Showing everyone the new face of farming.

Walking to work this morning (yeah, I walk 40 minutes in Rochester weather to counteract the effects of a desk job–I need that fresh air), I was thinking about the conference and the theme of honor that emerged.  Our keynote speakers mentioned the theme, as did many people I spoke to personally.  All essentially thanked Beginning Farmers for having energy, for showing that farming is a profession that will not die out, and furthermore for showing that farming is an honorable profession for hard-working and motivated people.

I’d like to point you all to a great farmer-baker-blogger whom I had the chance to meet during a slow hour at the publications table this past weekend, Bill McKerchie.  He has written a glowing review of his conference experience.  Trust me, we didn’t force him to!  In the same post, Bill writes very clearly about his feelings on GE Alfalfa, agribusiness giants, and the like.  Now, the USDA is supporting Beginning Farmers with a variety of grants, which you are welcome to make use of.  It’s a huge organization with lots of branches, so let’s try to distinguish that part of things.  (Full disclosure: the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Project grants fund some NOFA-NY Beginning Farmer programing, including scholarships to the conference!)  However, I wonder if this issue of the release of GE alfalfa, though it’s also USDA territory, maybe has not been viewed through the Beginning Farmer lens, so in the letter I wrote to The President and the USDA, I explained how this crop’s release would negatively affect Beginning Farmers aside from any general concerns about the science of the crop.  More than experienced farmers (except those totally reworking their marketing strategy), beginning farmers must advertise their growing practices in hopes of gaining and maintaining customers’ trust in the product and farming practices they use.  These aren’t the same farmers whose fields have touched their neighbors’ lawns for decades, whose farm stand is a childhood memory for their customers.  Customers can be loyal, but their allegence is not easily won.  It’s so hard to hear customers give a farmer a hard time for superficial damage on a perfectly scrumptious and properly-grown Haukerei turnip.  Given that many in the beginning farmer wave aren’t planning to certify organic, or haven’t been on their land long enough to do so, they must convince customers of the merits of their product, and one thing they are currently able to say (since consumers have heard the buzzword “GMO” and respond to it) is that a product is GMO-free.  NOFA-NY certainly can and does help Beginning Farmers in approaching the marketing of products, but I do feel this will be much harder if the farmers can’t guarantee GE-free food to customers who are still learning to trust in the farmers.  As a consumer of organics, I’d like to continue to buy organic dairy, which I struggle to do on a budget.  I can’t imagine the price of certified organic foods and dairy if there will be so much more double-checking and cautionary measures that need to be taken by farmers.  There are issues of pollen and seed drift, which really complicate a farmers’ life when they get accused of stealing intellectual property or find that they can’t manage their crops because their crops are just a little different from what they had planned to have.  I think you all know this, I’m just saying that I know it too!  So call your representatives, get loud and angry about whatever side you feel.  Maybe you totally disagree with me, and that’s fine too.  Let’s have it out, let’s make the crop-release/approval system appropriate for the people who will be farming in coming decades.  Let’s make our voices heard!  If anything, can we agree that GE crops would definitely need to be thought about differently and researched much more extensively before any thought of release would occur?

Taking another one of Bill’s points, which is something I was also thinking about this morning, people outside of the farming/conscientious eating movement may not know what the newest farmers look like, what they’re growing, where they’re growing and what their interests are.  This isn’t American Gothic any more.

This is where I’d LOVE LOVE LOVE your participation.  You may not be a writer, blogger, or feel like a person of many words who can call the USDA.  You can send me photos of yourself, with your animals, with your produce, with your homemade jams, on your farm, in your dorm room, in your fire-escape garden.  I’m looking for images that represent our diverse pool of farmers (not just beginning!), of aspiring farmers (a photo of you with the plan for the farm of your dreams?), of crops, of styles (rooftop and windowsill farmers can you hear me yet?).  We could turn this into something great.  As Bill says, there are no commercials representing young farmers.  I don’t know about making a commercial, but we can show the public, somehow, the images to connect with the word farmer.  Email me the images (rachel@nofany.org).  My original idea was to have people re-interpret American Gothic, but it’s obviously wide open.  If nothing else, I’ll post them to this blog and make myself some great wallpaper for my office.  It could definitely be more than that, though, so please participate!  Oh, there may be prizes (you’d be impressed with the spirit of giving among farming companies–they want Beginning Farmers to be well-equipped.  I have a whole bag of gloves that Foxgloves donated to the project after the conference).

Looking forward to helping to show the world the new face of farming….