Several weeks ago, I wrote a sustainable energy diary, which garnered a fair bit of support, and then promised, but failed to deliver a farm diary. Well the wait is over, and while this diary is not the article I had intended to write, perhaps it is more telling that the last week politically, economically, and personally have wiped out even the infectous optimism of baby goats running around.
To dispense with the personal, Terri and I both came down with, and are still weak as kittens from a wowser of a case of flu. Ordinarily this plus our last diary, in which I list the ways sustainable energy is being NIMBY'ed locally (thus putting my livelihood at jeopardy), would be good and sufficent reason for a somewhat depressing turn of prose...For Aqriculture and small farms in the northeast, and one special little farm, the news just keeps getting worse.
Yesterday, the greenhouse that houses all our kids and young Moms collapsed, effectively eliminating 60% of all our housing area, and making the remaining chores VERY difficult for 2 people in good health (never mind one ill person)
While much of what I have to say probably will come as no surprise to many of you, I am very much afraid that local farms passed a tipping point last week, and no longer think a bandaid approach is going to fix, or even help all that much. In case you are not in the loop, or the area, I am alluding to a little bail-out being directed to the areas dairy farmers. Currently in my county, there are 50 dairy farmers left (20 years ago there were about 200). The current price of the bail-out looks to be about 12 million dollars, statewide, for about 187 operations. The primary objuections to this seem to be:
1.) they should be allowed to sink or swim based on the free market.
2.) they are contributing to an oversupply of milk.
I am afraid that the answers to these questions are beyond me.
I do know the following with some deqree of certainty: Whether the emergency aid package goes through or not, allowing corporations to set prices for farm products through the USDA will eventually lead to the extinction of all ag operations not owned by corporations. Small Dairy operations represent the underpinning of agriculture in the northeast, and without the foundation they provide we will be unable to build a significant small farm/local food production infrastructure. Without the existing subsidies being applied to non-local milk/milk products over the past 25 years (directly into corp coffers), the local dairy industry wouldn't be suffering from 25 years of deferred maintenance and have a negative profit 50% of the time.
Believe it or not, that's not what I set out to write about...I'm not a dairy farmer (at least not by the states definition). I am however a small farmer, who has been paying prices that are inflating by the day (100%/six months), has been deferring maintenance/construction (hence the collapsed greenhouse), and trying to hold the whole thing together, since, like most, I can't afford to go out of business.
There are certain activities which must take place on this farm, and must take place this week, or we will never survive. The green fouse must be rebuilt, and this MUST happen this week. We must buy another 750 bails of hay, and another 4 tons of grain. We must move the young goats out of the dairy, and repair and sanitize it (we had to put them somewhere after the collapse). Terri and I are capable of doing all of this, but can't do any of it if we have to work off the farm to raise the mortgage. We also can't afford to purchase the parts to replace the greenhouse. There is no credit available for local farms...they are considered poor risks/low profit enterprises.
Our short term solution, is to take a certain shoe manufacturers advice, and just do it....accordingly, we are pushing ahead, building, repairing, and trusting that we will find the money somewhere.
But we do have a long term solution, and that's where all of you come in. Our farm , in conjunction with 1 other operation and 2 or 3 other individuals has noticed a lack out there in the ether. While there are numerous political organizations and there are a fair number of technical organizations, aimed at advocating for organic or sustainable lifestyles/farms, there is a dearth of people on the ground with local ag credibility to research, develop, and adapt sustainable techniques to the geographic, political and legal situations actually in place in various locales, and then make them freely available to local farmers, together with assistance in integrating these techniques within the pre-existing farm framework.
These are all activities that one would expect from governmental agencies, and little or none of it is happening (at least that I can determine). This is also not a set of activities that we can put off any longer, and not something that individual farms will be able to self-finance, we have allowed the corporations to feed off them so long, they are effectively bled out.
What we need from one or more Kossacks are the organizational and legal skills to help us put something like this together, as well as contacts with financial resources. Within the nascent organization that has grown up around this farm, there are some outstanding technical skills, both conventional and unconventional....what we don't have is any knowledge of formal business/cooperative techniques to keep what we produce freely productive.