Tag: Sustainability

Nuclear abolition, climate change, environmental degradation, nature, peace and justice.

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Kitchen Garden Living in Society

Farmers Talk Land Use

Ready to Exit Stage Left if Proceedings get Dull

The room was packed for the Johnson County Board of Supervisors public hearing on the County’s comprehensive plan. Current and would-be farmers were present and spoke about their profession. The hearing took two and a half hours.

Supervisors have been working on the plan for two years and would like to finish it and move on to what matters more, the Unified Development Ordinance, which codifies how the plan will be implemented. Last night’s public hearing brought the county closer to closure, even if the subject of land use will continue to be debated well beyond my years of walking the earth.

The main points were the 40-acre rule for definition of a farm is an obstacle to beginning farmers, and there is a wide difference of opinion regarding the role of animal feeding operations in producing the beef, pork and chicken non-vegetarians love to eat.

The Frequently Asked Questions page of the plan website addressed the first issue, “Will the new Comprehensive plan change the 40-acre rule?” Short answer is no. While officials expressed a desire to accommodate smaller farms during the process of developing the comprehensive plan, one expects the 40-acre rule to remain intact. A farmer can make a living on less than ten acres, especially if they can benefit from the State Code’s agricultural exemption from county zoning regulations. The path is unclear to enable farmers to acquire smaller parcels that would be zoned as ag exempt. There may not be a path, except by supervisors establishing special criteria and deciding each parcel individually on its merits. That’s no way to go. Not only is it labor intensive the politics of the board can and will change over time. People have spoken on the issue. Now it’s time to see what supervisors do.

If people want meat and meat products, livestock will be raised to meet demand. The words “concentrated animal feeding operation” have become a lightening rod of tumult about livestock production. Many do eat meat and few non-farmers want to live next to a livestock production facility. In any case, the State of Iowa maintains preemption over concentrated animal feeding operations. Under Republican control of government, preemption is here to stay. I doubt that would change under Democratic governance. People like their pulled pork, fried chicken, hamburgers and steaks, and it has to come from somewhere. Environmentally it would be better for humans to source protein from plants. If you believe they will over the near term, stand on your head.

The highlight of the hearing was a grader and son of a farmer who read an essay titled, My Barn. “I see my cows Jake and Nick coming up to me because they’re excited for me to rub their noses,” he said. “They feel as soft as a teddy bear.” The hearing engaged several livestock farmers. The ones who raised cattle and hogs took issue with persecution of their trade and the appellation “CAFO.” They said treatment of animals was humane on their farms.

There was insider baseball about the new map to accompany the comprehensive plan. My view is “whatever.” Let the supervisors decide based on best practices. There’s no going back to the way the land was before it was settled. It’s already been ruined by development and that happened in the 19th Century. The North Corridor Development Area has been designated as a buildable area in the plan in order to preserve county farmland. When one flies over it, it’s clear it has been settled from the outskirts of Iowa City and Coralville all the way to the county line. Everyone who has a strong opinion on the NCDA has an ox being gored. Speaker and naturalist Connie Mutel made the best case about how the new map was developed using “best practices.” Managing development in the county is like carrying water in a half empty leaking bucket.

Despite the serious nature of the presentations last night was fun. I got a chance to see friends and acquaintances in the context of working together to resolve issues of beginning farmers. That counts for something and in these turbulent times where would we be without that?

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Farm Friday

Seedlings

Friday is my day to work with Farmer Kate near Iowa City.

I made 30,288 soil blocks for plants at Wild Woods Farm this season. Add in additional work at Sundog Farm and my total production was 59,688 soil blocks since Feb. 25. That’s a lot of vegetable seedlings.

We’re planting lettuce, squash, cucumbers and zucchini which indicates we are more than halfway through spring production. Last year I finished at both farms on June 25 to get ready for the apple season beginning in August.

Cucumber Seedlings

Soil blocking is specialized. I use unique tools and soil to make the 72 and 120 block trays. This is my sixth year and I’ve incorporated soil blocked seedlings into our kitchen garden. Better propagation through this process makes a difference. Soil blocked seedlings are a part of growing better plants which produce great tasting vegetables. With retirement, healthy seedlings combined with additional weeding and better cultivation should result in higher yields. Importantly, it is all about freshness and flavor.

I receive fair compensation for my farm work. Over a few years we arranged a part barter – part cash settlement that works out for both parties. Each season has been a little different. This year I exchange labor for standard CSA shares in the spring and fall, then secure crates of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and onions for preservation and storage. If my labor is more than that, I get a cash settlement. It is probably unnecessary to place a monetary value on these arrangements. Vegetable shares supplement our kitchen garden which produces much of what we need along with some specialty crops not grown on the farms. In turn, sourcing some crops from the farms reduces work in my garden. The arrangement is part of an ecology of food our household developed over time.

Over the course of spring, soil blocking at the farms has become part of our culture. I intend to continue as long as I can and the farmers are willing.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Living in Society

Hoping for Garden Time

My next shift at the home, farm and auto supply store is May 16. That schedule provides a solid block of time at home to work in the yard and garden.

If it rains, I’ll work inside. There is no shortage of work, although I’m not concerned with that now.

The 87th Iowa General Assembly has been a pisser.

When Republicans won control of the Iowa Senate during the 2016 general election everything changed. It wasn’t small changes. They had a vision of Iowa and executed their legislative agenda in support of it. They took a broadsword to almost everything that matters. They reduced taxes beyond belief and hobbled the state’s ability to generate sufficient revenue to balance the budget. Then, because of the revenue shortfall, they drastically cut services. In Iowa that means cutting education, health and human services, public safety, and governmental compliance. Tomorrow the legislature is expected to pass more tax cuts and a budget that as of this writing isn’t finalized.

The state sought to get more involved in people’s lives under Republican governance, seeking to control how counties manage the minimum wage, how residents protest, how communities work with the federal government, and managing reproductive rights under established law.

Almost none of this legislation during the last two sessions was bipartisan.

The legislative changes impact everyone, including our family. We are not better off for it now and the prospects for the future are dim. The Republican vision for Iowa is not widely shared, especially among the 30 percent of Iowa voters who register as Democrats.

That doesn’t mean we have given up, we haven’t. Participation in the four Iowa Democratic district conventions was the highest anyone can remember during a midterm election cycle. A number of groups rose in resistance to Republican governance immediately after the election. The Iowa Democratic Party fielded the largest number of house candidates this year in most people’s memory.

However, the obstacles to convincing Iowans that Republican governance leaves much to be desired are daunting. 800,983 Iowa voters, or 51 percent of the electorate, chose Donald Trump as president. The votes are there to flip the state Democratic if we can find them. When everyone is running for cover by registering no preference or retreating into small family networks, that is no small task.

Proverbs 16:29 informs us here, “A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth him into the way that is not good.” Republicans may have been successful in accomplishing much of their agenda in the 87th Iowa General Assembly. We don’t plan to let them get away with it for long.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

Bringing Food Home

Farmers Market Food

A relationship with food in American society is complicated.

Some don’t have enough. Others are awash in calories. We each have a human need for nourishment and the ways we go about meeting it are as different as the families which engendered us.

A favorite childhood memory is when Mother went to work in the school cafeteria after the Catholic Church built a new grade school near our home. With other women like her, she took a list of ingredients based partly on government programs (including lots of cheese) and partly on a limited budget, and made meals that included such dishes as porcupine meatballs (hamburger and rice) and grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. Father worked at the meat packing plant which had an employee butcher shop where he could buy beef, pork and meat products at a discount, and did. The idea of stretching hamburger by mixing it with cooked rice was a novelty in our household and eventually we implored Mother to make porcupine meatballs for us at home, just like the ones at school. She did.

This story of external culinary practices coming into our home is essential to understanding the rise of a diverse diet in American society. We see things out there, they look good, and we want them. Most people, including low-wage workers, have or find the means to get them.

Many books, careers and lives have been based on food in society. We are an individualized rather than generalized culture with regard to food acquisition, preparation and consumption. To a large extent, the rise of the modern mega grocery store has shaped our eating habits in ways no one would have expected. Much ink has been spilled about that and I’m less interested in regurgitating my slice of it.

What I do know is local food farmers work hard for the sparse income they garner. All farmers do. The local food movement of which they are a part is based on the hope more people will bring locally produced, raw ingredients produced in a sustainable manner into their kitchens, ice boxes and pantries. Enough people do for a small group of farmers to make a living.

In many ways the increased interest in local food is the same type of behavior that took place in our home in the 1960s. We experience surprise when our CSA share includes Broccoli Raab, Koji or Bok Choy. We learn how to eat and cook them and want more. It’s not that our home nourishment plan is boring. We want and enjoy the experience of creation as it relates to cooking and eating. We want that experience to be personal and shared with family. That is very American.

I concede promotion of local food is a form of consumerism no different from a tomato catsup purveyor who spends dollars on an advertising campaign to enhance sales. The same behavioral forces are at work. I’m okay with that.

Just so you know, I’m not bewitched by the allure of eating a kale salad, at least not yet. Suffice it to say the diversity and behavior regarding food in our household with its kitchen garden, farm sourcing and grocery shopping has some unique qualities that may not be of interest to the authors of the Michelin Guide, but make our lives a little better. That too is very American. That’s part of who I am, who we Americans all are.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Green Washing and a Local Food System

Spring Onions

Wind came up yesterday and would not relent.

I planted onions and cilantro in the garden, transplanted some seedlings to larger pots, but that’s about it. The septic tank service arrived and pumped our solids tank while I trimmed the lilac sprouts from the space in front of our house.

Constant wind beating against me took its toll.

The first of five spring shares was ready yesterday afternoon from our CSA: Bok Choy, Koji and Broccoli Raab.

Both CSAs where I work are running behind due to weird spring weather. Carmen Black’s newsletter summed up where we are nicely:

First of all I want to thank all of you for your patience and understanding in starting a week later than planned! As I’m sure all of you can guess this weather has been very difficult to deal with on the farm. Two weeks ago it snowed, and today it’s eighty degrees! In addition to the swings in temperature its been the driest April on record, which means that everything we’ve finally been able to plant has needed to be watered immediately. Through all of this weather stress I’ve been very grateful to know that you all are so supportive of this farm, and will understand the challenges we’re facing in organically growing local veggies this spring.

First Seasonal Salad

Dinner was a salad to go along with pasta last night. Three kinds of greens and this year’s spring onions along with odds and ends of cold storage vegetables. It’s why we invest our time and resources in a food ecology.

The words “local food” mean less today than they did, and not what we thought they meant. I discuss local food with farmers and gardeners and I’ve heard the usage it is a form of green washing. Is “local food” a form of green washing? Maybe.

I know the produce harvested in our back yard is local food. With each passing season I see less significance. We want food we serve at home to be fresh, tasty and pleasurable. When we take a dish to a potluck, using garden produce gives a personal touch to a classic casserole. A kitchen garden like ours serves those things well.

“Local government can make policy that makes it easier to grow and consume #LocalFood,” Johnson County Supervisor Kurt Michael Friese posted on twitter.

If anyone is familiar with the local food system, Friese, a long-time restaurateur and food writer is. He is well positioned to make and implement policy that supports local food. But what exactly is that?

Breakfast Quesadilla with Homemade Salsa

Early on, local food referred to how and where food was sourced. There was talk about mitigating “food miles.” As I explained in a 2013 post, “Food distribution and related costs are a social construct that makes transportation seem inexpensive, or irrelevant to what we find in grocery store aisles.”

Where advocates of local food may have gone wrong is using the idea of food miles as a place holder for complex, flawed arguments. Costs are costs, and a producer has to recover his or her financial production costs when the consumer buys an item. Using any complex argument, including food miles, as a place holder seems a diversion. Such talk belongs more appropriately in a sales and marketing context as a form of puffery.

Read my entire set of arguments here.

The better framing for “local food” is to know the face of the farmer. Two years ago I wrote at length about what it means to know your farmer and practices they use. Here is the salient point related to green washing:

Driven in part by mass media, consumers are concerned about a wide range of food issues that include contamination with harmful bacteria; dietary concern about consumption of carbohydrates, fat and sugar; the way in which plant genetics are modified to improve them; and more. Partly in response to media campaigns, annual sales of organic food exceed $30 billion in the U.S. (USDA). The increase in organic market share from national advertising campaigns is significant. If you get to know your local food farmer, what you may find is they benefit from this marketing, but their customers come and stay with them because of a personal relationship with the farmer.

Local food is not exactly green washing, which is defined as “disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image.” However, there is a lot of conflicting and sometimes contradictory information related to food. Plant genetics alone set off a firestorm of media and organizational controversy and spawned a new food labeling process under the aegis of the Non-GMO Project. Simply said, it’s complicated.

If a definition of “local food” is elusive, how our county defined a local food system may be as good as it gets:

In Johnson County we see the need to localize our food system – and we are working to create a healthy, intact system that lessens resource inputs, promotes worker’s rights and preserves the natural environment.

Yesterday’s wind blew a single-use plastic bag into our Ash tree where it got stuck and is flailing in the wind. Part of me is tempted to leave it there as a symbol of all that is wrong with our society. Then again, if I want it fixed, I’d better do something about it. So it is with the local food system.

Full Moon Setting Behind Clouds

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Back to the Garden

Spinach Seedlings

No food is more local than a kitchen garden. I’ve got to get moving on mine after a late spring.

Everyone was in a good mood at the farms when I soil blocked Friday and Sunday. My farmer friends caught up last week by finishing onion and potato planting. Trays of seedlings are moving to wagons and then into the ground, thus clearing the greenhouse for what will be June and July crops. I started zucchini and cucumbers Sunday in the greenhouse.

The first spring share is today and in honor of it I’m composting my over-wintered lettuce.

A neighbor and I had a conversation about spinach and how it grows. She is changing her garden around as last year the zucchini they love developed powdery mildew. Her tactic is to plant the whole garden in corn to give the soil a break and let the fungus dissipate. Here’s hoping that works.

As for me, Monday is mine to do what I want. This week that will include getting our septic tank pumped, writing off line, gardening and yard care. It’s time to put winter behind us.

Categories
Writing

A Sense of Place

Moon Setting

Hearing the laughter of children; seeing wildlife in the backyard; digging dirt turned to soil by one’s hands; feeling a breeze, getting frostbite, dancing in the rain, watering a garden with our own sweat.

They make a place if we are lucky enough to understand.

Among the lakes, creeks, forests, farms, cemeteries and subdivisions there is something. Something imperceptible but there.

To know it is a sense of place. It is not natural but has its rewards.

Hearing the laughter of children; seeing wildlife in the backyard; digging dirt turned to soil by one’s hands; feeling a breeze, getting frostbite, dancing in the rain, watering a garden with our own sweat.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

There is a Family Dairy Farm Crisis

Cattle

Things are bad when the coop sends the suicide hotline number with the milk payment.

Milk prices are currently about $15 per hundred weight while cost of production at family farms is more than $22 per hundred weight. Like so many segments of agriculture, consolidation is driving down costs and small farmers are going out of business.

The National Family Farm Coalition believes the federal government should do something about it and has written a letter to congress and the USDA.

“The nation’s dairy farmers are again in dire straits, just like we were in the 1980s,” Jim Goodman, Wisconsin dairy farmer and board president of National Family Farm Coalition said in a press release. “Proposed safety nets are totally inadequate and without real long-term market reform, dairy farmers will continue to lose their farms. Consumers who care where their milk comes from and policymakers claiming to care about rural America must support these steps to ensure farmers a fair price. Without immediate government action, the days of the small dairy farm are numbered.”

A key component of government action would be to establish a floor for milk pricing at $20 per hundred weight which would provide immediate relief for farmers in debt and unable to pay bills.

“Dairy farmers today are facing no money, no hope, no way to plant spring crops or pay last year’s debts,” Pennsylvania dairy farmer Brenda Cochran, said in the press release. “Nothing will stop the financial hemorrhage we are facing except a better farm milk price.”

Dairy farmers are coming full circle, sort of.

In 1933, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Among other things, the AAA was designed to boost agricultural prices (including milk) by reducing excess production.

“Farm programs in America were originally created as a way to shrink the great mountain of grain, and for many years they helped to do just that,” Michael Pollan wrote. “The Roosevelt administration established the nation’s first program of farm support during the Depression, though not, as many people seem to think, to feed a hungry nation…. but to help farmers reeling from a farm depression caused by … collapsing prices due to overproduction.”

Fast forward to President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, in the 1970s. Facing political pressure due to high food prices, Nixon ordered Butz to do whatever was necessary to drive down the price of food.

“Butz implored America’s farmers to plant their fields ‘fence row to fence row,’” Pollan said, “and set about dismantling 40 years of farm policy designed to prevent overproduction.”

Food prices have not been high enough to engage consumers ever since. That brings us to today’s dairy crisis.

“I have a hard time imagining how we can conserve farmers without some kind of production controls to curb the overproduction that causes the ag markets to crash,” dairy farmer Francis Thicke wrote on the Practical Farmers of Iowa list serve. “Are American farmers even open to considering production controls?”

The National Family Farm Coalition believes they must be and outlined aspects of a government program to ease oversupply:

  • Setting an immediate floor price of $20/cwt for milk used to manufacture dairy products;
  • Establishing a milk product purchasing initiative by utilizing U.S. Department of Agriculture’s authority under 7 USCS Section 612c, commonly referred to as Section 32 surplus removal;
  • Placing an immediate moratorium on Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) funding and direct and guaranteed loans for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs);
  • Holding hearings on the milk pricing formula and the dairy crisis;
  • Implementing a supply management program as outlined in the proposed Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act of 2011 to stabilize milk production.

It’s clear from watching the Republican controlled federal government that small dairy farmers are on their own. It’s hard for consumers to react when the price of cheese and other dairy products is down and milk sells for less than $2 per gallon. In this scenario, something’s got to give. Unless the federal government steps in with production controls it will be family dairy farmers.

Categories
Environment Writing

Earth Day Weekend 2018

Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968

Earth Day is and will always be about this photo taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts on the first manned mission to the moon.

“The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth,” command module pilot Jim Lovell said from lunar orbit.

With a perspective six inches from our noses, we often forget who we are and how we fit into the vast reaches of the universe. We are a speck in a place larger than we can imagine.

When I participated in the first Earth Day as a senior in high school, the idea we should work together for peace, reduce pollution, and care for the environment seemed obvious. Even much reviled President Richard Nixon got it — society had to do something to address clean air, clean water and endangered species.

Earth Day is a chance to revisit this iconic photograph. When we consider a broader perspective, as the photograph encourages us to do, little has changed on Earth since it was taken. Our troubles seem petty compared to the overriding fact Earth is our only home. We are all in this together.

As much as societies seek to delineate metes and bounds, there are no borders on the globe. There is only one society of which we are all a part.

This Earth Day I’ll be working at home in my garden. A late spring created pent up demand for outdoors work. For the last four weeks, one excuse after another delayed needed work, yet now I’m ready to release the floodgates.

Not before I consider this photo one more time.

Categories
Environment Living in Society

Letter to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors

Woman Writing Letter

Dear Lisa, Mike, Kurt, Janelle and Rod,

It’s funny how when one gets all the information the picture looks different.

Since I complained about the purchase of Dick Schwab and Katherine Burford’s property using conservation bond money after partial information was leaked via our local newspaper, I wanted to get back to you now that the purchase has been made public.

The fact Burford/Schwab donated the developed portion of the property mitigates my concern about how bond money is being used. In fact, because of that, the plan, as explained in the Press Citizen, complies with what I said in my March 7 email. “I hope and expect you to vote no on the acquisition of this property using conservation bond money.” My concerns are rendered moot because of the donation.

On reflection, this decision was a good one for which the board should be commended. It is also consistent with conversations I have had with Schwab about how he planned to dispose of his property.

While I continue to be dissatisfied by the partial leakage of information, I have no beef with you.

Thanks for your service on the board of supervisors.

Regards, Paul