, if the Board started making rules that resulted in really egregious human rights abuses or something along that line, the Assembly could step in and establish some guidelines.  Still, the existence of the Board would be constitutionally mandated, and the members would be appointed as stated.  There’s nothing the assembly could do to change that.  Basically, if we vote this Board into existence and decide we don’t like some of the rules they’re passing, the only way to do anything about it is for the Ohio voters to pass another constitutional amendment repealing this one.

Besides that, even if the Board did have to get approval from the Assembly for any new agriculture regulations, what’s the likelihood the Assembly would contradict them? This board will be regarded as “the experts” in agriculture in Ohio.  If they–veterinarians and industry bigwigs–say that something is a good practice, how reasonable is it to think that a majority of the General Assembly is going to oppose them?  It’s true that elected politicians like to get re-elected, and that legislators need to be responsive to voters.  They’re not going to want to get caught between the voters and the Board, though, so it’s easier for the legislature to skirt the whole dilemma by giving the Board blanket authority from the outset. Then, if voters protest to their Representative about a new Board regulation, the legislator can say, “I share your concerns, but this isn’t a legislative matter.  It’s the Board that makes these rules. You should appeal to the Board directly.”

The commercial said a Yes vote will ensure safe, locally grown food, and that livestock are well treated.

Big Ag isn’t clueless. They know consumers prefer safe, locally grown food, and that consumers want livestock to be well treated. In other words, they know that the public objects to the way they do business. This is why they fought so hard to prohibit natural dairy farmers from advertising their hormone-free milk as being hormone-free.  (The compromise the courts came up with is that labels can say that milk is rGBH free, but they also have to say that rGBH-free milk is no different than milk from cows on steroids.) They know that if consumers get to choose between safe, ethical, locally grown food from a small, family farm, or scary, questionable stuff produced by a multinational corporation, they’re going to go for the former, often even if it costs more.

To stay in the game, they’ve co-opted these buzz words to push public opinion in favor of a constitutional amendment that can protect them.  Really, it’s a bold move.  Big Ag is trying to win the support of the people who hate them most, because they know that if Issue 2 passes, they don’t have to do anything to please anybody ever again.  The Board can give a free pass to factory farm abuses and outlaw anything that gives small farmers a market advantage. Things like the milk labeling issue wouldn’t be settled in court anymore.  The Board would decide.

Did they lie? Not exactly. It’s not lying if you believe it yourself.  In the opinion of the industry, industrial food is safe.  In their opinion, factory farms are humane.  If a facility in Ohio is raising cattle in a confined feeding operation to sell to Japan, it’s still an Ohio farm.  That makes it local food, right?  If a family owns a farm with several hundred acres, millions of dollars in assets, and several employees, and it raises half a million chickens a year on contract for Tyson, it’s still a family farm, isn’t it?  In their view, what they’re doing is providing safe, local food from family farms. What farmers like me are doing–raising animals naturally and selling directly to the people in our own communities–doesn’t even count.

If you talk to the farmers at your local farmers’ market, most of them will tell you they oppose Issue 2–assuming they’ve researched the matter.  The reasons vary, but the bottom line is the same: whether it will hurt us or not, changing the constitution to establish the Livestock Care Standards Board will not do anything to help us. Having a bunch of corporate lobbyists get together to make rules–whether they favor Big Ag or not–is not going to make my animals happier, me wealthier, or you healthier.  It could possibly have the opposite result, but it can’t improve on what I’m already doing.

Actually, I guess that’s not exactly true. With this enormous amount of power they’d be given, the Board could issue an edict that rules null and void all prohibitions against livestock. They could see to it that chickens, pigs, and dairy goats are welcome in every city, subdivision, and gated community across Ohio, even if clotheslines and non-conforming house colors are not. Yeah…that’ll happen.  I’m sure that’s exactly why it’s being supported by all the factory farm organizations–because they want people to raise their own food in their own communities.  More likely, if we see a loosening of these restrictions come to pass, it’ll be because they want to allow a hog factory to be built in a place where the zoning prohibits it.

Election day is tomorrow.  If you haven’t already voted, please go vote NO on Issue 2.  A local, free-range farmer asked you nicely.

I didn’t show up early, but it didn’t matter. The parking lot was mostly empty other than several fire trucks that were there for an unrelated event. I told a woman at the registration desk that I had pre-registered online, and it made no difference. “Did you register to speak?” I had, I told her. She handed me a folder with a colored sticker on the outside and a ticket inside. It appeared that everyone got one of these folders. So much for the scary warning about the need to pre-register.

I went into the banquet room where there were probably fewer than a hundred people in what looked to be a space designed for a thousand or more. That “fewer than a hundred” included members of the press, USDA officials, and a handful of security personnel in addition to regular attendees like me. I got a seat to the left of the central aisle, where there were microphones about every 15 feet. In front of me was a woman wearing a T-shirt that read “I LOVE MY COUNTRY. IT’S THE GOVERNMENT I DON’T TRUST” or something to that effect. To my left was a young woman carrying a baby in a sling. The woman with the T-shirt was making it her business to personally accost each person she could before the start of the meeting, as though we were all going to vote and she wanted to make sure we voted the right way. Unfortunately for the cowboy-hatted gentleman sitting next to her, he responded that he really hadn’t taken a position and could see the merit of having some kind of system for tracking diseases. The T-shirt lady got into a heated debate with him–well, heated on her side, at least. When she failed to rattle him, the lady with the baby joined in. I felt bad for him, though I disagreed with most of what he was saying. Just about the time I hopped into the conversation, the meeting started.

The USDA officials spent about an hour giving us their sales pitch for NAIS and explaining the format for the day’s listening session. From 10:00 a.m. until noon, they would draw numbers at random to select people to offer comments which would be recorded into the transcript. I didn’t know what my number was, though. I searched the folder inside and out to determine which number they meant. I finally found a red raffle ticket and figured that must be it. When they started calling the numbers, though, they were two-digit numbers, and the one on my ticket was about seven or eight. They got through maybe eight numbers before the lady drawing the numbers announced, “I’m just going to read the last two numbers since the first ones are all the same.” Whew. It was the right ticket…but what were those first numbers she called? Was one of them mine?

I was really panicked, now. I hadn’t gotten to fully prepare my comments yet, though Mayda did help me review the agenda points on the seven-hour drive from Columbus to my grandparents’ house. I had notes from our discussion, and I was trying to condense the highlights down to the three minutes I would be allowed to speak. Forget the highlights–I wanted to pick out the most useful points that I didn’t figure were likely to be said by everybody else there. Still, it was a struggle to get it down to three minutes. On the drive to Harrisburg from my grandparents’ house Thursday morning, I was rehearsing. I’d set a three-minute timer on my cell phone, and speak extemporaneously on my most important points until the timer went off. Then I’d trim it down and go again. The drive wasn’t long enough, and I was not yet fully prepared as they were calling numbers. I kept writing as I listened to other people speak.

It was clear where most of the people in the room sat on this issue. Most of the speakers were well-informed on the matter and gave excellent arguments. Every time one would point out something absurd about NAIS, the room would erupt in applause, punctuated by one guy sitting near me who couldn’t contain himself (all day) and kept saying, “Yes! Yes!” (Which, on the whole, was much nicer than the guy a couple rows behind me who would periodically declare “Bull shee-yit!” whenever the USDA folks said something.) There were a couple people who got on my nerves: people who either had no opinion but felt they needed to eat up three of the 120 alloted minutes, or people who were so unintelligible they really had nothing useful to say on either side of the issue. There were maybe four people who spoke in favor of NAIS. Predictably, they represented large organizations vested in industrial food.

There were some entertaining moments as well. One woman–Willow Moonbeam or something close to that–who ran a health food store gave a sermon. When she took the mic, she closed her eyes as though to slip into an altered state of consciousness. Then she’d launch forth with an impassioned warning about how we were disappointing our Heavenly Father. There was the young Amish man (I’d say 10% or more of the people there were Amish or Mennonite) who started by asking for a show of hands in the audience of everyone who had milked cows that morning, followed up by asking the panel the same question. He then tried to continue with this Socratic method of illustrating his point only to get set straight by the moderator. “This isn’t really set up to be a question and answer session. The purpose of this listening session is to tell us what you think, using your three minutes to express your views.”

One of the best was the large man in the cowboy hat who started by saying, “Another person who had been called generously yielded me his time, so I’ll be speaking for six minutes.” They didn’t object. His was one of the three best speeches I heard there that day, citing experiences of a friend of his in Australia, where they already have something like NAIS in place. Then they got to the two-and-a-half-minute mark and asked him to wrap up. There was a brief locking of horns as the moderator tried to explain that he was restricted to three minutes and he insisted that he got his extra three fair and square. The crowd, who was almost unanimously behind him, felt like it was about to lose the restraint and civility it had demonstrated up to this point. The moderator finally gave in, but warned the rest of us that we weren’t allowed to cede time. (I’d not heard the phrase before, and it’s only just now as I write this that I realize she wasn’t saying “seed time.”)

As speaker after speaker got called and time was running out, I was growing ever more certain that I had missed my number right at the beginning and wasn’t going to get to speak. Then, finally, I heard it. “49.”

What’s NAIS?

What’s NAIS? You mean you hadn’t heard? It’s hard to remember sometimes that those whose livelihoods and lifestyles don’t circle around livestock may not have heard of this program. Among activists, it’s been described as “the mark of the beast” and a practice run for implementing a totalitarian state. Surrounded by such rhetoric, it’s easy to forget that most of our population has never even heard of this. Let me back up for a moment.

In 2003, a cow imported from Canada to the US was found to have BSE–Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis–or “Mad Cow disease,” as it’s more commonly known. Having seen the horrors of BSE in the United Kingdom, importers of American beef suddenly became disintrested in our offerings. The American beef lobby is a powerful force in Washington, and they insisted something be done. Verichip and other RFID tag makers, hearing opportunity knock, pitched a plan to the USDA. If we would put these radio-tracking tags on every single animal in America, and track their movements by animal owners making regular updates to the database while backing this up with satellite monitoring, we could have a system that would enable epidemiologists to track a disease back to it’s source within 48 hours of discovery, thereby nipping any potential epidemic in the bud.

The USDA thought this sounded like a fantastic idea. More power, more money, and more expensive gadgets–what’s not for a government agency to like? The problem was that such a system would be horrifically, unimaginably expensive. The long-term costs would make the money spent on the Iraq war look like a door prize. Think about this for a moment. All across the whole 3,794,066 square miles of the United States, every cow, sheep, goat, pig, horse, llama, chicken, turkey, pony, donkey, alpaca, etc., would have to be tagged with a Radio Frequency ID chip. Each animal owner would have to have equipment for scanning these chips. The would then download the information from the scanner onto their computers, where they would then upload it to a national database. Each animal owner would have to register their premise and be assigned a number. The owners would have to make reports any time an animal entered or exited the premise, and any time an animal was born or died. To make sure the farmers are doing as they’re told, boosters and repeaters would be needed to allow these tags to be read by orbiting satellites. Word was that failure to report any “incident” within 24 hours would be punishible by a fine of $1000 per animal per day.

So how do you pay for all that? First, you externalize as much of the cost as possible by making the animal owners pay for their own equipment. Tags, readers, and any computer equipment or software associated with making the necessary reports would all be the farmers’ responsibility. As for the rest…well, it was just two years after 9/11. If you wanted money then, all you had to do was turn it into an issue of national security. Part of APHIS’ mission statement is to protect us from agricultural bioterrorism. They pushed it through as a Homeland Security issue.

They started this program by making it voluntary. The big producers jumped right on board. It was they, after all, who would benefit by convincing foreign importers that America had a high-tech system to ensure the safety of our meat. It didn’t hurt that they could implement this system pretty painlessly using inventory tracking systems they already had in place. Then “voluntary” started to become a very flexible word. The states were put in charge of enforcement, and some made it mandatory. Now, even on the federal level, people are having their premises involuntarily registered with the USDA under this “voluntary” system. Veterinarians and some others are now obligated, under certain conditions, to submit premise identification information to USDA-APHIS (the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service). People who don’t want to be in this voluntary system, who didn’t volunteer, are now in it and can’t opt out.

So what’s the big deal? Stopping disease is a good thing, isn’t it?

One of the nasty things about NAIS is that it doesn’t do a blessed thing to stop disease. Even if it worked the way it’s supposed to–which preliminary studies have not indicated–it would only show where a disease came from, not where it is now and where it’s going. Think about it like this: imagine there’s a deadly flu passing from person to person. It takes four days after exposure for you to have any symptoms. Ten to fifteen days later, you’re dead. Okay? Now, imagine every single human being had an electronic ear tag, and the government monitored their progress, keeping records back 48 hours. A person goes to the hospital with symptoms of this disease. The tracking system will let the authorities know who else this patient has exposed in the past two days, but they may have been infectious before that. Also, you don’t know where they got infected, because the records don’t go back far enough. You could have a Typhoid Mary who spreads the disease without suffering symptoms, with other people not showing a sniffle until four days after contact. I won’t go so far as to say such a system would be entirely useless, but it doesn’t do what needs to be done. Unless records of every movement of every person are kept permanently, and the government doing the tracking also has the authority to restrict or quarantine any person, they really have no way to stop the spread of this disease. Spending a lot of money and having a lot of farm cops destroying livestock and locking up farmers only serves as a whitewash. A system that big and scary must be effective, right? Have another burger, Japan.

But it’s even more ineffective than that. Many diseases affecting livestock–and I should point out that many of the diseases of concern are non-fatal–are also spread by wildlife and humans. Humans get hoof-and-mouth, too, and it’s no more fatal to us than it is to cattle. Wild birds are one of the biggest vectors for Avian Influenza. Unless you have a means for controlling all of them, too, it’s not worth spending a dime to backtrack these diseases among livestock. Rather, we should put the money into treatment, vaccination, and so forth where it may actually do some good. The USDA, according to many of the farmers at the meeting, is failing miserably in this regard, though. They’ve got their priorities twisted.

The USDA has made a couple very small concessions. Namely, poultry producers will only have to have a number for each flock rather than for each animal. Allegedly, I’d just have to file a report and print out a new bar code every time I get a new shipment of chicks rather than injecting a microchip into each little bird. I said “a couple” concessions, didn’t I? Well, that’s it, really. Just that one. Other than that, they’ve gotten really vague, refusing to discuss “the future of NAIS.” They insist that it’s voluntary, but in the same breath say that it can’t work unless they have 100% participation and start issuing orders to sign people up involuntarily. They also won’t discuss penalties now. We got reminded of that a few times during the meeting. But I digress…you’re up to speed on NAIS now.

I stepped up to the mic, the third from the last speaker, much more anxious than I’d have liked to have been since I had been fretting for most of the morning, and this is what I said…oh, I should mention that the official agenda said the purpose of this meeting was to offer solutions rather than just our concerns:

I’m opposed to NAIS, but you asked for solutions today for creating a system we can live with. This suggest that you’ve already made up your minds to move forward, and that all of the comments of strong opposition here today will simply be disregarded.

With that in mind, it seems to me that the chief beneficiaries of NAIS will be those producing meat for export, whereas most ot the objections seem to be coming from folks like me. I’m a small farmer doing direct, local sales through farmers’ markets and a CSA. My poultry is processed by the only state-inspected, custom poultry processor in the entire state of Ohio. There’s nothing secretive about my operation. My farm is easily located by a simple internet search. If the USDA wants to destroy my flock or check my records, they would save probably less than 30 seconds by having my farm in the NAIS database.

So my participation in NAIS would not benefit me, would not benefit my customers, and would be of only inconsequential benefit to the USDA. The people who would benefit from 100% participation are my larger, already more advantaged competitors like Tyson & Perdue. With the disease control whitewash of NAIS, these large producers will likely see increased sales to foreign buyers. They can then leverage those profits against small producers like me who are selling domestically. It seems reasonable, then, that the companies benefitting from my participation should be paying me for my participation.

By imposing a substantial fee on meat exporters–a “NAIS gains tax,” if you will–and using that to pay subsidies to small, local farmers so that compliance actually results in a profit for these small farmers, you could eliminate many objections to this program.

In summary, those who want this program should pay those of us who don’t want it, rather than forcing us to foot the bill for their inventory tracking system and international PR campaign. That’s all NAIS really amounts to unless you propose to not only track, but also control the movement of not only all livestock in North America, but also of all humans and wildlife as well.

Some noteworthy points from other speakers:

• A number of multi-generational farmers were brought to tears talking about how this program would prevent them from being able to pass their farming operations on to their children and grandchildren.
• A couple of the Amish/Mennonite folks spoke of religious discrimination.
• Several pointed out that all the disease problems have been associated almost exclusively with large operations, not with the little guys running grass-based operations. One of these was the health food store preacher lady who said that disease is God’s way of telling us we’re doing it wrong.
• Australia already has a system like this in place. It’s putting ranchers out of business, causing the bottom to fall out of rural real estate prices there, and isn’t doing a thing to prevent the spread of disease.
• Small producers aren’t the only ones affected by this. Six-minute guy, a large cattle rancher and the only other farmer besides myself who identified himself as being from Ohio, said that a large substantial part of his business is selling stock to new farmers, about 75 of them every year. If that stops, he said, his operation would fold in about four years. (I got his card. I’d like to do beef if we ever get enough land and get this blasted surveillance program shot down.) There was also a manager of a large caged battery hen operation who was equally concerned about costs and government nosiness.
• Officials are saying on one hand that the information gathered under NAIS would only be used for disease control, but then they try to sell it to farmers by saying that it could be used to locate lost or stolen animals.
• The lady with the baby was an activist representing some sort of organization of small farmers. She had been to Washinton to sit in on a presentation to Congress about NAIS. She was personally snubbed by Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack who promised the group a meeting and then never got back to them or even offered to have a representative answer their questions.

There were a couple more speakers after me, then we broke for lunch. After that, we returned and separated into three groups, each of which went to a different room. This part was much more informal. There was a facilitater there to ask questions to extract more detail and move things along, and another official there to pass the microphone around like at a talk show. Everything spoken into the mic was being recorded into their transcript, so it gave everyone who wanted to an opportunity to speak at greater length than the three minutes each alloted in the morning session. We heard some much better, deeper commentary. As things loosened up, people got more personal and more passionate. We started hearing things like “end of our way of life,” “utter disregard for the Constitution and our religious freedom,” “no authority to do this,” and “there’s gonna be blood in the streets.” After so much of that, I decided to stick a fork into the elephant on the table.

I haven’t been farming long. Until a couple years ago, I was a police officer, trained in crisis intervention and hostage negotiation…and the thing that really strikes me about this whole debate is the parallel between this and a suspect barricade situation. On the one hand, we’ve got the authorities saying, “Do what we say or we’re sending in the SWAT team!” and on the other side, you’ve got people feeling scared, trapped, and desperate. In their minds, there’s only two ways this can go: either they’re going to suffer total defeat and end up in an Orwellian police state, or they’re going to somehow get out of it. And the thing is, the more the noose tightens, the closer this comes to becoming mandatory, the more people start to lose any hope of getting out of it. And as they start to lose that hope, they get even more desperate and prone to drastic action.

We saw this in the nineties. When the cultural conservatives felt marginalized and pushed out, like they didn’t have any control over their lives or society anymore, they started forming seperatist groups and joining militias. The government, rather than reaching out and trying to bridge the gap, dug in its heels and got all heavy-handed, and we ended up with Waco and Ruby Ridge. Then the other side dug in and retaliated, and we got Oklahoma City. I don’t want to see this turn into the same thing. I don’t want to see honest farmers turned into militant rebels.

The USDA needs to de-escalate this fast. Lucille mentioned psychology–”Why don’t you have happy farmers lining up for this?” I think she’s right. USDA needs to learn some psychology here and see what they can do to make farmers happier about this. Make us feel less desperate. Open up a two-way conversation where we can talk about concessions or reparations of some kind. Address our fears and show us that they’re unfounded. Show us that NAIS isn’t as bad as we think it’s going to be. I think it’s disingenous for USDA to hold these listening sessions and say we’re not going to discuss the future of NAIS or penalties for noncompliance or anything. We’re scared, and you could put our fears to rest very easily, and you’re not making the least effort, which just puts the farmers in the position of thinking there must really be something there to worry about.

You could put this to rest so easily by trying to reach out to us and build a bridge. NAIS could go forward without having to be a one-size-fits-all solution. On one end, you’ve got a total police state. On the other, you’ve got no NAIS at all. I think there’s a big, broad margin in between there that neither side is even acknowledging. You could have different levels of oversight for different sized producers. For example, in Ohio, poultry producers who produce less than…I think it’s either a thousand or five-thousand birds, can process at home on the farm. More than that, I think up to ten-thousand, you have to use a state-inspected processor. More than that, and you have to use a USDA processor. I think you could do a similar kind of thing with NAIS. Also, show us that our fears aren’t anything to be afraid of. For example, maybe it’ll be mandatory to participate, but non-compliance results in nothing or maybe a little slap on the wrist. Maybe nothing would be enforced unless there was an actual disease tracked back to that farm, or the farmer could be shown to be negligent in some unhealthy practice or something. I just think there’s a lot of room for you to come up with alternatives that would set most people at ease, and you’re not even mentioning them. You’re just leaving people worrying, and I think you need to do better at reaching out and creating a genuine dialogue.

That’s a very liberal paraphrasing. In actuality, that’s a summary of two turns at the mic, and I’m sure it was even more inarticulate. I later offered the specific solution of creating a “Farmers’ Bill of Rights,” similar to the Patients’ Bill of Rights. Guarantee that nobody’s animals will be destroyed or seized unless they are first proven to be infected. Guarantee that you aren’t going to enter a registered premise without permission or a search warrant. Guarantee that if you do have to destroy an animal, the owner will be compensated fair market value.

In the interest of giving balanced coverage, I feel it necessary to point out that one small farmer in our group said he didn’t see NAIS as a big deal. He was already required to participate in the scrapie program since he raised sheep, and it was pretty much the same thing. He didn’t understand why anyone would object unless they had something to hide. Of course, his comments were immediately followed by someone else addressing him and saying that they shouldn’t have to offer any kind of explanation as to why they don’t want this program. In a democracy ruled by the people, it’s enough that they don’t want it. It shouldn’t be forced onto them against their will.

What our farm needs is a cannery that will do meat, broth, soups, and other meat-based products. We’ve made inquiries to ACENet and the ODA–even looked into starting our own facility–and all we heard was “You have to have a big industrial cannery to do meats.” After more than a year of searching, we finally found Keystone Meats in Lima, Ohio. They charge $1.35 per 28 oz. can, and the minimum amount they’ll process is 2000 lbs. of boneless meat.

They don’t slaughter the animals, though. You still need to have that done at an inspected facility somewhere else. Otherwise, the cans will be marked “not for resale.” That means I’d have to take my broilers to King & Sons (presently the only state-inspected custom poultry processor in the state) to have the birds processed first. The trouble with that is that they’re only equipped to do 800 birds a day. Conservatively estimating two pounds of boneless meat per bird, that means you’d need a minimum of 1000 chickens to get enough meat for Keystone to let you in the door. And King’s doesn’t slaughter every day. It’s just one or two days a week, never consecutive days, so I it wouldn’t even be possible to have them do 1000 birds at once. You’d have to drop off 800, store them frozen somewhere, then do another 200 on a different day.

Let’s say this was workable, though. By the time I pay around a thousand dollars for a thousand chicks, and buy feed for them at $11.35 per 50 lb. bag, then pay for fuel to haul them two hours to King’s, pay them to slaughter and de-bone, and pay Keystone $1.35 a can for 2000 pounds worth of 28 oz. cans, I’ve got over $11,000 tied up in cans of meat that I have to sell for something like $9.60 a can just to break even. If I sold it for $11 a can (too low? How much will someone realistically pay for a can of non-organic chicken?), I’d make about $1,500 profit. That’s not accounting for marketing costs, fixed assets, etc. Presently, I can make more than that on 300 birds I sell at the farmers’ markets, and I don’t have to raise them a thousand at a time or take out a loan of $11,000 for operating expenses.

And Keystone won’t do broth. That’s principally what I’m looking for. After my customers make a rush on the chicken breasts and buy about half the leg quarters, I’m left with a bunch of wings, backs, and the other half of the leg quarters. I’d like to cook these down into broth or soup to try to recapture some value, but try collecting 2000 lbs. of those pieces! I have a big pressure canner, but the state won’t let me sell broth or stock canned in it.

If some well-funded entrepreneur were to open a cannery that could do small, custom batches of soups, broths, canned meats, etc., affordably, it would be a fantastic opportunity for small farmers to sell value-added products. We have no shortage of Ohio produced jams and salsas, but there are no small farmers in Ohio doing direct sales of hot dog sauce or chicken noodle soup made from their own meat. And if a cannery is licensed and outfitted to handle meats, they could do other low-acid foods, too. That throws the door wide open to all kinds of canned vegetables. We could fill the grocery stores with locally produced, identity preserved goods, if only someone would package them for us.

Best of luck, though, to Mr. Leard and anyone who gets in on this new fruit cannery co-op.

Wayne Shingler
Frijolito Farm
Columbus, OH

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Renee Hunt
To: oeffaco_oeffadirect@oeffa.org
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:18:49 -0400
Subject: [oeffadirect] [Fwd: Fwd: co-op cannery]
Anyone interested in forming a cooperative cannery, read on… This was originally sent and distributed to the OEFFA Athens Chapter. Best, Renee

*From: *”Ray Leard” <rayleard@purelyamerican.com >
*Date: *May 17, 2009 11:03:01 AM PDT
*To: *<perkaber@juno.com >
*Subject: **co-op cannery*

Hi!

I own Purely American, a specialty food manufacturing concern located in the Poston Station Road Industrial Park – www.purelyamerican.com . I am trying to determine the interest among the region s’ farmers for the creation of a cooperative cannery in which the farmers would contract with my company to provide certain fruits raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apples for the production of a premium brand of creatively designed fruit based preserves. I would invest the required funds in building the commercial kitchen, product design, marketing, promotion, and distribution at the national level through my existing channels I have already established. The press attached release explains the basic idea.

Wanted to know if, as a member of the Athens Farmers Market, you (or other fellow farmers that you know) might have an interest in becoming an owner/member in our new cooperative. The main purpose in creating the co-op will be to enable the area farmers to join forces to obtain a fair and consistent price for their premium quality fruit. The fruit will be used in a line of preserves that will help establish the Athens region as one of America’s premier locally grown food artisan regions. This will be achieved by maintaining the level of “Athens Grown” fruit in the line of products at 100% thereby creating a product line similar to great wines in which all the grapes are from a certain winery or region. In the preserve world as a company gets larger and larger they start compromising on quality and begin sourcing their fruit from outside the region where the idea started thereby compromising the integrity of the product.

I would appreciate your serious consideration in this matter. Please feel free to ask any and all questions. Don’t have all the answers yet but will work with each of you to make this something we can all be proud of as we proceed.

See you at the market!

Ray Leard and dedicated foodcrafters

Purely American

5991 Industrial Park Road

Athens, Ohio 45701

740-592-3800

740-592-4610 (fax)

rayleard@purelyamerican.com

–
Renee Hunt
Program Director
Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association
41 Croswell St., Columbus, Ohio 43214
Ph: 614-421-2022 Fax: 614-421-2011
renee@oeffa.org

“So, the question is: how can we plausibly increase the amount of farmers? The answer seems to be to take farming to where most of the people are at: in the cities.” –Sam Rose

I very much agree. In bringing farming to cities, we face two major obstacles, neither of which are insurmountable.

The first is that, even with intensive models such as Square-Foot gardening, Grow Biointensive, or SPIN, farming still requires land. A person aiming only to feed his or her own family might find a backyard sufficient, but someone trying to grow enough to earn a living is going to need either a lot of land on which they can grow during the regular growing season, or a more modest space with a greenhouse in which they can grow all year.

For all romantic and idealized notions people may have about farming, most urbanites who have a steady paycheck coming in, especially from a white collar job that they’ve obtained through many years of college and career climbing, aren’t likely to chuck it all for a risky entrepreneurial venture that’s bound to mean less money (especially at first) and a life of hard, dirty, sometimes smelly, often uncomfortable, physical labor outdoors.

Of course, not all city dwellers have such cushy lives. Many are poor and/or unemployed. Many already perform physical labor with no hope of advancement. For these people, farming offers the promise of a better life. These people, however, don’t have the capital necessary to start, and usually aren’t financially savvy enough or well connected enough to get it. Even peasants farming in developing nations on plots of an acre or less have more land than most of America’s urban poor can afford to buy.

In a nutshell, those who have the means to farm generally don’t want to, and those who want to generally don’t have the means. This is true all over, but the problem is exacerbated in the city because of higher real estate prices. Community gardens are not the answer. They’re a good way for people to learn horticultural skills and to put some extra nutrients in their diets or a few dollars in their pockets, but the average community garden plot doesn’t come even close to what’s necessary to feed one person, let alone provide an income for an entire family.

This is where I put in my plug for Local Matters and offer high praise for the work Michael Jones and his colleagues are doing. They are developing a system to connect landless farmers with landowners willing to let others use their land. I am the beneficiary of their first test of this idea. They connected me with a man who owns about five acres in Columbus, maybe three miles from my home. In exchange for donating some produce to local food pantries and agreeing to manage a community garden on the front acre, I’ve been given access to the back acre for my own use. I worked out a similar deal on my own with another township’s community garden, and I’ve been leasing a vacant lot for $1.00 a year from the city of Columbus for the past few years. In aggregate, I now have around two acres on which to farm. This year, I’m offering a CSA for the first time. My gross sales to date this year (as of May 7th) already equal over 70% of my total sales for all of 2008 when I had only a half-acre–and the season is only starting!

I said there were two big problems. Getting land into the hands of the people who want to work it was the first. The second is the morass of municipal regulations criminalizing agriculture. I’ve written extensively about this elsewhere, so I won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that in neighborhoods where hanging out laundry is prohibited and everyone’s Christmas lights have to match, the controlling authorities frown upon having livestock and hayfields next door. Until we can change urban sensibilities enough to eliminate or at least loosen up some of the agri-phobic codes and regulations presently in place, we can’t grow food in the city on a wide scale without constant harassment from health departments, zoning officials, and homeowners’ associations.

From what I understand, they plan to look for pathogens in samples taken from farmers’ fields both before harvest and either at the time of harvest or immediately afterward (I’m not sure which). They also plan to take samples after the produce has been out on display at a farmers’ market, where it will have been handled by customers.

As a farmers’ market vendor, I’m opposed to this study. Why? Have I got something to hide? Am I afraid that all the dirty little secrets of sustainable agriculture will be discovered and the whole concept of “clean food” exposed as a sham? Not at all.

What I’m opposed to is the narrow focus of this study. I have no doubt at all that tomatoes that have been fondled by prospective customers for three hours are going to have some level of some kind of dangerous pathogen on them. No question. It further stands to reason that tomatoes that have been sitting out for three or four days at a large grocery store that’s open 24/7 are going to have tremendously higher counts of dangerous pathogens…but the proposed study won’t be looking at these tomatoes.

See the problem? Germs are everywhere. They’re unavoidable in the natural world. That’s why we have immune systems. Vegetables–at least any other than hydroponic ones–grow in dirt. Dirt is–you guessed it–dirty! The outdoor fields where the tomatoes are grown, exposed to flying birds and other wildlife, undoubtedly carry traces of germs, which is why the smart money is on washing your food before you eat it. This is true, though, of food grown outdoors whether it’s sold at a farmers’ market or at a big chain grocery store.

If we take two samples side by side, we can say, “Both samples show the presence of Superbug X, but Sample A has 6,000 times more Superbug X on it than Sample B does.” Reading that sentence, you would probably come to the conclusion that you would prefer Sample B. If, however, the result is just “We tested a sample from Jones’ Fruit Farm, and it contained Superbug X,” no doubt Farmer Jones is going to see business dry up fast. His customers will run from his stand to whatever store happens to be selling the food that is 6,000 times filthier, because that danger wasn’t reported. There is no absolute safety, only relative safety. If you don’t make a fair comparison, anything examined in isolation is going to seem dangerous.

I would welcome such a study if it were broadened to include conventionally grown food sold in stores. If the study shows that my carrots are germier than Wal-Mart’s carrots, so be it. It may hurt my interests, but at least it’s a fair accounting.

I trust that the folks behind this study have the most principled of intentions in doing the study. They no doubt want the public to be safe. They see farmers’ markets growing, and like anyone suspicious of something new and unconventional, they feel it necessary to verify the safety of the food sold at these markets. That’s fine if the study is being done in such a way as to include like samples of non-farmers’-market-food to offer some context. Otherwise, regardless of the sincere intentions of the creators of the study, it has the potential for being used as a hit piece by purveyors of industrial food seeking to undermine the competition.

That may sound a little “tinfoily” to some, but we’ve already seen Big Dairy sue to force farmers who don’t juice up their cows with hormones
to label their milk with a disclaimer saying that milk from normal, healthy cows is no better for you than milk from cows on drugs. Just today I read a story about Monsanto suing Germany for banning a genetically modified kind of corn that was the cause of some health concerns. If a corporation will do massive damage to the environment and sell people poisons while calling it food, there’s little reason to expect them to play nicely and tolerate competition from a bunch of little farmers selling homegrown goods. I don’t want to give these guys any ammunition, and a study that will undoubtedly conclude that local food is dirty (without also saying that shipped-in food is tremendously dirtier) would do exactly that.

Granted, the report to the county also included complaints about things strewn about the yard, and I agree that it is unsightly. A public health hazard? Not so much. Mr. Sanitarian, as I’ll refer here to the sanitarian who visited us, disagrees. He feels that anything touching the earth provides a harborage for rats.

His concerns aren’t completely unwarranted. At least two of our neighbors have rats in their homes, and we did, years ago, find a rat’s nest dug into the ground at the junction of our property and two others. Rats are a problem in this neighborhood, but not on our property in particular. We have over six cats (we claim six, but others come over for dinner) patrolling our little quarter-acre at all times. I built the barn up on a foundation of concrete block piers so the cats have easy access underneath. All the chicken feed and cat feed is stored inside this building in metal trash cans. The hens themselves would no doubt rip apart any rodent that dared venture into their domain. I once saw a mouse in our house, and we’ve seen perhaps a grand total of five cockroaches in the five years we’ve lived here. I’ve shot one oppossum and about eight or nine raccoons here, and no others have appeared since last fall. I occasionally find a dead songbird that’s fallen victim to the cats. The only wildlife of any sort that’s managed to thrive here are the squirrels, and to my knowledge, the county health department has not yet declared them a public health nuisance.

This has not deterred Mr. Sanitarian, who no doubt feels he has to do something since he went to the bother of coming out here. Yielding to the powers given him by the ridiculously vague wording of the county health code, we’ve complied with his wishes. So far, this has included building three elevated platforms–two for building materials, and another for firewood. Yes, firewood. You know how when you see firewood stacked…oh, anywhere in this county, it’s stacked on the ground or on someone’s porch? That’s a violation. It’s supposed to be at least 12″ off the ground. I personally feel having that stuff elevated and thus more prone to toppling is a far greater danger, but we’ve humored him. I even put our compost bins right out in the middle of the yard so that there’s lots of open ground around it, like Alcatraz island sitting in the middle of a bay full of sharks.

Technically, we’re not even supposed to have the compost. In the initial complaint some years ago, we were told we couldn’t have “an accumulation of vegetation and feces.” That time, I buried it. On a later visit by Mr. Sanitarian, I showed him an old chicken tractor put to use as a compost bin, with grass clippings on top of the compost. It was full of chicken manure, but you couldn’t smell a thing, and it was cooking along nicely, as compost should. I raised the lid to show him. “This is good practice,” he said. Since then, I’ve built larger, open compost bins, with compost heaped up such that it can be seen from the street, but he chose not to mention it when he visited Tuesday. We’re coming to an understanding. He tells us to do silly stuff like levitate the woodpile, and we do it without giving him any guff, so he overlooks things that are technically violations but aren’t hurting anything. In a previous visit, he told us we couldn’t have salvaged lumber stacked on the ground. I cut it up and arranged it neatly on the ground as a walkway and flower beds. That was okay.

This is a good arrangement, because the county health code–as I mentioned, and as I express to Mr. Sanitarian routinely–is ridiculously vague. We have ash trees probably fifty feet high or more. The code prohibits “vegetation over 12 inches tall.” Last I checked, trees are vegetation, as are hedges, rosebushes, pampas grass, or any number of expensive, over-twelve-inch-high ornamentals sold by your local garden center. You’re also not allowed to feed animals outdoors. The last time we went to Tractor Supply, we got a forty-pound bag of sunflower seeds. I got these for sprouting and to plant, but I didn’t get the tax exemption for agricultural use because these were being sold as bird seed. You’ve heard of bird feeders, I’m guessing. Again, back to those garden centers selling illegally tall plants. They sell squirrel feeders, too. They even sell birdbaths and fish ponds and all kinds of other standing-water hazards that breed mosquitos and promote the spread of West Nile virus. And compost! Why, Noah and I were at the Oakland Park Nursery just yesterday and saw a great pile of what appeared to be either compost or mulch, ten feet high if it was an inch. It dwarfed my little rat harborage by many orders of magnitude, and was probably less than a hundred feet from an elementary school! It’s a wonder the health department doesn’t call in the National Guard to firebomb all these garden centers, being as they’re a menace to the public health on so many levels.

Oh, one more before I leave this topic. You can’t leave anything out overnight that animals might eat. We have fruit and nut trees. We gonna pluck off all the immature fruits and nuts and bring ‘em in before sundown every evening? For that matter, there are owls in this neighborhood. Feeding them at night by letting them get at the rats could be construed as a violation.

It’s just silly. I don’t see how something written as broadly as the county health code has stood up to a single challenge in court. The whole point of having written, codified law in the first place is so we can easily distinguish, fairly and objectively, what is a violation and what isn’t. We adopted this system because we didn’t much fancy the idea of a government official banging on our doors and saying, “The king’s feeling cranky today and he doesn’t like you. We’re hauling you off to prison.” That’s essentially the power that the county health department gives itself, though, by writing regulations so expansive that they actually outlaw trees and shrubs. They have no intention of enforcing these rules to the letter. They have neither the resource nor an interest in doing so. They just like to keep it nice and vague, like the police officer’s charge of “persistence in disorderly conduct.” It’s something to charge people with when they defy your authority. I’ve expressed to Mr. Sanitarian many times a sincere intention to cooperate and stay on the right side of the health code, and he’s reaffirmed to me that there is absolutely nothing illegal about raising chickens in the township, as long as I do it sanitarily.

The whole situation frustrates me, though. If I knew who the complainant was, I could build a higher fence or plant some arbor vitae or something to shield that person’s view of our yard. I’d work with them to develop a mutually satisfactory solution. But because they haven’t got the guts to identify themselves, that leaves us guessing and gossiping, suspicious of all our neighbors. This troubles me. As a member of the Transition Movement, I appreciate the importance of connecting with my neighbors to build a strong community, and of including them in the farm or otherwise inspiring them to adopt sustainable practices of their own in order for our community to be increasingly resilient and self-reliant. So far, it’s seemed largely successful. One neighbor behind us plants a few vegetables (they’re pagans, too, so that’s another connection). The octogenarian next door used to raise chickens himself. When he’s not working at a local hardware store, he’s tinkering in his garage on a recumbent tricycle he plans to use as a dog cart. The guy on the other side of him hunts, gardens, and raised a pig last year. The pig was provided by the folks across the street, who aspire to have their own farm someday soon. For the most part, our neighbors are very supportive of what we’re doing here.

There is a minority, though, a stealthy, mostly anonymous minority, who wishes they lived in the sort of neighborhood where you can’t hang out your laundry and where your flowers and Christmas lights have to be the same color as those of all the neighbors. Not being able to afford to move to such a neighborhood is no doubt a source of frustration for these people (I speak in the plural, but for all I know, it might be a lone individual), and seeing chickens and crates and greenhouses and such probably only aggravates these frustrations.

People sometimes ask me what the hardest thing is about farming. A lot of them expect it’s getting up early (which I rarely do) or physical labor (which I enjoy) or cleaning up after animals (which isn’t too bad if you do it frequently and don’t let it get out of control). They’re all way off base. They have this pre-conceived, largely incorrect notion of what farming entails, and they’ve been taught to think of it as unpleasant. I tell them that the greatest obstacle we face, even greater than having such a small parcel, is urban sensibilities. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not using the word “sensibilities” to suggest that I think the people exhibiting these sensibilities are being sensible. I’m using the dictionary definition of “sensibility,” referring to the ability to be affected by aesthetic or emotional stimuli. That is to say, the greatest challenges I face as a farmer relate to things that make my city neighbors turn up their noses. These things don’t have to pose any danger or damages, no sounds louder than those indigenous to the city or smells any more offensive than the ones typically on the air. They just have to offend the sensibilities of those observing them. That is, they have to seem out-of-place, unfashionable, or weird.

Virginia farmer and author Joel Salatin once wrote that country people will only tolerate so much weirdness. “You can be a Buddhist, or you can be a nudist, but you can’t be a Buddhist nudist.” I think that, for however much city folks, especially liberals, like to think of themselves as tolerant, the rule applies just as much in an urban setting, if not more so. It’s just that urbanites define differently what qualifies as weird. In the city, you can color your hair and skin every color of the rainbow; pierce, burn, stretch, or otherwise mutilate every square inch of your body; dress up as though for Halloween; make up your own religion and preach it on a street corner; and drive a contraption with pneumatic lifters, spinning rims, concrete-crumbling speakers, and Barbie doll heads glued all over it–and that’s okay. That’s tolerable in the city. Cool, even. But grow food other than a potted tomato plant? Have an animal that’s not sold in a pet store? Kill an animal for food? Horrors! These are atrocities of the highest order in the eyes of the citified. What country folks call a hayfield, city folks call a public nuisance and an eyesore. What is day-to-day life on a farm is a crime or a scandal in the land of pavement.

The reason I say this rule against weirdness applies even more in the city is that in the country, you at least have a degree of privacy. Tall vegetation and sheer distance provide a buffer between neighbors. If our rural Buddhist nudist keeps to himself, nobody need even know about his skyclad meditations. In an urban environment, though, we’re packed on top of each other like cattle in a CAFO, wading waist-deep in each others’ presence. If city dwellers are perceived as being less hospitable, it is only because they must create an imaginary bubble of isolation around themselves to preserve their own psychological well-being against constant intrusion.

Just as urbanites shut out awareness of their neighbors, so too do they shut out awareness of the natural world itself. To me, a farmer and a pagan, nature is everything, everywhere. It is both beautiful and brutal, awesome and inescapable. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the process of breaking that down into its chemical components and rebuilding it as flesh and bone, even the forces that stick all our molecules together and keep our cells the same pressure as the surrounding atmosphere so they neither explode nor implode–all of this is nature. Gravity, heat, pressure, all the laws of physics, everything that makes our existence possible, all fitting together into a very neat system in which nothing is wasted–this, to me, is nature.

To our mall-walking urbanite, though, nature is “the outdoors,” an amenity, an option that exists all by itself inside the boundaries of a park and can be put on a shelf or thrown away altogether when you’re done playing with it. Food comes shrink-wrapped and processed on a grocery store shelf, or magically prepared from a restaurant. Wastes go “away,” as though there is such a place. Birth and death both happen behind closed doors in hospitals so the general public doesn’t have to see that they exist; their perceptions of these events come from depictions on TV and in movies. If you told these urbanites that they are eating what used to be a breathing, moving, live animal or a plant that grew in dirt which was itself rotted leaves and grass and manure, they would lose their appetites. They know all this in the back of their minds (well, some do–I’ll get to the ones that don’t in a moment), but they choose to push it to the back of their consciousness where they can pretend it doesn’t exist. They are discomforted by the idea of food that stares back at them, and so prefer to eat it from a paper wrapper or a plastic tube. Ignorance may be bliss, but when ignorance is spoiled by knowledge, denial makes for a pretty convincing substitute.

I’ve been referring to “urbanites” and “city dwellers” here, but the problem is no less present in the suburbs. Suburbs are how cities eat farmland and turn it into cookie cutter subdivisions of McMansions and dog pasture. Ironically, these suburban communities that think of farming as weird, these artificial worlds that enact regulations against agricultural practices, are actually located on the sites of former farms. Whereas municipal governments tell city dwellers not to live as a part of nature, suburbanites often adopt these regulations voluntarily through neighborhood covenants and homeowners associations. Indeed, they often go even further than the cities to enforce a Stepford-like conformity to standards which create a Disney-esque showcase bearing hardly any resemblance to a place lived in by people.

I don’t live in such a neighborhood, thank goodness (though at least one of my neighbors would like to change that). Some people I care about live in such places–by choice, even, and I respect their right to do so. Heck, if a person wants to live in a place that’s a year-round Renaissance Fair where everyone is required to dress in period clothing and speak with an English accent, I figure that’s their prerogative. Where it becomes a problem is when they move into a new area and try to coerce the natives to play along. Don’t move into a neighborhood where people have always hung their clothes out on a line to dry and then tell them that clotheslines are forbidden. Likewise, don’t build a city so large it swallows up rural townships and then tell the township dwellers they can’t farm.

Another thing that bothers me about this is the ethics of it all. Thrift is a virtue. Conservation is a virtue. Self-reliance is a virtue. Industry, as in working hard and producing things, is also a virtue. Diversity is healthy. Self-expression can be artful. But what do the homeowners’ associations and code enforcers promote? Bring your clothes in off the line and burn more energy with a clothes dryer. Put compostables in the landfill and buy peat moss in a plastic bag imported from Canada. Put toxic chemicals on your lawn so you don’t get that homogenous green monoculture cluttered up with pretty yellow (edible) flowers. Quit fixing your own car and take it to a mechanic. Stop growing your own food and buy it imported to the store from California and Thailand and Peru. Make your house look like all the ones around it. Waste, spend, dispose, consume, conform.

Can’t we just live? Grow our food and make things at home and trade with our neighbors like we have for thousands of years without some bureaucrat or busybody standing over us telling us no? My sincere concern is that we’re reaching a point where the bureaucrats will be laid off and the busybodies will lose their influence, and we’ll need to know how to do for ourselves and rely on nature rather than a paycheck, but too many people won’t know how because they’ve been kept ignorant by a culture that thinks natural living is yucky.

I said a few paragraphs back that I’d get to the issue of people who were completely ignorant of nature, and this seems as good a segue as any, talking about a culture that thinks natural living is yucky. We have produced entire generations that know nothing but the artificial, manufactured, indoor existence in which they have been confined since birth. Farmer and author Gene Logsdon wrote a couple articles (”What Kind of Tree Do Acorns Grow On” and “The Acorn Tree Syndrome Strikes Again“) where he coined the term “Acorn Tree Syndrome.” I’d encourage you to follow the links and read both articles (they’re short), but the gist is that many, many people today are so ignorant of the natural world that they don’t know what sort of tree produces acorns, think that potatoes grow above ground on bushes, and can be easily fooled into thinking marshmallows grow on plants. The problem (or one of them) with this is that these people, ignorant of where their food comes from and of the other natural systems that sustain life, get an equal voice in making the policies that affect us all. It’s like three people sitting on a keg of dynamite with a book of matches voting on whether to light the matches, but two of them don’t know what dynamite is and they think the third person is too weird to be trusted.

There is no fee for participation in the 2009 season.  Wayne Shingler of Frijolito Farm will be available to help those new to gardening.  Whether you’re looking to make a dent in your grocery bill or just want to give away your crop to neighbors or a food pantry, come out and play in the dirt with us this year!

Plots will be ten feet by ten feet, but if we have more plots than gardeners, you can do more than one plot.  Everyone is welcome, but in the spirit of localizing our food system, preference will be given to those who live nearest to the garden if we get more interested people than we have plots available.

Special thanks to Art Yoho, Chuck Lynd, and Michael Jones for making this garden possible.

To sign up or for more information, contact Wayne at (614) 390-2692 or at wayne@frijolitofarm.com with “Maize garden” in the subject line.

Part 1:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/watch.html

Part 2:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/watch2.html

At our last meeting (Thursday, Sept. 18), we discussed how to narrow our focus to a single project, and came up with the idea to buy a vacant lot from the Columbus city land bank, build a greenhouse there, and produce mixed salads throughout the winter (and presumably the rest of the year as well). Karen suggested that these salads could be sold to local restaurants and in local grocery stores to compete with similar products imported from California and elsewhere. She also pointed out that Second Harvest would pay for produce that may not be of sufficient quality to sell on the open market.

We were talking about doing this as a non-profit organization and using that non-profit status to get a grant for the startup money we’d need. The problem was that we needed a charitable cause, some place to donate any profits. We randomly threw around ideas of possible beneficiaries–OEFFA, Four Seasons Community Garden, Ohio Food Bank, and some others.  Thinking on this since the meeting, I’ve come up with a different idea, one that could grow with us if and when we expand beyond the greenhouse operation, and that more directly addresses our concerns about a lack of processors and canners to handle food from local farmers. Following are some notes outlining this idea that could later be put into an actual business plan:

Overview

The purpose of the foundation is to encourage local production of food by offering material and instructional support to needy entrepreneurs who wish to start new farms or food processing facilities or expand existing small farms and food processing facilities to serve the local community. Principal funding to support this foundation would come from operating the very sorts of industries the foundation wishes to promote.

Goals

- To improve local food security and food quality by increasing the amount of locally produced food available to consumers.

- To strengthen the local economy overall by encouraging the growth of local food production industries.

- To assist people aspiring to work in agricultural or related fields when they might not otherwise have the resources to do so.

- To directly provide jobs, food, and land stewardship to the local community through the farms and other production or processing facilities operated by the foundation.

Operation

The way this would work is that the foundation would, through grants, donations, or other assistance, acquire startup capital to run a farm, orchard, greenhouse, livestock operation, food processing facility (commercial kitchen/cannery), or similar operation, and then run it the same as a private business. Revenues generated would pay operating costs including equipment, materials, supplies, labor, fuel, utilities, etc. Any money generated in excess of costs would go into a fund to be distributed as grants to start or expand local food production and processing operations.

As Karen pointed out, a non-profit organization is allowed to pay for services rendered, and many non-profits have paid employees, so it would be possible (assuming it’s managed well) for members of the organization to earn at least a modest, part-time income doing this. We may be able to get seeds and other supplies donated, and get a grant for the initial money to purchase land and to build a greenhouse. Karen and I have talked some about how to fit out the greenhouse to work as efficiently as possible, collecting and storing rainwater on site. There’s still a lot to work out.

One concern I have is about utilities at the greenhouse site. While water may not be necessary, I think electric is. To avoid the need to heat the entire greenhouse in the winter, we had discussed using soil heating cables in raised beds. Also, fans are useful in a greenhouse, both to ventilate during warm weather and to keep the air moving to prevent fungal diseases. This would require electrical hookup at the greenhouse, which could drastically increase the cost of building one to code. Obviously, this is going to require some more study before we apply for a grant.

On Friday, I met with Ellen Walker, township administrator and farmers’ market manager of Jefferson Township. She and I had been talking earlier in the season about Frijolito Farm renting some land. I’m currently leasing about a fifth of an acre from a friend in Kirkersville, but the 58 mile round trip has encouraged procrastination, not to mention it’s really darned expensive, especially in a truck that gets about 13 miles per gallon. Ellen told me the township owned a 10-acre parcel, seven acres of which they had been renting to a farmer for about twice the price I was paying for less than a quarter-acre. She went on to explain that when the tax assessor discovered a crop was being grown there for profit, he said he was going to tax the land far in excess of the money the farmer was paying to use it unless they destroyed the crop.

See, the land is behind a school and had been set aside for development as a park; therefore, it was exempt from taxation. Since they weren’t immediately able to begin construction of the park, Ellen figured the land might as well be productive while they were waiting. When the county auditor got wind of the soybean crop growing there, he ordered it to be plowed under. Ellen’s idea for next year is to make this acreage the site of Jefferson Township’s community gardens, with individuals being able to apply for their own allotment. This is an appropriate use of park land, so it should put to rest any problems with the auditor.

Before she told me of her plan to turn the field into the community garden site,  I told her about this non-profit organization we’re putting together. I suggested that allowing us to use the land might be a way around her township’s tax problem. She didn’t seem too interested in that particular solution, but she was very interested in the organization itself. She’s involved (on the board, I believe) with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, and in her work as Township Administrator she’s been dedicated to farmland protection and the preservation of the rural nature of the township. She introduced me to Eric Pawlowski of Shepherd’s Corners (who, according to Shepherd’s Corners’ website is currently on the board of OEFFA) and suggested that he might be able to help us in some way. She also gave me contact information for Michael Jones of Local Matters and the Greener Grocer at North Market.

by Frijolitofarmer