So What Do Farmers Need? An Interview with Work Song Farm
As I have mentioned before in the blog, many times farmers of all types wish to be more sustainable but lack the resources to overcome the barriers to sustainability. Regrettably, I did not have time during this thesis process to conduct a proper statistical survey of farmers, but I have had the opportunity over the course of my general life and research to speak to several farmers about these barriers. As can be seen in the interview printed below, the number one impediment farmers face to implementing sustainable change is time and money. These two factors are mentioned time and time again when speaking to farmers about these issues, whether the farmer lives in Australia or the United States, works in conventional or organic agriculture, or works in a big or small farm.
In order to fully understand what farmers need to overcome this access barrier, it is important to speak with them directly. The interview I have chosen to share with you all comes from a farm in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Work Song Farm is a small, organic, family-run farm that provides year-round fresh produce to their customer base. Full disclosure, I used to work for this farm, and it was a great summer filled with fantastic people, both my co-workers and my bosses.
Brief side note before we dive in: keen readers will remember me complaining about mulching a few blogs back — and yes, it is fantastic to be so validated in this interview.
With immense thanks to Dan and Abby at Work Song for their thoughtful answers, here is the interview. Questions are in bold.
Why did you decide to be an organic farm as opposed to a conventional farm?
“Well, first we have to define what we mean by “organic.” There’s organic, the grass-roots movement to steer agriculture back to the natural system it has been for millennia (except for the brief period, post World War II, of industrialized agriculture, now known as “conventional.” Then there’s Organic, as certified by the USDA, with all its rules and records and bureaucracy.
We participate in both: the former because it is consistent with our personal ideals and our theories of how best to grow food. We feel it’s better to try to work within natural systems than to try to outsmart or obliterate them. The latter, the USDA version, because it’s a marketing tool — a shorthand way to tell our customers we farm a certain way.
We will always maintain our farm organically, though we may decide to drop Organic Certification at some point. We are so close to our customers we really don’t need that label to build trust.
What government organizations do you work with? Do you think this process could be streamlined at all?
We work with quite a few. The USDA NRCS has conservation programs that we have participated in: to build high tunnels, set up irrigation systems, use cover crops, and the like. The NH Dept of Agriculture is the agency that certifies our organic status. They also license our scales, grant [kwb5] permits to spray pesticides (even organic ones), and put out farm maps for consumers to find farms in their area. There’s the UNH Cooperative Extension, which is mainly a resource to connect farmers with the knowledge and research that comes through the University. There’s also the County Conservation Districts, which are sort of the county level outreach for NRCS.
I’m not sure if these agencies coordinate formally, but I have witnessed some collaboration between them, like a workshop hosted by Cooperative Extension with speakers from NRCS or NHDAMF. Sorry for all these acronyms. They’re hard to write out, but easy to Google.
I’m sure there’s room for improvement streamlining all these agencies, but good luck trying to do so. It could be a bureaucratic quagmire.
What barriers do you face when thinking about becoming more sustainable?
The two biggies are always time and money. As a small farm we’re always strapped for both, which often leads us to skimp on the sustainability practices we’d like to use, in order to pursue the weekly paycheck or the family down time. Resources and sustainability are a bit like chickens and eggs; one is dependent on the other. Solar panels are a good analogy. In the long run, they save money as well as being more environmentally friendly, but they require an initial investment that is likely out of reach for those of lesser means.
Are there any long-term goals you have for the farm?
It would be great to be more energy self-sufficient. Solar panels would be great, and we’re trying to figure out how to capture heat from compost piles to use in our greenhouses.
We’d also like to emphasize more winter growing/marketing, possibly ease up in the summer months, in order to even out the work load throughout the year. That would be a form of sustainability in itself. Related to this, we’d also like to rely less on seasonal employees, and find one or two permanent helpers who can really invest themselves in the success of the farm, and maybe even spin off enterprises from it — maybe add some livestock, preserve crops (frozen strawberries), or some other venture that would add value to the farm’s products.
Also I want to build the barn-of-my-dreams, and, of course, work less and make more money.
What changes do you think should be made to the organic guidelines? Should these guidelines change based on the size of the farm?
I don’t pay much attention to the organic rules, other than those that affect us directly. I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately about the allowance of CAFOs and hydroponics and such in Certified Organic agriculture. Without doing much research, we definitely fall on the side that opposes things like that. We even joined on organization called the Real Organic Project, which attempts to distinguish farms that grow in soil and let their livestock onto pasture from the big agribusinesses that have lobbied the USDA to accept their practices as organic. But we joined more out of curiosity than any real political commitment. We prefer to keep things simple: know and listen to our customers, and vice versa. We operate at such a local level (we sell 95% of our product within 5 miles of the farm) that engaging in national discussions is low on our priority list. Maybe some day.
What is one farming practice that you wish you could implement on your farm, but lack the time/money/equipment for it to happen?
We use a lot of mulch — specifically tree leaves in various states of decomposition — as part of our soil health strategy. Natural mulch keeps the soil covered, conserving water and nutrients, smothering weeds, minimizing tillage, providing food and habitat for soil organisms, and adds carbon (organic matter) to the soil. Spreading all this mulch by hand is laborious and time-consuming. I would love to have a tool to chop and spread the mulch more easily.
What is one thing you wish more people understood about running a family farm?
We’re actually really fortunate to have in our area so many customers who are supportive, appreciative, and forgiving. Perhaps the biggest misconception is that farming is a simple life, and the rhythms of nature are like a current that carries the farmers gently from one task to another. It is much more complex and chaotic than that. While there are moments to zone out with some repetitive activity, like weeding, most of the time it’s a fast-paced, stop on a dime and switch directions sort of life.”
This is just one interview with one small farm. However, the barriers faced by Work Song Farm are universal — lack of time, money, technology, and some difficultly with bureaucracy. What this tells me is that for the United States to feasibly switch to syntropic agriculture, or any kind of sustainable agriculture, we need more support for our farmers. And we need to listen to them.
We will be back to our programming next week to discuss the differences between syntropic agriculture and other types of sustainable agriculture. In the meantime, think about supporting some local farmers if you can.
With summer job nostalgia,
Ajah
