Farmers: Stewards of the Land

Here’s an interesting statistic from the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization: 50% of habitable land is used for agriculture. That’s half the world’s livable land under the care of farmers.

In this country, according to the USDA, 40% of the American landscape is classified for agricultural use and, of that 40%, 90% percent is considered small family operations.

And “small family operations” are the kind of farms that come to Farm to City markets.

All of those farms are located within 150 miles of Philadelphia.

They invest time, money, and energy making sure they use sustainable, environmentally-friendly practices. When you meet the people who grow your food, don’t think of them simply as growers of delicious food, but as stewards of the land.

We asked a few of those farmers about their sustainable practices.

The Farm as an Ecosystem

Small farms are better at conserving natural resources than larger farms, according to several studies.

For example, we’ve learned that small farms preserve 17% of acreage as natural forest, compared to only 5% on larger industrial farms.

Not being able to use 17% of your land for production can’t be good for business, right?

So we asked Deirdre Fleming, of Two Gander Farm, why having a natural forest on the farm is so important.

There were many reasons, among them:

good for windbreaks
important to control soil erosion
a haven for native pollinators
the forest acts as a buffer that catches the nutrient runoff from the farm.

“One of the biggest reasons is the beneficial wildlife. We get a lot of red-tail hawks and lots of owls in the woods around here. There are foxes that den up near the farm and can get into the fields through the deer fencing. Foxes and birds of prey go after the rodents and the voles, the kinds of animals that damage our crops.”

Deirdre also explained how the native habitat encourages the right kind of insects to their fields, for example, certain kinds of wasps that eat the aphids and caterpillars that attack the brassica crops.

“It’s not a complete solution to pest pressure but it definitely helps. It’s great when nature can do the job for us so we don’t have to intervene as much.”

“We Grow Soil…”

According to the same agricultural studies, farmers devote as much time to soil-improvement practices as actually growing and harvesting the produce.

“I was just thinking about this the other day,” Emma Cunniff from Kneehigh Farm wrote to us, “when we were plowing our middle field and planting a year-long cover crop.”

“The farmers that I look up to the most prioritize soil health above all, and will often say ‘we don’t grow food, we grow soil.’”

— Emma Cunniff from Kneehigh Farm

“That’s a third of our total acreage but it’s totally worth it to take it out of veggie production in order to feed the soil for future crops.”

Emma even includes this kind of practice as part of her mission statement: We are committed to building fertility through cover cropping and carefully selected organic fertilizers & amendments.

“The farmers that I look up to the most prioritize soil health above all,” Emma told us, “and will often say ‘we don’t grow food, we grow soil.’”

Emma’s Kneehigh Farm has been part of South Coventry Township for six years now and she’s very proud of the work she has done “growing the soil”.

“It has been amazing to see the change in my land’s soil from when I started farming it 6 years ago to now. I can’t think of a more gratifying feeling.”

Trust But Verify

If there’s one person we need to trust the most, it’s a farmer.

We need to trust them to grow, raise, and sell the food that we feed ourselves, our families, and our friends (and sometimes our pets!) but we also trust them with one of Earth’s most valuable resources -- the land.

One way that a farmer can gain our trust is to go through a certification process, although that doesn’t always mean certified organic.

The majority of the farms that come to markets are not certified organic, for a variety of reasons. The process has many components, involves lots of paperwork and can be too expensive for some farms. It also takes many years to complete, an obstacle for farms that don’t have long-term leases.

Every year, more farmers are enrolling in other kinds of certification programs, like the peer-review process behind the Certified Naturally Grown program.

But, when you look at all the farmers that come to market, most of them rely on gaining your trust by showing up every week with their freshest produce, rain or shine or snow.

We truly believe that the face-to-face transactions at the market is the kind of trustworthy relationship we should expect between producer and consumer.

But some farmers believe that you, as a consumer, deserve more than that.

“I don’t want to have to ask the customer to trust me,” Ola Creston from Taproot Farm told us.

“Certified Organic is a 3rd-party verification which sets a National Standard. The certification is a system that helps ensure the honesty behind the words.”

When asked about the obstacles expressed by the majority of farms, Ola is quick to point out: “It may be intimidating at first but the certification process doesn’t ask for any information that we as farmers shouldn’t be keeping anyway.”

Justin Donaldson from Robin Hill Organics agrees. “Production records, greenhouse records, planting records, input (fertilizer/pesticide) records, sales records,” he wrote, “it’s not much extra paperwork.”

“It’s nice,” he added, “for people to just look and see the USDA organic logo and know that we are organic.”

Ola from Taproot expressed the same idea. “I can have a conversation with you about my farm story, I can talk to you for hours about why I love kale so much, but as far as my growing practices go, it’s all right there in that little logo in the corner.”

Your Impact on the Environment

Deirdre from Two Gander reminds us all: “Agriculture has a high impact on the environment. We do our best to manage the farm as an ecosystem but a farm is still an unnatural landscape. In ecological terms, agriculture is a disturbance. We want to minimize that disturbance as much as possible.”

You as a shopper minimize that disturbance and soften that impact every time you support the farmers at the market. That’s how you can contribute to what the farmers are doing.

Shopping at a producer-only market and eating a seasonal diet, this is an environmental action, a way for you to invest in the practices that keep your environment healthy, fertile, honest, and productive.