My friends over at the Food Declaration Facebook page posted this piece from the NY Times. It deals with the loss of diversity in apple varieties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/06/opinion/06fri4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

I agree mostly with her premise, but I think her timescale should be examined. Compared to the 1905 stats cited in the article, we certainly have seen a decline in varieties and local specialties. But more recently? When I was a kid in the ’70’s, apples were red or yellow. I remember my Mother and Grandmother being very happy when Granny Smiths were once again available. Today? Fujis, Galas, Braeburns… plus other varieties I can’t think of off the top of my head are avaiable even in my nearby chain supermarket. On a shorter timescale the trend is positive.

Of course, the broader context of the article is about our food culture, and not just apples. Have we forever lost a way of life, and was it sacrificed at the alter of corporate interests?

We once had the kind of local food and small farm culture mourned in this article. Sadly it is a shadow of its former self, but not because of giant supermarkets and corporate agribusiness. It’s because in that time and that place, people who KNEW the difference between apple varieties and lived or worked on small family farms CHOSE to give it up for a better paycheck in town and more convenience in the kitchen. Monsanto and Krogers and Walmart came later. They are responses to this shift, not the original cause. (That they later accelerated and perpetuated the shift, I don’t deny.) So when we had this culture, we chose to give it up. Now that it is nearly extinct, will we choose to bring it back?

Personally, I’d love to think so. My breakfast this morning included eggs from our own hens and honey from our local bee guy. (Maybe some of my pollen is in there somewhere.) My to do list includes planting five varieties of figs to be marketed locally, and having our Nigerian Dwarf doe bred so we can have cheese next summer (And more goats!) So when it comes to the value of fresh food and minor varietals, I’m a believer. But as to how many others share this enthusiasm? Not so much.

According to my stats page one of the searches that led to my previous piece was “why sustainable farming’s bad”. Interesting. I’ve never said it was bad. Curious as to what might have motivated that search, though.

It is often taken as gospel that the higher prices of food that has been “sustainably” farmed is a reflection of the “true cost” of food. As for myself, I haven’t questioned this particular piece of dogma either.

Until now. Not that I am rejecting the entire proposition. But I am thinking about the implied corollary to this statement, which is that if “sustainable” food  captures the “true cost” of food, then it must be paying “true value” for all of its inputs.

Which is why this article caught my eye. I applaud the initiative of the people described in the article; indeed I can see myself in their shoes. (I traded a career and a chunk of home equity to get into the farming business at age 35, the twilight of “young”.) But the article describes them earning $7 to $9 per hour, and in one instance working a month for free, since the farm could not pay them.

What is striking to me is that these wages are less then is commonly paid in my corner of California for farm labor, most of whom it is safe to say are not college educated. So is $7 to $9 per hour really the “true value” of farm labor? If that is the case, than Southern California farmers are apparently benevolent, rather than exploitative as is often charged.

The difference is that these neo-farmers are driven by passion, while for most farmworkers, the job is just a paycheck. So the question becomes, does this really mark a path toward sustainability? Like any industry, agriculture benefits from new minds and fresh energy, so this is a good thing. On the other hand, this newly found source of cheap labor, while “renewable”, is probably very finite. Will this resource last? Will the many small farms that rely on this type of labor continue to be able to attract volunteers as their model is adopted on wider scales?

In the long term, we will have to come face to face with two unpleasant truths.

Firstly, farming is not and generally has never been, aspirational. Sadly the history of mankind is the tale of people inventing ever more clever ways to get away from the farm. (A more detailed reflection on this point here.)

Secondly, much of the toil in agriculture is confined to entry level jobs that require few skills, no higher education, and in some cases, not even literacy in the prevailing language of the region. Such jobs are unlikely ever to pay very well, whether the worker holds a master’s degree or a green card.

Quoted and pictured today in the incredible shrinking Star! Just love talking ’bout that agricultural policy!

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/oct/01/farmers-happy-county-not-abandoning-williamson/

August and September have been busy months. Irrigation is always critical this time of year, and we are just concluding picking and pruning the lemons. It was particularly busy in the small end of the business: With lemons delivered to Ventura Limoncello, Meyer lemons and figs to the Sidecar, and additional Meyers into “mainstream/niche” markets, September was our biggest month yet for local and specialty fruit.

The experience has encouraged us to try to branch out a little further, so too new crops will be added to the mix. Garlic and Figs.

Now, I know, I mentioned figs already, but let me explain. For the past two seasons we have sold figs to chefs and caterers, but they have all come from the big “family tree” which is 50+ years old and is presumed to be a black mission varietal. What will be new is that we will have a dozen trees of mixed varietals, including Kadota, Brown Turkey, and Desert King. We hope with some new varieties we may find some which really click with our customers, thrive in our microclimate, and fruit through a longer window.

Garlic is something we are going to try on a very, very small scale. I’ll be very happy if we have a thousand pounds of marketable garlic, and despite the title of this piece, we will be committing far less than an acre to it. But I have learned that local garlic is very hard to come by, so I’m going to give it a shot. It will be quite a change from tree crops. One thing I think is underappreciated about agriculture is the vast differences in knowledge and infrastructure to grow different kinds of crops. I try to be polite when sustainably-minded suburban friends suggest that we just grow X instead of Y, but I have a line rattling around in my brain about the difference between painting a portrait and painting a house. Like painters, not all farmers do the same thing.

Continuing in the vein of new crops, next spring should see our first harvest of Star Ruby grapefruit, Sanguinelli blood oranges, and Cara Cara navel oranges. Probably not enough for any meaningful contribution to the bottom line, but it will be great to get the chance to introduce them to our customers (and eat more than one or two.)

Sustainability and viability are always on my mind, and  these factored into the garlic and fig decisions. Citrus fruit in California is potentially threatened by the Asian Citrus Psyllid insect, which is a vector for Citrus Greening disease, or Huanglongbing virus. This has devastated much of Florida’s citrus industry, and as excited as I am about new specialty citrus varietals, I need to hedge our bets. Garlic and figs? Not affected by it. Avocados have had a rough ride the past few years, because as a subtropical fruit, the “extremes” of Southern California weather can push them to their limits. Will our weather be more extreme over the next few years, as it has been for the last three? It seems prudent to think so. Garlic and figs are well known to be capable of thriving with much higher highs and much lower lows. The fact that they have lower summertime irrigation requirements has got to help too, don’t you think?

 I have followed with interest a debate which has been bouncing around between Facebook, Grist and the American regarding organic versus conventional agriculture.

Links to the relevant articles here and here.

At the risk of being attacked from both sides, I would posit that neither is quite right, and yet both are correct. Does that sound like a political BS non-answer? Let me dig my hole deeper…

 “Conventional” farmers and those on that side of the debate often claim that “organic farming can’t feed the world.” To date that is correct. But that does not mean that it may not be true at some point in the future. But first organic/sustainable food systems will have to overcome some very serious obstacles about scale, efficiency and distribution models.

Organic advocates often point out that agriculture as practiced today will be untenable for the next 100 years. This is also correct. But they miss the point that farming is no more likely to remain static in the coming century than it was in the last. The usage of no-till practices, covercrops, and highly efficient means of irrigation are on the rise, and these innovations are coming from the ag community.

It is my belief that we are in a period of convergence between the two. In Omnivore’s Dilemma, the book at the center of this particular exchange, Michael Pollan examines one transitional model: the so called “Industrial Organic.” I think that this a good example of the blurring of the line between the two camps. I also believe that there is another possibility… Let’s call it “Artisanal Conventional.” What of a farm that sells produce both into mainstream channels as well as to local consumers and food artisans, yet will still use a little conventional fertilizer when called for? (Disclosure to those who may not know me: this is my model.)

There are an awful lot of farms that fall into a gray area between the two poles, and at the further risk of seeming self-serving, I do believe that it is in the middle, and not at the extremes, that we will see the future. And I do believe it is one we will be happy with.

A final anecdote: Yesterday I was at a meeting of sustainable food systems types in Los Angeles. It was mentioned in passing that another member of the circle who was not present at the time was going to be attending a $1000 a plate fundraiser. This was accepted as proof that his organic business model must be working. Indeed it seems to be. But from my small semi-conventional farmer perspective it seemed to me that his ability to do this had more to do with an operation that is roughly 50 times my size, than the fact that his produce is organic. I don’t bring this up to complain: I cite it as evidence that the usual big/small, conventional/organic dichotomies that we so quickly embrace in these debates are not always that well reflected in reality.

Last week I posted a piece about the need to scale back our dependence on regulations and policy solutions to allow people to be more creative in solving the problems that face us. I suspect the piece was viewed by some as a libertarian rant, but I don’t consider myself a libertarian. I do think we tend to overdo it when it comes to regulation, but I’m not in favor of anarchy.

I wasn’t planning on writing this morning, but three things caught my attention and I think allow me to elaborate on my regulatory views.

The first was a report on NPR that it is once again legal in Seattle to grow vegetables in the parking strip in front of your home without a permit. A full article was reported here in the Seattle Times on July 25^th. I’m sure when this permitting requirement was passed it was done with a sincere desire to advance the public good. But thankfully, the folks up in Seattle have recognized that this is a regulation that they are better off without. Greater freedom to decide how to use one’s parking strip turns out to be in the best interest of everyone.

The second piece I saw informed me that it is now legal to harvest rainwater that falls on your roof in Colorado with a catchment system. Previously this was considered water theft and could have subjected you to a $500 fine. It has been reported here  on NPR. Water policy can be headache inducing even to experts, but this one seems pretty simple. Why shouldn’t people be able to manage the water that falls on their property for their own use? It will ultimately be used on their lawn or find it’s way back into the water cycle: they just get the use of it first, without relying on externally managed infrastructure. More sustainable? Clearly.

Usually when you advocate for less regulation, you are suspected of being in the pocket of “Big Business” and are simply looking for a way to more profitably rape the planet and exploit the masses. But let’s face it: in our mind-numbingly complex regulatory world the big guys can get away with most anything they want. They can afford to find the loopholes. The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world. But US corporations typically pay less in taxes as a percentage of income than their foreign peers. Frankly I’d consider myself more populist than libertarian (granting that these aren’t mutually exclusive); I want the breaks for the “little guy.” I think these two examples are both great case studies for the ways in which a policy heavy approach to life impacts regular people and  hampers progress.

So can a conservative approach to regulatory policy advance a progressive vision? These two examples say they can, but there are many more. These just happen to be a couple that found me before 8am on a Monday morning.

Oh, right… the third thing! My friend Jessica Arciniega posted a quote from Ghandi this morning:

All progress is gained through mistakes and their rectification. No good comes fully fashioned, out of God’s hand, but has to be carved out through repeated experiments and repeated failures by ourselves. This is the law of individual growth. The same law controls social and political evolution also. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.

 Substitute “The Legislature” for “God’s hand” and you have my thoughts exactly.

Thank you, Jessica. And thank you, Mahatma.

As I wrote the first draft of this it looked as if  the House of Representatives had voted down a sweeping food safety bill, HR 2749. With a few new maneuvers, it looks like it may not be dead yet. If it stays dead, this non-event is perhaps one of the best things to happen to agriculture this year. I say this not because I am a fan of unsafe food. But this bill would have placed the same level of documentary requirements on food producers of all levels, regardless of the systemic risk posed by their operation. It as if the corner bike shop in your town had to meet the same regulatory requirements as General Motors. Despite a flurry of proposed amendments, some of them potentially big improvements, the bill died as it should have. It died because even legislators under pressure to do something about food safety recognized that this wasn’t the answer. It would have added huge costs and administrative burdens to the part of the food system not having any problems, without providing resources to do anything about the corners of the system where problems are known to linger. Why can’t we find a policy solution to a complex problem as important as food safety?

Sadly some of the trouble is with policy tools themselves. No matter how hard we try or how complex we make them, policies have a great deal of trouble with complexity. Policy handles course-grained issues well. More calories, less cost? Easy. All food must be organic? No problem. Everything must be from within 100 miles? Piece of cake, legislatively speaking. Policies and regulations are great at prohibiting certain actions or practices. Pass the law and it is so. (Implementation is another matter, of course.)

But does this produce the result we are looking for? Does it produce a food system with a wide variety of healthy food options for people of all incomes, successful farmers, happily fulfilled farmworkers, ethically treated animals, clean streams, thriving local businesses, empowered cook-at-home consumers, equitable taxes, delighted gourmets, abundant wildlife, pristine views, smart urban growth and development….

Sorry, kind of dozed off there for a second without finishing that sentence. But the point is that the preceding sentence can never be finished. Why? Because we want it all. And that’s the problem. We have never had it all, either through policy and regulation, free market capitalism, feudalism, monarchies, hunter-gatherer clans or any other form of human enterprise.

Does this mean we shouldn’t have policies or regulations? Of course not. But I’m skeptical that we will ever develop the perfect policy that delivers the perfect outcome. And if you look at the most dysfunctional aspects of our society, is it any surprise that they have the most regulation attached to them? To look at examples beyond food and agriculture, how good of a job does the Pentagon’s mountains of procurement policies do at ensuring our defense dollars are well spent? Does our tax code do what we want it to do? Pick a handful of state and local rules that impact you directly. How do they measure up?

My point is that no matter how much we complicate our policy, it can never  fully embrace the continually changing complexity of reality. What we are left with is an increasingly burdensome legacy that creates a lot of work for accountants, attorneys, consultants and bureaucrats. What happens when  the number of people regulating an activity approaches the number of people performing the activity? I’m not sure what would happen at a basketball game with 10 officials on the court.

I offer no solution, merely a recommendation for mitigation. Let’s look at paring down our libraries of statutes. Let’s consider that maybe some of the regulatory medicine is worse than the disease.  Didn’t we try deregulation in the financial markets, you ask? We did, and you are correct… it didn’t turn out well. But what really happened? A few outright frauds like Bernie Madoff are headed to jail. A few poorly managed companies no longer exist. Unreasonably inflated asset values returned to more rational levels, painful though the process was. I’m not trying to be cavalier about this… I know people got hurt. It turns out we did strip out a few important regulatory safeguards, but because of the complexity of the whole system, no-one recognized them as such. A simpler regulatory scheme would have been better. Enough capital reserves? Prudent risk assessment? Reasonable use of leveraged capital? A simple set of rules is superior to one that is too complex for anyone, even the experts, to follow.

Phrased another way, if Moses had brought down the 27,896 commandments from Mt. Sinai, would the whole Judeo-Christian thing have caught on? I think not.

I read a good article by my friend Larry Yee this weekend about the way that supermarkets are fudging (“abusing” or “exploiting” if you prefer) the term “local” in their produce sections. Much of the online commentary was supportive, but a couple of readers, deducing that an educated Ojai  type is probably a “liberal”, dutifully set about ridiculing his ideas. I don’t think Larry would dispute the liberal label, but there was nothing in his piece demanding socialized healthcare, gay marriage, or whatever other issue is this month’s Grave Threat to America. His basic points: Know the people you do business with, buy hometown products, and if it’s not the truth, don’t use it to sell your product.

Perhaps Larry is a conservative after all.

Americans have gotten pretty comfortable with the easy right/left, liberal/conservative labeling system. Just about any issue can be quickly divided up, and you can predict with great accuracy who will be on either side of a debate. I think the popularity of the “Red State/Blue State” terminology is due to it being simpler just to drop the pretext that our partisan battles are even rooted in a coherent philosophy.

But food issues just don’t work that way. As an independent and natural contrarian I find it funny to watch the inconsistencies. Much of our food industry is kept alive by big government programs and subsidies paid for with our tax dollars. Yet when liberals suggest that a better system might be more innovative, entrepreneurial, and small business friendly, conservatives attack. Really? Shouldn’t true conservatives embrace a roll-back of the government’s intrusion into the marketplace for food? After all, that is what is at the heart of many of the buy-local and slow-food concepts. On the other hand, liberals rarely grasp that many of today’s food system problems derive from deliberate and well meaning policy decisions to have the federal government ensure enough food for a healthy population. Monsanto and other agribusiness giants are as much a result of our cheap-food policies as the cause. This has led me to an observation:

Sometimes no policy is better than bad policy. (Now I sound libertarian…)

My great fear is that we will create a system that enjoys the worst of both worlds. Will we maintain the big government system of subsidies for crops that we now produce out of proportion to our actual need for them, while simultaneously using other tax dollars to restrict and discourage their consumption? Does that sound absurd? We do it already in tobacco. Will we allow small, entrepreneurial food networks to flourish, or will we tax and regulate them to the point that only largest, most sophisticated can survive? In short, rather than creating a new more flexible, more innovative food system, will we simply graft new bad ideas on top of the old?

You  know, I’ve never liked the term “agribusiness”. Business has always been a component of agriculture. Yes, it entails land stewardship, and crop science, and just good, old-fashioned hands-in-the-dirt work. But those of us who do it for a living have no reason either to feel apologetic for wanting to make a profit, or feel inferior because we don’t wear expensive suits in a glass and chrome office. “Agribusiness” is useful for vilifying corporate farming, or for making insecure farmers or businessmen feel more important. I’m not much interested in either.

What I am interested in is a return to grass roots, bottom up, entrepreneurial farming. And while I appreciate the support and enthusiasm of foodies, academics and policy wonks, what we really need are people who have an enthusiasm for this business. In the part of my life spent in Silicon Valley, I observed an ethos that changing the world and making a profit did not need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, it was generally felt that making the world a better place was precisely what entitled you to significant financial rewards. (I’ll grant that some people in the Valley got a little bit drunk on this Kool-Aid, but I still like the philosophy, at least in moderation.)

This is why I was very happy to read a piece that Rob Smart posted on Civil Eats. Real change will not come externally and it will not come with a single lightning bolt from on high. Farms and small businesses will be the ones that create the models and the relationships and the innovations that will transform our present food system, just a bit at a time, until we have something much better than we have today. While I hope the pace of change will be rapid, I do believe it will be evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Let’s imagine the food system we want as being represented by a chicken.

Small. Adaptable. Friendly. Managable. Chickens are the embodiment of local scale. There is a reason that they are the iconic emblem of the idealized happy barnyard.

But what is the ancestor of this chicken? The fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Huge. Predatory. Not very pleasant to interact with, I would imagine. A good representation of today’s food system perhaps? I think so. How did we get from T. Rex to the Rhode Island Red?

Despite the occasional meteor or ice-age, it happened just one little innovation at a time.