Category Archives: Agriculture

To eliminate our networking desert

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How to share experiences with people working in establishing local food systems in other places? What is going on where? In Iowa, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, serves as a linking pin around building local food systems. Today I joined a meeting of the Regional Food Systems Working Group. This group is a Community of Practice of around a hundred people who meet four times a year to network, learn and share with other Iowans from all over the state, but today, there were also quite a few visitors from other states. Because it seems there is a lot going on in Iowa, compared to some other (Midwestern) states.

The Leopold center is a research and education center of ISU established under the Groundwater Protection Act of 1987 committed to systemic change in agriculture. Currently, there are three programs around the themes of marketing food systems, ecology and policy. Next to the center’s outreach through workshops, network meetings, seminars, and the like, it provides grants to researchers and educators of all Iowa universities and to private and nonprofit agencies throughout the state. These project grants, 33 this year, worth over 700.000 dollar in total, are a very important catalyst for furthering sustainable agriculture. Projects range from research on nitrogen management to improve water quality, developing alternative swine production systems, targeting perennial conservation practices, analysis of the value chain of local produce to targeting on-farm energy needs through renewable energy.

one of the fields on the Small Potatoes Farm

One of the fields on the Small Potatoes Farm

Today the center presented their ongoing work in local food. For example they are putting together a resource guide which will give an overview of all organizations and programs working in local food. We also reviewed a draft on local food procurement information about regulations around raw agricultural products. There are still a lot of myths and fears around the use of local raw agricultural products in commercial institutions, but there are no laws prohibiting direct sale from a producer to an institution.

The Community of Practice brings together various regional food initiatives. Those initiatives gave short presentations and updates on their activities before the more interactive sessions started. For example the Hometown Harvest initiative in Southeast Iowa started a feasibility study to come to a farmer owned food coop and announced a new website and logo. The Northern Iowa Food and Farming partnership shared their experience on how to set up local food distribution among various producers. And the Southwest Iowa Food and Farming Initiative is building a database mapping all local producers and potentially interested consumers as part of the first step in building a food system. The initiative in Marshall town, COMIDA also presented their ongoing work, for example their seminar with Ken Meter (see blog.)

These quarterly meetings are very important for the people working in the regional food initiatives. “I come here and hear about what others do which gives me new ideas” one of the participants said. “Sharing here is a big source of information” and, “things are changing fast now”. There is more acceptance nowadays, that whereas some continu to target the world, others actually want to feed their neighbor.

Selective breeding in organic dairy production II – PhD-thesis completed

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Earlier I wrote a post on the PhD-thesis ‘Selective breeding in organic dairy production’ by Wytze Nauta. The complete PhD-thesis can be downloaded at the site of the Louis Bolk Institute

Feeding the city or nourishing the city?

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More than half of the world’s population is living in cities. It are especially the larger cities that are increasing in size and many of these ever expanding cities are located in regions that are most suitable for food production. The tension between a growing urban population and a decline in agricultural land is increasingly acknowledged. Also the former Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Cees Veerman, states that the growing urban demand for food requires a fundamental shift in food production systems: fresh food should be produced closer to cities. He holds a strong plea for setting up a large Metropolitan Agriculture pilot project (see also this video interview). At first sight, the idea of producing food close to where people live sounds appealing as it will reduce food miles significantly.

But at second sight, his plea for metropolitan agriculture is to a large extent nothing but a plea for an ongoing industrialization of food production as this metropolitan agriculture video shows. Veerman also states that small-scale initiatives like urban agriculture cannot fulfil the growing urban food demand. Although this may be true, I do believe that innovative forms of urban agriculture such as SPIN farming, small-scale hydroponics and rooftop gardening can provide a significant part of the food needed for the urban population.

Most important, however, is that urban agriculture is about nourishing the city, while Veerman’s metropolitan agriculture is limited to feeding the city or actually, to phrase Michael Pollan, to produce foodstuffs (i.e. the highly processed, modified, fructosed, hormoned, and antibioticized products that we eat) for the urban population. With nourishing the city, I refer to the fact that food is more than a vehicle for nutrients, vitamins, calories, proteins, etc…; it is also a means to contribute to the development of  sustainable and healthy cities: 

Urban agriculture has the potential to make a significant contribution to the solution of many current urban problems that fall within the rubric of healthy communities and sustainable development. These include:

  • environmental degradation and ecological restoration
  • resource consumption
  • health and nutrition issues
  • food security and access for lower income citizens
  • ecological education
  • local economic development and diversification
  • community building

All these can be influenced in a profound way by the activity of food production in urban spaces.  Add to that the increased freshness of locally produced food, lower transportation costs, dietary diversification, and responsiveness to local needs and the advantages of producing at least some of our food in cities becomes obvious. This is what makes the prospect of a city full of food gardens and overflowing with the bounty from urban greenhouses so exciting” (http://www.omegagarden.com/index.php?content_id=1509).

One aspect that is missing in the quote above is that urban agriculture is, unlike the form of agriculture now proposed under the label of metropolitan agriculture, a form of food production that centres around notions of food democracy and food sovereignty (see also Petra’s recent blog).

Although Cees Veerman may be right by concluding that urban agriculture is not capable of feeding the urban population, I do think that urban agriculture has the potential of producing a significant part of the food needed by urban dwellers, and, more important, urban agriculture does much more than just producing food (see e.g. urban farmer Will Allen). So if we take the different contemporary problems of many metropoles into account, I would argue that we are much better of with metropolitan food systems that do not simply feed the city but that actually nourish the city.

Allium Sativum L.

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The corn grain elevator of Minburn

The grain elevator, a corn symbol in every town

I drove to Minburn yesterday where I spent a great day at the Small Potatoes Farm. I past the road to the farm without noticing and stopped at the post office, next to the grain elevator, to ask for directions. A good choice because the post office, I soon realized is the epic center of this tiny town. So a few minutes before my arrival, the news was announced by the post office, calling to the farm that a tall Dutch lady was coming over.

We harvested more than 5 different varieties of garlic. If it would have been not such wet weather so far, the harvest would have been in already around the 4th of July. And even now, the land was quite wet, which meant that the garlic bulbs came out with big lumps of soft black earth hanging in their roots. We pulled, collected, cleaned and trimmed the garlic bulbs after which they were let to dry hanging in the barn, in bundles of eight. Each variety had its own place in order not to mix them up, and we indicated what we hung on a map. Of some varieties we only harvested a basket full, just to grow more seed.

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The Small Potatoes Farm grows an incredible amount of different vegetables and different varieties. These include different kinds of: squash, melon, potato, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, lettuces, unions, leek, cabbage, beets, kale, beans, strawberries, asparagus and herbs. The total amount of hectares available for production is around 4.5, however at any point in time, there is 1.5 hectares in production while the other acres have a cover crop such as buckwheat to increase soil quality and organic mass. STA72126

When you see the rows of different crops weaving in the wind, you wouldn’t think there is much mathematics involved. However, the production planning system is a complicated multi dimensional puzzle. While rotating land out and into production and rotating the right kind of crops after one another to minimize disease, there also has to be a certain kind of yield available every week throughout the season to give the CSA members their vegetable share. And, of course, this share demands a certain kind of diversity too. A puzzle for winter times,  when a thick pack of snow is covering the land.

Buying fresh local organic sustainable and just food….

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Corn! The first harvest of sweet corn at the farmers market in Des Moines
Corn! The first harvest of sweet corn at the farmers market in Des Moines

While I am staying in Ames, I am enjoying the fresh fruits and vegetables of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in which the Flora’s have a share. All throughout the growing season, the weekly share can be picked up at the church, organized by the Farm to Folk Collaborative, which serves as an intermediary organization in order to connect the local producers and consumers. Different CSA farmers and other local producers offering ‘a la carte’, deliver each Tuesday after which the Farm to Folk people take care of assembly and payment handling.

Now I know my way around, I picked up their share at the church this week. It is a share of the Small Potatoes Farm, based in Minburn, southwest of Ames. I had onions, kohlrabi, carrots, squash, potatoes and kale. All the certified organic produce of the Small Potatoes Farm finds its way to the customer through CSA shares. The nature of the CSA model, based on a direct and trusting link between producer and consumer is the closest you can get to an unambiguous ‘honest’ product. It is both organic ánd local. But in the market place both ‘organic’ and ‘local’ can obscure different meanings and practices.

Organic can be produced in an industrial way within the limits of the label. Much of the organic produce in supermarkets is coming from industrial-size farms or companies with farms, which often have an organic line next to conventional production; organic is just another market. The local, at the other hand, has no regulation as to what sustainability standards should be applied. Local produce can come from small scale, but conventional farms, can include the use of pesticides and herbicides for example.

Des Moines Farmers Market

Des Moines Farmers Market

Since organic production has become an industry too, the ‘local’ is often elevated above the organic because the local – by its very nature – cannot be incorporated easily into the centrifuging forces of global commerce. Buying local is an act of opposing corporate food chain powers by going back to a less asymmetrical peer-to-peer relationship between buyer and seller.

A popular platform for these relationships is the farmers market. There are 18 farmers markets in Greater Des Moines (the city and the surrounding counties including Story County in which Ames is located). Saturday, together with Rick, Stacy and Tillie from the Small Potatoes Farm, their worker Brian and his friend, we visited the Des Moines farmers market, one of the biggest in the country. It is huge. Over 200 stands with a variety of products, from vegetables to ‘Dutch letters’ (??), a peculiar S-formed pastry letter, from clothes, to ‘Frisian Gouda’ cheese and from bread to garden equipment.

The beets are 'pesticide free'

The beets are 'chemical free'

Vegetables are promoted as ‘fresh’, ‘without pesticides’ or ‘local’. But that does not necessarily apply to all vegetables at one particular stand. I bought some tomatoes, thinking that I bought local produce. I found out later that it will take a few weeks more before tomatoes can be harvested in Iowa. I have no idea where my tomatoes came from. Being a conscious consumer is hard work.