Triple Bottom Line
by Sophie Mendelson, ‘15
So I have this crazy idea.
It’s an idea about what the farm of the future could look like. Big topic, I know, and right now the idea is still pretty half-baked, I’ll be the first to admit. It’s fanciful and incomplete, with untested foundations, erratically constructed extensions and a leaky roof. But seeing as it’s an idea about collaboration, and the first step toward any kind of collaboration is communication, I’m going to lay it out for you anyway.
This idea, like so many, starts with the identification of a problem: loneliness. I believe that loneliness is a problem that is often overlooked in the discussion surrounding sustainable, small-scale farming. When trying to envision the farm of the future, we spend a lot of time talking about economics and chemicals – how can farmers make a living? How can they reliably produce food without harmful technology? What new economic models and low-impact technologies can we implement? These are all important questions, but I think equally important is the question: how can we make the farming lifestyle sustainable? In other worlds, how can we help farmers not to be so darn lonely?
In my personal experience, loneliness has been THE NUMBER ONE hardest part of farming. Isolated geographically and socially, farming is often a solitary business. There is a huge difference between working fourteen-hour days with a group of people and working those same hours on your own, and I’m not just talking in terms of productivity. For me, the former is exhausting but satisfying, while the latter leaves me flattened and struggling to suppress a creeping sense of desperation. It’s no wonder that so many young farmers start out with enthusiasm only to quit after a couple of years in the field!
So here is my crazy idea: the farming cooperative. I may be twisting the word “cooperative” to fit my purposes here, because I don’t mean a totally consensus-based, commune-like farming model. What I have in mind is more closely matched to the Zingerman’s business model (check out A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building A Great Business by Ari Weinzweig if you’re intrigued). I’m talking about a farming model in which several quasi-independent farms, all located in the same geographic region or even the same property, collaborate to coordinate operations and market their products under one front. You could have, for example, a vegetable farm, a dairy farm, a meat farm, a fruit orchard, and a processing facility for value-added products that all run mostly independently from each other, but draw on each other for support and all market through the same outlet and under the same label.
In my idealized and untested fantasy version of this model, the farm cooperative would work to meet “the triple bottom line” (to steal, and then tweak, a phrase from Dina Brewster): economic, environmental, and spiritual. Economically, marketing through one outlet would provide consumers with an incentive to buy from the cooperative, as they could meet most of their grocery needs through the products collectively assembled. Environmentally, the cooperative model encourages a diversified farming approach, where multiple kinds of farming are all taking place in coordination with each other on one piece of property, allowing farmers to close nutrient cycles and feedback loops. And now here’s the biggie: spiritually, the cooperative addresses to major issues for farmers. First, it provides a built-in community. This model of farming necessitates the involvement of many families and many workers, de-isolating small-scale farmers and creating a social environment. Second, it makes it so that one farmer doesn’t have to keep track of everything that is going on in a diversified farm all by his or her self – each operation is managed by a separate set of people, who then collaborate to bring their operations in concert with each other, thus diffusing the responsibility and easing the need for manic multi-tasking. Oh yeah, and each operation can help out other operations during times of particular need, like harvesting tomatoes or slaughtering chickens, strengthening social bonds and reducing the need to bring in extra labor during these times.
So far, that is the extent of the crazy idea. I would love, love, LOVE to talk to people about this, so please don’t be shy! Help me poke some holes in this thing so that we can build it back up even stronger.
Ad-hoc intern Kendra Dawsey ‘14 on her trip to a conference on racial equality in the food movement:
On October 5th, college students and others with an interest in the food movement gathered for a panel on Race and Place in Food and Co-op Movements, which doubled as a fundraiser for CoFed. CoFed, short for ‘Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive’, is an organization that started on the West Coast, devoted to equipping college students with hard skills to create cooperatively-run food enterprises on their campuses. The event took place at Colors restaurant in New York City, a restaurant that uses local ingredients and trains local employees, and is owned by a national organization that prides itself on respecting restaurant owners. I was fortunate enough to attend the panel with the help of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, and it was so exciting to see tons of young people interested in promoting racial equality in this movement.
The speakers at the panel included many prominent people in the current food movement such as Kolu Zigbi, the Program Director for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems and EAT4Health and the Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation, Curt Ellis, co-director of King Corn and The Greening of Southie, Tanya Fields, an entrepreneur who founded both Black Girl Inc. and The BLK ProjeK, and Karen Washington, founder of two farmers markets and a board member of NYC Community Gardens Coalition. To start the night off Yoni Laudau, co-director of the organization, spoke about CoFed with praise. He noted how much the project had blossomed from its roots in a borrowed minivan. Then Christine Johnson, the Northeast Region Organizer for CoFed, greeted the excited crowd. Afterward a brief speech, she sat down and asked the panelists questions on their experiences.
The first was a personal moment when they became interested in the intersection of race and place. Karen Washington, who has been growing food for 20 years, realized the importance after calling the census bureau for statistics on farmers. She was astounded to find out that there were only 110 black farmers in in all of New York State. She said, “We have to do something … We are talking about an equitable food system but it can’t be equitable if a portion of people aren’t farming.”
Curt Ellis became interested during the production of King Corn. In one town where filming took place, all of the farm workers were from the same town in Mexico, one that had its own corn to be harvested. However, working in America gave the families of workers enough money to send back home. Curt Ellis is currently co-director and Executive Director of Food Corps, an organization that seeks to address systemic food issues at the local scale. The organization takes into account the realities of race and poverty and how it affects food access. He says, “It is our priority to understand how the food movement discriminates in race and in class.” Food Corps uses service members with a specific knowledge of the area they are to be placed in, and involves schools in the process of giving youth a lasting relationship with healthy food.
Perhaps most illuminating was the situation described by Kolu Zigbi. At the age of 17, before attending college, she went to visit her father’s rural village in Liberia. The farmers of the village constituted most of the population, and they grew enough native rice to feed themselves and also sell outside the community. However, the people lacked the automobiles and other means take their goods to the market, located far away. There was one bulldozer available in the entire village, but to use it, you had to take out a loan from the World Bank in the form of expensive seed—despite the fact that the farmers had seeds of their own. Therefore, they had no means to sell their natively grown rice without being forced into debt by the World Bank.
Additionally, US aid to Liberia is frequently given in the form of free rice. This rice was sold by the government to the citizens to pay off loans. Zigbi asked herself why international aid was putting farmers in debt instead of helping them develop. Reflecting on this point, she concluded, “race is a tool for exploitation.” She went to talking about her experiences with organizations in general. “Too many foundations are colorblind … the idea of talking about race becomes so personalized, no one looks at it like an academic reality.” By claiming not to see race at all, some organizations turn a blind eye on the unique histories and realities of each race, especially with regards to the food movement. Lack of access to healthy food disproportionately affects people of color in America, due to the complex way race and city planning have played into each other in this country.
Tanya Fields was the last to come in due to a babysitter flaking out; she walked into the room with apologies and two of her children. Hearing her speak from experience as a single mother and entrepreneur in the food movement was an excellent and moving way to end the night. Fields talked about how she had struggled to get grants when she wrote honestly about her background. “I thought I would list what I had done and people would make it rain,” she said, drawing laughs from the audience. “But that did not happen … ” She went on to explain that those who give out money for grants will still go for a college graduate over someone with a lot of experience, but less formal education. There is also the constant barrier of try to get jobs as a black woman, when many in charge place stock in having a white face on their organization. Later, she said, “When I submit a proposal to philanthropist … we have to start dealing with institutional racism.”
The panel ended with a conversation on how to start change. Washington said that overall, movements need to be grassroots, not political, and change must start within communities. Fields reiterated this point: “There’s a myth that people in poor communities don’t know anything, or they need help. They don’t need help, they need liberation.”
The entire night, I heard comments that articulated feelings I had regarding the general food movement in America, and helped open my eyes to the complexity of situations regarding race in the environment. I get to spend more time at Yale and afterward learning about these issues. I hope everyone in the room came away from the meeting with a desire to continue this very important discussion.
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about how sustainable agriculture tends to defy easy answers— and how that quality is one of its most compelling. So to start the week, here are two stories that demonstrate exactly how thorny thinking carefully about where your food comes from can get.
First there’s a domestic tale from our neighbors to the south in New York, where backyard chickens are laying eggs with detectable (but not necessarily harmful) levels of lead. Soil contamination, especially in urban areas, is a huge issue for many would-be backyard gardeners; the Yale Farm site was chosen in large part because unlike much of the rest of the city, it has lead-free soil. There are quick, cheap soil tests that you can do to determine whether soil is plantable or not, but no such standards exist for raising chickens or other backyard livestock— leaving many families without guidance, wondering if their attempts to raise their own are actually doing them more harm than good.
Then there’s the international: entrepreneurs in Haiti are trying to stimulate local economies by having natives grow the peanuts given to malnourished children in their communities. It’s a smart idea in theory, creating jobs on farms and in processing plants, intending to enrich the population rather than keeping them dependent on foreign aid. The catch is that the peanuts are vulnerable to fungi and toxins, requiring intensive chemical management— and that the multinational companies importing peanuts work on a massive scale and do so much more cheaply than these small-scale startups can. So far the UN has been willing to buy the more expensive product, supporting the long-term vision at work, and it will be interesting to see if the Haitian farmers can create a more competitive price without sacrificing the unique elements of their business model.
And because it’s Monday, a little bonus something fun: David Chang, Adam Gopnik and a host of others talk food on The Moth Radio Hour.
A few more snaps from Saturday’s snowfall, which Farm Manager Daniel Macphee took while he and some hardy volunteers harvested whatever couldn’t survive the freeze and made sure the chickens were warm and cozy for the duration.
Last Friday’s Harvest Festival looked like it was going to be a bummer— it had been raining for days, and a grey, soggy afternoon doesn’t tempt many out for Farm work, even when combined with the promise of pizza, cider and live music! Luckily our hearty volunteers and dedicated student staff didn’t let a little drizzle rain out the day— they came out in force to complete the harvest for Saturday’s farmers’ market, and the sun came out that afternoon as we ate, drank, danced and celebrated together.
Back to the Land, Reluctantly
While we’re talking about what you can pull off at home, here’s a fantastic New York Times piece about how a single, working mother put her backyard to good use to feed her family locally, organically, and very cheaply— reminding us that ethical food is by no means the exclusive provenance of the idle rich.
Urban Beekeeping: An Introduction
Just this morning, the YSFP office received a frantic phone call from one of our Connecticut neighbors. He was desperately searching for local honey for the treatment of seasonal allergies (more on that later) and he thought that we might be able to help him out. Although the bees that we installed on the Farm at the beginning of summer are still too young to produce honey, New Haven is home to many local beekeepers dedicated to the sometimes-difficult but always-rewarding task of urban beekeeping. This week on the blog we’ll highlight the benefits of urban beekeeping and introduce some of the local practitioners who have been working here in New Haven since long before it was trendy.
At first, urban beekeeping might seem like a contradiction in terms. It’s difficult to imagine a beehive in the middle of a city, and we might wonder if bees can even survive in an environment so completely altered by humans. And if they can make a home here, is there really any benefit to raising bees in what might sometimes seem like a concrete desert?
In fact, bees are constantly at work in even the most urban locations, affecting the landscape in ways we tend to take for granted. So what are bees good for?
1. Bees are pollinators. In the simplest terms, they take pollen from one flower and bring it to others, allowing for the fertilization that produces more seeds in flowers and fruit, thus ensuring a next generation and producing the parts of plants we like to eat. Without them, farmers would have to spend a lot of time hand-pollinating, and uncultivated crops would disappear almost entirely. Among the surviving plants, genetic diversity would plummet, since bees can carry pollen over many miles— and diversity is crucial to the robustness of any population. So without bees, all the flowers, shrubs and trees in parks and medians all over your city? They would pretty quickly disappear.
2. Urban beekeepers are doing their parts to counter Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In light of the recent and ongoing decline in wild bee populations, domesticated bees are increasingly responsible for the pollination of not just city gardens but also larger scale agricultural crops and uncultivated plants.
3. Perhaps most obviously, bees are the one and only source of honey! Everyone knows that honey is a nutritious and delicious natural sweetener, but some claim that local honey can also serve a medicinal purpose in the treatment and prevention of seasonal allergies. Because local honey is the direct product of region-specific pollen, consuming locally harvested honey is thought to accustom the body to those allergens in small doses, so that when they’re encountered en masse they aren’t seen as a threat.
We reap the many benefits of bees every time we put honey in our tea, slice up a tomato, or enjoy the flowers in our parks and gardens. Later his week we’ll take a more in-depth look at exactly how urban beekeeping works, with a post about the bee boxes Pollen recently installed on our Farm and a post about Vince Kay’s Swords Into Ploughshares, an operation that processes and packs honey just a couple of blocks from the Farm. Hopefully along the way we’ll inspire a few would-be apiarists to start hives of their very own!
What We Grow: Tomato Varieties
We grow three general types of tomatoes on the Yale Farm: paste tomatoes, best suited for drying and sauces, cherry tomatoes, which are ping pong ball-sized single bite delights, and a number of larger heirloom “eating” varieties that are good right off the vine. Below is some more specific information on the breeds we’ve used in years past, with notes on their size, shape, color, and best usage.
TOMATO, BRANDYWINE Very large, delicate heirloom with unrivaled rich traditional ‘tomato’ flavor; potato leaf, indeterminate
TOMATO, GREEN ZEBRA Small, striped green tomato with sweet flavor, perfect for salads; indeterminate, resists cracking
TOMATO, STRIPED GERMAN Large, somewhat flattened fruit with red/yellow marbling; extremely sweet, juicy, with a light fruity flavor
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PASTE TOMATO, BLUE BEECH
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CHERRY TOMATO, SUN GOLD Prolific, deep orange fruits are always the favorite for eating out of hand; tend to split when handled or stored; indeterminate hybrid
How to Grow: Tomatoes
It’s that time of year again when the first really warm days mean the same words from everyone who visits our stand at market: “When will your tomatoes be ready?” In fact, our tomato seedlings have just been transplanted into the ground from the soil blocks where they spent the first few weeks of their young lives. While tomatoes can be planted any time after the threat of frost has passed and nights stay above fifty degrees, we waited until our seedlings were strong and hearty enough before transplanting them into one of the farm’s high tunnels.
Everyone has a secret to the best way to grow tomatoes, but the majority of growers train the tomatoes upright using one method or another. Whether it’s by caging, staking, or stringing up the tomato plants, any method that raises the plants off the ground increases the airflow around the plant, preventing the spread of disease and leading to a surplus of healthier fruit— this is especially crucial in a damp, humid climate like New Haven’s! At the Yale Farm, we take advantage of the overhead bars of our high tunnels to string a trellis from the top of the tunnel to a stake attached to the ground near each tomato plant. We can then clip the stem of the young plant to the string to encourage vertical growth. Much like using a stake, stringing tomatoes in this way helps support the fruit-bearing plant, preventing bending and breaking while ensuring a more equal sun exposure. We choose string rather than stakes because the string provides more vertical space for indeterminate varieties such as ours to grow taller.
Now that the tomatoes are planted and the string is stretched between the overhead bar and the base of the plant, the real fun begins. Every foot or so we’ll add another trellis clip to attach the stem to the string, and every few days we’ll pluck off the suckers – the tiny off-shoots that grow horizontally from the stem – encouraging the plants to focus their energy on growing taller and bearing more fruit rather than spreading out horizontally. While some growers allow the suckers to develop and produce fruit, our careful pruning ensures even sun exposure and allows us to grow the plants closer together, eighteen inches rather than the conventional two feet. We get a better use of space and healthy, evenly ripened tomatoes.
What’s the number one trick for growing tomatoes at home? More sun! We plant our tomatoes in full sun under the plastic of the high tunnel so it’s as hot as possible. You’ll want to make sure they’re well watered at the roots— we use drip tape to irrigate our plants— so that they can absorb all of the necessary nutrients from the soil, which prevents common problems like catfacing and end rot.
