Your food dollar makes the most difference spent with local farms
by Leslie Goldman
This is Harvest EarthFair month in San Diego. What do we harvest with our food dollar? A healthy society requires a healthy food supply system. But this system is threatened by lack of local consumer support and awareness. The "go between" is every "Joe the Farmer," the local farmer working in the field on our behalf.
The following interview is with Rodriguez family members, Joe Rodriguez Sr., founder of Blue Pacific Wholesale Florists and Rodriguez Ranch Flowers; Joe Rodriguez, Jr., of JR Organics, with more than 60 organic acres in production; and friend-of-the-farm, Scott Murray, consultant to Triple R Culinary Herbs, another Rodriguez family business.
LG: What is the food crisis we are facing?
Scott Murray: The trend of support, without our awareness, has been toward a national agriculture, rather than a local bio-diverse agriculture. Niney-five percent of local food is exported, while we import 95 percent of what we consume. Our major supermarkets source less than five percent of local farmers.
The choice is ours: dependence on food from "somewhere else grown by who?" vs. supporting local farmers who produce pure, wholesome food distributed direct to the consumer. Supporting local farming is an issue of national security and personal security.
In 1962, we had 50,000 acres of row crops here. Now we have only 3,000. Predictions see a population increase of 51 percent in 20 years, and 57,000 developable acres. But this land is farmland.
More and more of our food is now coming from Mexico. Fall and Winter '96-'97 imports increased 400 percent. Mexico's population doubled in the last ten years. At what point will they need to keep their exports?
Pessimists say we will have no stable food supply within 20 years. Optimists look toward technology, including chemical farming and genetic engineering of foods for answers. My solution is building the local ecosystem. Every time a person shops at a farmers market, joins a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, or makes sure they are buying locally grown produce from our favorite store, we are helping the problem. We can take a positive stand on our food crisis through supporting the local farmers we have, so younger people will come in and become farmers.
LG: Why organic?
JR, Jr: When I grew up, we were not aware of pollution, or the ill-effects of chemical farming. I remember mixing chemicals for the field, about six ingredients. I wore a respirator. I had to walk away and throw up.
I met Effie May, one of the local organic growers at an auction. I visited a number of other farms, and discovered it was practical to go in this direction.
Amado, my grandfather, was a believer in chicken fertilizer. The jump to organic was not a big one. Keeping the compost going is a large financial task; yet building the soil is the key to organic farming. One of the first sights that greet the visitor to the Rodriguez Ranch are large compost piles, the answer to remineralizing the soil. You can go out and buy a few bags of chemical fertilizer and see results. The first two years are great. Then, the soil will not grow quality food no matter how much chemicals you give it. The soil becomes addicted to these chemicals.
You can spend $100 the organic way and not see results as fast, but in the long term it's important. Mexico is producing more organic food. But the techniques that they are primarily practicing using chemicals can't feed their soil. By the year 2000, Mexico will have burned up much of their soil.
LG: How are the farmers markets working for you?
JR, Jr: The farmers markets were created so that farmers could grow and sell their food without a broker, without selling wholesale. We were involved in 1979, in some of the first ones. I steered the family toward organic farming in 1984. We entered the farmers markets about 1991 with our organic produce. Our family does seven markets a week.
JR, Sr: A large part of our income came from the flower industry, and still does. We often wait a month or more to receive payments. The farmers markets mean immediate cash flow.
Once, our organic produce earned 40 percent of our income. Now its down to 10 percent. The number of farmers markets have grown, but not the number of customers.
Once, our best market brought in $3,000 to $5,000; now $2,000-$3,000. Our San Diego El Cajon Blvd. Sunday market brought in $1,000; now $300.. The organic industry has grown, but operation costs go up, and profits have gone down. Competition is strong.
In June '96, we had a $20,000 lettuce crop destruction due to a freak June '96 hailstorm, and a $200,000 loss of perennial flowers due to fire in October '96.
Challenge is always coming at you in farming. I thrive on challenge. Each generation goes its own way, but hopefully stays on the trail that has been made. My grandfather Joe lost everything he had in Buena Park in a freeze. My father came here and mainly grew produce. I turned the family toward flower growing. That was where the money was. Joe Jr. started us in organic produce.
JR, Jr: What we do changes every five to seven years. We are constantly adjusting. I've been farming for 20 years now and see this. Our latest focus is providing high quality organic culinary herbs our Triple R label.
We can deal with Mother Nature and what she sends us. She will send us some good years. We do not give up.
As farmers, we pay attention to what we have to do to protect the next generation. We all face the need for more consumer education. Organic farmers are growing good food faster than new consumers have arrived. We dump what we do not sell. This hurts. We need people to support us and we will still be here.
Leslie Goldman is a friend of the farm, contact him at: The Enchanted Garden Club-Friend of the Farm/Happiness is Organic campaign, (619)582-9669
Meanwhile, back at the edible city, the potential for the growth of urban agriculture may be greater than it seems.
A report by Rutgers University and members of the Community Food Security Coalition's North American Initiative on Urban Agriculture charts the national trend: Across the country, "significant amounts of food" are cultivated by entrepreneurial producers, community gardeners, backyard gardeners, food banks in vacant lots, parks, greenhouses, roof tops, balconies, window sills, ponds, rivers and estuaries.
A third of the 2 million farms in the United States alone are located within metropolitan areas and produce 35 percent of U.S. vegetables, fruit, livestock, poultry, and fish.
"The potential to expand urban production is enormous," according to the report. Add one more ingredient: growing concern about community food security: "Times of war and conflict render tenuous our dependence on distant food sources, especially in this post-9/11 world," according to the report.
But enough with fear already. Pleasure's more the point that and a connected community. That's how Murray and Hughes see the issue. Now all we need is a Slow City movement.
Louv's column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached via e-mail at rlouv@cts.com or via http://www.thefuturesedge.com.
EXERCISE FOR MICHELLE OBAMA
ethnic peers; foods that may otherwise be difficult to find.56
Exercise
Gardening and food production is good exercise. Health professionals and others, however,
often undervalue its exercise-related health benefits. Garden enthusiasts and farmers themselves
rarely compartmentalize their labors as “exercise.” The “exercise” ranges from fine motor
involvement when cutting flowers, to aerobic gross motor tasks such as turning compost piles.57
Gardeners report that garden “activity” increases self-esteem, pride, confidence, personal
satisfaction, and efficacy.58
Research that addresses gardening generally unravels the holistic advantages of gardening from
“exercise.” Many studies bundle walking, bicycling, taking the stairs, and gardening together as
undervalued forms of exercise. When self-identified as exercise by research subjects or isolated
by researchers, gardening has been connected to reducing risks of obesity (children and adults)59,
coronary heart disease (for women and for men, notably menopausal women and elderly
males),60 glycemic control and diabetes (adults, elderly men, Mexicans and Mexican-
Americans)61, and occupational injuries (railway workers).62
Gardening can expend little or intensive amounts of energy. Even moderate forms of garden
exercise increase muscle strength and endurance in activity-reduced persons including pregnant
54Shoemaker and Kiehl 2002; Littman 1996; Brogan and James 1980.
55 Armstrong-B 2000; Herbach 1998; Hynes 1996.
56 Growing New Farmers, http://gnf.bigmindcatalyst.com/cgi/bmc.pl?page=pubpg1.html&node=1010;
World
Hunger Year, Food Security Learning Center, http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/;
New England LAND LINK, http://www.smallfarm.org/nell/nell.html.
57 Brown and Jameton 2000.
58 Hanna and Oh 2000; Waliczek et al. 1996.
59 Reynolds and Anderson 2004; Kien and Chiodo 2003.
60 Beitz and Doren 2004; Reynolds and Anderson 2004; Lemaitre et al. 1999; Pols et al. 1997; Grimes et al. 1996;
Haines et al. 1992; Caspersen et al. 1991; Magnus et al. 1980; Magnus et al. 1979.
61 Wood 2004; Reynolds and Anderson 2004; Van Dam et al. 2002.
62 Chau et al. 2004.
women, cancer survivors, and those generally sedentary.63 Gardening and nature-adventure
education in after-school programs increased energy expenditures of 12 year olds by 60
percent.64
Research shows that gardening is a preferred form of exercise across age, gender, and ethnicity.65
Overall, older persons do more gardening than younger ones.66 Research does not always
capture gardening as exercise, because some gardeners perceive it as part of a day’s leisure or
labor activities and not a separate activity in the category of “exercise.” In one study, men
identified gardening as “exercise” more often than did women though women and men reported
similar amounts of time gardening.67 Many women may associate gardening with gendered
household food-related chores rather than exercise.
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