Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: From the Farm to the Fork

July 28, 2010 
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By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences
Written for Living Natural First Magazine July 2009

In the past few months the farmers’ market season has crept upon us once again. For many direct marketing farm families like mine, the time from mid-April through October is the busiest time of the year. Not only are we having to prepare, plant, and harvest pastures, hay meadows, fields, and/or market gardens along with fencing, pasture rotations, feeding, record keeping, and animal health maintenance, we are devoting a lot of time to marketing our products. This can be at best highly rewarding, and at worst depressing depending on your level of sales. However, to see the smile on a satisfied customers face when they return to you market booth with praises about your products and how glad they are to have local farmers providing them with an option for local, healthy food, makes the busyness of the business all worthwhile. Sustainable farming and direct farm-to-consumer marketing finally seems to be coming into its own after thirty-plus years of pioneering hard work, activism by producers and consumers alike, and a desire to bring back much of the “GOOD PRACTICES” of the good ole’ days.

What I eluding to with these statements can be discovered in the recent agricultural statistics in the USA, and by what I currently see happening from my family’s experiences at farmers’ markets here in Texas. I don’t want to bore you too much with numbers, but bear with me a moment as I try to explain what I think is occurring.

Livestock production agriculture alone contributed $123 billion to the US economy in 2006, according to the US-GAO report GAO-07-592 dated July 6, 2007. This one sector of agriculture alone is a huge economic driver, especially when you factor in supporting industries such as feed, animal health, fencing, and equipment suppliers. According to the Texas Agricultural Statistics Service, Fannin County, Texas, where I farm, had a 2005 Agricultural Income of $67,483,000 and a 2006 Agricultural Income during a severe drought of $48,915,600. The 2-year average of these typical and non-typical years was $58,199,300. No other private industry in Fannin County, Texas supplies this kind of revenue. These numbers prove a point, that agriculture is still a huge driver for the American economy, regardless of what some people think about America being strictly economically based on urban and suburban area business. According to the 2007 USDA Ag Census US Data: Total Farm Numbers were up by 3.6%; Total Farmed Acres went down by 1.7%; Total Market Value of products increased 47.8%; and the Number of Full Time Farmers decreased by 13%. According to the 2007 USDA Ag Census DFW Metroplex Area Data: Total Farm Numbers increased 6.8%; Total Farmed Acres increased 3.6%; Total Market Value of products increased 57.5%; and the Total Number of Full Time Farmers decreased by 12%. The USDA conducts a farm census every seven years to keep up with agricultural trends, and to provide statistics to Congress when it is time for farm legislation. So these increases or decreases are based on the 2007 data versus the 2000 data. Other 2007 USDA Ag Census Data indicates that not only are farm numbers up, but it seems that organic/sustainable (non-conventional) farm numbers continue to increase. In fact they recorded over 20,000 farms nation wide engaged in organic/sustainable production. Because of this significance, the USDA-National Agricultural Statistics Service has commissioned a Census of Organic Production for the first time in history.

These figures seem to be saying a few things. That smaller farms and value-added agriculture must be on the rise because farmed acreage is down while farm numbers are up and market value of products is up around 50% on average. This probably means that, yes, production per acre has increased due to better practices, genetics, or more inputs, but also the types of products being produced must be of higher value, meaning niche market, sustainably or organically produced and the like. So to really explain such a market value explosion in seven years, we almost have to assume that niche-products and valued added products are playing significant roles in our country’s food and economic systems. The increase can’t all be explained away with increased yields or inflation. Also, there seems to be a trend towards less full-time farmers and more part-time farmers. From what I know about many part-timers, they are highly interested in sustainable and/or organic practices.

Not only is this type of product production up, but it seems that the demand is increasing by the month as consumers become more educated and concerned about their food supply. Not knowing what is in the food that is being consumed, as well as being concerned about where food is being sourced, or what type of carbon foot-print the food being consumed has is becoming more and more of an issue for folks. Consumers are longing for a return to a connection with the land, their food, and who produces it. This brings me to the real reason I sat down to write this article, farmers’ markets in Texas.

At one point in time around 100 years ago, almost every county seat and major town in Texas probably had at least one farmers’ market. Folks would come from miles around to bring their products from eggs, milk, butter, bacon, and salt pork, to carrots, onions, pumpkins, and melons to the town-square or market center to sell, share news, and socialize directly with patrons as well as folks who might be running the local corner groceries. This probably occurred throughout the US. Customers knew the farmers by name and vice versa. From what I know about the my county’s agricultural history, this went on up until sometime about 1960 and then fell completely out of favor. Folks probably got caught up in the thrill, gadgetry, and sometimes fear of going to the moon, “modernizing” everything in sight, and the “Cold War”, respectively. Thus busyness ensued and they forgot about supporting their local food system. Many of the same stories could probably be told where many of you live. The Dallas Farmers’ Market is one of the oldest continuously run markets in the US, but it was one of the only ones in this part of Texas up until about the past seven years. In fact up until May of this year our county, a county that is rural and heavily dependent on agriculture for its economy, has probably not had one official farmers’ market in well over 30 years. Much of what is produced here, leaves here. My family is one of the few producing products to be sold and consumed locally!! It could probably be said, that if we had to rely on local food to survive, it would not be a pretty site.

Oh, but times are a changin’, and there is Good News, as the Gospels would say! This is where I finally get to the point of my article. As many of you know by now, I can get slightly long winded as I try to bring perspective to the points of my articles. Let’s face it, as a Texan, I am a little bit begrudging to change. However, it seems that the time has finally arrived for farmers’ markets, on-farm markets, pick-your-owns, food coops, and community supported agriculture (CSA’s or farm shares) to meet the daily increasing demands of a yearning public who wants the farm-to-consumer-to-fork experience, whether it be for economical, societal, nutritional, or all of the above concerns. In the DFW Metroplex area alone, there has been an increase in farmers’ markets over the past seven years from 2 or 3 to nearing 20 as I write. I know of 5 new markets that have come on-line this year in the DFW Metroplex, and I can speak to at least three more that have started or will be starting in counties outside the Metroplex proper. One being in our “lowly ole’ Fannin county”, as some outsiders might presume to call us country bumpkins. Farmers’ markets and these other ways of providing your family with local foods and products, can make a huge difference in your families health, nutrition, and quality of life while having a positive impact on the local economy in these times of foreclosures, layoffs, and American corporate bankruptcies.

I’m going to try to wrap this up so that I have room to leave you some references for finding out more about locations to get involved with the Farm-to-Fork movement. Below is a list of ways that you can find out more about selling, finding, and/or purchasing local food. I encourage all of the readers to get involved whether you be producer or consumer.

Until next month, Farm On!!

Resources for marketing or purchasing local food on the Web:
http://www.crosstimberscoop.org/
http://www.eatgreendfw.com/home/
http://www.localharvest.org/
http://www.texomacore.org/
http://www.eatwild.com
http://www.picktexas.com/farm_market/farmers_market2.htm

http://www.town-mall.net/mall/farmersmarket.html

Book Resources:

“The New Farmers’ Market” By: Vance Corum, Marcie Rosenzweig & Eric Gibson
Copyright 2001, New World Publishing, Auburn, CA

How to Direct Market Your Beef” By: Jan Holder
Copyright 2005, Sustainable Agricultural Network, Beltsville, MD