Saturday, September 29, 2007

More on Community Supported Agriculture

I’ve been talking to people I know here in the valley and beyond this week about what might be done to connect Borrego Valley residents more closely to where their food comes from, how it is processed and handled, and how Borrego Valley farms might fit into that.

Specifically, I’ve been wondering if a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program might work in Borrego.

I’ve mentioned CSAs in previous columns. A CSA is an organized group of consumers whose members buy their produce and other farm products directly from local farmers. Members pay a pre-agreed subscription amount per growing season and in return receive a weekly harvest of fresh, locally-grown food. Farmers have a local market and a dependable income.

For more information about CSAs, see the U.S. Department of Agriculture website at: www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml

As a way to get more information about whether a CSA would work in Borrego, let me ask you a few questions. Please take a minute and email me with your answers.

What do you know about where your food comes from, who grows it, and how it gets to you?

Would you buy at least some of your food from local farmers on a regular basis if it were available?

What else would you be willing to do to support the growing of food locally?

Replacing Farms with Houses

I encourage everyone to read Alison Williams’ August 11, 2007 Los Angeles Times article about water in the Borrego Valley, “A Resort Town Thirsts for Solutions.” Granted, Williams’ article has its shortcomings, but it makes one very important point.

Williams unfortunately perpetuates recycled and misleading information about the health of Borrego’s aquifer, for example the myth that the aquifer only has a useful life of 30 years. Furthermore, Williams’ article places an alarmist emphasis on a recent speculative remark made by the Department of Water Resources’ Tim Ross about the MW-5 monitoring well on the southern edge of the Borrego groundwater basin. The Borrego Sun made this same mistake a couple of months ago in an article Steven Smiley has rightly called “sensationalized” and “misleading.”

Finally, while falling into the familiar trap of blaming valley farms for a water crisis that in fact cannot be convincingly shown to exist, Williams only quotes one of Borrego’s farmers. Most of the other people quoted are committed antagonists of valley farms. The article is not adequately balanced.

Williams is dead right on one point however, and this is primarily why her article has merit. For the first time, to my knowledge, a journalist has finally recognized and acknowledged what is really going on behind the effort to run Borrego’s farmers out of the valley. The goal is not primarily to save water at all, but rather to transfer ownership and control of water from valley farms to residential developers and to the Borrego Water District. It’s about money and power, not conservation, “merely replacing farmland with houses,” as Williams’ article puts it. That’s just not a good idea.

Farming is Part of the Borrego Ecology

As the sun comes up over the Borrego Valley, I feel fortunate to be able to walk through the shaded fields of native Washingtonia filifera palms and their close cousins Washingtonia robusta here at the farm. Near my feet I hear the quiet hiss of drip irrigation emitters releasing carefully measured water into the soil. Above me I think I catch a glimpse of a Vermilion Flycatcher seeking a high vantage point among the deep green fronds. This is the good part of the day, the timeless part--before summer heat makes us count the minutes until break time or lunch.

There is another sense in which these fields seem timeless to me. There are folks out there who will tell you that agriculture began in Borrego early in the 20th. century when the first homesteaders ran Fresno scrapers across the desert floor or perhaps later when the Di Giorgio Corporation tried to grow early season grapes. But of course the story is much older than that.

Some anthropologists believe the Cahuilla Indians may have planted and maintained palm groves in the Borrego area for perhaps thousands of years before their traditional way of life came under assault from the Spanish and later the Americans. The Cahuilla and the Kumeyaay also most likely tended stands of mesquite and oak not far from Borrego, domesticated grasslands, and transplanted and hybridized species of plants in a complex managed landscape the legacy of which we mistake today for “natural.”

This older story is important to remember. Farming is simply an integral part of the very old, highly dynamic, and ongoing ecology of Borrego. This morning in the fields, the link that joins farmers to this remarkable system seems clear to me.

American Farming and Safe Products

In spite of recent safety scares in the media, Americans enjoy the safest, most abundant and most affordable food supply in the world, due in large part to the productivity and responsibility of American farmers. Recent stories about disturbingly inadequate safety and purity standards for food and other consumable products originating in other countries should remind us how important it is to maintain vigorous and competitive agricultural operations here at home where quality and safety can be better monitored.

Food is only part of the story. Many non-food products we use in our everyday lives come from plant and animal products produced by American Farmers. Health care products like many pharmaceuticals, surgical sutures, latex gloves, even x-ray film include farm-produced materials. The same is true for personal care products like shampoo, soap, cosmetics, and toothpaste. The ink in many newspapers, perhaps this one, most likely originated on a farm. Schools could not operate as they do without farm-produced materials in crayons, textbooks, chalk, pencils, and paper. Manufacturing depends on adhesives, lubricants, solvents, and detergents based on farm-produced crops.

Yes, even the palm trees that shade our homes and do their part to reduce greenhouse gases in our neighborhoods are grown on farms, several here in Borrego.

We rightly associate American farms with outstanding and abundant food. But food is only part of the story. Farming is simply too important to “outsource” to other countries.

Thanks to Our Loyal Workers

A man from a cooler part of the country had just returned home from a July vacation in Borrego Springs.

“How did you find the hot desert weather?” a friend asked the tourist.

“It was easy,” the tourist replied. “I just went outside, and there it was.”

Well, when the mercury goes up in Borrego, we have to keep laughing somehow… The extreme heat of a Borrego summer is part of our valley’s signature identity, a source of good stories, even a matter of stoic, or perhaps ironic, pride for local people who weather the May-October dog days.

Of course, air conditioning and swamp coolers have made Borrego a much more habitable place during the summers, but I often imagine what it must have been like during indigenous times and later during the early ranching and farming days when very little came between people and the heat.

On Borrego’s farms, of course, not everything has changed. Farming, like all outdoor work, is still a challenging undertaking during the summer. We start the day early to avoid the heat as long as possible, and as the heat index goes through the roof, we look out for each other, limiting exposure to the sun, making sure everyone stays hydrated, and watching for any early signs of heat illness.

American farm workers have to adapt to some pretty harsh conditions in order to provide us with food and maintain the health of our nation’s agricultural economy. This is a good time of year to remember these folks with appreciation.

Ellis Farms says thanks to our employees and all farm workers for the great work they do, especially during the long hot summer months.

Self-styled "Planners" Decide Farms are in the Way

As many of you know, the so-called Desert Area Initiative (DIA) was approved by the Borrego Springs Community Sponsor Group (BSCSG) on June 5 and now must be accepted by the County Board of Supervisors to be implemented.

The DIA proposal shows how a few good ideas can be used to disguise a radical agenda. In this case it is a comprehensive no-growth agenda combined oddly with an aggressive, intentional assault on family farming in Borrego. But the DIA contains too much snake oil medicine for the sugar to cover up.

While the DIA proposal talks a lot about “community values,” it forgets that farmers have been a part of the community since Borrego’s founding. Instead, the anti-farming agenda of the DIA is clear throughout and is epitomized by Recommendation 4.1.1.2, which calls for “economic, political, and/or legal means” to be implemented against farming.

I’m afraid the DIA would also be a disaster for the entire community, not just farmers. Its extreme and intrusive level of regulation would impact everyone. Layered among several constructive suggestions and a clever scheme to force out farmers is a morass of new permitting requirements, ordinances, mandates, review processes, bureaucracies, districts, and trusts that would effectively lock down property rights in Borrego.

The DIA proposal claims to include “only those recommendations that are supported by the entire community.” That’s not true. The DIA proposal fosters an illusion of consensus. There can be no true dialogue when a handful of “planners” have already made up their minds what’s good for us.

Please contact County Supervisor Bill Horn and ask him to reject this ill-conceived “Desert Area” idea:

Bill Horn, Supervisor, 5th. District
San Diego County
1600 Pacific Highway, Room 335
San Diego CA 92101

Community Supported Agriculture

“I know of no pursuit in which more real and important service can be rendered to any country,” George Washington wrote in 1789,” than by improving its agriculture.”

While we tend to associate progress with technological advancement and large-scale innovation, one of the most exciting changes on the agricultural scene these days is the growing number of small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. A CSA is an organized group of consumers whose members buy their produce and other farm products directly from local farmers. Members pay a pre-agreed subscription amount per growing season and in return receive a weekly harvest of fresh, locally-grown food.

Typically, a CSA supports several small farms within a close radius of where the food is distributed. In contrast, produce in the grocery store is trucked an average of 1,500 miles from, well…most of us don’t know where. Buying produce directly from farmers, CSA members pay less than retail for the freshest food possible. Many CSAs feature food that is grown organically, without pesticides, and using sustainable farming practices.

It’s the proverbial win-win situation. Communities gain satisfaction from reconnecting to the land and participating in the production of the food they eat. Small farmers receive fair and stable prices and better financial security.

Learn more about community supported agriculture on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website at: www.nal.usda.gov.

Friends Visit the Farm

We had a nice visit at Ellis Farms a couple of weeks ago from an old friend of mine.

Isabel and her husband Chuck have been farming and ranching their entire lives. When I first started farming on my own, back in 1977, they took me under their wing and taught me a great deal about caretaking the most precious resource America has, productive farm land.

Chuck and Isabel taught me the kinds of practical skills you can’t learn from books. With characteristically good humor, they burst the bubble of some of my naive and dogmatic environmentalist ideas. Perhaps most importantly, they demonstrated what it means to be good neighbors. That kind of mentoring is why talking about the “farming community” is far more than a cliché.

Through careful management over the course of decades, Chuck and Isabel have left their farm in better shape than when they started on it. Theirs is an example of true conservation conducted by individuals, and done according to the constraints and opportunities of the marketplace not the bureaucrat’s regulatory manual.

As we all know, the amount of farmland in this country is declining as farms are converted into housing developments. When farmland disappears, it doesn’t come back. These two friends have done their part to stand in the way of that kind of “progress.”

Desert Area Initiative--Heavy Handed Regulation

Unnecessary government regulation is one of the most serious challenges facing the farming community in the United States.

Federal agencies alone enforce over 144,000 pages of rules affecting agriculture. In addition to that, state and county agencies add their own pervasive layers of bureaucracy and mandatory regulatory compliance. Of course some of these regulations benefit farmers and society as a whole, but much of this regulatory maze does not and serves only the interests of the $3.5 billion a year environmental lobby and other activists who seem dead set on enforcing their often unscientifically supportable and radical political agendas on society.

Then comes the Borrego Springs Community Sponsor Group’s “Desert Area” initiative. This plan will impose strict new permitting requirements, create new bureaucracies of subcommittees, districts, and trusts, and lock down property rights in Borrego in the name of dubious values like keeping the sky dark, changing productive farms to “habitat,” and requiring houses to be built in “mid century” modern style.

The “Desert Area” initiative is a prime example of how uncurbed regulation can impact everyone, farmers and non-farmers alike.

Please contact County Supervisor Bill Horn and ask him to reject this ill-conceived “Desert Area” idea. Several people have asked that I include his contact information. Here it is:

Bill Horn
San Diego County Supervisor
1600 Pacific Highway, Room 335
San Diego CA 92101
1.800.852.7335
Bill.Horn@sdcounty.ca.gov

The Desert Area Initiative

For farmers, the land is everything. That’s one reason farmers are characteristically so concerned about property rights. When bureaucrats take control of your prerogatives over the property you own, they put at jeopardy your livelihood and way of life. Actually, it’s an issue that should worry all citizens, not just farmers.

I am very concerned about the proposal made by the Borrego Springs Community Sponsor Group for a “Desert Area Initiative.” On the face of it, some of their ideas sound constructive and community oriented. The larger agenda, however, seems outrageously negative. The draconian scope of the intrusive regulation proposed by the Sponsor Group would compromise the property rights of everyone in Borrego, mandating everything from what kind of driveway you could install, to the lights you use, to how close you could live to the state park. The way I read it, the proposal would make it almost impossible for anyone to conduct business in Borrego. It would be a disaster.

If you don’t believe me, ask the Sponsor Group for a copy of the proposed regulations—it’s a 13 page long, single spaced agenda.

The Sponsor Group began working on this initiative in May of 2006. They didn’t ask for public comment until January 2007, as a final step before submitting the proposal to the county. I hate to say it, but it seems they just want us to sign on to a plan they have already decided is best for everyone. This is a no growth initiative in sheep’s clothing. It will hurt everyone in Borrego.

I urge you to directly contact San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn and express your opposition to this proposal.

Farming's Contribution to Society

In a 1999 poll commissioned by the American Farm Bureau Federation, 85 percent of respondents said that farmers make a “great deal of contribution to society.” That was only 1 percent behind teachers and firefighters.

When it comes to providing healthy food, the survey gave farmers excellent to very good marks. When it comes to conserving resources and caring for the environment, Americans rated farmers ahead of environmentalists, scientists, and government regulators.

By comparison, only 13 percent of respondents said that politicians make a “great deal of contribution to society.”

That’s what Americans say. Not surprisingly, politicians say something else altogether.

Today only 3.4 percent of federal spending goes to agriculture. That represents a steady decrease since 1960, when a still very modest 5.3 percent of the budget went to supporting agriculture. To put it into perspective in another way, the federal government spends twice as much on servicing the national debt as it does to ensure the long term health of America’s farms.

Everybody has their priorities. I guess the bureaucrats are just not on the same page with the rest of America.

Oh well, I guess teachers aren’t getting rich quick either.

Family Farms or "Corporate Agribusiness"?

Have you noticed that people who defend farming often use the expression “family farms” while people who attack farming prefer to talk about “corporate agribusiness”?

The first term suggests an image of an old fashioned way of life in some kind of small-scale rural paradise. The second term implies that farms are rapidly slipping into the hands of large, soulless corporations driven by Gordon Gekko’s mantra “Greed is Good.”

The truth about family farming lies in the middle, of course, and is much more complicated. In reality, the overwhelming majority of America’s 2 million farms are still owned and operated by families. The size of the farm has very little to do with a real definition of family farming. Some family farms are very small, while some families farm thousands of acres. Some family farmers do all the work themselves. Some employ large numbers of workers. More than half of all American farmers work off the farm, and of those, 80 percent have full-time jobs. Many family farms have incorporated. It’s a financial decision, not going over to the dark side.

There is no doubt that family farming is in danger from corporate mergers and acquisitions, from historically low prices, from residential development and sprawl, and other factors. A first step in understanding that danger is recognizing what a family farm is. What links together all family farms is a lot of hard work and a personal stake in both the financial and environmental health of the farm.

Welcome to the Farm Corner

Joe F. Combs was well known in east Texas for many years as a columnist for the Beaumont Enterprise. Combs’ rural roots and farming background gave him a real love for local places and the natural world, and his column “Farm Corner” was a favorite among several generations of readers.

In 1963, Combs’ columns were collected in a book, Farm Corner: A Collection of Little Essays on Nature. Combs was a friend of my great grandfather and my grandmother. I keep a worn copy of Farm Corner on my desk. As the title suggests, Combs’ writing embodied the simple and unpretentious claim that just about every place in this country has a connection to farming and the farming way of life.

Borrego, of course, is no exception.

With this nod to Combs then, I plan to use our Ellis Farms ad to do a series of very short articles about farming. I’d like to call this “Borrego Farm Corner.”

Combs was often sentimental about farming. You get a taste of that in lines like this: “In the stillness and crisp air of the countryside the sounds of home life over on the hill at the neighbor's farm were easily heard.” I, on the other hand, don’t feel sentimental about farming at all. I simply believe that family farming and soundly managed agricultural production are vitally important to America and that we are all connected to farming in one way or another.

So please look for “Borrego Farm Corner” in upcoming issues of the Sun.