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Too tough a row to hoe
Bundles of challenges make this intern conclude farming takes lots more than she wants to bargain for.By Hannah Daugherty
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It is no secret that farming is hard work, even for veterans of the soil. I’m learning that problem-solving on a farm demands many more skills than I realized. So I can’t really fathom the struggle I would go through if you ordered me to start an organic farm with five acres, $10,000, internet access and a fellow English major for a partner. I can see that farming is a huge undertaking, and I simply don’t possess the skills or knowledge to pull it off. Interested as I may be in the concept of organic farming and feeding people, the scope of work that would be required by such a mammoth task would be too daunting. I would certainly want to make use of the Rodale Institute’s Organic Transition Course. Even though it is geared toward farmers who already understand planting, harvest, machinery, livestock and commodity marketing, there’s plenty in there for the neophyte non-farmer. While I would not have to switch my mindset from conventional to organic farming practices, I would have to make a transition from student life in the academic world to that of a farmer facing complex decisions that determined income. So before I could make such a move, I would have to learn the basics of the farming life. This would demand extensive research and a lot of time with patient farmer/mentors to become acquainted with how they have coped with the everyday demands of my new profession. I would need to learn everything from scratch, from when to plant crops to figuring out a crop rotation to what equipment I would need to buy. I would have to educate myself about what I could sell and its market to determine how much I stood to gain or lose in order to make, and meet, realistic goals. Above all, I would have to train myself to become a keen observer of the right things at the right times. Only after I had done substantial homework could I hope to complete the Organic Transition Course and gain the knowledge needed to make my land a successful organic farm. One of the most challenging parts of the course would be the section on becoming certified. The whole certification process is foreign to me. It requires a farmer to complete a detailed form about each aspect of their farming operation for a certifier. For someone who had never even had to wait for a corn crop to mature, working three years through the steps of organic transition to sell my products as organic seems like a long time. I’d need to learn how to stay informed about changes to organic regulations, too, but I suppose conventional farmers have changes in their crops and markets they need to keep informed on, as well. I have spent a good deal of time lately looking at the Organic Transition Course and reading about the attention an organic farm requires. It seems to me that the hardest thing would be making time for it all without letting critical details slip through the cracks. If I just had to tend some crops and sell them, I think I would be all right. However, the addition of soil monitoring, implementing integrated pest management strategies, keeping livestock living conditions up to par and making a business plan, among many other tasks, would be daunting, maybe even overwhelming. Farmers who make it must be amazing people. I think that it would really just take a tremendous amount of time before I could complete this challenge. There would be trials and errors and a long phase of me settling into a routine and getting organized. There is really no substitute for experience. I could read about farming until my eyes bled, but it would no doubt help me and my fellow English major more to get out into the fields and start doing. Studying is all very well but it can only take you so far. The rest you have to figure out for yourself, on your land, asking new questions when new thing come up. My guess is that even if I worked hard and most things went as well as could be expected, it would be several years of failures before my small organic farm saw any success. There’s a real gap between writing about farming for a summer and even thinking I could do it profitably. One thing is for sure—the next time I have the opportunity to choose “organic,” I will know what is involved, from the perspective of my own health, that of the environment, and, most especially, with more knowledge and appreciation for the effort involved. |
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The point is...
Farming is not something you can learn in a classroom or from books. It is something you need to experience and do. It is a way of living and thinking, timing your life to the cycles of the earth. Some of the tasks she talks about, like business plans, can be done in the winter, others just become a part of the cycle of life, but they are not seperated.
Implementing your integrated pest management plan is just a part of tending your crops, not something you designate specific time for. Monday, Wendsday, Friday 1:30-2:45 - IPM. Instead it is started in the winter when you plan what and wher eto plant, in the spring with timing and covering of plantings, through the summer with hygine and soutingm and into the fall as you clean up your fields. Most "tasks" of farming are like this, just part of the cycle of the seasons.
But she is right in that you need to go through a few seasons to get the feel for what is happening, what should be happening, and what that means. A good internship where your hands get dirty will help but farming is so much more then farming you really just have to do it. And intern at a farm where they embrace the technologogies avilable to small growers, those technologies mean true sustainability. I would think 5 acres would be a lot to start with. Start with a one acre garden or less, and plan to start with a job.
The "J.O.B." word is hard to say, but wow does it make life easier when all your cucmbers die of powdery mildew, your tomatoes get late blight, or a late frost kills those carefully started and just transplanted peppers! At least you can pay the bills. In a couple years when you get past the learning stage you can start to count on the farm more for 100%, but the beginning... Well if you know next to nothing, start at the beginning.
Also, I would suggest considering if you need organic certification at first. When your customer base is small,and you know them, inviting them onto your farm and creating relationships with them will mean as much as any certification. Later when those 5 acres are going full blast, then that peice of paper means much more....
My other question would be, why are you an English major if you want to farm? If your passion is farming you will know it, and the doubts and questions will fade away, the hardships become less hard, and the rewards outweigh everything...
Tough row
I can appreciate the honesty of the writer,that there is alot of work to any farming endevor,easy will never be associated with farming,either natural or chemical.
I believe (from over 40 years experience in both types of farming) that the natural way is best,if you choose to trust Monsanto and the USDA then go for it but remember to keep that GMO/Roundup trash out of my air and water as well as my genetic material,many seem to forget that these companies have produced and spread planetwide some of the most dangerous substances ever created,agent orange and roundup are nearly identical substances in their effects and europe has lost the watertable in places to roundup and dioxins were so safe we could eat them,remember?.
I agree we must use all the "best" farming methods available and that a mix of things will work,old and new, what troubles me is the fixation on the "new" and the tendency to scrap the old as though the new was always better,it just aint so,older methods are time proven,many new ones reguire expensive and dangerous "imputs" like GMO's require roundup and other such things to produce a crop. I will not for instance give up my old Furguson for a mule,and I will from time to time buy a bag of triple 19 to sidedress some corn but some things that farmers are being conned into using these days are just wastes of money and worse,I raise the most of what I eat,and I do it naturally,but like I said some things that are perhaps unnatural are not nessessarily bad,even as there are perhaps a few natural things that are harmful,one must study them out to find the best.
There are improvements to be had for farming and having farmed for many years and worked as a small farmers advocate for several groups on farming issues I am convinced that the old ways are not failing to perform, they are being eliminated by the large corporations who will profit by their demise,again I point to monsanto,and we can not forget their willing accomplices in the USDA and the state ag collages and depts of ag,many of these groups together have been openly hostile to traditional farming,I have been in meetings where they dismiss natural farmers as outdated but when confronted one quickly sees its all about building the market for these corporations sales ,thats not what farming is or should be about.
My point is simple;go with what works but dont be too trusting when govt and industry try to sell you a pig in a poke,chances are whats in the bag will hurt you and others,thanks.
The Hard, 1930's Way or New Tech?
Here we go again, another altruistic young American trying to save the world, or at least her's by going to the past and trying to duplicate and revive it! We don't need 1930's farming revived in the 21 Century goddamn it! You have to go to the most recent innovations in the field of endeavor and extrapolate upwards with innovations and adaptations of the newest, latest technologies available - this is the study part, done by one group of people or at one time. The ideas gleaned from the best knowledge and newest technology has to be put together in practical and economically sensible fashion, the other group, with much cross-communication does this. You need composting, solar everything, aquaculture, GMO's at your service, plastics, new super-insulations, antibiotics for your livestock, electric controls, geothermal heating, microwave cookers, windmills using the latest super-magnets and solid state controllers, gas rototillers, straw bale insulation, ground water cooled solar and wind powered refrigeration- that works reliably and for free. LED lighting running from super-rechargeable Lithium batteries, the latest fertilizers, uber-composting, indoor composting toilets, methane gas generators from livestock manures. You need a group effort and a comunal lifestyle, all this cannot be done alone! Look to Isreal's methods, look at how Indians survive, use cell phones, use computers but try to develop off-grid where practical! Use every possible way to develop your five acres into independance, the oil crunch is coming and many hungry people will need your blueprint to the future of America.
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