Hearty Roots Community Farm « Hudson Valley Mercantile

by Lindsey Lusher Shute

Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted from Lindsey Lusher Shute’s talk, “Building a Future with Farmers,” that she gave on February 16, 2013, at the TEDxManhattan conference, “Changing the Way We Eat,” which examined how we think about food. Lindsey and her husband Benjamin own Hearty Roots, a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm here in the Hudson Valley. They personify the new generation of young farmers – highly-educated, innovative, vocal and actively involved in and passionate about the development of local food systems and the future of sustainable food production. They represent our best hope for the future of farming and our nation, for as the popular saying goes, “no farms, no food.”

My great-grandfather, Henry Clerkus Sheets, was the last farmer in our family. He farmed in the foothills of Southeast Ohio and produced dairy, salt pork, and tobacco. Henry worked hard and earned enough to own land, eat well and get three of his kids (my grandmother included) to college. Those kids became a teacher, a principal, a welder and a gas station owner. None of them stayed on the farm.

The path my great grandfather was likely proud to put his children on is the same one that 99% of us find ourselves on today. For generations, farm families have been sending their kids away from the land–and all for good reasons: a dairy crisis; discriminatory federal policies that left families of color without a safety net; consolidation and vertical integration; skyrocketing land prices and plummeting incomes. Life has been difficult for many farm families and opportunities outside of the farm sector have grown.

That’s why today there are 28 million fewer farmers than there were in 1920, when my great-grandfather was farming, and that’s in a country with 200 million more people. And because a least two generations of young people left the farm, farmers over 65 now outnumber farmers under 35 by a margin of 6 to 1. As a 34-year-old farmer, I and my husband Ben, along with thousands of young people across this country, are bucking the trend by starting a new farm operation. These young farmers and ranchers represent an incredible opportunity for food, agriculture and rural America.

They are cultivating their crops by hand and with tractors that haven’t seen the outside of a barn in 50 years; they are putting cows and sheep and goats and chickens back on grass where they belong; they are creating jobs and opportunity in places that haven’t seen new industry in decades. They are demonstrating, as did generations before them, the more a farmer is able to care for the land, the more the land gives back. Not just to the farmer, but to everyone.

At our farm, Hearty Roots Community Farm, we grow 25 acres of vegetables and produce eggs for the members of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that feeds 900 households in the Hudson Valley and New York City. Our 25 acres is bringing in gross revenue of $425,000 per year, which is being spent mainly on creating jobs in our community. We employ nine other young people—some seasonal and some year round—who in turn spend their paychecks at stores in our town. Many of our supplies are purchased locally or regionally, and our contractors live down the road. The percent of our budget spent on fossil fuels is very small.

Compare that to commodity corn, which is what was being grown on our land before we transitioned it to vegetables. Twenty-five acres of corn produces about $25,000 in revenue; half of that is spent on inputs like fuel and GMO seed and machinery, and only about $750 goes to labor. That means our farm would need to grow over 5,000 acres of corn to produce the same number of jobs we offer producing 25 acres of vegetables. That is half the size of our town.

The more growers we have caring for smaller parcels and maximizing the land’s potential, the more benefits our town will experience. As I said before: The more a farmer is able to care for the land, the more the land gives back.

The challenge is putting more young people, more farmers in the position to do just that. What would our rural communities look like if we had 1 million more farms like Hearty Roots, like the Salad Garden of Missouri, the West Georgia Cooperative, Three Springs Farm in Oklahoma, Kilpatrick Farm of New York, Bucio Farm of California or Sauvie Island Organics outside of Portland? Just think of the social, economic and health benefits for the nation.

But a million new farms like these aren’t going to just come along. It’s not 1920 when Grandpa Henry was farming. Land is crazy expensive (it took us 10 years to find a permanent home for our farm). Banks forgot how to loan to us, and there is now something called a student loan that zaps hundreds of dollars from a bank account each month (for decades), supply chains are in shambles, research on new organic systems is behind the curve, and Federal Policy is largely written to perpetuate what we already have.

In 2010, I co-founded the National Young Farmers Coalition. We are a team of farmers and consumers that want at least a million new farms in this country, and know that big change is necessary to make that possible. We are working to create land agreements, policies and local networks that will create a permanent home for independent, diversified, family-scale farms in the United States.

In our national survey of 1,000 young and beginning farmers, we found that capital was the number one challenge to starting a farm. Of course banks and investors need to be engaged to help solve this challenge, but history teaches us that getting capital to farmers can’t be left to private interests. It is much too important for the nation’s security. That’s why the federal government makes low interest loans to farmers through the Farm Service Agency – and Republican President Theodore Roosevelt helped to start the cooperative Farm Credit system in 1908.

These institutions can do a lot more for young and beginning farmers. We were very proud to have worked with the Farm Service Agency to revise their rules to allow new farmer training programs, such as apprenticeships, to be considered as experience that would qualify them for a loan. And we helped the agency launch a new micro-lending program. But there is so much more that needs to happen.

Right now, Congress only allows the Farm Service Agency to loan a farmer $300,000 to buy a farm, when that amount of money can hardly buy a house in most regions. Also, they have no permanent funding from the Farm Bill. So each year they are at the mercy of the Appropriations Committee, and farmers are left to wait for months on loan decisions.

We need to give this agency more money and more stability, so that farmers can use it like a bank. If you want to go out and buy a house, you get pre-approved from a mortgage lender, then make an offer. If you want to buy a farm with help from the Farm Service Agency, you find the farm, hope that it’s under $300,000, and then beg the owner to slog through many months of bureaucracy while you both wait and hope that money will be available. This is no way to buy a farm, and no way for our most important farm lender to operate when 70% of all farm land is going to change hands in the next 20 years. They are more important than ever before.

And speaking of land, it is the second biggest challenge to getting started farming. Land is selling at prices that are many times what a working farmer can possibly afford. Just like you all have affordable housing in this town, we need to work with the land trust community to create affordable farms in ours. And out in the Midwest, we need to trade the subsidies that grow mega farms for incentives to sell or rent ground to beginners.

But the National Young Farmers Coalition is not waiting on Congress. We are rebuilding local support networks of farmers on the ground. We have local chapters made up of farmers that are helping each other overcome day-to-day obstacles. Our Hudson Valley chapter gathers together to share meals, put plastic on hoop houses, and uses their combined purchasing power to get a better price on animal feed.

We are getting a lot done, but we can’t do it alone. Even if every farmer in the United States stood with us, we would only represent less than half of one percent of the population.

I said before that we’re working in the same structural environment that led to the downfall of so many farms, but I didn’t point out the big difference between now and 20 years ago: you. You as consumers that buy our food. You as consumers that care deeply about the future of American agriculture. You as consumers that might still remember a family farm, even if you didn’t grow up on one. If we’re going to create a new path of opportunity for American farmers—one that helps them care for the land and helps us all experience the benefits that an independent farm can bring—then we need your help.

You can help us rebuild American agriculture by helping everyone buy locally-grown food, encouraging your kids to farm, helping transition farmland to a new generation, and joining with us to tell Congress that if we invest in new farmers, the entire nation will win.

I hope you will join us.

To learn more, visit http://tedxmanhattan.org; http://www.heartyroots.com; http://www.youngfarmers.org

Tags: Community Supported Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, farmers, Hearty Roots Community Farm, Hudson Valley, Lindsey Lusher Shute, local food systems, locally grown, National Young Farmers Coalition, sustainable, TEDxManhattan
Posted in Food | No Comments »

by Brian PJ Cronin, photographs by Kristen Cronin

It’s a raw late November morning, the kind where the wind whips through your clothes and seeps into your bones. We’re walking through an open field in Wappingers Falls, toward what looks like a small hangar; about 100 feet long by 14 feet high with translucent sides that billow in the wind like the sails of tall ships.

Stepping inside is like stepping back in time six weeks. It’s about 20 degrees warmer and the air is heavy with the sweet, loamy smells of growth. The ground is shot with brilliant greens and reds all the way to the back of the structure. There’s a crop plan hanging on a clipboard by the door, but Tim Heuer doesn’t need to look at it anymore as his fingers dance through the air.

Farmer Tim in the high tunnel

“Swiss chard, carrots in the middle, turnips on the end, then spinach, two different varieties, then arugula, then lettuce for salad. Two different kinds of mustard greens, that’s giant red mustard and the wispy stuff is ruby streaked mustard, then komatsuna, then purple mizuna, then regular early mizuna. In the middle of that is tatsoi and red Russian kale and the second to last bed is all spinach.” His fingers have guided us back around to the last bed, which looks like it contains greater variety than most supermarkets’ entire produce sections. “The last bed is a hodgepodge.”

Tim works for Common Ground Farm, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project in southern Dutchess County, where I’m finishing up a two year term serving on the board. We’re standing in the farm’s new high tunnel, an unheated greenhouse that captures energy from the sun in order to extend the growing season. Anything growing outside the walls of the high tunnel right now is stunted, withered and spent. Inside, things are still growing fast. Maybe too fast. “I’ve actually been trying to slow things down in here the past few weeks,” Tim says. The temperature can be manipulated via louvered aluminum vents on either end; the sides of the tunnel can also roll up a few feet and be tied off to the metal framework to let in low lying breezes.

The CSA season is over now but thanks to the high tunnel, Tim is still growing, still taking fresh local produce to the Beacon Farmers Market every Sunday. He figures he can keep things going until mid-January, then come back to the high tunnel in early April and start tomatoes for next season’s CSA shares. “I could actually turn it right around in January and start growing again, but that would mean I don’t get a break all year,” he says, carefully navigating through the jam packed rows of greens underfoot.

In 2011, for its first full season in use, the tunnel will help to supplement the shares of Common Ground Farm’s members and offer extended shares next fall and winter. But visitors to the farm, which consists of nine acres leased from the Stonykill Environmental Education Center, can be forgiven for not knowing about the tunnel. That’s because the tunnel isn’t on the farm.

Last winter, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a program to award grants to farms seeking to build high tunnels as part of a three year program to determine their effectiveness in conserving water, reducing the use of pesticides, maintaining vital soil nutrients, increasing crop yields and extending the growing season. Representatives from the Cornell Cooperative Extension urged Tim to apply for the grant, which would pay for half of the costs of the tunnel. The problem was that there was nowhere to put it. The nine acre plot the farm leases from Stonykill was completely full.

In stepped Alex Reese, a friend of the farm who owns land just up the road from Stonykill. Alex offered a three year lease on an acre of his land for a dollar, and donated the rest of the cost of the tunnel himself. Now that the tunnel is up, Alex and his wife Allison often stop by to give Tim a hand.

thinning.

If Alex hadn’t offered the land, Tim would not have been able to even apply for the grant, much less build the tunnel. When a farmer doesn’t own their own land, it severely limits them in what they can grow, how they can grow it, and how they can expand. It also makes it very difficult to take advantage of opportunities, like the high tunnel grant, which come their way, as well as plan more than a few years down the road.

These problems are nothing new for Benjamin Shute, who runs Hearty Roots Community Farm. Hearty Roots, which is located in Upper Red Hook, has grown into a robust model CSA, growing more than 600 shares for people in the Hudson Valley and New York City while still selling to local restaurants and farmers markets and growing a thousand pounds of produce a week for food pantries in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. On a 25 acre plot of land, Benjamin and his staff are feeding thousands of people every year.

It wasn’t always this way. It began in 2002 with an acre of land leased on a handshake from an elderly couple running a dairy farm in the area. From that acre, Hearty Roots expanded slowly but surely, learning along the way, until they got to where they are now. But when the couple passed away two years ago, their multi-generational farm was sold and another piece of prime Hudson Valley farm land was lost. Hearty Roots couldn’t even consider putting in an offer on the land; at a price tag in the millions it was way beyond their reach.

Right now, Hearty Roots is leasing 25 acres of the 500 acre Greig Farm. They’ve been able to hold steady at their current scale, but they keep running into the same problems as all farmers who don’t own their land. They haven’t been able to invest in long term infrastructure upgrades like underground irrigation lines and bigger walk-in coolers, because those upgrades would be left behind if they ever had to leave. It takes years to truly know a piece of land, to know where it floods when it rains and where it dries out in a drought, to know which parts are best suited for which crops, to know where the sun breaks over the hills in the summer and where the wind blasts through in the fall. Years of hard won knowledge of the landscape will be lost if they have to move.

All the while they make sure they are growing in a sustainable manner using organic practices, in order to preserve the fertility of the land. Of the 25 acres they lease, only 17 or so acres are being sown. The rest are lying fallow, recovering nutrients and waiting their turn in the rotation plan, even if Hearty Roots won’t still be on the land when it’s recovered. Tim made a similar decision this past summer at Stonykill. After a year and a half of farming the Common Ground Farm plot, he concluded that the land had been planted too aggressively in the past. Next year, more fallow land will be worked into the rotation, even though it means he’ll be growing less food and the farm’s budget will have to shrink accordingly.

It’s a hard choice to make, considering that the demand for local, sustainably raised food continues to grow. Benjamin laughs when I ask him how much land he thinks it would take to meet the demand he sees every day. “I don’t think we’d ever be able to meet the demand,” he says. Still, there’s no doubt that he could be feeding a lot more residents with permanent access to more farm land. He works with groups like Scenic Hudson, the Dutchess Land Conservancy and the Winnakee Land Trust, as well as the town of Red Hook, to preserve the area’s historic farmland. But preservation is only half the battle; the preserved land then has to be made affordable to small scale farmers who will grow in a sustainable manner. And that’s the nut that no one in the Hudson Valley has been able to crack yet, at least not in a manner that can be replicated throughout the Valley and beyond.

There is much work to be done, but it’s incredibly encouraging and humbling to know that there are people like Benjamin and his staff, like Alex and Allison, like Tim. People who are serving as stewards of the land, maximizing not only its agricultural potential, but also its benefit to our local communities and local economies while making sure the land will remain healthy and fertile for generations to come. It makes one optimistic about the possibility of more Hudson Valley residents doing what they can to preserve our local foodshed for the next generation and make sure it’s entrusted to the right people. Underneath all of the laws, tax codes, and vagaries of the real estate market, at the center of it all is people. And people need to eat.

Brian PJ and Kristen Cronin live in Beacon with their four cats and a baby on the way. Check out their blog A Rotisserie Chicken and 12 Padded Envelopes on this site, and view more of their photos at www.flickr.com/teammoonshine.

Tags: Benjamin Shute, Common Ground Farm, Cronin, CSA, Dutchess Land Conservancy, farmland, foodshed, Greig Farm, Hearty Roots Community Farm, Hudson Valley, Stonykill, sustainable, Tim Heuer, Upper Red Hook, Wappingers Falls, Winnakee Land Trust
Posted in Food | No Comments »