How CEA is Bringing Agriculture Into the Exurbs
Urban sprawl reached a crescendo in the early 2000’s. Elizabeth Becker, writing for the New York Times, reported that “The United States is losing two acres of mostly prime farmland every minute to development, the fastest such decline in the country’s history.”
There are lots of reasons for this trend. But chief among them is the simple fact that the farmland is often more valuable when it is turned into a housing development than when it is used to grow food. This makes it harder for farmers to keep farmland in the industry after retiring and for aspiring farmers to buy land to pursue their dream. Controlled environment agriculture, or CEA, allows you to grow more food on less land, and may be a solution for farmers trapped in suburbia.
The rise of exurbia
Agriculture used to be the backbone of the U.S. economy. In 1870, almost 50% of U.S. workers earned their living through farming. By 2008, the number of people directly involved in agriculture had dropped to less than 2 percent of the population.
We are profoundly disconnected from the most basic livelihood known to man. We are lost in a sea of shifting economic trends and technological change. Where does food fit into this picture?
We want to grow our own food, please and thank you
Farming has never been easy, especially when big farms from California and Mexico are driving the prices down. But with consumers asking for higher quality locally grown food, more young and first time farmers are finding a decent paycheck on the farm. Leading the way are people like Jean Martin Fortier, who farms on less than 2 acres in Quebec.
In his beautifully written book The Market Gardener, Fortier describes how he is able to generate over $100,000 in crop sales with less than 2 acres of land and a few seasonal workers:
When our sales broke the $100,000 mark the following year, our micro-farm reached a level of production and financial success that most people in the agricultural industry believed to be impossible.”
But I can’t move to the countryside
Fortier was able to build his farm with less than $40,000 in equipment and infrastructure. Unfortunately, as he points out, “this figure does not include certain necessities such as delivery vehicle, land rental/purchase fees, mortgages, or other variable costs.”
Even if we did know the price of his land, many aspiring farmers will not be able to imitate Fortier’s success. For one thing, many folks just don’t have the ability to relocate to the countryside. Even if they did, they might have a hard time finding a suitable piece of land. In many places, you would have to drive 30 miles from the city (or more) to find an affordable piece of land.
This inaccessibility to land has been developing for a few decades. In the last 20 years, the price of urban and suburban land has more than doubled. In many areas these properties continue to reach record high prices.
Unfortunately, this trend is not accidental. Farmland has been the target of aggressive real estate speculation, leading to a dramatic rise in land values. Here is how Jim Hightower describes the trend:
Our nation’s farms conjure up Americana, the old home place and our rich, rural culture. Less bucolic, however, is the assortment of financial trusts and hedge fund hucksters that are buying up these farms and converting them into fast-buck investment packages for super rich global speculators.
Investments like these have led to the unique phenomenon of the American Exurb. These unique places are not exactly a “suburb”, but they aren’t exactly a new “town” either. You can find these “commuter cities” way out past the suburbs, where they are populated by young professionals with Mazda sports cars and lots of debt. I am always struck by how new and impermanent these places feel, as if they had sprung up overnight. You can tell you are in an exurb when the houses all look the same and the busiest intersection in town is at the corner of the Home Depot and the Target.
And I can’t afford to farm like my parents did
In The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry describes how farmers were facing financial pressure to sell off the farm:
“A farmer who earns $10,000 to $12,000 a year typically leaves an estate valued about $320,000 — which means that when that farm is financed again, either by a purchaser or by an heir, (to pay the inheritance taxes), it simply cannot support its new owner and pay for itself.”
Berry wrote this in 1977, 8 years before Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson teamed up to launch the Farm Aid tour. At the time, many family farms were facing foreclosure, or being forced to sell to developers or factory farms. There was a farm bill that favored corporate agriculture while offering little assistance to struggling family farmers.
If anything, these trends have only accelerated over time, with results like the ones described above. But there are some bright spots on the horizon.
CEA as a solution: more food, less land
My position at Bright Agrotech gives me a chance to study the economics of small farms. The challenge is significant: small farms have to set themselves apart from the commodity crops shipped in from out of state, with prices high enough to justify their existence. They have to find access to land or facilities despite high prices and remote locations.
From these challenges, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) arose and continues to evolve. This is an industry born out of necessity. High density CEA can be highly productive, and can avoid some of the risks associated with traditional farming. It is also an appropriate technology that can be scaled appropriately for small families, businesses, and commercial ventures.
CEA allows farmers to design a facility that maintains optimal conditions for growing the crops. CEA growers have advantages over traditional farming with year-round yields and often, productivity in a fraction of the space. Recent advances have increased the productivity and reduced the labor required to operate a CEA farm. The techniques are especially useful where farmland is expensive, where soil requires remediation, or where local food can improve freshness and taste for local consumers.
If you’re an exurbanite looking for a way to farm, CEA could be your ticket to farming. To learn more and see model greenhouse operation, watch this breakdown of a small greenhouse farm startup.
Lyon, France
Read more
¹ “Hightower: The Speculating Farmers of Wall Street — Making … — Alternet.” 26 Feb. 2017, http://www.alternet.org/food/hightower-speculating-farmers-wall-street-making-quick-money-has-seized-american-farmland. Accessed 17 Apr. 2017.
² “Farm Aid: Saving the Family Farm : NPR.” 23 Nov. 2006, http://www.npr.org/2006/11/23/6526686/farm-aid-saving-the-family-farm. Accessed 18 May. 2017.
