Face of Farming: Owen Maguire -- Rodale Institute

I could see the Empire State Building from my bedroom growing up, but I really didn't like the environment. I was searching for ways to leave the city and thought conservation or forestry would get me out. I wound up going to Delaware Valley College and entering the agronomy program. As graduation came closer, the only conservation jobs were through the government and they weren’t hiring so I ended up farming.

I was never really interested in mainstream farming. Not that I really knew what that was, but I knew I didn’t want to do chemicals or thousands of acres. The thing was mainstream ag jobs were the ones that put money on the table and I really did want to learn how to "farm-farm."

So I got a job at a dairy farm where it was just me and one other guy. I milked and did the field work for about a year to get practical experience. I actually enjoyed it, but I figured if I was going to work 100-hour weeks, I wanted to do it for myself and not for someone else.

My wife and I started planning to get our own place. We landed a rental property that had been a small, older farm. I had a degree in agronomy and my wife had a degree in horticulture, but neither of us had ever put actual food on the table. So we planted a big garden and learned how to grow and can and freeze. We expanded from there figuring it out as we went along. We had chickens, goats, lamb, rabbits, ducks, and pigs. And we learned how to put food on the table.

In 1983 I was hired at the Rodale Institute. I wasn’t the world’s most experienced organic grower at the time, but it made sense to me. When I was in college, one of my professors had farmed in Europe before the war. This professor taught us about green manures and crop rotations. I had farmer friends who went to other colleges and were basically given the agronomy guide to memorize and it was all chemicals. I was lucky. What I did learn in college was a lot more applicable to where I wound up.

What was the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a farmer and what was the key to overcoming that challenge?

Ever year is a different thing. It is just what farming is. Farming itself is a challenge, but it keeps it interesting. It’s not cookie cutter.  Farming as a general rule makes you think. Organic farming makes you think years in advance. You can’t just wake up one morning and say “I’m going to plant corn in this field.” You have to plan it at least a year in advance. Piecing together crop rotations and seeing how it all fits together is actually fun.

As far as organic growing, my challenge is the same as any other organic farmer—weed pressure. And I can hardly say I’ve overcome it! We’ve learned a lot over the years. The equipment has gotten a lot better and more mainstream. When I started we were using equipment from the ‘30s and ‘40s trying to fix it up and do a decent job. That was challenging. There was very little equipment out there specific to farming organically.

What do you think is the most important thing for consumers to understand about where their food comes from?

The key to the whole organic thing for me is not something you can see by looking at a product on the shelf. And it is not that organic food tastes better or is inherently more “nutritious.” All these things are so dependent on place, timing, variety and how far something has been shipped. There have been some studies on residues on food, but it really isn’t a strong enough argument yet. To be honest, really, I don’t need those studies.

The part about organics that is really important is the stewardship of the land--that we’re not putting chemicals on our soil and into our drinking water.

Tillage is a bad word right now in ag. In organics, we have to do tillage, so in some circles we’re the “bad guys.” The problem with conventional no-till is they apply manure on the top of the fields, but don’t till. When it rains, where does that manure go? And then as substitute for tillage, the conventional community uses herbicides. Where do the herbicides go? The manure and the herbicides are going into the groundwater.

Consumer should understand where many of our agricultural chemicals came from. That warfare chemicals were repurposed for farm-use once the war was over. I can only imagine what the original salesmen told farmers when they were hawking the stockpiled chemicals of war. That they would only have to use the herbicides for a couple of years. Eighty years later they’re still spraying and now there are resistant weeds. Besides, the idea that we can completely get rid of weeds is ridiculous. I know I have weeds on the farm, but there will always be weeds on farms.

What is your opinion on organic versus local?

Well, I do like to support local growers. When you’re buying local, you’re supporting your neighbors. It would be great if there were an organic guy down the road. But if not, you can still open the door with growers about organic while you’re making your local purchases. You can have a real conversation about it—not a condemning conversation. Ask, “What about going organic?” Let them know you’d be willing to pay more for meat or milk or produce raised without the chemicals and hormones.

I’ve had those conversations, and it’s not unusual the first time or two to get the proverbial door slammed in your face. But down the road, they just might come to you and ask about the whole organic bit and what it takes to go that way. Even if they don’t go 100% organic, maybe they will start doing a couple of things to make their farm more earth-friendly.

Can organic feed the world?

We’ve shown here over the years you can produce just as well organically as you can conventionally. You might not get the record-breaker yield, but we had 200 bushel corn and that’s nothing to sneeze at and our soils here aren’t the best.

And there are certainly organic growers working thousands of acres. The thing with organics is to make it work you have to want it to work. If farmers are forced to go organic, it’s not going to work. Anybody forced to do something is going to resist. If someone shoves a crop rotation on you, it’s not going to work because your interest isn’t there.

The developing world is more complex. A lot of what goes on with aid programs is they typically send over the latest hybrid corn and the latest fertilizer and it doesn’t work. Those communities have a history of feeding themselves. These “phoney farming” techniques displace their traditional place-based farming. We should be finding what works so they can feed themselves and then worry about farming for export later.

What tool couldn’t you live without?

My front-end loader. There is hardly a day that I don’t use the front-end loader for something here. We move a lot of material. Every time I take it off, I have to put it back on. I think everyone should be given a front-end loader and a case of diapers when they’re born.