By Carolyn Twesten, Weaver Street Market Produce Merchandiser
This January I had the privilege of attending the 37th annual EcoFarm Conference in Pacific Grove, California. It is an event that brings together farmers, ranchers, activists, wholesalers, and retailers from the national organic food community for three days of sharing ideas, information, and inspiration. The attendees are mainly from the West Coast, myself being among the few exceptions.
Being from the East Coast, unaware of the pressures and realities of California farmers, I had my eyes opened. While the conference was inspiring and uplifting, learning among almost 1500 other attendees passionate about sustainable food, there was also an underlying sense of anxiety for the uncertain future.
Water shortages due to long-term drought have been receiving lots of media attention and are one of the top concerns for California farmers. But that’s just the top of the list. Labor shortages, the effects of climate change, rising land costs, falling crop values, and lack of younger generations to take over family farming operations are all weighing on the minds of these farmers.
The high cost of doing business in California has resulted in the continuation of many unsustainable conventional production methods due to the extreme pressure to be profitable. Strawberries, one of the most profitable cash crops, are a prime example of these methods. Short crop rotations (time when the land is not planted to berries), if there are any at all, lead to disease problems, which lead to more chemical use. Lack of winter cover crops (crops planted only to rest and renew soils) leads to erosion in heavy rains.
The conference included an all-day bus tour of the Salinas area, known as the “salad bowl” of the United States, on which we visited several organic farms. There was a stark contrast between the organic farms we visited versus the conventional operations we drove by, especially in January when much of the conventional soil was bare while the organic fields were planted in lush cover crops of rye, clover, and vetch.
I attended several workshops over the course of the conference that dealt with the unsettling trend of small and mid-size farmers selling their land and getting out of the business. In the face of rising costs and low crop yields due to the effects of water shortages and climate change, especially for orchardists, making a profit has become a rarer and rarer occurrence. And profit or not, many of these aging growers have no succession plan, as production agriculture is not a desirable occupation to younger generations. As farmers sell out, their land is affordable only to corporate farms or developers. According to the American Farmland Trust, over a million acres of agricultural land in California has been lost to development since 1982. If the trend of urban sprawl continues, an estimated two million acres of farmland may be lost by 2050.
At this point you may be asking, when did I get inspired and uplifted, with this bleak picture I’ve just painted? As I mentioned, there were 1500 people attending the conference who are passionate about making change in our food system. There were also organizations like California Farm Link, who works to connect young farmers with land and to help existing farmers with resources to fund or diversify their current operations. There were workshops focused on regenerative and dryland farming to restore soils and sequester carbon. There were discussion groups on how farms can develop new value-added enterprises, or on how to form cooperatives to expand market opportunities for farmers. So many great ideas were afoot that it was easy to envision better food systems developing.
I was glad to meet farmers whose farm names I’ve seen on produce boxes for over a decade (like my favorite, Surf Monkey Organics!). It was also exciting to make connections with other food co-ops who have developed systems to source produce directly from small and mid-size California farmers, rather than settling for whatever’s available on the mass market. I hope to collaborate with these co-ops in the future to bring some of this produce into Weaver Street Market.
While the difficulties faced by farmers mount, we can focus our efforts on strengthening our local food economy. By understanding the challenges of our North Carolina farmers and supporting them, we reduce our reliance on distant food sources and keep our local farmers in business.
At Weaver Street Market, 100% of our beef and pork comes from local farmers. We carry local seafood year-round, including quick-frozen NC shrimp. In 2016 15% of our produce came from local farms, with the goal of increasing to 20% in 2017. We sold close to 10,000 pounds of local strawberries in 2016!
Our customers’ desire to support local is driving these numbers. If the public demands a stronger local food economy and supports it by eating what’s in season, local farmers and entrepreneurs will thrive, with more systems being created to support and drive local production.