New kids on the farm scene: Succession and the future of food

Over the past couple of millennia that agriculture has been around, it’s overcome some major hurdles. Be it disease, drought or pestilence, our species has so far managed to invent our way out of trouble, keeping the food supply just ahead of the human population. Lately, though, it seems we’ve hit quite a number of limiting factors: the availability of land, water, and new variations on the genetic code that fool the pests for another generation of crops. But while we might have expected to eventually run out of space and technological fixes, another looming shortage involves a different kind of resource: manpower. Farmers are aging, and there doesn’t seem to be a new crop of them to take over the job of growing our food.
This fact was illustrated for me a couple of weekends ago, when Bob, Ann and I climbed into the old farm truck to rattle down to the Shannon farm and pick up some plastic sheeting. The Shannons run a dairy farm – the only one left in the valley, actually – and use the plastic to wrap the feed for the cows. They can’t reuse it, but the Collins find it great to lay down in the garden and keep the weeds at bay.
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The sun doesn’t seem to want to succumb to the typical fall gloom here on the island, and was out warming the golden leaves of the maples lining the Shannon driveway. We pulled up to the house and knocked on the door.
The Shannons are old friends of the Collins. Before Bob and Ann quit the dairy business, they and a small cohort of other farmers constantly relied on each other for equipment parts, emergency help and moral support. Old bonds die hard, and so this visit was just as much about catching up with each other as it was about recycling plastic.
Terry answered the door and his wife, Donna joined us in the kitchen to sip Earl Grey and discuss the state of agriculture in the valley. After a bit, the conversation turned to the upcoming Christmas party organized by the Farmers’ Institute, a group that advocates for farmers and serves as a sort of social catalyst for those who often have a limited off-farm life. But neither the Collins nor the Shannons were too excited about the party this year, actually, considering last year’s disappointment. The ladies who planned the event had decided that since nobody usually danced at the party, they wouldn’t have music, either. They also put a ban on alcohol and shut it down at 9 pm.
“The good thing was, you were done early enough to get drunk at home and not have to worry about who was driving!” Donna noted.
“Maybe there’ll be more young people this year,” somebody said. Terry laughed.
“Last year, we were the young people.”
There was a time, apparently, when the Farmers’ Institute Christmas party was quite the event. Everybody came down and had a good time. Ann used to be the one in charge of planning them, and one year, she even hired a belly dancer. That was about the time some of the older folk decided she wouldn’t be the one to plan them anymore. The problem was not that everyone suddenly got conservative. It was simply that there were so few farmers remaining in the area, and most of those who did remain couldn’t handle more excitement than a hip replacement.

Lots of reports come out about the “succession” problem in agriculture, reducing the facts to dry figures. The average age of a farmer in the United States is 57. One-third of all farmers in Canada will retire before 2035. Seventy percent of US farmland – most of it owned by family farms – will be changing hands in the next 20 years. Behind those numbers, the human face of the problem was made clear to me in that conversation at the Shannons’: No more parties. No more young people. No more farmers once those who remain sell off their land – whether to developers or to agribusiness – and retire. If the land is paved over, food will have to come from elsewhere. If the land goes to a corporate farm, the control of our food supply is consolidated even further. There just doesn’t appear to be enough people stepping up to the plate. Although the whole local food trend is on the up and up, farming still isn’t quite “sexy” enough to be considered a career option by most people my age. In the popular eye, agriculture doesn’t have the prestige of law or the heroism of medicine. Not to mention what usually is cited as the most important factor: There’s no money in it. I’m not sure which of these reasons is actually causing the profession of farming to die off with my parents’ generation. But the results are immediate and self-perpetuating. Universities all over North America are shutting down agriculture programs because of a lack of interest, taking with them valuable extension offices and other services to the agricultural community. As farmers retire, they are more likely to give up their land to urban sprawl or sell it to the nearest mega agribusiness operation than pass it on to their children, who are understandably reluctant to consign themselves to a lifetime of earning less than the minimum wage (one farmer at a recent meeting here said that, all told, he earns about $5.00 an hour at his job). Because of constantly rising real estate prices and the sad truth that farmland is worth more when the crop is condos, if a young person does happen to decide on a career in agriculture, they have a hard time finding a place to do it anymore.
When the world’s population increases by a third in the next 40 years, I imagine that a lot more of us will be rushing to what’s left of our agricultural land to try to crank out some more food. We’ll probably not want to wreak further environmental havoc, so organic methods will be in demand. But who will teach us how to do it? Unless we cryogenically freeze the farmers we have today and find some way to harvest their knowledge in the future, we could be up a creek, and the brown stuff in the water will probably be more chemical than animal.

I don’t want to preach gloom and doom here. While most children of farmers go off to find employment that actually pays a salary, there are the few that hang on. In fact, the Shannon farm will soon see a fourth generation of the family take the reins. Terry and Donna’s son Josh is the next in line, and he’s committed to making the farm work for another few decades. Since Terry’s grandfather came out from the dust-choked plains of Alberta in the 1930s, the farm has weathered economic ups and downs in the region, survived the mad cow outbreak of 2006 that did in other dairy farms, and managed to expand to over 500 acres. But their story is not typical. In fact, as far as the Collins can tell, the Shannons are currently the only farmers in the region with a successor. Their position of relative financial security probably has a lot to do with that.
Still, one way or another, those who want sustainable livelihoods based on producing food are finding their way into farming. And the new generation of farmers – even if they’re smaller in number– are doing things a bit differently this time. They understand the difference between growth for growth’s sake and sustainably managing land for the long term. Today, farmers can look at historical disasters like the dust bowl and modern-day tragedies like the droughts in Australia and think twice before over-plowing and freely sucking rivers dry. Not that all farms that started before our current problems – climate change, peak oil, water shortages – started spiraling out of control were operating unsustainably. Most just didn’t know better, and when squeezed by low commodity prices, were forced to try to pump higher and higher yields out of each acre. In comparison, for farmers starting out today, it’s almost impossible not to take environmental and social equity concerns into consideration in the business plan. This new ethic is reflected in the “manifesto” of a (highly inspiring) website dedicated to cataloging young farmers in the United States, Serve Your Country Food: “[We are] motivated by a force of intention that cannot be rationalized economically, with lives driven by an instinct for direct action and stewardship that honors the planet, people, and place, we are the allies of every American.”

So there are young farmers out there, and some of them are quite radically committed to making up for agriculture’s previous errors and energizing their peers into joining the cause. This leads me to another way to view the “succession problem”: by recognizing that farming itself is changing. While farms will always be an important source of food and other agricultural products, the conventional agriculture model that requires trading hard-earned cash for food sometimes isn’t the best option. It doesn’t work, for example, for those who don’t have much cash to spare but still want – and have a right to – fresh, non-polluted food. Instead, more people are planting their own gardens, working agriculture into the urban infrastructure and finding other ways to grow food other than on traditional farms. They are farmers in their own right, although the census will never count this as their primary occupation. On the other hand, farmers are seeing more income coming from agritourism (combining tourist accommodations with farming), educational programs and value-added food production. They still produce food on the side, but perhaps they, too, are not considered “farmers” under the black and white definitions of labor statistics. And that’s ok. It doesn’t mean farmers will ever be obsolete. Not every city or region is suited for agriculture, and for the majority of communities, a completely local food economy is simply impossible or impractical. For example, places like Pheonix, Arizona will probably always be better off importing their food from elsewhere rather than trying to bargain for some of its water so they can grow their own tomatoes. After all, we sustainability-pushers have to be realistic: Not everyone is going to move to a lush river valley so they can grow their own food and trade with other farmers. In fact, that would be impossible. It’s the 21st century. Compromise is key. And so is hope. Those who can’t run out and take over for aging farmers are at least becoming aware and supportive of family farms. Others, like those listed on Serve Your Country Food, are working on filling in the gaps. I, for one, plan to do my best to make the annual Farmers Institute of Port Alberni Christmas party as raucous as possible.
Update: Yes! magazine has an excellent photoessay on young farmers across America. 

100 chickens, 50 carnies, one camera

Port Alberni's Fall Fair last weekend opened my eyes to a whole new spectrum of rural life. Over the course of twenty-four hours (sleeping in a borrowed tent-trailer with Andrea, the biggest Fair enthusiast I've ever met), I witnessed not only the usual puke-cyclone rides and pie judging, but also power tool racing, tractor pulling competitions and logger sports. The real reason I was there, however, was to man an agricultural display put together by a group of local farmers (including Collins Farm). We brought out our prize produce, grains, canned goods and mysterious food preservation implements (dehydrator, pressure cooker, juicer, etc) and explained it all to fairgoers as they strolled by. Hopefully, they learned something and didn't confuse us with the sideshows. I also had a chance to chat with Wayne Smith, who for the last few years has been growing grains like wheat and rye in Port Alberni, filling the "last 100-mile-diet niche". Thanks to him, eating 100% locally is now slightly more realistic for people living in the area. It's a very exciting time to be on Vancouver Island, at least from an agricultural and food security standpoint (especially since where I left off in Oregon, the Bean and Grain Project was just in its second year). I feel like I'm seeing the local food revolution unfold before my very eyes. But more on that in another post.
Rather than try to piece together a bunch of photos into the blog format (Blogger is wonderful, but its photo uploader is as useless as a flat wheelbarrow tire), I'm trying something different this time. The entire album of fantastic, fur-filled, foody fair photos - with captions! - should appear in the slide show below. (It's not perfect, either. Click the big green "play" button, then push the smaller "pause" button that appears toward the bottom of the photo to scroll through them manually.) Better yet, click here to go to the album directly.

On the River

Inspired by/in tribute to Edward Abbey’s wonderful documentation of his float down Glen Canyon in the book Desert Solitaire.

When a cool breeze, a precursor to evening, rushes across the water and over your face, when you’re eye level with the water and the party downstream moves out of earshot, the river almost seems wild. I let myself believe, for a moment, that I’m here two hundred years ago, before the loggers and the homesteaders and the tourists started arriving by the boatload. It’s like squinting at someone in a hazy bar and convincing yourself, just for a moment, that he or she is more beautiful than you first observed.
Not that the river, especially on a sweltering day like today, isn’t beautiful. The sun, low in the sky, highlights each ripple on the wide, shallow expanse of water moving slowly toward the Alberni Inlet and eventually the Pacific. Trees loom on either side like living canyon walls, taking on a slightly disjointed appearance with the slanted shadow cast by the sun. It’s that long, hot stretch of summer that reaches lazily between July and August, but the river always has somewhere to go ¬– crisp, cool and smelling of high forests.

We’re close to the end of our float. Crystal and I, hot and tired after the Saturday market, had set our inner tubes in a few miles upstream of the farm and spent the past three hours taking our time coming home. This river, which runs right by Collins Farm, is known as the Somass. The salmon run here in greater numbers than any other river in North America – earning Port Alberni (the closest city to us) the title of Salmon Capital of the World.

We aren’t too concerned with salmon, though, other to watch them jump as we float effortlessly down the river. I keep one eye skyward in search of eagles, which are another common sight in these parts. Just last week, Peter and I were in the barn chatting with the horses when we noticed a crowd of vultures gathering around a glistening, translucent blob of cow afterbirth in the field. We stood on the lower rung of the fence watching, and soon an eagle joined in the feast. To us, it seemed like an undignified way for such a regal bird to get a meal, but eagles are, after all, scavengers. A second eagle landed and the vultures began to back away, and with good reason. Even from five hundred feet away, I could catch the sharp, menacing look in the bigger birds’ eyes. We stayed where we were, trying to keep still, the toes of our boots pointed firmly toward the dirt.

The Somass drifts past a shooting range, a large greenhouse, a few small farms and quite a few houses. Crystal and I get off our tubes and bask in the sun whenever we feel in need of a break. At other points, curiosity simply gets the better of us. The Field of Weeds, for example, demanded investigation. From the river, we could make out over a rocky embankment hundreds of tall, strange-looking plants. Crystal is here on the WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) program and is, like me, interested in all that grows. We park our tubes, climb up the rocks and up onto a large pasture hosting a few cows and some geese. The odd plants take up half the field, but we can’t quite figure out what they are. They grow two or three feet apart over bare ground, towering over our heads with thick stalks, huge leaves and pointy heads that bend over with their own weight. A few that have fallen over sprout three or four new heads out of the side. I express jealousy for the plant’s ability to bud offspring so effortlessly; Crystal admires its resilience in the face of potential setbacks.
Life lessons learned, we decide the best course of action will be to run through the plants with our arms outstretched, yelling nonsense at the top of our lungs and feeling the beat of hundreds of stalks against our hands. It doesn’t solve the mystery, but it gives the cows something to ponder over as they chew their cud.

***

Back on the river, I’m daydreaming with my chin pointed toward the empty sky when I notice Crystal out of the corner of my eye, floating with the top of her head in the water. I question her motives. She tells me I have to experience this perspective, so I follow suit, leaning all the way back on my tube until I’m taking in my bobbing surroundings upside-down. I have to admit that this is unexpectedly amazing. The last few of my cares and worries, already fried to a crisp in the sun, fall right out my ears. The trees look even taller. The water and sky are even bluer. I feel like Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Few experiences in life require a person to instantly begin singing at the top of their lungs, but this is one of them.

The only possible threat to our enjoyment this afternoon may be an encounter with George Fleagle. Mr. Fleagle represents the crème-de-la-crème of the Port Alberni beer-gutted, tobacco-stained bachelor crowd. I’d met him a couple of weeks ago while swimming in the river with Crystal and Andre, another WOOF-er, near her farm. He came snorkeling down the river, unnoticed by us until he popped out of the water just as Crystal was lighting a cigarette, sure that she wouldn’t mind if he bummed one and oh, by the way, do you gals ever want to go tubing? We claimed a strong aversion to water, a defense that was probably undermined by the fact that we were in bathing suits, dripping wet by the side of a river. George stuck around anyway, educating us on the many pleasures of inner tubing and the river in general.
I was due back at the farm soon and decided to head home, leaving Crystal to deal with our new friend. My car was parked in her driveway at the top of the hill a short distance away. I hadn’t been paying much attention when we came down, and it was my first time there. Naturally, I assumed I would find it anyway and became utterly and completely lost in the thick brush. I ended up back down near the river, but some thirty feet away from the path I was supposed to be on with a thick patch of thistles blocking my way forward. Luckily, I could see my friends from where I stood, so swallowed my pride and yelled for direction. George, who happened to have grown up in the very house Crystal was staying in, jumped to the rescue. He gallantly escorted me up the hill, questioning my rash decision to move to Canada all by myself without anyone to help me along. Because of my embarrassment, I found myself being what probably came off as friendly to the hopeful Fleagel, who now considered himself a bonafide hero. He promised to come visit me at work.
When I told Ann and Bob about the experience, they seemed quite amused. My gut feeling – namely, nausea – about him had been dead-on. George had grown up with their two sons – he and his friends habitually threw rocks at their campground sign, picked on their kids and generally made nuisances of themselves. Fleagle was a man who lived up to his name.
Thankfully, we haven’t seen him yet, and the prospect of a redneck admirer has turned into a favorite farm joke instead of an actual threat. Still, when we near crowds of young guys on the river, I sink a little lower in my tube, ready to go for an impromptu swim.

But the waters are surprisingly quiet today. Tubing is something of a sport in this town, where most of the kids seem to have nothing to do but drink beer, smoke pot and go for a float, often taking with them giant boom boxes strapped to rafts, which shake the trees to their roots for miles around. Like many places in the Pacific Northwest, the two major industries here – logging and fishing – collapsed on themselves in the latter part of the last century. This leaves the young people with the unexciting prospects of collecting welfare checks and scrambling for tourist dollars if they wish to remain in the area. Boredom seems to hang heavy over the town. If only they could all be bussed out to Collins Farm to pull weeds. All, of course, except the pesky Fleagle.

***

Before the river meanders around to our jumping-off point at the farm, it flattens out and gets wide for a long, shallow stretch. Over the sound of water scurrying over rock we hear music – not the obnoxious thump of a tuber’s bass but a lighter melody. It actually sounds like the trees themselves are ringing.
The music gets louder, coming from the left bank ahead now. I crane my neck to peer through the underbrush. Then I spot the source. A ray of lingering sunlight makes its way through the trees and illuminates a man standing with his back to us, his arms flying across the keys of a huge xylophone, wooden mallets in hand. The chiming, stacatto music rises on the breeze above his back yard, his house, and the river. He seems to be performing for nobody but himself and the trees, completely lost in the joy of it. I stand up in the shin-high water, entranced by the sight and the sound, the sudden reminder of life’s endless mystery.