The sustainable hand

Piece Description

Full Story:

One of the big buzz words in agriculture today is “sustainability.” It’s all about making sure natural resources are not depleted or permanently damaged so that we CAN farm into the future. But how best to do this and who’s really making the commitment for the long-term? In part three of Harvest Public Media’s series on “The Farmer of the Future,” Jessica Naudziunas reports that as more farmers, from varied agriculture techniques embrace the idea of “sustainability” … their open-ended definitions will help shape the next generation of farming.

The farmer of future will grow food and raise animals with tomorrow in mind. They’ll know contributing to the food supply is not enough. I f the soil, air and water they use to produce food is damaged, good luck feeding anyone. Unlike the organic label, sustainable tends to have a floating definition-- there’s no way to be certified “sustainable,” so many people have come up with their own idea of the word.
“It’s a sort of long definition, so bear with me.”
Rob Hedberg is the national director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, or SARE He gives the official US Department of Agriculture definition:
“The term ''sustainable agriculture'' means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application...”
It’s a little complicated, and a little vague. Hedberg goes into more detail.
“A. Satisfy human food and fiber needs. B. Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agriculture economy depends.”
REPORTER: C: be efficient, use resources wisely, then, D: keep a close watch on the farm finances E: enhance the quality of life for farmers, and everyone, as a whole.
“So, it is not a multiple choice question, that is the whole definition for sustainable agriculture. These are the kinds of questions that a lot of people can spend a lot of time debating and looking at the fine detail.”
And people have studied the fine detail, and picking and choosing sustainable methods as they please. It’s not organic, and it’s not industrial, it’s a mix of all of the good practices from each. And it’s a tricky movement to pin down, because most farmers can say: I’m sustainable.
FARMERS MARKET AMBI
So, it might help to get the word on the street for this one:
Montage of farmers asking “WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY?”
Opening day at the mid-week Columbia, Missouri farmers market has brought six farms with booths displaying mostly produce, and some goat cheese. If you’re looking to bone up on the latest farm trend, this is the place to do it.
MONTAGE OF ANSWERS: crossfaded for time
“Reporter: can you define sustainable food? #1 YES. Ummm. It’s. For instance beef that is fed on grass, and the local, um, plants, and that…um…with no…#2 everybody talks about being green, but in my mind, farming, its about being brown. Brown is really the new green. If you start losing your brown, nobody is going to grow anything. By the same token…REPORTER: this idea of sustainability…what does it mean to you? #3 Sustainability to me…especially being an heirloom farmer…means that we can reclaim the seeds out of these plants, and reproduce the same product in the end. A lot of the modern ways to me, I don’t appreciate, and I don’t like the way everything is being chemically done…you spend more time in the field doing it by hand rather than machine, when you are doing it our way. REPORTER: do you make a lot of money? No, not as this, no. #4 Sustainability…ahhhm…to…to be able to financially sustain your business by making the money back that you invest into your business. #5 Sustainability to me, is using the land in a way that you can continue to use it productively, for the next generation. REPORTER: and, um, what isn’t sustainable? The big hammer tools, the big chemicals, that type of thing. Not putting your efforts back into making the soil productive through composting and cover crops, and just basically not taking care of it so it can take care of you.”
FARMER IDs
[WILLIAM POWERS AMBI UP]
Five hours northwest of this small farmers market of opinions, in Lincoln, Nebraska, you’ll find young farmer William Powers. He’s the director of the Nebraska outpost for Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.
“My wife and I have a small farm here in the Saline Wetlands of Sounders County called Darby Springs Farm.”
[FARM AMBI]
They live in a small home that is more modest than the others along the rural road that is just feet from his front door. Outside, he has a movable fence that keeps two horses and a cow from wandering off. Next door, a makeshift chicken coop houses about a dozen heritage breed birds.
“Sustainability is a journey. I don’t know if there will be any point in our life when we can say we’re a sustainable farm. It’s not like the organic standards that the USDA set down. Where you do these and you are organic. Sustainability goes beyond something that is written down.”
Powers says, sustainable farming speaks directly to educating the individual, but the big idea behind agriculture in the US for so long has been “grow food, at any cost to the environment, to communities, to farmers themselves, to feed the world.” Though, as hard as the industrial agriculture model works to reach that goal, Powers says, when he looks around he doesn’t see a well-fed world. The town nearest has people who go hungry…
“So if that’s the goal, they’ve failed. They’ve failed really bad. It’s just not an obtainable goal in my opinion. A growing population needs to learn to feed themselves, to be able to live for themselves…and that’s going to be sustainable.”
[AMBI UP OF DAN HOWELL LOOKING AT BLUEBERRY BUSH his ambi will be up and throughout the next graf…parenthetical ambi inserts here and there.]
“OK…Dan Howell…a local farmer-rancher in Marshall County, Kansas…”
Most of his over 1500 acres once yielded strictly row crops, milo soybeans wheat…the classics in Kansas. But at the age of 60, Howell has changed, but it would be difficult to pick up on it by looks alone. He wears a plaid shirt and black jeans held in place by a belt with a Conestoga wagon design on the buckle.
[HIGH TUNNEL AMBI]
Howell is experimenting with his land like an idealistic young farmer. His motivations is to avoid the pain of losing.
“Years ago when I wanted to farm more crop ground. I went through the farm crisis of the 80s, and that was really ugly. I am wanting to be a little closer to shore than farther away.”
Howell says he no longer uses big equipment or fertilizer on his land, and for the most part, the farm runs itself. He says he’s sustainable because he works with the land, instead of manipulating it to work for him.
“How can I work in that model and make it work for me? And so this is a lot the things why I am changing my deals, cuz I don’t like buying three and four dollar fuel. And so these are things that I can do to buy less of it and still be productive. ”
Those changes come in the form of a high tunnel, a young fruit orchard, and a shiitake mushroom grove built into an old cluster of trees. He’ll sell his cows to other farmers who need them, and his produce to the local school system. Instead of living in a barn, or a small grazing field, his docile Hereford and Angus cows rule on the rolling hundreds of acres around them.
“In society today, we don’t have a real strong sense of accepting diversity in agriculture. I’ve had several friends, are good people, but they say ‘why don’t you let me rent that ground and plant and grow corn and soybeans, instead of running cows on that ground. They thought the model that I wanted to work with, they thought I had fallen off a rock fence or something…”
Driving along with him on the edge of these fields feels like a Kansan safari…no structures to block our way, no manure drainage systems that are politely kept out of conversation. As a reformed row crop farmer, Howell describes his old life making much more money than he does now. When it came time for Howell to make a decision about the type of farm he ran, he looked to the future, and knew, after decades of planting soybeans, that it could not sustain him, or his family for very long. SOQ.