The Food Shortage Solution in Your Own Backyard
Posted on June 9, 2022 by Ellen Brown from Web of Debt
While the global food systems we depend on come under increasing strain, there's a solution to the growing crisis that most Americans can find in their own backyards–or front lawns.
A confluence of crises—lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war—have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do?
Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance, pointed out in a recent interview with Del Bigtree that in the United States there are 40 million acres of lawn. Lawns are the most destructive monoculture on the planet, absorbing more resources and pesticides than any other crop, without providing any yield. If we were to turn 30% of that lawn into permaculture-based food gardens, says Gale, we could be food self-sufficient without relying on imports or chemicals.
Permaculture is a gardening technique that "uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area."
Russian families have shown the possibilities, using permaculture methods on simple cottage gardens or allotments called dachas. As Dr. Leon Sharashkin, a Russian translator and editor with a PhD in forestry from the University of Missouri, explains:
Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody's got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners' output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia's gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.
The Dacha Model
Dachas are small wooden houses on a small plot of land, typically just 600 meters (656 yards) in size. In Soviet Russia, they were allocated free of charge on the theory that the land belonged to the people. They were given to many public servants; and families not given a dacha could get access to a plot of land in an allotment association, where they could grow vegetables, visit regularly to tend their kitchen gardens and gather crops.
Dachas were originally used mainly as country vacation getaways. But in the 1990s, they evolved from a place of rest into a major means of survival. That was when the Russian economy suffered from what journalist Anne Williamson called in congressional testimony the "rape of Russia." The economy was destroyed and then plundered by financial oligarchs, who swooped in to buy assets at fire sale prices.
Stripped of other resources, Russian families turned to their dachas to grow food. Dr. Sharaskin observed that the share of food gardening in national agriculture increased from 32% in 1990 to over 50% by 2000. In 2004, food gardens accounted for 51% of the total agricultural output of the Russian Federation – greater than the contribution of the whole electric power generation industry; greater than all of the forestry, wood-processing and pulp and paper industries; and significantly greater than the coal, natural gas and oil refining industries taken together.
Dachas are now a codified right of Russian citizens. In 2003, the government signed the Private Garden Plot Act into law, granting citizens free plots of land ranging from 1 to 3 hectares each. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) Dr. Sharaskin opined in 2009 that "with 35 million families (70% of Russia's population) … producing more than 40% of Russia's agricultural output, this is in all likelihood the most extensive microscale food production practice in any industrially developed nation."
In a 2014 article titled "Dacha Gardens—Russia's Amazing Model for Urban Agriculture", Sara Pool wrote that Russia obtains "over 50% agricultural products from family garden plots. The backyard gardening model uses around 3% arable land, and accounts for roughly 92% of all Russian potatoes, 87% of all fruit, 77% vegetables, and 59% all Russian meat according to the Russian Federal State Statistic Service."
Our Beautiful but Toxic and Wasteful Green Lawns
Rather than dachas, we in the West have pristine green lawns, which not only produce no food but involve chemical and mechanical maintenance that is a major contributor to water and air pollution. Lawns are the single largest irrigated crop in the U.S., covering nearly 32 million acres. This is a problem particularly in the western U.S. states, which are currently suffering from reduced food production due to drought. Data compiled by Urban Plantations from the EPA, the Public Policy Institute of California, and the Alliance for Water Efficiency suggests that gardens use 66% less water than lawns. In the U.S., fruits and vegetables are grown on only about 10 million acres. In theory, then, if the space occupied by American lawns were converted to food gardens, the country could produce four times as many fruits and vegetables as it does now.
A study from NASA scientists in collaboration with researchers in the Mountain West estimated that American lawns cover an area that is about the size of Texas and is three times larger than that used for any other irrigated crop in the United States. The study was not, however, about the growth of lawns but about their impact on the environment and water resources. It found that "maintaining a well-manicured lawn uses up to 900 liters of water per person per day and reduces [carbon] sequestration effectiveness by up to 35 percent by adding emissions from fertilization and the operation of mowing equipment." To combat water and pollution problems, some cities have advocated abandoning the great green lawn in favor of vegetable gardens, local native plants, meadows or just letting the grass die. But well-manicured lawns are an established U.S. cultural tradition; and some municipalities have banned front-yard gardens as not meeting neighborhood standards of aesthetics. Some homeowners, however, have fought back. Florida ended up passing a law in July 2019 that prohibits towns from banning edible gardens for aesthetic reasons; and in California, a bill was passed in 2014 that allows yard use for "personal agriculture" (defined as "use of land where an individual cultivates edible plant crops for personal use or donation"). As noted in a Los Angeles Times op-ed:
"The Legislature recognized that lawn care is resource intensive, with lawns being the largest irrigated crop in the United States offering no nutritional gain. Finding that 30% to 60% of residential water is used for watering lawns, the Legislature believes these resources could be allocated to more productive activities, including growing food, thus increasing access to healthy options for low-income individuals."
Despite how large they loom in the American imagination, immaculate green lawns maintained by pesticides, herbicides and electric lawnmowers are a relatively recent cultural phenomenon in the United States. In the 1930s, chemicals were not recommended. Weeds were controlled either by pulling them by hand or by keeping chickens. Chemical use became popular only after World War II, and it has grown significantly since. According to the EPA, close to 80 million U.S. households spray 90 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides on their lawns each year. A 1999 study by the United States Geological Survey found that 99% of urban water streams contain pesticides, which pollute our drinking water and create serious health risks for wildlife, pets, and humans. Among other disorders, these chemicals are correlated with an increased risk of cancers, nervous system disorders, and a seven-fold increased risk of childhood leukemia.
That's just the pollution in our water supply. Other problems with our lawn fetish are air and noise pollution generated by gas-powered lawn and garden equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this equipment is responsible for 5% of U.S. air pollution. Americans use about 800 million gallons of gas per year just mowing their lawns.
Continue reading "The Food Shortage Solution in Your Own Backyard" »
Posted at 11:06 AM in Ellen Brown, Farming, Food, Web of Debt | Permalink | Comments (0)
If the Planet Goes Down, It Will Be Irrelevant Whether a Woman Has the Right to Choose or Not
Democrats will fail at codifying Roe vs Wade, but Republicans will succeed in codifying anti-abortion rights if a Republican President is elected in 2024. But that's the least important thing that will happen. If Republicans take over the House and Senate in 2022, and a Republican President is elected in 2024, forget the US and the world doing anything about climate change. It will be full steam ahead for fossil fuels, and full steam ahead for the death of the planet. We don't have that much time any more to prevent irreversible change due to global warming. All the deadlines here have past or soon will be past. The relevant headline is Greenhouse Gases Must Begin to Fall by 2025, Says U.N. Climate Report. We are continually being bombarded with political and cultural trivia when the giant in the room is climate change. The prevailing attitude is we'll get around to that eventually, but eventually is almost here, folks. If not much is happening before 2025, we might as well forget it and spend our few remaining years enjoying the human past times of war and trivial pursuits. Eos reported:
"The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report on climate mitigation since the Paris Agreement was released today. This is likely the IPCC's last word before the window of opportunity to stop warming at 1.5°C disappears, after which scientists said life-threatening climate consequences and feedbacks will intensify.
"Led by hundreds of scientists convened by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, the summary of the report was approved by 195 governments after 16 days of discussions and one 40-hour marathon session that stretched into Sunday night.
"The report gives the world a failing grade. International policies implemented by the end of 2020 will miss the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming well below 2°C. Current trends suggest that by 2100, the world will warm 3.2°C compared to preindustrial average temperature, with a spread of 2.2°C to 3.5°C possible.
""Reaching 3.2°C will be nightmarish," said Andrea Simonelli, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the report. "The threshold for habitable is already being pushed to the limit in many places.""
Despite these dire warnings the human species is still on a binge of colossal pettiness. This means that wars and in particular resource wars will become more severe and common. Already the whole world is in a food crisis due to drought and lack of water for crop irrigation. War also plays a part. Russia and Ukraine together supply more than a quarter of the world's wheat, and coming disruptions could fuel higher food prices and social unrest. When people start fighting over food, wars will take on proportions that will make the war in Ukraine seem like a minor aberration. Russia and Ukraine together export more than a quarter of the world's wheat, feeding billions of people in the form of bread, pasta and packaged foods. The countries are also key suppliers of barley, sunflower seed oil and corn, among other products. Food prices have already risen globally as a result of pandemic-related shipping disruptions, rising costs for farmers and adverse weather, and wheat is no exception. Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of wheat increased 80 percent, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. That was on a par with rising costs for corn and higher than increases for soybeans or coffee.
Now we're talking some serious stuff, not just the future of NATO. The brunt of the food crisis just like the brunt of climate change in general will be felt most by the poorer nations. As a consequence, whatever immigration crisis that is being felt today will be magnified 1000 times at least as starving people seek to come across borders not only in the US but all over the world where prosperous nations border on poverty stricken ones. So crises based on real world problems, rather than on national borders between Russia and Ukraine, will become more severe. Already in California, the water supply for crop irrigation is likely to be turned off by 2025 as Lake Mead and Lake Powell go dry. California supplies about a quarter of the US' fruits and vegetables so the American diet is shortly to be seriously affected and not just by supply chain issues. Recently, a fire in Laguna Niguel destroyed 20 multi-million dollar homes on a day that was not particularly windy or hot. One 10,000 square foot mansion recently was on the market for almost $10 million.
They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now the human species is fiddling while the whole damn planet is about to go up in smoke. Oh well, it was a nice planet while it lasted. Scientists assure us that there are trillions of other habitable planets out there, but they're so far away.
Posted at 04:37 PM in John Lawrence, Climate Change, Democrats, Extreme Weather, Farming, Fires, Food, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Heat, Hunger, Off the Top of my Head, Russia, War | Permalink | Comments (0)
Beyond Meat and Cow Farts
by John Lawrence, February 24, 2021
About 19% of the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted into the atmosphere each year comes from agriculture. There are roughly a billion cattle in the world raised for both meat and dairy. The 2 billion tons of GHGs they burp and fart account for 4 percent of global emissions each year. Also pig poop accounts for half of all poop related emissions with cows making up the other half. Industrial cow and pig farms create ponds full of poop which then sometimes break through to streams and rivers. In an article, "A million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms", we find the following:
"Fifty yards from Miller's family graveyard is a massive open-air cesspool storing the pigs' waste – a stagnant pool containing their feces, urine, blood and other bodily fluids – often referred to as a "lagoon", one of about 3,300 lagoons across the state. When the cesspool reaches its capacity, its contents are liquefied and sprayed into a field across the street from Miller's house via a large, sprinkler-like apparatus. The sprayer releases a mist of waste on to the field, which, according to court documents, is about 200ft from Miller's home at its closest rotation."
In addition to the environmental, health and stench problems, pig shit lagoons are contributing major amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. "Air pollutants from the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation," Wing and fellow UNC researcher Jill Johnston wrote in a 2014 study. They also found that the state's industrial hog operations disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. That pattern, they concluded, "is generally recognized as environmental racism".
The Guardian article continued: "North Carolina's pork production industry has shifted dramatically since the mid-80s. Today's industrial farms, often called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, raise pigs and other livestock in confinement until they are ready for slaughter. The hogs generally live in cramped quarters; Michelle B Nowlin, supervising attorney of Duke's Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, estimates they typically get seven or eight square feet of space each." Chickens and cattle suffer the same fate of having to spend their meager existence in CAFOs.
As more people world wide become middle class, they want to eat more meat. This is not only a problem for the animals who suffer the most, but it is a problem for the GHGs that animal agriculture causes that contribute to global warming. But the nutritional aspects of eating animals are equally inefficient. A pig eats 3 times as many calories as we get when we eat it. Cows require six calories of feed for every calorie of beef that we eat. In China and other developing countries meat eating is becoming much more popular because of a growing and more affluent middle class.
There are several alternatives already on the market: plant based hamburgers called Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers. These burgers are a pretty good approximation of the real thing, but there are even more products being developed that don't only mimic the taste of meat. They actually are meat except they are created without having to pass calories through a cow and then slaughtering the cow. They use the same metabolic processes that a cow does to deposit meat on its bones. This meat though is created in a lab and is already on the market in Singapore according to The Guardian:
"Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.
"The "chicken bites", produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.
"Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild."
If the world's consumption of meat can be converted to lab grown meat that looks, taste, and feels like the real thing, then we can eliminate the whole process of passing calories through a cow or pig or chicken first and still get the same end result. That alone will save about 10 billion tons of GHGs per year.
Posted at 09:35 AM in John Lawrence, Black Lives Matter, Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, Farming, Food, Global Warming, Green New Deal, Off the Top of my Head, Pollution, Racism, Sanitation | Permalink | Comments (0)
Farming: Past, Present and Future
by John Lawrence, May 5, 2020
There are a lot of people in the world who still wake up each morning and worry about where they will get the food for today. They are subsistence farmers or, if they live in cities, they are subsistence eaters. Unfortunately, the pandemic has made the situation even worse. Besides that midwest farmers are suffering because their export market to China has been ruined by Trump's trade war. Throughout American history monocultural farmers have gone bankrupt due to market conditions. They have to borrow heavily to plant their crops, and, if interest rates go up or market conditions are unfavorable when the crop is harvested, they might not be able to repay their bank loans. Farmers like my Grandfather were in a lot better shape because they were basically self-sufficient. They grew their own food, and kept just enough animals whose slaughter fulfilled their own needs. My Grandfather had a small dairy farm which he worked himself. He didn't have a lot of fuel or equipment expense. He used a team of horses for which he grew their own food. He grew the hay for his dairy cows. He didn't have to borrow money for fuel, equipment and seeds every year like the midwestern monocultural farmers.
So he could sell his milk for whatever price the market was paying. He and his family were self-sufficient. My Grandmother made their clothes. They had a garden. She canned foods for the winter months. Very little was store bought. So they weathered the Great Depression with no problem because they had a self-sufficient farm. Today farmers markets are providing a more important service in the age of pandemic. Local farmers are providing fresh food that the industrialized agricultural food chain has not been able to provide. They have filled a niche. Industrialized agriculture relies on antibiotics for animals and pesticides and herbicides for crops. My Grandfather's farm was organic because every pre-World War II farm was organic by definition. Today the industrialized farm inputs like Monsanto's GMO seeds and weedkiller Roundup make farmers dependent on banks which are all too willing to foreclose on their property if they cannot make their loan payments. Not only was my Grandfather's farm organic, he didn't have any debts. He did not have to borrow money every spring from the banks, and then pay back on his loans every fall. He did not have any GMO crops for which he had to buy seeds every year from Monsanto and then buy the Roundup to spray them with.
I'm thinking the local farmers' markets are teaching us a lesson in this pandemic era. They can supply food that does not have to have a long supply chain to get it to the stores. It doesn't have to be trucked for miles. It does not have to be sprayed with cancer causing chemicals. It doesn't have to be cultivated and harvested with fuel intensive, greenhouse gas producing tractors. It is not as susceptible to food borne disease such as e coli, salmonella and listeria which come mainly from industrialized farms. Maybe local farming should be encouraged. People want healthy organic foods, foods devoid of GMOs. Local supply chains are more reliable and safer than industrialized food chains. I think that the agricultural industry should become more like my Grandfather's farm, more local, more organic. Farmers' markets are showing us the way.
Posted at 11:17 AM in John Lawrence, Farming, Food, GMO, Off the Top of my Head, Organic, Pesticides | Permalink | Comments (0)
Animal Agriculture Industry Rivals Fossil Fuel Industry as one of the Largest Causes of Climate Catastrophe
In Chris Hedges brilliant accompanying article he says, "One of the easiest and most significant ways an individual can directly reduce his or her environmental impact on the planet is to eat a diet free of animal products." Another is to eat organic as much as possible. Not only will it be better for the planet, it will be better for you personally. The industrial food industry has been a problem for almost as long as the fossil fuel industry. The first oil well was discovered in 1859. After the Civil War, the meat packing industry was started, made possible by the railroads which could distribute meat to the rapidly growing urban areas. Armour and Swift meats were concentrated in Chicago's Union Stockyards in 1865. So the industrialization of food and the industrialization of oil started the same time about 150 years ago. That's when the human race started pumping huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere resulting in the global warming and environmental crisis we face today. Henry Ford got his idea for the assmbly line for automobiles from the assembly line production of meat products pioneered by Armour and Swift.
From the beginning meat packing and the other industrialized food products were laden with impurities. A chemist, Harvey Wiley, showed that honey and maple syrup were nothing more than corn syrup modified with a few chemicals. Foods including meat were preserved with formaldehyde. Borax was added to milk to hide the fact that it was sour. The meat packing industry was so unsanitary that people were getting sick eating industrialized food products. Prior to the Civil War most food was produced on local farms and not shipped miles in railroad cars to urban centers. Hence it was organic by definition since chemical weed killers and pesticides had not been invented yet. As food became more industrialized, Monsanto got into the act and industrialized farms started spraying foods with chemicals. In 1906 Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle" brought the attention of the general public to the deplorable conditions in the meat packing industry.
Eventually, thanks to Harvey Wiley and Upton Sinclar mostly, the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was enacted. Of course the titans of industry were very much against it. It was government interference in free enterprise. It was socialism. But finally they were required to list ingredients on the label. Today we still are dealing with the situation of adulterated food, food contaminated with preservatives, animal feedlots that are unsanitary, food contaminated with e coli and other pathogens. Monsanto's glyphosate, a known carcinogen, is sprayed liberally on crops. Food additives, both to preserve them and make them look and taste better, are still arrows in the quiver of the food industry. The fast food industry consumes huge quantities of beef products. The general public is ignorant of proper nutrition much less the difference between the health benefits of organic versus nonorganic foods.
The general public is also ignorant of the fact that industrialized animal products are not only contributing to global warming, but also to the growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics due to the fact that animals are fed antibiotics to make them grow faster so they can be slaughtered quicker thus contributing to greater profits.
The question is will Americans and other advanced societies cut out their consumption of meat, encourage the recreation of organic family farms, lead healthier lifestyles and reduce consumption of products dependent on fossil fuels in order to save the planet from runaway global warming? If they did, they would be healthier and the planet would definitely be healthier. Otherwise, we will long for the days of preindustrialized America and all the "progress" that has taken place since then will just be seen as a mess of pottage, a Biblical reference, by the way. A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable (Wikipedia). Technological progress has by and large been a mess of pottage if it means that in return for 150 years of industrialized toys and goodies, we will have destroyed the earth for future generations.
Posted at 07:38 AM in John Lawrence, Climate Change, Farming, Food, Global Warming, Off the Top of my Head, Organic, Pesticides, The Environment | Permalink | Comments (0)
Think You Know What a Farmer Looks Like? Think Again.
Food | New Economy | Go Local
by Sena Christian posted April 17, 2014 by Yes magazine
Preliminary results from the 2012 Census of Agriculture show the increasing role of women in U.S. agriculture—especially on organic and small-scale farms.
Lindsey Carpenter keeps records at Grassroots Farm. Photo by Annalise Canfield.
When Lindsey Morris Carpenter was a college student studying art in Philadelphia, she never expected that, just a decade later, she would spend most of her days fixing up tractors, turning piles of manure, and corralling chickens.
Carpenter doesn't want to be the Whole Foods of farm-to-table produce.
But that's precisely what she's doing. Carpenter, 29, dropped out of school in 2004 and returned to her home state of Wisconsin, where she found a job on a vegetable farm. She went on to apprentice at a larger operation in suburban Chicago and eventually secured employment at an urban farm on the city's south side, teaching previously incarcerated people how to grow food.
By 2007, Carpenter had decided she wanted her own piece of land to farm, so she and her mother, Gail, bought 40 acres in south central Wisconsin and got down to business—an opportunity she's grateful for since she's aware that not everyone has access to the resources that allowed her to purchase this land.
Today, Carpenter's certified-organic operation, Grassroots Farm, grows fruit, vegetables, hops, and herbs; she also sells pesticide-free cut flowers and eggs from the farm's chickens. Being as environmentally sustainable as possible is paramount to Grassroots' operations, Carpenter says. So, too, is a commitment to provide healthy, fresh food to local people regardless of the size of their bank accounts.
"One of my biggest priorities is affordability," Carpenter said. She doesn't want to be the Whole Foods of farm-to-table produce. To that end, she designed her community supported agriculture program to be relatively affordable. She charges only $25 a week for a box of produce, which she offers 16 weeks out of the year.
Carpenter's been in business for five years and has struggled to make a living; she estimates her take-home income at $1.75 an hour. And while it's been "shockingly easy" to get support from her neighbors, they're also "sketched out" by her tattoos, short hair, and unmarried status.
Carpenter is one of America's new and growing class of women farmers. Her focus on sustainability and social justice represent part of the promise women bring to the sector, while the difficulties she faces demonstrate some of the challenges that stand in their way. Many of those challenges are shared by Carpenter's male counterparts: inclement weather, insects, weeds, erratic markets, soil erosion, droughts, labor shortages, urbanization, and the expense of sustainable methods that don't rely on toxic chemicals or machines dependent on fossil fuels. But additional burdens often fall on women farmers, such as childrearing or caring for aging parents.
Luckily, women farmers from earlier generations have built institutions designed to help newcomers. And Denise O'Brien, a farmer from southwest Iowa, has done more than her share.
As times got rough, in many cases it was the farmers' wives who kept the operations going.
O'Brien and her husband, Larry Harris, decided they would grow organically when they first started farming in 1976. They were inspired by the first Earth Day in 1970, she says, and the many environmental issues making headlines in the mid-1970s. She talks about organic agriculture in classic environmental terms of doing no harm and leaving the earth in better shape than how you found it.
But the decision to go organic left the couple feeling isolated from local farmers, who mostly grew corn, soybeans, and hay on conventional farms. No networks existed to provide support to farmers who wanted to do things differently.
"When we started farming, we couldn't even say the 'O-word' out loud,"O'Brien said, laughing. "But we're out now."
By the mid-1980s, O'Brien and Harris had started an informal network called the Progressive Prairie Alliance. Ten years later, she'd helped to build several organizations that helped farmers work more sustainably and cooperatively, but hadn't yet done anything specifically to help other women farmers. That changed in 1995, when O'Brien, then president of the National Family Farm Coalition, was asked to give a presentation at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
O'Brien went searching for case studies on American women working in agriculture, but couldn't find many. She had readThe Invisible Farmers: Women in Agricultural Production, a book by Carolyn E. Sachs about women in the industry. She also had her own personal experience to go on—she had lived through the farm crisis of the 1980s when an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 farmers faced financial failure as land and commodity values boomed and busted, interest rates skyrocketed, and thousands went bankrupt.
As some farmers sunk into depression, O'Brien says that in many cases their wives were the ones who kept the operations going. She believed the landscape of industrial agriculture would change as more women farmers became decision makers, and suspected their role would only grow.
What the numbers show
She was right. The number of women who were named as the principal operator of an American farm or ranch increased by nearly 30 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Women composed about 14 percent of principal farm operators in 2007, and that percentage has held steady since then, according to the preliminary 2012 census released in February.
However, that jump may have more to do with what was happening in the census than on the farm. The form used in the 2007 census was the first to allow two primary operators to be listed—so wives now had a place to be named alongside their husbands. The full 2012 census will be released later this spring with data on women as a percentage of all operators, not just the principal ones; in 2007 women made up 30 percent of all farmers.
Part of the picture is that both men and women are leaving the profession, but women are leaving less quickly. The total number of farms in the United States declined by about 5 percent to 2.1 million from 2007 to 2012, with nearly all of those losses concentrated among smaller farms of less than 1,000 acres in size.
And women-operated farms are generally smaller and less profitable than others, according to the new census data. Seventy-five percent of American farms grossed less than $50,000 in 2012; for farms with a female principal operator that figure was 91 percent. About 69 percent of U.S. farms were smaller than 180 acres in size; for farms with a female principal operator that figure was 82 percent.
But it's not just a picture of women farmers barely scraping by. Census data from 2007 showed that women were more likely than men to operate farms with a diversity of crops, and to own a greater percentage of the land they farmed. Women farmers also tended to sell food directly to the consumer rather than to large food-processing corporations—an approach that the United Nations report has found to be important for improving food systems.
Leigh Adcock, executive director of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, said she believes the U.S. food system will be healthier when more women farm.
Growing institutions
Last November, more than 400 women from 20 states and four countries assembled in Des Moines, Iowa, for the fourth conference hosted by the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, a nonprofit organization that O'Brien founded in 1997.
"When portions of the population are left out of things then you're not hearing the whole picture."
WFAN's mission is to "link and empower women to build food systems and communities that are healthy, just, sustainable, and that promote environmental integrity." The group encompasses all sorts of women: some who caught the farming bug after careers in other sectors, widows who inherited land, and some who work side-by-side with their partner.
"We don't just want to link women," Adcock told attendees. "We want to empower you."
Women, Food and Agriculture Network Founder Denise O'Brien, left, speaks with Leigh Adcock, the group's executive director, in November 2013.
The network has been expanding its ranks to provide much-needed camaraderie for women working in a male-dominated field and education on how to lead the sustainable farming movement. This year's conference included sessions on marketing, soil health, cooperatives, research and grants, pricing, pesticide drift, and wildlife and watershed management. Sustainability was a common theme.
The network has grown from 300 members in 2008 to more than 4,000 today, which suggests women in sustainable agriculture aren't going away anytime soon. But whether more women means an improved food system is a question that must be answered with evidence, O'Brien said. For now, she's just trying to get women farmers a seat at the table.
"I believe in my heart of hearts that when portions of the population are left out of things then you're not hearing the whole picture," she said.
California produce in Iowa's farm country?
Being involved with the Women, Food and Agriculture Network has given Iowan farmer Ellen Walsh-Rosmann an outlet for her message that farmers need to make their voices heard on legislation related to food and agriculture. She has hosted politicians at her in-laws' farm and has lobbied in Washington, D.C.
"We live in Iowa," she thought. "What's going on here?"
"[Lobbying trips] made me realize this is not an intimidating system," she said. "These people are just like us and they come from where we live, they know the same people we know … but we as constituents can really inform them and tell them those stories and update them on the current situation. That's what our job needs to be."
Walsh­-Rosmann moved with her husband to the small city of Harlan during the month of September, a good time for local food. But when shopping at the grocery store for the first time, she discovered only produce grown in California and wrapped in plastic.
Ellen Walsh-Rosmann runs Pin Oak Place, a 10-acre organic farm in Harlan, Iowa. Photo by Valerie Vozza / Oxfam America.
When she and her husband started Pin Oak Place, a 10-acre farmstead, in 2010, they were adamant they would focus on nourishing their community with fresh, healthy, organically grown vegetables and certified-organic eggs. The time she'd spent at Iowa State University studying the social, political, and economic forces that affect agriculture cemented this mission.
But putting her mission into practice has been a challenge.
"I was doing the local farmers market in my town and I was basically giving food away," she said, meaning they couldn't make a profit. The farmers have shifted their business operations to focus on wholesale, targeting nearby Omaha, Neb., and its much larger population.
Between raising her son, dealing with her own health problems, and struggling to build a profitable business based in sustainable farming, life has become a balancing act for Walsh-Rosmann. Her network of other women farmers provides invaluable support.
Sena Christian wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sena is a newspaper reporter in Roseville, Calif., with a passion for social justice and indoor soccer.
An Oasis of Community and Support for Latina Moms
How a Fruit and Vegetable Auction in Rural Ohio Helps Appalachian Farmers Thrive
Farmer Startups? How Incubators Are Helping Small, Sustainable Farms Take Off
Posted at 12:09 PM in Farming, Organic | Permalink