Kacy, one of the authors on this blog, works with the Polk County Agricultural Development Office in Mill Spring, North Carolina. Polk County is south of Asheville and Hendersonville, just up from the South Carolina border and includes the towns of Saluda, Columbus, and Tryon.
Eric and Lynn Turner have an HD Media company based in the same building as Kacy, an old being-renovated-at-the-moment brick school building with a lot of potential. In that building, a community is forming that includes Soil and Water, ag development people, artists, and farm marketers.
Last year, the Turners produced this lovely "Meet Your Farmer" video, with the simple intent to promote agriculture there in Polk County. The music comes from Tim McMorris, a talented and uplifting songwriter. It just makes you feel good to be (or want to be) a farmer on any scale! Enjoy.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Galatia, Illinois: Randy Anderson
You know, we ARE trying to be stewards of the land. I look at it like this. I look at the land and it's almost like a vehicle. Okay, if you take this vehicle out here and you drive it back and forth to town just as hard as you can drive it, every trip you go, there's not going to be very many trips left in that vehicle.
In Benton, Illinois, on a hot day, we stopped at the local library to do some research and cool down. We chatted with the librarian about our project, told her of our search for farmers, and she vanished for a few minutes. When she emerged she had a sticky note with Randy Anderson's number and a smiley face on it.
Currently, Randy is recuperating from an injury that has his arm immobilized in a sling. Two young boys played on the floor of his home, playing with John Deer tractor toys. Their house is set on the same farm that Randy grew up on, amongst long Illinois crops, with typical grain storage bins in the driveway. He farms about 3,000 acres of corn, soybeans, and winter wheat. In this interview, he speaks of Roundup Ready crops and Bt corn. These both refer to genetically engineered crops, a hot topic in agriculture.
I'm part of the system and I'm part of the victim. All of my soybeans are Roundup Ready. Yeah, it's nice and easy to do. The thing is, trying to grow traditional soybeans, there's not enough seed companies out there, and the majority of the companies are not concentrating any of their new development bringing any of the new traits, new genetics to the forefront as a traditional seed. Meaning increased yield. They put everything into this here other seed that's already got all the traits to it and then they send it out here...it's kind of like walking onto a car lot and you got this model here to choose from but every model has got the same stuff on it except each one of them's a different color. And then you go over to these other models and they don't got nothing. They got stick shifts and no air conditioning. That there's kind of like that traditional seed.
Randy seemed more skeptical than many of the farmers we spoke with, first suspecting us of having an "environmental" bent to our project. We assured him that we didn't, and he started talking; nearly 20 minutes went by before we even asked our first full question.
A lot of people has a view that, you know, the farmer's out here and we're destroying the environment and we don't really care about what's going on.
Just seems like things is just not always as good as what they used to be. I mean, there's so many things that I don't quite agree with anymore...I feel I produce as good a product or anything that I can out here on the farm, but by the time it gets to the consumer it's been messed with; I feel somewhat inferior.
I recommend reading this full interview; from a commodity farmer's perspective he speaks of politics, genetic engineering, pesticide use, and family history.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Thursday is Ag Video Day! The Plow That Broke the Plains, a 1937 propaganda film about the dust bowl.
This is a record of land...of soil rather than people--a story of the Great Plains; the 400,000,000 acres of wind-swept grasslands that spread up from the Texas panhandle to Canada...a high, treeless continent, without rivers, without streams...A country of high winds, and sun...and of little rain...
In 1937, this film was released by the Resettlement Administration, and generally wags a finger at American farmers and farm policy. As a contemporary film to the dust bowl, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, it provides a fascinating bit of insight (and remarkable footage) into that era of agriculture.
The dust bowl changed the face of the country; I often wonder...if all of those families hadn't been forced to tie their chairs to their Fords and abandon their homesteads...how many of their descendants would still be there in the Midwest? Would L.A. have been smaller, and Wichita become a more major city?
At one time, during the homestead days, much of the Plains were divided into 40- or 80-acre parcels. Servicemen were offered many of them after WWI. But when most of them wandered away, those who stayed found thousands of acres available again, and those titles became consolidated...it was natural that 80-acre farm families suddenly grew to 500-acre farm families.
The next generation, many children went to WWII. If they returned, they had more options to move to cities, to go to college. Again, was it not natural for them to relocate, leaving their parents to sell off their farm eventually? Suddenly, a 500-acre farmer had more land available as his neighbors retired, and became a 1,000-acre farmer. As of 2007, the average South Dakota farm size was 1,401 acres (and the vast majority are still family operations, contrary to popular belief). This continues, and, amongst the popular small-farm and local-foods movements happening now, I wonder if there will ever be a movement to resettle the plains.
I have to wonder. In the meantime, enjoy this 1937 film about how the grasslands turned to dust, how "Wheat will win the war!", and why so many families headed to California in the '30's as their plow was covered over. It's 30 minutes long; make yourself comfortable and have a snack. And think about where that snack came from. --Trav--
In 1937, this film was released by the Resettlement Administration, and generally wags a finger at American farmers and farm policy. As a contemporary film to the dust bowl, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, it provides a fascinating bit of insight (and remarkable footage) into that era of agriculture.
The dust bowl changed the face of the country; I often wonder...if all of those families hadn't been forced to tie their chairs to their Fords and abandon their homesteads...how many of their descendants would still be there in the Midwest? Would L.A. have been smaller, and Wichita become a more major city?
At one time, during the homestead days, much of the Plains were divided into 40- or 80-acre parcels. Servicemen were offered many of them after WWI. But when most of them wandered away, those who stayed found thousands of acres available again, and those titles became consolidated...it was natural that 80-acre farm families suddenly grew to 500-acre farm families.
The next generation, many children went to WWII. If they returned, they had more options to move to cities, to go to college. Again, was it not natural for them to relocate, leaving their parents to sell off their farm eventually? Suddenly, a 500-acre farmer had more land available as his neighbors retired, and became a 1,000-acre farmer. As of 2007, the average South Dakota farm size was 1,401 acres (and the vast majority are still family operations, contrary to popular belief). This continues, and, amongst the popular small-farm and local-foods movements happening now, I wonder if there will ever be a movement to resettle the plains.
I have to wonder. In the meantime, enjoy this 1937 film about how the grasslands turned to dust, how "Wheat will win the war!", and why so many families headed to California in the '30's as their plow was covered over. It's 30 minutes long; make yourself comfortable and have a snack. And think about where that snack came from. --Trav--
Saturday, February 12, 2011
LeRoy, Kansas: Lyle Fischer, LeRoy Coop Association.
Larry listened to our story, told a few of his own (like the one about the farmer who has had a suspicious number of insurance claims for lightning-struck cows, or the one about Larry's aging father who refuses to be told that he's too old to farm...Larry won't let him on the tractor anymore), and then pulled out his cell phone to start calling farmers for us.
One of the contacts that he gave us was Lyle Fischer, who manages the LeRoy Co-op Association, a nearby grain elevator and agronomy service. Two days later, after enjoying the Coffey County Fair and a parade, we drove a few miles out to LeRoy to call on Lyle.
A cooperative is member-owned. In 1960, fifty years ago, the farmers wanted something better for them. Competition-wise, they wasn't getting a fair shake in the market. So they decided to start a cooperative and own it themselves. From that it's grown to the membership we have now. But a co-op is member-ownership; you earn your membership by doing business there, or you can buy membership. Any money that's made at the end of the year is shared back to the people that have done business that year. So all the assets, the income, is returned back to the members, based on their annual purchases, unlike an independent elevator or grain business, where it goes in their own pocket.
1980 was a tough year. It was a dry year. Very, very dry. That hurt too, back with the interest and the dry year, people didn't raise a crop. And not too many people had crop insurance then.
In the 90's, the price for commodity crops were at rock bottom, which has changed today. While commodity crops command a better price these days, the catch for many farmers currently is the high price of inputs. Any natural or synthetic additions a farmer has to apply to the soil or crop is usually very expensive.
Lyle also has seen a lot of farmers working hard to reduce their pollution from chemicals and runoff. The government requirements are getting tighter and tighter and in this area nitrogen has been found in drinking water and phosphate in the lakes. Lyle believes that the government will continue to demand better and cleaner systems, and he has seen that most farmers are willing to comply with requests even before they are requirements. A lot of farmers in this area have lined their streams with filter strips which prevents runoff to some degree.
We asked him about the increasing size of these Midwest crop farms...are they getting bigger because they want to or because they have to to stay afloat?
I would say that most of them are getting bigger because they have to. Now, there's a few, I'm sure, that are getting bigger because of pride. You know, "I want to be bigger than the other guy." I could tell you a few of those. Most of them, I'd say, are getting bigger because they see the need to farm more acres to make their machinery pay. To me, I can't understand how they can put a quarter million dollars into a combine or $200,000 into a planter, and plant two or three thousand acres and make it work. I guess they have to. I spend $200,000 for a sprayer, but I can spray 30, 40,000 acres, generate a lot more income. Not necessarily profit, but a lot more income, cash flow, out of that machine. But when you run a quarter million dollar combine over 2,000 acres, I don't know, that's a lot of money per acre.
We also asked him about the negative press that chemicals often get in popular press, and how he feels about it:
I think the word "chemical" sounds like a hazardous material. Maybe the word "chemicals" is the wrong word to use. "Herbicide" is a better terminology to use. Herbicide is used by our customers to control weeds. Then there's pesticides. Pesticides are more for pest control, insects. Gosh...how do you tell the consumer that these chemicals are not hazardous to the food?
Herbicides are safe! They're out there to control weeds. The plant that grows, like the corn or soybean, is tolerant to those herbicides, so it doesn't bother that grain that's growing. I don't know.
I don't know if the consumer actually knows what it takes to raise a crop, to make the bread on his table and the eggs in his frying pan, I don't know if they do or not. Sometimes you wonder. I think...to me, the naturalist or whoever that thinks that we can feed the world on the way it was 50 years ago, is going to go hungry. We can't feed the world on 50-bushel {per acre} corn, 20-bushel beans. We have to have genetics, we have to have fertilizer, we have to have herbicides...we have to have those traits in these crops to make higher yields.
The GMO is the traits that they put in the plant so that the plant is resistant to the corn borer. Well, think about that. The corn borer, the corn root worm is being controlled genetically in the plant instead of using a pesticide. So the use of a true pesticide, the organophosphates that we used to use to control corn root worms, we don't use them anymore. We don't have to! Because the plant itself has got the gene in there to control that pest.
So the pesticide use has gone down bunches in our country, in corn and soybean country. Because we don't use them anymore!
To society I think that farmers offer a lot. They're independently owned. They're their own boss. I'm not sure how to answer that, except that farmers are just a huge part of this society, in these communities. Now Kansas City or Wichita, you know, they get overlooked. What do you think?
I think there's a lot of people that wish they could be more involved in raising their own food, having their flower gardens...farming to me is just a livelihood. I don't know how anybody could beat it, to be a farmer. You're your own boss, you're out there working with your animals, you know nobody's telling you what to do everyday! The young people that don't ever experience those thoughts even, or the joy of it, being out in the country, they're missing a lot.
Read the full interview here, and learn about the complex grain marketing system, government regulations, and a year in the life of a grain elevator.
I would say that most of them are getting bigger because they have to. Now, there's a few, I'm sure, that are getting bigger because of pride. You know, "I want to be bigger than the other guy." I could tell you a few of those. Most of them, I'd say, are getting bigger because they see the need to farm more acres to make their machinery pay. To me, I can't understand how they can put a quarter million dollars into a combine or $200,000 into a planter, and plant two or three thousand acres and make it work. I guess they have to. I spend $200,000 for a sprayer, but I can spray 30, 40,000 acres, generate a lot more income. Not necessarily profit, but a lot more income, cash flow, out of that machine. But when you run a quarter million dollar combine over 2,000 acres, I don't know, that's a lot of money per acre.
We also asked him about the negative press that chemicals often get in popular press, and how he feels about it:
I think the word "chemical" sounds like a hazardous material. Maybe the word "chemicals" is the wrong word to use. "Herbicide" is a better terminology to use. Herbicide is used by our customers to control weeds. Then there's pesticides. Pesticides are more for pest control, insects. Gosh...how do you tell the consumer that these chemicals are not hazardous to the food?
Herbicides are safe! They're out there to control weeds. The plant that grows, like the corn or soybean, is tolerant to those herbicides, so it doesn't bother that grain that's growing. I don't know.
I don't know if the consumer actually knows what it takes to raise a crop, to make the bread on his table and the eggs in his frying pan, I don't know if they do or not. Sometimes you wonder. I think...to me, the naturalist or whoever that thinks that we can feed the world on the way it was 50 years ago, is going to go hungry. We can't feed the world on 50-bushel {per acre} corn, 20-bushel beans. We have to have genetics, we have to have fertilizer, we have to have herbicides...we have to have those traits in these crops to make higher yields.
The GMO is the traits that they put in the plant so that the plant is resistant to the corn borer. Well, think about that. The corn borer, the corn root worm is being controlled genetically in the plant instead of using a pesticide. So the use of a true pesticide, the organophosphates that we used to use to control corn root worms, we don't use them anymore. We don't have to! Because the plant itself has got the gene in there to control that pest.
So the pesticide use has gone down bunches in our country, in corn and soybean country. Because we don't use them anymore!
To society I think that farmers offer a lot. They're independently owned. They're their own boss. I'm not sure how to answer that, except that farmers are just a huge part of this society, in these communities. Now Kansas City or Wichita, you know, they get overlooked. What do you think?
I think there's a lot of people that wish they could be more involved in raising their own food, having their flower gardens...farming to me is just a livelihood. I don't know how anybody could beat it, to be a farmer. You're your own boss, you're out there working with your animals, you know nobody's telling you what to do everyday! The young people that don't ever experience those thoughts even, or the joy of it, being out in the country, they're missing a lot.
Read the full interview here, and learn about the complex grain marketing system, government regulations, and a year in the life of a grain elevator.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
National Ag Day promotional video.
Hello folks! Today I want to depart from the interviews for just a moment and show a video. It's like those wonderful days in school, when the teacher didn't get the lesson plan together in time and you get to just watch. I encourage you to take 5 minutes to watch this one, promoting National Ag Day, in March, on the first day of spring. For two reasons:
1) I like thinking that spring is almost here. My seed catalogs have all arrived, and I'm eagerly waiting for the ground to thaw;
2) The video does a nice job providing images and quotes that, I believe, reflect the diversity of agriculturalists in this country. The attitude that I've generally felt amongst farmers and ranchers is not one of secrecy, but one of transparency. It's increasingly obvious that consumers want to know details about their food production. Supermarkets are all starting to put up signs featuring their growers, and government funding is coming down the line for increased food education in schools.
I would love to hear your comments, and your arguments. Yes, there are a number of discrepancies in the industry, from labeling issues to complex safety standards. It's a complex system, and I hope to be a part of the discussion.
Are there people whose opinions or views you'd like to hear? We will do our best to seek them out and interview them, so ask your questions. Enjoy the video!
--Trav--
1) I like thinking that spring is almost here. My seed catalogs have all arrived, and I'm eagerly waiting for the ground to thaw;
2) The video does a nice job providing images and quotes that, I believe, reflect the diversity of agriculturalists in this country. The attitude that I've generally felt amongst farmers and ranchers is not one of secrecy, but one of transparency. It's increasingly obvious that consumers want to know details about their food production. Supermarkets are all starting to put up signs featuring their growers, and government funding is coming down the line for increased food education in schools.
I would love to hear your comments, and your arguments. Yes, there are a number of discrepancies in the industry, from labeling issues to complex safety standards. It's a complex system, and I hope to be a part of the discussion.
Are there people whose opinions or views you'd like to hear? We will do our best to seek them out and interview them, so ask your questions. Enjoy the video!
--Trav--
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Richvale, California: Dennis Lindberg, 86. Rice farmer.
Well, I was born here in 1924. On July 23rd, 1924. When I was a senior in high school I grew my first rice crop as an FFA project. I bypassed college and all and went to the School of Hard Knocks or whatever you want to call it.
This year I planted my 69th consecutive rice crop. Somebody asked me when I hit 50, "well aren't you gonna retire?" And I said, "Hell no!" I've been very fortunate in those years.
In the spirit of welcoming the unexpected, let us leave the midwest in the sweltering last days of July and fast forward through a few states to an interview that took place in Richvale, California.
Richvale is nestled north of the fertile fruit and vegetable valleys that supply many of us non-Californians with carrots and lettuce in the winter months. The first farmers to inhabit Richvale tried to persuade wheat to grow here, but the climate and terrain were unsuitable for that crop. It wasn't until Dennis Lindberg's father started farming the land around 1911 that he and his peers realized this land was perfect for growing rice.
I have a great respect for my father and other people who settled this community in the years beginning '11, '12, and '13. We just celebrated our 100th anniversary of the founding of Richvale. They came here to what was primarily wheat land. And not very good wheat land at that. There was some farms established that'd been abandoned. Well, then a group out of the San Joaqine Valley Realty Firm came up here and formed what the called the Richvale Land Colony and they started promoting, selling this land.
This was as early as '09 and '10, if you will. Rice was just in its infancy in California at that time. The first rice was grown in probably '09 or '10 on an experimental basis down and out west of Gridley from what I understand. Then, of course, as things went on, by 1915 the land developers were gone. They grabbed their money and left, if you will.
So it was left to our founders to get an irrigation system. It didn't have proper drainage; there were a few wheat farmers out here, and when they were farming rice it would leak out onto their wheat, and of course they didn't like that. And there were no improved roads. So our founders went through a living Hell, if you will, till they got something established and founded this [BUCRA]. This facility was founded in 1915. My father was one of the founding members and on the original board of directors.
So, I feel a great debt of gratitude in those of us of second and third generation to our forebearers, forefathers, who founded this community and provided a place for us to do something with our lives.
Dennis, or "Denny", as he is known in his community, exudes excitement, an abundance of civic pride, and a passion for growing rice. As a hobby he also grows watermelons of generous proportions. He and his son, Gary Lindberg, farm about 400 acres of rice in this region of around 500,000 acres. We were connected to him, for all intents and purposes the local historian, by Jim Morris at the California Rice Commission.
The Butte County Rice Growers Association (BUCRA) building where we met Dennis also contained evidence of his artistic abilities; the front waiting area had one of his hand-fashioned metal duck sculptures featured. He creates these metal ducks with different themes (the Fire Department Duck and the Evangelist Duck, for example) and sells them as fundraisers for the town of Richvale.
It's a city without a real city government, if you will. They call me kind of the ipso facto mayor around here. I don't live here anymore; my son lives on the farm. We live over in Thermalito.
Richvale had been a boom town that could have been on its way to busting in the early 1900's, but its citizens wouldn't hear of it. When the economy started tanking back then, and the townsfolk were abandoned by the developers, this hamlet rolled up its collective sleeves and started planting rice and helping each other get through. There is a definite Bedford Falls feel here and Dennis could easily play the role of George Bailey, town enthusiast and champion. The fire department, a local cafe, and schools are operated and maintained in a large part through donations and volunteer power from the community. Dennis describes his town as a "self-help community."
When asked what he'd like to see change in agriculture, he spoke, among other things, of the need to remind people that this rural Californian community exists out here, producing an incredibly important food crop. He references Lundberg Rice, a neighbor who specialized in organic growing (no relation, by the way, between the Lindbergs and the Lundbergs. Both families were early settlers here):
Public acceptance that we're out here. And we want to remain here! We got to keep this commerce going. You know, out at Lundbergs, there's 250 employees in that facility over there. Right here at Butte County we must have 50! We got an irrigation district with 12 employees, we got a drainage district with 4 or 5, we got a school...you gotta keep those things going. And rice is what's doing that in this case. I want to see that continue.
Like some of the other farmers we've talked to, Dennis relates how much technology and equipment has been improved over the last decades. He is working on his 69th rice crop this year and he grows a short-statured variety.
When the Lindbergs got their first harvester it could harvest in a day what a brand new harvester could do in an hour today. Denny used to let his fields lay fallow every other year but demand has become so great for rice that he plants every year now. Water rights are an issue we heard many farmers express concern about, but Richvale has impenetrable water rights that keeps the ever growing population of southern California off their backs.
I saw this industry...I consider it a privilege...I'm 86 years old by the way...I got to see horses working in the field as a kid. I've seen this industry come from the horses and the hundred-pound sacks to stationary harvesters. I even pulled the bundle wagons if you know what they are. They put the rice in shocks about so big around, and you went around with a bundle wagon, pull it with a tractor. When I was 13 years old, pulling that bundle wagon out and over to the harvester, where you unhooked and went and got another bundle wagon.
In those days they hired transient workers, hobos if you will. They were coming out of Oregon and Washington up there in the grain harvest. They'd hit here about October. Well, come Saturday night or if it rained, you paid 'em off you didn't always see 'em again! {laughs} So my dad had to get me out there one bad winter in 1937 when I was 13. So I got exposed to some of that and I begged to continue. I though, "boy, this is cool, man!" Not that I didn't enjoy school. I was a good student; I was a straight A student my first two years, but then I got more interested in farming than I did school.
Lundberg Rice, also based in Richvale, is the leading grower of organic rice in the country; Dennis mentions that they "put this town on the world map".
Dennis estimated that 60% of the rice grown here is sold domestically, and 40% is exported.
Like most farming communities, time is made and set aside for recreation, especially if it involves agriculture. Before we hit the road, Dennis drove us out to his rice paddies and just beyond, where he has his watermelon patch. Every year he grows 4 or 5 gargantuan melons to be used in a weight-guessing competition; whoever is closest to the actual weight takes the melon home. Travis and I were sworn to secrecy (melons have been stolen in the past) about the location of the patch, and Dennis took us to a seemingly overgrown portion of his field. After furtively glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he surreptitiously bent down and pulled back a layer of grass to expose the promising green-striped shell of a watermelon already the size of a mini-refrigerator. As quickly as it had been uncovered it was inconspicuously tucked back into its hay bedding and Dennis straightened up and had us renew our vows to keep mum about the location of the watermelon.
This year I planted my 69th consecutive rice crop. Somebody asked me when I hit 50, "well aren't you gonna retire?" And I said, "Hell no!" I've been very fortunate in those years.
Richvale is nestled north of the fertile fruit and vegetable valleys that supply many of us non-Californians with carrots and lettuce in the winter months. The first farmers to inhabit Richvale tried to persuade wheat to grow here, but the climate and terrain were unsuitable for that crop. It wasn't until Dennis Lindberg's father started farming the land around 1911 that he and his peers realized this land was perfect for growing rice.
I have a great respect for my father and other people who settled this community in the years beginning '11, '12, and '13. We just celebrated our 100th anniversary of the founding of Richvale. They came here to what was primarily wheat land. And not very good wheat land at that. There was some farms established that'd been abandoned. Well, then a group out of the San Joaqine Valley Realty Firm came up here and formed what the called the Richvale Land Colony and they started promoting, selling this land.
This was as early as '09 and '10, if you will. Rice was just in its infancy in California at that time. The first rice was grown in probably '09 or '10 on an experimental basis down and out west of Gridley from what I understand. Then, of course, as things went on, by 1915 the land developers were gone. They grabbed their money and left, if you will.
So it was left to our founders to get an irrigation system. It didn't have proper drainage; there were a few wheat farmers out here, and when they were farming rice it would leak out onto their wheat, and of course they didn't like that. And there were no improved roads. So our founders went through a living Hell, if you will, till they got something established and founded this [BUCRA]. This facility was founded in 1915. My father was one of the founding members and on the original board of directors.
So, I feel a great debt of gratitude in those of us of second and third generation to our forebearers, forefathers, who founded this community and provided a place for us to do something with our lives.
The Butte County Rice Growers Association (BUCRA) building where we met Dennis also contained evidence of his artistic abilities; the front waiting area had one of his hand-fashioned metal duck sculptures featured. He creates these metal ducks with different themes (the Fire Department Duck and the Evangelist Duck, for example) and sells them as fundraisers for the town of Richvale.
It's a city without a real city government, if you will. They call me kind of the ipso facto mayor around here. I don't live here anymore; my son lives on the farm. We live over in Thermalito.
Richvale had been a boom town that could have been on its way to busting in the early 1900's, but its citizens wouldn't hear of it. When the economy started tanking back then, and the townsfolk were abandoned by the developers, this hamlet rolled up its collective sleeves and started planting rice and helping each other get through. There is a definite Bedford Falls feel here and Dennis could easily play the role of George Bailey, town enthusiast and champion. The fire department, a local cafe, and schools are operated and maintained in a large part through donations and volunteer power from the community. Dennis describes his town as a "self-help community."
Public acceptance that we're out here. And we want to remain here! We got to keep this commerce going. You know, out at Lundbergs, there's 250 employees in that facility over there. Right here at Butte County we must have 50! We got an irrigation district with 12 employees, we got a drainage district with 4 or 5, we got a school...you gotta keep those things going. And rice is what's doing that in this case. I want to see that continue.
When the Lindbergs got their first harvester it could harvest in a day what a brand new harvester could do in an hour today. Denny used to let his fields lay fallow every other year but demand has become so great for rice that he plants every year now. Water rights are an issue we heard many farmers express concern about, but Richvale has impenetrable water rights that keeps the ever growing population of southern California off their backs.
I saw this industry...I consider it a privilege...I'm 86 years old by the way...I got to see horses working in the field as a kid. I've seen this industry come from the horses and the hundred-pound sacks to stationary harvesters. I even pulled the bundle wagons if you know what they are. They put the rice in shocks about so big around, and you went around with a bundle wagon, pull it with a tractor. When I was 13 years old, pulling that bundle wagon out and over to the harvester, where you unhooked and went and got another bundle wagon.
In those days they hired transient workers, hobos if you will. They were coming out of Oregon and Washington up there in the grain harvest. They'd hit here about October. Well, come Saturday night or if it rained, you paid 'em off you didn't always see 'em again! {laughs} So my dad had to get me out there one bad winter in 1937 when I was 13. So I got exposed to some of that and I begged to continue. I though, "boy, this is cool, man!" Not that I didn't enjoy school. I was a good student; I was a straight A student my first two years, but then I got more interested in farming than I did school.
Lundberg Rice, also based in Richvale, is the leading grower of organic rice in the country; Dennis mentions that they "put this town on the world map".
Dennis estimated that 60% of the rice grown here is sold domestically, and 40% is exported.
As a parting gift he gave us two lesser melons and the sparkling wisdom of a man who has seen his fair share of harvests- "when you cut 'em open they should go 'snick!'- that's how you know you've got a good one!"
A few weeks ago, Dennis wrote to us again to update us on the aforementioned watermelon. Below is the 90 pound monster. Dennis' son, Gary (right) and Donald Rystrom (left) each guessed within a pound of that.
Read the full interview after the jump, including stories of growing up in rice country and facts and opinions about the industry...
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Update: Harry Young, one of our interviewees passed away this week.
Harry Young, one of the farmers interviewed for this project, passed away this week in Kentucky. Our previous write-up of the interview is here.
Harry was a fascinating fellow, 83 years old, with a unique situation. He has been fighting to get his land and honor back after he was forced off of his lifelong farm and it was auctioned off. Much of our discussion was about the hardship of being a small farmer, his frustration that this could happen over what he says is a financial misunderstanding, and about the racism that he felt in the area.
An author and friend of his, Monica Davis, provided the following readings associated with his life and struggles. It's worth a read, especially for people such as myself who were raised in a very different region:
82-year-old Black farmer arrested, charged with making terrorist threats, May 17, 2009.
Black farmer files lawsuit to regain farm with $750000000 in coal deposits.
Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future in Black America, a book by Monica Davis.
And, a summary of our visit with Harry for the Stewards Project.
Harry was a fascinating fellow, 83 years old, with a unique situation. He has been fighting to get his land and honor back after he was forced off of his lifelong farm and it was auctioned off. Much of our discussion was about the hardship of being a small farmer, his frustration that this could happen over what he says is a financial misunderstanding, and about the racism that he felt in the area.
An author and friend of his, Monica Davis, provided the following readings associated with his life and struggles. It's worth a read, especially for people such as myself who were raised in a very different region:
82-year-old Black farmer arrested, charged with making terrorist threats, May 17, 2009.
Black farmer files lawsuit to regain farm with $750000000 in coal deposits.
Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future in Black America, a book by Monica Davis.
And, a summary of our visit with Harry for the Stewards Project.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
St. Louis Missouri: Stephen Inman, New Roots Urban Farm
"I'm more prone to calling it a garden this year. Before it was like, "don't call it a garden! It's a farm!"
We sat at the picnic table and watched the sun set on the abundant crops while Stephen told us about the challenges and perks of being an urban farmer. This garden has been functioning for about seven years and Stephen told us the story of the four individuals who got New Roots going. Everybody is a volunteer and they have initiated or helped with several other food and social justice projects in St. Louis. The produce that is harvested supplies an impressive number of CSA boxes for its size and it barely pays for the next season of the garden's existence.
It is difficult to operate not knowing if the yield will bring in enough money for another season of planting and harvesting, but that is the reality of most farms, rural or urban. One of Stephen's goals is to have this garden produce enough to pay for a gardener who will lead the project and volunteers, since that position doesn't exist right now and the garden is run on hopeful volunteer labor and luck. The volunteers do get to walk away with some of the food, but the whole project started when the founders realized that they couldn't afford their own produce on their rural farm outside the city. A garden that won't sustain the folks who work it seems doomed to failure, or, at the very least, ironic.
Despite the typical volunteer and practical urban issues, the kale is looking lovely, and as we sit chatting with Stephen a few neighborhood folks wander in to check on the crops and do some harvesting, thankful for this abundant gift of food amidst the hustle and bustle of the city. We watch the sun set and the city sky turn purple over the distant skyscrapers and abandoned brick neighborhood buildings...
Click here for Stephen's story in his own words...
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Council Grove, Kansas: Don and Doris Cress
The Santa Fe Cafe had just changed hands and a family of four was there to greet us and take our order. Our waitress looked to be about 9 years old and when we ordered 2 breakfast burritos she scrunched her forehead in thought and put her pencil to the order pad and scratched out "2 brayfast blotos" then happily skipped back to the kitchen where her dad was waiting and whispered loudly "Two breakfast burritos dad. But I didn't know how to spell that."
The burritos, or blotos as we now call them, arrived and they could have fed an army with as much eggs and vegetables as were stuffed into that fragile tortilla. She came back to get our empty plates, offered each of us a raspberry candy and then went outside to hail in the passing motorcyclists that were roaring through downtown slowly on a Sunday morning drive. There were swarms of motorcyclists out to take advantage of this beautiful bluebird day, and, as we left, a few came in and took our place to order their own blotos.
Trav and I decided that our next course of action would be to go to church, as we figured those Kansans who weren't riding around on their motorcycles would most likely be in a church on Sunday morning, and we wanted to meet people. I called my dad, who is a minister, to consult and see which denomination would be most likely to have the best snacks and we ended up going with the Presbityrians.
There was a great time of singing and then we sat through an interesting service in which a woman told of her recent experience with a missionary school in Guatemala. A youth group rafting trip that had been planned for the day before had been cancelled, so as we filed out of the sanctuary we grazed on all the Subway sandwiches that would otherwise be doomed to perish, as well as some excess cucumbers from a parishoners garden. Between bites we introduced ourselves to the minister and got to telling him about our project with farmers. With a light in his eye he snapped out his cell phone and called two church members who had just retired from their farm and moved into town, being 91 and 87 years old.
Don and Doris Cress are the oldest farmers that we had the pleasure of interviewing, and their stories about how things used to be were a pleasure, a history and a warning all at the same time.
Click "read more" to see what they had to say in their own words.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
A Thank-You Letter to everybody even slightly involved with this project.
Many apologies for the vast delays in our blog updates! We still have many farmers to write about, from Kansas to Oregon, and from Monsanto to Farm-To-School folks. Kacy and I have both been doing plenty of writing, but neither of us are efficient at transcribing it into the internet yet. We'll improve!
Just before Christmas we spent some days writing thank-you notes and hand-addressing envelopes to every farmer we interviewed, as well as most of the people we stayed with and the individuals who connected us with farmers along the way. I'm sorry if some of you whom were key in the project have not received yours; we actually ran out of the postcard I created, which is pictured above.
Each envelope included this postcard with a personal note on the back, a copy of the individual's portrait when appropriate, and a one-page letter drafted by Kacy, which is shown below. I took the rather large stack of letters to the post office on December 23rd; I thought, "well, I've organized them by state, to help out the postal workers during this holiday rush." Feeling like a good samaritan I presented the box to the woman at the counter, and she said in a definitive southern drawl, "Aw, that's sweet of ya, darlin'...but they all get dumped in the bin anyway." And with a "whoosh!", my carefully organized pile joined the glittering mass of holiday cards and packages, bound for points across the world.
Thanks to everyone involved in the project! Please read the letter below for an update on our process.
New years resolution: post on this blog at least once a week.
Stewards: Stories and Perspectives on American Agriculture
Trav Williams and Kacy Spooner
Trav Williams and Kacy Spooner
Winter greetings!
We hope that this note finds you well and warm as December settles over your farms and towns. Some of you are good old friends and others are people whom we met only briefly for an interview this past season. This is a hearty Thank You! for being a part of our project; it’s also an update of our progress.
We traveled across the US this past spring and summer, interviewing farmers, ranchers, and other agriculturalists; our intent was to collect a diversity of views, perspectives, and creeds and to publish these conversations as an archive of modern agricultural thought.
In the end, we spoke with over 160 farmers, ranchers, scientists, homesteaders, veterinarians, viticulturalists, historians, seed-savers, editors, and agents. We traveled for about 6 months on 12,500 miles of gravel and asphalt, seeking out characters and farmers of all types; we ended up with over 350 hours of recorded conversation, from Maine to California.
The youngest farmers were working on their 4-H projects in Illinois and studying sustainable agriculture in Maine. The oldest were selling their farm in Kansas at the age of 94 or were documenting their own heritage in California. Some farmers had made their fortunes; others were losing their property or struggling to get started. Farm sizes ranged from tens of thousands of acres of rangeland in eastern Colorado to ¼ acre lots in St. Louis and Denver. Some farmers stressed localized and diversified operations, while many others focused on a single crop that was distributed worldwide, such as soybeans. The diversity within our larger agricultural community is amazing to us.
When we asked the question, “What should the role of the farmer be in our society?” a large number of people included the idea of “stewardship” in their answers. The working title of this project was “Portrait of a Farm,” but we are now leaning towards the title, “Stewards: Stories and Perspectives on American Agriculture”.
This winter we are working on obtaining further funding that will allow more interviews to take place and allow for a more complete project. We are transcribing those many hours of recorded conversation and pursuing potential publishers; we’ve begun proposing a book concept, but we will not likely have made publishing decisions before next summer.
You have helped us by either telling us your story, sharing your resources and connections with us, or providing a place to cook food or rest our heads during this trip. It has been our honor to collect your unique perspectives; we hope that they will touch and educate those who read them.
Besides the interviewees themselves, we’d also like to thank the folks who helped us find farmers; Cooperative Extension and Farm Bureau agents were particularly helpful, connecting us with numerous people and organizations. We could not have been nearly as thorough without your help.
At the conclusion of our trip, we decided to settle in western North Carolina for the time being. We are thankful to be in such a beautiful place. Travis is working with photography in Asheville and Kacy is working on farmland preservation with the Agricultural Economic Development Office in Polk County. We are happy and we’re counting on spending lots of time this winter working on this project and musing about the past and the future of American agriculture.
There’s a good chance that, in the next few years, you may find us settled on the farm Trav grew up on in Oregon, but we shall see. The soil there is fertile and the history is strong. We will continue to keep you updated about any significant progress on this project, but if you have any questions in the meantime, or if you’d like to continue to have a dialogue, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Within a day or two of today, dozens of farmers and families across the US are opening this same letter as winter approaches. Whether you are snowed in up in Maine, prepping soil in California, or watching your apple trees turn inward for the winter, know that you are a significant part of a complex and necessary system that keeps us all going. We hope that all of you and your families are well, that your crops did well, and that next season will be lucrative and satisfying.
Thanks for telling your story-- --Kacy Spooner and Travis Williams
We hope that this note finds you well and warm as December settles over your farms and towns. Some of you are good old friends and others are people whom we met only briefly for an interview this past season. This is a hearty Thank You! for being a part of our project; it’s also an update of our progress.
We traveled across the US this past spring and summer, interviewing farmers, ranchers, and other agriculturalists; our intent was to collect a diversity of views, perspectives, and creeds and to publish these conversations as an archive of modern agricultural thought.
In the end, we spoke with over 160 farmers, ranchers, scientists, homesteaders, veterinarians, viticulturalists, historians, seed-savers, editors, and agents. We traveled for about 6 months on 12,500 miles of gravel and asphalt, seeking out characters and farmers of all types; we ended up with over 350 hours of recorded conversation, from Maine to California.
The youngest farmers were working on their 4-H projects in Illinois and studying sustainable agriculture in Maine. The oldest were selling their farm in Kansas at the age of 94 or were documenting their own heritage in California. Some farmers had made their fortunes; others were losing their property or struggling to get started. Farm sizes ranged from tens of thousands of acres of rangeland in eastern Colorado to ¼ acre lots in St. Louis and Denver. Some farmers stressed localized and diversified operations, while many others focused on a single crop that was distributed worldwide, such as soybeans. The diversity within our larger agricultural community is amazing to us.
When we asked the question, “What should the role of the farmer be in our society?” a large number of people included the idea of “stewardship” in their answers. The working title of this project was “Portrait of a Farm,” but we are now leaning towards the title, “Stewards: Stories and Perspectives on American Agriculture”.
This winter we are working on obtaining further funding that will allow more interviews to take place and allow for a more complete project. We are transcribing those many hours of recorded conversation and pursuing potential publishers; we’ve begun proposing a book concept, but we will not likely have made publishing decisions before next summer.
You have helped us by either telling us your story, sharing your resources and connections with us, or providing a place to cook food or rest our heads during this trip. It has been our honor to collect your unique perspectives; we hope that they will touch and educate those who read them.
Besides the interviewees themselves, we’d also like to thank the folks who helped us find farmers; Cooperative Extension and Farm Bureau agents were particularly helpful, connecting us with numerous people and organizations. We could not have been nearly as thorough without your help.
At the conclusion of our trip, we decided to settle in western North Carolina for the time being. We are thankful to be in such a beautiful place. Travis is working with photography in Asheville and Kacy is working on farmland preservation with the Agricultural Economic Development Office in Polk County. We are happy and we’re counting on spending lots of time this winter working on this project and musing about the past and the future of American agriculture.
There’s a good chance that, in the next few years, you may find us settled on the farm Trav grew up on in Oregon, but we shall see. The soil there is fertile and the history is strong. We will continue to keep you updated about any significant progress on this project, but if you have any questions in the meantime, or if you’d like to continue to have a dialogue, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Within a day or two of today, dozens of farmers and families across the US are opening this same letter as winter approaches. Whether you are snowed in up in Maine, prepping soil in California, or watching your apple trees turn inward for the winter, know that you are a significant part of a complex and necessary system that keeps us all going. We hope that all of you and your families are well, that your crops did well, and that next season will be lucrative and satisfying.
Thanks for telling your story-- --Kacy Spooner and Travis Williams
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