Flying Tomato Farms

I’ll have fingerling potatoes–two kinds: Red French and Austrian Crescent–in two pound bags.

I’ll also have summer squash–mostly the light green cousa type. These are very tender and tasty–I try to pick them at a smaller size so they’re not too seedy.

Sweet peppers will be on the table again, maybe some Italian parsley, and more of those big bunches of evergreen hardy white scallions.

I should have a bag or two of broccoli side shoots and one or two other delights as well.

See you at the market!

…are subject to change when someone utters the words, “I know where there’s a great cherry tree….”

First Canning 2009

I really had not planned on doing any canning today–or even this week.  Yes, I picked up some supplies, but my main food preservation goal was to get roasted summer squash and beans in the freezer (which I did–six bags).

But then my friend Gail stopped by and mentioned this sour cherry tree covered with ripe fruit in a public place. Then I thought of an apricot tree nearby that might be bearing.

At first we just thought we’d scout–check it out and see what was there and if it was worth picking–maybe see if a ladder was necessary.  I was wearing a dress, after all, and had other plans for the day. Maybe we’d pick tomorrow if it was worthwhile.

Well, after seeing both trees had good fruit in quantity, it become a simple matter of how fast I could change and we could grab her ladder and get back to start picking. After all, H just loves the sour cherries!

I took a few apricots and most of the cherries; she took most of the apricots and a few of the cherries.  We searched around town for a cherry pitter to no avail until I hit upon the idea of using the tube from a ballpoint pen–it worked just fine.

Several hours later and an even messier kitchen than I started with produced 6 jars of sour cherries (alas, the seventh broke in the canner) and 4 jars of mixed cherries and apricots. I canned them with a very light syrup of 12 cups water to 3 cups sugar, plus added a tablespoon of Still 173 rum to each jar.

There’s plenty of syrup left over, which may get cooked down, strained, and canned for pancake and ice cream topping, as I’m running low on maple syrup, and I don’t foresee a Vermont visit (or a Vermonter visit) in the near future.

So the canning season begins for 2009.  I started a lot earlier last year–putting up a few quarts of pickled asparagus spears in spring, but to tell the truth I haven’t cracked them yet.  I’ve been waiting to schedule a Bloody Mary brunch, but it never seems like the right time.

Tomorrow I’ll work on the rest of today’s original plans, clean up the kitchen, and work on some final course grading.  But then, there were a lot of cherries left on that tree…

It was a wild weekend (at least by South Dakota farmer standards)–H., my fellow farmer, and I all hit the road for the South Dakota Blogger Picnic hosted by our friend and ally in the blogosphere, Cory Heidelberger and his gracious wife and fellow blogger Erin.

There were other bloggers there besides me and Prairie Highway author Kelly Fuller–Matthew “Hubba” Trask was there (a more complete list of attendees is available from our host), as well as a few MSM folks–real, live honest-to-goodness print journalists–including one who served as a delegate to the SD Dem Convention with H way back when I was just a babe.

Lively discussion was had about the roles of bloggers and the importance of actual paid investigative journalists (I just read somewhere that publicists now outnumber them 4:1).

Yes, it’s true–even us independent-minded bloggers care about the state of the dead-tree (and radio, and TV) press–we all get ideas for posts there, and journalists’ paid positions give them the ability to pursue stories we might not have the capacity to cover.

Another part of the conversation revolved around the best and most effective uses of Twitter and peripheral applications. I should give a hat tip, by the way, to Todd Epp for bringing Twitter to the forefront of our blogger consciousness at last year’s blognic, though he was conspicuously absent from this year’s event after the Babe War kerfuffle.

After good food and brain-pickin’ on the shores of Lake Herman, our little Vermillion crew headed north again to the little town of Milbank for the South Dakota debut of the documentary film, Food Inc. We pulled into a parking spot just across from Mill Theatres 1-2-3 just about two minutes to show time, bought our five dollar tickets, and sat down to enjoy the film.

Food Inc. is an important movie.  Everyone’s been saying that, but I’ll say it again because it’s true. It hits the center of a bullseye other books and films have been circling around for the past few years.

Food Inc.  takes some of the messages of films such as The Future of Food, Fast Food Nation, and King Corn, along with books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The End of Food, and (again, because it’s nothing like the film so-named) Fast Food Nation, and rolls it together with additional information and great cinematography.

In fact, the visuals are so good and so clever (especially in the beginning of the film), I found myself ooh-ing and ahhing over them.  It’s a great tactic to pull you in for a sometimes rough, sometimes outrageous, sometimes stomach-turning ride.

While I won’t do a full critical review here, I will say that the thing that scared me most–the thing that made me cry– the thing that froze my guts into a hard little ball was the segment on Moe Parr, a custom seed cleaner who was sued and put out of business by Monsanto–not for saving seed, but for providing a way for others to–that is, by “encouraging” farmers to break patent law.

There is a segment where Moe is being questioned by Monsanto’s attorney about all his business dealings–they’ve seized his records, his computer, and they’re running through a list of names–asking him about all his customers, his neighbors–figuring out who they’ll investigate, sue, and ruin next. It’s a killer.

Luckily, the film ends on positive words about what consumers can do to make change.  If it didn’t, it’d be hard to recommend the film without the warning, “prepare to be depressed.” You still might be, but at least there’s some hopeful and sound advice about local food, farmers markets, and supporting farmers through CSA and the like.

After the film, the six or eight of us who’d watched then adjourned to the lobby with our gracious hosts and settled down for a good discussion of the film, food activism, coal plants and CAFOs, and all manner of other concerns on both sides of the western MN/eastern SD border, as well as issues without such tight borders.

The thing about rural activists of all stripes is this–you tend to make friends fast, and you tend to stick together and offer help whenever you can. Realizing that we hadn’t gotten dinner nor arranged a place to stay, the owners of the theatre not only offered dinner, but beds and breakfast as well.

And what great local food it was–a relief after seeing that film, and worrying that Taco John’s might be the only dinner we’d find. Instead we feasted on locally raised meats, vegetables, and homemade bread while chatting amiably around the farmhouse table. Breakfast was eggs, sausage, fruit, and toast slathered with organic butter–oh, my-my good.

After hugs and handshakes all around (plus making sure we’d got all the farm cats out of the car), we hit the road south again–stopping to check out the tiny town of Twin Brooks (where, we learned, the Gunslinger Bar–now for sale!–hosted their annual “Coon Pecker” contest) and pausing to view the lovely Blue Cloud Abbey–whence you can just make out Big Stone Coal Plant on the horizon.

All in all, the trip–even with the somewhat scary and depressing film–had a definite uplifting feel.  There’s so much on the broader stage of state, national, and global affairs to be reckoned with–to be fought against or preserved from or simply to shake one’s head in wonder at–that it was a real treat to meet up with passionate and hopeful people working to make things better.

August is Food Preservation Month.

No, no governor or president or board has made this pronouncement (or if they have, I haven’t heard); this is my personal pronouncement about what my mind tends toward when summer’s bounty is at its height in our little corner of the universe.

No grasshopper mentality for me–like a good ant, I’m getting my jars cleaned, my knives sharpened, and my freezer bags stocked to put food by for the long winter ahead.

In a food dessert, what else can you do?  Sure, things look bountiful now–but there’s a long season coming of no readily-accessible local food except what’s in the pantry or freezer or root cellar.

What snapped me into action was driving by my favorite chokecherry tree yesterday and seeing that the birds (and possibly the neighbor) had already picked it half-clean!

So after my final essay critiques that took me most of the day to complete, I swung into action with my buckets and full-coverage mosquito abatement gear and pulled about a gallon and a half of the remaining fruit from that tree.

That fruit will get washed and frozen in bags with a little sugar to use later on–I still have two bags left from last season, but there’s no sense in wasting this year’s crop because there’s some from last year still on ice. That, and I’ve developed a certain fondness for my chokecherry liqueur recipe.

Yesterday I pulled about a dozen summer squash from the patch as well, and with no market in sight, it occurred to me that I while we probably couldn’t eat all of it before the next big flush, I could get some of that in the freezer as well.

My favorite recipe for summer squash is to roast it with snap beans and a little sage.  While the snap beans aren’t ready, the pole shell beans are heavily laden–what’s a few pounds of the younger pods out of 90 row feet of shellers?

Then there’s the gallon of broccoli side-shoots I cut yesterday–that’s two or three packages to blanch and put up as well.  I guess I haven’t gotten my canning gear out yet (tomatoes soon!), but I will need to plug in the chest freezer within the next day or two.

There’s a good amount of clean-up that needs to happen before I can really settle into concerted canning and freezing–tomorrow’s project will be to clean the fridge and the aforementioned downstairs freezer.

Tonight’s dinner will help with the fridge project: I’m on my last few pods of sugar snap peas and there’s a bit of chard and an onion I pulled at the tail end of last week.

All that thrown together with a few of the beans I picked today, a summer squash, green pepper, a few sprigs of basil and six cherry tomatoes sounds like a fine feast with a fresh salted baguette.

Mmm–all those lovely colors and flavors! I might be an ant at heart, but I’ve got at least a little “sing the summer” grasshopper in me.

Looking at the state’s local food website and even at the Dakota Rural Action local foods directory, you’d think there just aren’t that many farmers markets in South Dakota.

But in my travels throughout the state in the past few weeks, and through the e-mail requests for help and information from beginning or established markets over the past few months, I’ve discovered this just isn’t the case.

In fact, there are scores of little markets all throughout the state. It seems that almost every little town–even ones with no traffic lights and only one paved road–even ones with populations under 500 people–have lively little local markets with diehard vendors and loyal customers.

On my visit to the extreme northeastern part of the state this past weekend, I learned about four more markets within a fifty-mile radius of each other, none of which is advertised in any larger publication on farmers markets in the state.

Why don’t we hear about these markets? Why aren’t they publicized, and why don’t they join together with other, larger markets to collectively bargain for better regulations, more customers, and to share vendors?

Because they’re scared.

They don’t know the health code. They don’t know who to talk to, and they’re afraid of surprise visits from the Department of Health that might shut them down.  The locals know about these markets, and they have regular customers, but outside of that community circle, the markets are somewhat of a secret.

Last year at the Black Hills Farmers Market, the SD Dept. of Health and Clark Hepper, Office of Health Protection administrator, on reading in the Rapid City Journal that Joel Schwader was making and selling hundreds of kuchen (South Dakota’s state dessert), came to the market and shut him down.

While kuchen is not a shelf-stable baked good (it contains a custard filling), and Schwader did need to make the dessert in a commercial kitchen with all the appropriate licenses, the incident has, according to reports from markets throughout the Black Hills, had a chilling effect on the number of vendors who come to sell.

While the customer base is still there, and in fact is still growing, the feeling among vendors and market managers is that if you get big, if you get press and you are popular, you run the risk of the Health Department coming in and shutting you down.

While the little local markets scattered throughout the state are hidden from outside view, that doesn’t mean their vendors don’t read the news, or hear about incidents such as this through the producer grapevine. Heck, even some customers I’ve talked to relate that they don’t write checks at markets anymore, for fear that could get their favorite producer in trouble.

Managers are concerned even about selling the markets’ mainstay: fresh, homegrown produce.  The Rapid City Journal article on Joel’s kuchen had Hepper stating that, “Any time you have food for sale or service, you’re required to obtain a food service license.”

Obviously, for fresh produce at farmers markets, that’s just not true. Selling homegrown tomatoes or potatoes does not require a license–or does it?

While the article also relates that Hepper “concedes that the state and the hundreds of community farmers market associations throughout the state could better educate and enforce these regulations and standards,” the question is how? (And by the way–hundreds? He must know about more markets than all of the rest of us combined.)

How can farmers market boards and even individual vendors educate on and enforce regulations that seem to be amorphous, subject to change, and impossible to get hold of in any layperson-usable form? These problems, coupled with generalizations and misinformation spread by state employees themselves, is serving to hamstring South Dakota’s burgeoning local food economy.

Regular readers of this blog know that I identify a strong local food economy not only with helping to save family farms and boosting the local economy as a whole, but also with food safety and security in uncertain times.

Unfortunately, our state government seems still to be languishing back in the “bigger is better” days, where small producers who actually grow or make food for people to eat get no (positive) attention, no respect, and no real support.

It’s true there are some really helpful people in state government, but what’s also true is that a lot of officials, faced with situations they’ve never encountered before, are making things up as they go along, and instead of taking a “let’s work this out together” approach, are falling back on an enforcement-only, “just shut the ‘problem’ down” tactic.

When I get yet another, “I don’t know what to do,” “they won’t call me back,” “we are losing vendors,” “we don’t want to be listed” e-mail from a farmers market manager or vendor, I wonder if state or local governments will ever figure out what folks in many other states did long ago–that farmers markets and local production are a huge benefit to the local and state economy.

I say it’s time for us vendors and customers and market personnel to go to Pierre and demand real support–support that doesn’t relegate us to a side-line or sub-title or add-on to some Dept. of Ag employee’s already over-filled plate. Yes, we need regulation–regulation that comes in an easy-to-read and readily accessible format–but we also need support.

We need support from people who have experience with building, growing for, and selling at markets, who know the rules, and who are willing to lobby on our behalf for regulations that encourage rather than discourage local production and marketing.

We need support that welcomes small producers and markets into the fold, instead of forcing them to hide out and hope they won’t be discovered–helping their local economies, providing safe and sustainable food for their friends and neighbors, and improving our state’s food security.

And if you want to get in on the process of drafting new regulations that support rather than discourage small producers and markets, contact Dakota Rural Action at 605.697.5204.

I only wish this were a column about morels or puffballs or other tasty and wonderful fungi, but it’s not.  It’s about the late blight in the gardens.

I cut seven tomato plants out of the row on low supports–they were all but one of my Principe Borgheses.  I’m thinking that the blight came on one of the volunteer plants that I transplanted into that row–but really, there’s hardly a tomato or potato plant in the garden that doesn’t have at least a few spots.

A few of the peppers and eggplant have been affected too–I also took out four sweet pepper plants while I was on my clean-up detail and I pulled a few affected leaves off the eggplants as well.

I’d been trying to figure out what I could use to help control the less severe cases–some sort of fungicide that’s not a horrible chemical I wouldn’t want on my food. So, I looked in my medicine box in the bathroom thinking about fungicides–and I found tea tree oil there.

Did a quick internet search on whether this has been tried on plants and found it has been used by grape-growers to control powdery mildew.  Good enough.

Once the severely infected plants were cut out and disposed of, I cleaned out my sprayer and mixed about a tablespoon of tea tree oil with a gallon and a half of water.  Then I sprayed down all of the plants in the row I’d taken plants out of, plus the landscape fabric beneath them, and some of the pepper and eggplant as well–especially around the areas I’d taken out plants.

I’m really not sure this will work (be warned before you try this yourself), but we’ll see.  I’m going to go in early next week and dig out all the affected potatoes as well–Australian Crescents and French Fingerlings.

Notably, the Purple Peruvian fingerlings have not had any problems with blight at all, and neither have the Nyagous black tomatoes.  Almost every other tomato in the garden has at least a little except the Stupice tomatoes on the back trellis in the northeast garden–where I’ve never grown tomatoes before.

Late blight is taking out a huge amount of the tomato crop in the northeast, as you may have heard.  We don’t usually get it until late (yes, that’s why it’s called “late blight”) if we get it at all, but this year the extremely wet July virtually guaranteed an outbreak.

I’m thinking for next year the garden across the farm on the hilltop will have to be the tomato area.  I may avoid planting potatoes altogether just to be safe.  If I do, you can be certain I’ll order certified seed instead of saving anything from this year’s crop.

However, I have read that late blight is allowed in some small measure even on certified seed potatoes–so that might not even help.  I’ll have to start looking into what regions haven’t had such a wet summer, and see if I can get seed potatoes from there.

Spent much of the day (after dropping M. off at summer art camp) in Yankton at the Organic Field Days there.  This is the first year for that event, so attendance wasn’t great, but we’ll do it bigger and better next year.  I gave two presentations–one on CSA and one on the economics of sustainable agriculture.

I also got to hear most of Rena Hebda’s presentation on their slow and deliberate transition to organic production. It sounds like they’re making a good effort over there in Mission Hill, and I took the opportunity to introduce myself and make the same case to her that I made to her husband over the phone: Come to our Market!

But they also have a CSA, and one of their delivery days is Thursday.  So, I suggested they consider us for next year.  I also met another grower from Volin who might be interested in coming next week with Sweet Corn!  It’s possible we’ll have a little for this week–but next week is the real deal from everything I’m hearing.

When I got back from Yankton, I had about an hour before I had to pick up M.  You’ve never seen a gal throw off the heels and scrub off the make-up faster than I did.  I went out to the farm for a little yesterday evening about seven, and the mosquitoes were so bad, I had to wear a head net just to do a (literal) run through the gardens.

I thought since it was earlier and hotter this afternoon, it’d be better.  Well, I wasn’t wearing the headnet, but DEET came into play–even in the heat and full sun.  I made the executive decision to do some harvesting this afternoon, so I wouldn’t have to donate quite so much blood tomorrow during the rest of the harvest.

The good news: summer squash is bearing in my gardens now.  I know everyone and their cousin has had it for a couple of weeks (remember: I planted later to break the bug cycle–no Sevin for me!), but much of what I am growing is the light green teardrop-shaped cousa (or cousa) squash–very pretty, very tender.

Better news is that sweet peppers are coming on–I’ll have about a dozen or so to sell tomorrow.  I stopped in Jones’ on the way home to check their prices–they’re getting a dollar apiece for some not-so-fresh-looking specimens (sorry, Dean, it’s true!).  Mine will be a much crisper and slightly cheaper seventy-five cents apiece.

The bad news: I am still not seeing any Monarch or Swallowtail caterpillars on the milkweed or dill or rue–either here at home or in the gardens.  Generally by now I’ll see at least a few–this year–absolute zero.  I have seen only one Black Swallowtail and one Monarch in the gardens this year. At home–one Monarch, no Swallowtails. Not good.

The ugly: Yep–there’s some late blight on the tomatoes.  It’s not widespread (yet), so tomorrow I’ll go out with pruning equipment and take out some plants–a pepper plant, a couple Principe Borghese tomatoes.

Some plants have a little, and I might try to save them by pruning with sterilized clippers.  A couple plants just need to go.  All the diseased foliage and plants will get tossed over the fence–far from my compost pile.  And next year, all the tomatoes get moved to a different garden.

Tonight’s dinner is a compilation of leftovers plus some extra veggies.  I made a baked chicken-and-rice dish last night to comply with M’s desire for bland foods, but tonight is going to be a little more veggie-full.

I’ve got a pepper I slashed with the knife during harvest (oopsy!), the smallest summer squash of the bunch, plus some broccoli side-shoots from earlier in the week.  There’s sugar snap peas left that need to be eaten as well.  And there’s a few pieces of the aforementioned chicken and some brown jasmine rice.

You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?  That sure sounds like fried rice!

Despite my desire to beat Cory to the punch this morning with a post about the FDA desire to limit the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in livestock operations, a more pressing desire to put on a decent presentation at the Yankton Organic Field Days tomorrow has led me deep into the Series of Tubes researching the economic sensibility of sustainable farming.

Yep–that’s one of my two presentations tomorrow (the other’s on CSA)–somehow I roped myself into it after expressing a desire to attend such a presentation and being told that our dear Ag Economist friends at SDSU don’t have the hard figures to present such a lecture.

So li’l ol’ English instructor and small farmer me is doing some serious reading on the subject. I’m glad I have learned the usefulness of constructing an annotated bibliography before writing a research paper or presentation–that’s what I make my students do, and that’s what I’m doing now.  Looks like I’ll have a great new assignment example to post to my online classes!

What I’ve found in my reading is this: while there have been some studies on the social, economic, and environmental impacts of sustainable agriculture, there is a great need for larger studies with better measurement techniques.

Consider, for example, that many of the studies have assumed basic equality between conventional and organic/sustainable farms in terms of soil structure (tilth) and fertility without realizing that residual fertility means less fertilizer cost and better tilth improves soil’s ability to absorb and hold moisture–reducing run-off and leaching of nutrients, as well as irrigation costs.

Other studies have simply measured net yields and income without measuring input costs. Since one of the tenets of sustainability is to reduce outside inputs–that seems like a pretty important thing to measure–more important because one of the biggest costs on conventional farms is the outside inputs of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc.

Add GMO seed on top of that and the conventional costs really skyrocket. Of course, not every sustainable farmer saves their own seed–and with some crops, they run the risk of being sued for patent infringement by GMO seed companies if their neighbor’s GMO crop cross-pollinates with their own seed stock.

Measuring input costs is a huge factor in determining economic feasibility of sustainable farming practices because even if sustainable yields are lower (and the popular myth that organic/sustainable yields are lower is not necessarily true), drastically reduced input costs can mean much more of the crop’s value goes into the farmer’s pocket instead of to seed, fertilizer, and chemical companies, boosting the overall profit margin beyond that of conventional practices.

So my research is basically telling me there needs to be more research–but I think that’s a good thing.  More hard research on the benefits that any sustainable farmer can tell you about means more jobs, more good news, and a stronger movement in a positive, sustainable direction.

Despite the need for further research, I do feel confident that I’ll have enough hard facts and findings for a decent presentation tomorrow–and if any of those SDSU Ag Economists are there, I’ll be sure to share.

OK, back to work!

Last week, I set up at the farmers market–not with vegetables, but with information and petitions on the Food Safety Enhancement Act.  I think it was disappointing to some of my regular customers that my table held books, papers, and a clipboard rather than veggies.

I can understand that.

Truth is, I don’t have a lot ready in the gardens right now–I planted heavily for the early spring, so that I’d have lots of greens and spring veggies for the first few weeks of the market, when the bigger truck farmers are generally just starting to do their heavy planting.

My spring harvest tapered off right about the time that the other farmers started bringing their produce in–pretty decent timing, though I am constantly encouraging others to plant “early and often,” so I’m not the only one with produce during the first few weeks.

Too, in keeping with my research and development goals this year, I planted some of my summer crops–beans, cucumbers, melons, squash–a little later than usual, so I could avoid the plague of cuke beetles and squash bugs that can really take over and destroy crops if the pests find the crops when they (or the crop) first emerge.

That has worked really well so far.  Coupling a later planting with moving the main squash and melon patch to a completely different area of the farm has drastically reduced the pest problem–I’ve only seen (and squished) three squash bugs and two of their egg clusters so far, and I haven’t seen a single cucumber beetle (or potato bug) so far.

I had to put the cucumbers in one of the main garden areas though–there just isn’t enough room yet on the far hill for all the cucurbits–but I planted them late, and under the row cover I’d had on the spring cabbage, and left the cabbage stumps there to rot.  I finally uncovered that row yesterday and set up some supports for the cukes–they’re doing great!

The beans I planted earliest of all were the shell/drying beans.  I’m really not sure how many of those I’ll sell–the point of that crop is to fill my own pantry with good organically grown dried beans–and to see if a couple of 45′ trellises will produce an adequate crop to do so.

The heirloom snap beans just got in a couple of weeks ago and are growing fast–but there’s not quite so much space devoted to those this year–most of them will go in the freezer after being roasted together with summer squash and sage.

I’d also like to reserve a fair number of sweet peppers on the plants this year to get them red and ripe before roasting and pickling strips of them in jars–I can’t get enough of those for sandwiches and salads, and at $4-5 a jar in the store, I think I can do it better and cheaper.

Tomatoes will go in the canner and freezer as usual–as many as I preserve, there’s never enough of them to last until the next year’s crop. What broccoli side-shoots I can get (after the plants developed hollow stems from the heavy rainfall and started rotting away) will also find their way to the freezer.

Does it sound like I’m being stingy with my harvest?  Does it seem like I ought to be bringing more to the market instead of squirreling it away in my own pantry?

Let me bring this post back full circle, then, to what I had on my table at the market last week: petitions calling for small/local producer exceptions in the Food Safety Enhancement Act and information about the Farm Beginnings sustainable farmer-training program starting this fall.

Then let me refer back to what I’ve been blogging about in the past couple of weeks: Monsanto, SDSU, and GMO wheat; farmland speculation by foreign countries and big investors; and again, the food safety legislation.

I spend a lot of my time doing research–thinking, learning, and writing about local food, small producer, and food security issues.  While there is a lot of positive and exciting news in those areas, there is also a lot of troubling news.

Without sounding too much like a “Repent-the-End-is-Near” nutjob, let me just say that I think more people and more small communities at the end of the supply lines should be more concerned about how (and how well) they are going to eat in the coming hard times.

Yes, I do think they are coming, and on a global scale.  You can point at a stock market rally to say things are getting better, but as far as I can see, those rallies tend to mean that someone cut a deal that made some rich people richer by costing other people their jobs, their livelihoods, their food supply, their lives.

No one likes to talk about doom and gloom stuff (OK, some people do), but we in South Dakota are living in a food desert at the end of a very long and complex supply network.  Even if, at the worst, food continues to come through that supply chain, it could get impossibly expensive.

And here we are, sitting on top of some of the most gorgeous farmland in the world, and we’re shipping off the bounty of that land to the ethanol plant, the corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated soy oil manufacturer.

I don’t have anything against the people who work the land growing corn and soy for a living, but I think we as individuals and as a community ought to seriously consider carving out some of that land to ensure a steady and adequate food supply (planting early and often), as well as a facility or two for the processing and storage of that food.

So, that’s pretty much what I do in my spare time–what I’m doing when I’m not teaching classes or puttering about in my own humble gardens.  I’m trying to encourage others to take up a fork and a spade, and fighting against those who would regulate or restrict  that fork and spade in the name of land speculation or food “safety” or a swanky new development.

But I know having a table full of petitions isn’t as fun as having a table full of shiny young summer squashes, glossy peppers, and bazillions of tender beans.

The most fun I had at last week’s market was this: I got some of those tender yellow beans from another vendor.  And I got a cherry pie, two sacks of new red potatoes, a bag of the best homemade laundry detergent ever, and some tiny little white onions because all I’m growing are yellow and red ones.

Then I went home and made a big salad of those beans and potatoes and onions, roasted in the oven, plus cherry pie for dessert. And then (with my mouth occasionally full of my dinner), I got on a hour-long conference call with other activists and organizers from five western states.

The call was a Western Organization of Resource Councils meeting about how we will approach our legislators with the best Food Safety Act amendments so that the beans and potatoes and onions–and yeah–the cherry pie, too–will not only still be there in the coming years, but hopefully there’ll be more for everyone.

So, without being too righteous about it (after all, I really don’t have that much ready in the gardens right now)–let me say that the empty table is a sort of subtle reminder about what can happen without people working behind the scenes for the rights and freedoms of small farmers and those who want a fresh, secure, and sustainable local food supply.

See you at the market!

This morning’s perusal of articles posted by those I follow on Twitter yields this bit of potentially frightening news (and a hat tip to @CathyAtThe Fund for sharing).

In a post dated just yesterday, Chris Nelder at Energy & Capital asks, “Is Farmland the Trade of the Century?”

Legendary investor Jim Rogers has been all over the investing press this year, saying that farmland is his preferred vehicle. “If I’m right, agriculture is going to be one of the greatest industries in the next 20 years, 30 years,” he said in a March interview with CNBC. He is now the director of two funds which are developing new farmland in Brazil and Canada.

Major investors who have caught the farmland fever include George Soros and Richard Rainwater. A host investing houses like TIAA-CREF and BlackRock Investment Management have plowed serious cash into the sector as well.

Most recently, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, China, South Korea, and Egypt have all made the investing press for taking multi-billion dollar stakes in large tracts of farmland in relatively unexploited areas of the world, primarily in Africa and Asia. Not just because they like the investment outlook, but because they are worried about securing enough food to feed their own populations.

There are several serious problems with investors going after farmland as a great long-term investment–chief among which is that big influxes of cash into specific sectors drives up the price of the commodity–and it’s already hard enough for farmers to buy land.

Occasionally you can get an older farmer willing to help out a beginning one by offering a reasonable deal (contract for deed or the like)–but with wealthy investors waiting to plunk down large sums of cash–how is a young farmer going to compete–especially when retiring farmers want some comfort after their long years of toil?

Too, driving up the price of land tends to drive out the existing farmers–either by raising taxes (and our state has done some work on mitigating this through a tax on production value rather than land value) or by boxing in producers, so they can’t expand.

On our recent trip West River, my fellow farmer and I spoke to a woman at the Ghost Town and Rock Shop in Okaton, South Dakota. A little Wiki: “As of the 2000 census, the population was 29. Okaton has a closed school, a tourist ghost town, a gas station, and a crumbling grain elevator on the nearby abandoned train tracks.”

During our conversation with the woman, who helps run the little tourist spot, she mentioned that her family has a ranch nearby, and she also has four sons.  But the ranch isn’t big enough for all four of them to make a living there with their families.  They’d like to expand, but Ted Turner has bought up so much land there it has boxed them in and driven up land prices throughout the region.

MULLEN, Neb. — Ted Turner’s men didn’t flinch. As the price climbed past $8 million, $9 million, $9.5 million, they continued bidding at a rapid-fire pace.

When the auction was over, they walked away with what they came for: 26,300 acres of prime ranch land, at a cost of nearly $10 million.

“It hasn’t taken long to find out he’s serious,” said Duane Kime, a rancher and Turner neighbor who was outbid by about $100,000 by the CNN founder.

But what exactly is Turner serious about?

The question gnaws at folks here and in other rural areas of the country where people once thought the billionaire just wanted to play cowboy.

Turner has amassed 2 million acres over the past two decades to become the largest private landowner in the country. He owns land in at least nine states, with most of his holdings in New Mexico, Nebraska, Montana and South Dakota, and is restoring buffalo, cutthroat trout, wolves, black-footed ferrets and other flora and fauna that filled the Plains before the West was won.

His front men say their boss doesn’t have a secret agenda — he just wants to be a rancher. But each big buy only heightens the anxiety and gives rise to conspiracy theories, the most ominous of which hold that the swashbuckling Atlanta executive is bent on putting Nebraska ranchers and farmers out of business. [AP via Fox News. "Ted Turner's Land Purchases Generate Suspicion." 28 November 2007].

Turner’s buy-ups aren’t new, but they do give a pretty good idea of what happens when big money interests start grabbing up our most precious resource. While Ted may be doing some good work for the environment, ranchers who own the land they ranch (and farmers who own the land they farm) are by and large the best stewards of that land. And when big money gets involved, farmers and ranchers can’t compete.

On a global scale, I can’t help but think about what happens if there are food shortages in the countries that are snatching up farmland in other countries–and what happens if there are food shortages in the countries where much of the prime farmland is owned by other countries or outside interests.

Let me give an example: Say the mythical country of A buys up a lot of prime farmland in mythical country B and starts growing food on B’s soil to export to and feed the citizens of A.  What happens if there’s a food shortage in B (especially likely due to a lack of prime farmland, which has been bought up by A)? Do you think B’s residents are going to respect A’s fence around property in B’s country when they are starving?

And what about security in a time of need?  Will B allow A to import military forces, or even private security, to protect A’s crops from B’s starving people? And what would that do to the political stability of B if that was allowed?

I think it’s pretty easy to project the violence and instability this new colonialism will cause, nevermind the most important bit about a country using its own land to feed its own people.  Or are we so beyond that simple concept in a global economy?  Try telling that to the starving masses.

Some final thoughts on the farmland buy-up.  Investors think in terms of returns, and in most cases, investors are thinking about fairly quick returns–not fairly low but sustainable-over-the-long-haul returns.  Farming that stresses quick returns is farming that depletes resources and destroys land.

Too, if investors think that they can simply buy up land, displacing the farmers and ranchers who live and work there, and then hire them back as wage slaves, they don’t know farmers very well at all.  Those who have stuck it out can be a seriously ornery and independent folk, and they consider themselves learned professionals, not hired lackeys.

The managers and workers who get hired on to replace real farmers aren’t going to give a damn about the long-term health of the soil or the land, nor are they likely to care that much about the nutritional value and safety of the crops grown on that land. They’re going to simply try to make the boss happy by producing as much as they can to maximize profits.

In the end, there are a couple things that might save us from the nightmare this farmland grab could easily become.  The first is that farming is a risky business–and investors are used to “managed” risk.  But, how do you adequately manage risk in an environment and climate that is increasingly unstable and unpredictable?

And yes, you can insure–but what good does insurance do you if what you really need is food?  Let me cite my favorite of all Wendell Berry quotes here: “What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?”

Because of the inherent nature of massive speculation (that is, it forms a price bubble, which eventually bursts), it also could be that after a few years of outrageously high prices, the price crashes back down below where it is now–offering an even better opportunity for young farmers to get onto the land.

But given global climate change and its projected impact on the global food supply–to sit back and hope that in a few years this will all blow over, and we can get back to the business of recruiting young farmers and producing decent food seems more risky to ALL of us than a credit default swap could EVER be.