Summer Summary

Well, what a year to start farming. Apparently it was a terrible year to start farming in the Willamette Valley, with cold wet weather thwarting almost all attempts to grow anything at all. Outside my window are tomatoes that did eventually grow to about 5 feet tall, but have yet to produce…well, really anything edible. Lots of growth and a couple of them turned red, but they were all too bug and/or weather damaged to eat.

Our braeburn apple tree did flower, but no apples were produced. Even the crabapple tree, prolific creator of crabapples for the spiders and birds, produced very little.

Our pumpkins never made it past flowering stage.

Our cucumbers died in the pot.

Our eggplant is still alive, but is currently being drowned by rain and did not flower.

Our sunflower grew to about 3 feet and did actually flower, only to droop the next day.

We did have one successful crop though: potatoes. Red potatoes, fingerling potatoes, chieftains, and bakers all did relatively well in the rocky soil by our house. We might make that entire area potato next year.

We might do winter crops, kale, carrots, garlic, but I’m not sure.

In other, more positive news, the chickens are doing well and we now have 5 rain barrels attached to the house.

Hunger in the Land of Plenty - A brief history of Migrant Farm Work in California's Central Valley

Anyone who has flown over California's Central Valley will note the agriculture presence. A Patchwork of farms blanket the ground with green, brown, and gold throughout the region. California's agricultural sector accounts for about 13% ($36.2 Billon dollars) of the nation’s agricultural production in the 2008-2009 farm cycle and is the largest share of farm revenue in the US, dwarfing Texas and Iowa, the second and third largest producers. The Central Valley is 500 mile region encompassing both the Sacramento Valley to the north San Joaquin Valley to the south. Fresno County had an agricultural production value in 2008 was $5.67was the largest agricultural production county in California. Yet, Fresno County boasts a median income of only $15,495.00 and is one of the poorest counties in California. How is it possible a land so rich could have people who are so poor? And what does the price of my strawberries have to do with it?

Like so many other social issues we deal with today, the stage for poverty was set during World War II. In 1942, the Bracero Program, began as a joint effort between the U.S. and Mexico. This program allowed Mexican workers to come to this country and work for less than the U.S. minimum wage. From the Mexican point of view, this program helped the “peasant problem” they were experiencing after the Mexican Revolution by removing the poor from their country and for the US, there was now a steady stream of skilled workers who cost only a fraction of what the American worker did.

In the short term, the Bracero Program did improve the lives of Mexican families, but is also created an excellent opportunity for U.S. corporations to exploit these workers, often charging them rent to live in unsanitary shacks while sometimes paying entire families less than a dollar a day. The Bracero Program had created an environment where immigrant workers were essentially slaves, living in squalid conditions with little to no access to health care and certainly could not afford to purchase the food they were picking. After World War II, American’s returned but few were willing to do the backbreaking work for the fractional wages Mexicans accepted.

By 1962, the farm workers began to revolt. The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) was formed in order to organize farm workers in the Central Valley.

In conjunction with Filipino farm workers, the UFW launched the Delano Grape Boycott, which would become a five year effort to both unionize farm workers and a consumer boycott of all table grapes to bring the grape companies to the bargaining table. The boycott propelled the UFW and its organizers, particularly Cesar Chavez, into the international spotlight and for the first time, many Americans, started to think about where their food came from. At the end of the boycott, the grape growers recognized the union and migrant workers had some form of protection.

Partially in response to the growing visibility of Mexican farm workers, concerns over “illegals” started popping up in government memos and by 1965 the Bracero Program was discontinued. Of course, there were still plenty of Mexican farm workers in the field; they just suddenly found themselves without the papers to legally work in the U.S.

Although conditions have somewhat improved, farm workers still routinely make less than minimum wage in the Central Valley. In 1996, according to a UFW study, "the typical California strawberry worker spends as many as 12 hours a day stooped over the low berry plants. Workers report that foremen sometimes demand sexual favors from women field workers in exchange for employment. After years of loyalty, workers must line up each season to be rehired and face firings on a whim. Sometimes there is no fresh drinking water in the fields. Bathrooms are often filthy. Workers labor amid pesticides and suffer chronic back injuries, but often have little or no health insurance." The average farm worker was paid $8,500.00 per season. The UFW calculated paying workers a living wage and giving them access to health care would increase the price of strawberries five cents per pint. In 2001, the UFW succeeded in negotiating minimum wage and health insurance for the workers.

However, since 1985 there has been a disturbing slide in the conditions of farm workers, Discussions of trade agreements similar to the Bracero Program continue to circulate among lawmakers, and corporations still search for ever cheaper labor.  In addition to the horrible conditions faced by Mexican workers, the wage is so low American citizens cannot work these jobs as the violate labor practices, so the immigrants are abused and the Americans are locked out of work by this economic setup.

The war for fair wages and working conditions among migrant workers is still being fought in our fields and orchards, but we as consumers must decide whose side we are on. Are we willing to support our fellow humans, regardless of language, skin color or origin, by agreeing to buy products produced by fair means, or do we follow only our wallets? When we stop believing the lie that progress means the disintegration of human rights, perhaps then we can all enjoy dinner at the same table.
 

How much for the little red potato?

When we first started our little micro-farm, my husband would drive me insane trying to calculate whether or not the potatoes we were growing were “cheaper” than those at the store and whenever he did, he would furrow his brow and say “I don't get it, how can it be cheaper at the store?” The problem was he was calculating our labor, the soil, the water and the time it was taking to grow our own food, much like organic farmers do when calculating how much to charge at a farmer's market. The numbers, of course, didn't add up because the price we pay at the store has nothing to do with the cost of production. We knew we weren't spending any transportation or stocking costs for our food, since it grew a mere 15 feet from our oven, but how could we be paying twice as much to grow our own food? About two years ago I decided to find and discovered the fascinating yet nonsensical world of government farm subsidies.

A (very) Brief History of Government Farm Subsidies

Government regulation of agricultural goods in the United States has been in place since at least the 18th century, but it was the Great Depression that brought us to our current system of farm subsidies and production controls. In 1933, two systems were put into place that would vastly affect the way we farm in this country. The first was the Farm Credit Act (“FCA”). The FCA began the separation of farmers from other producers by creating credit specifically designed for farmers whose income turnaround time did not match the typical loan repayment scheme. The FCA allowed farmers some protection by offering longer term loans to allow their profits and losses to accumulate over the years instead of on a yearly cycle. The second was the Agricultural Adjustment Act ("AAA") which limited production on US crops in order to increase demand and prices. Large portions of the AAA were declared unconstitutional in 1936 due to unfair taxation and forced reduction of cash crops but the AAA lives on as the Department of Agriculture. For the next several decades the Department of Agriculture has attempted various methods for U.S. farmers to either produce more or less food depending on the assessment of government needs through the Farm Bill.

How do Subsidies Work?

Most farm subsidies are allocated by contract with farmers in either a Direct Cyclical Payment ("DCP").  or Counter-Cyclical Payment ("CCP"). From 2004-2007 DCP was available for the following crops: barley, corn, grain sorghum, oats, canola, crambe, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame, sunflower, peanuts, rice, soybeans, upland cotton, and wheat.  For DCP, the farmer was paid on a percentage plan based on acreage, yield and payment rate. Although the payments are not tied to any particular crop, basic math dictates that a higher valued crop makes more sense to grow than a lower valued one. The formula for DCP is the 85% of the farm’s base acreage times the farm’s direct payment yield times the direct payment rate.
For instance, in 2008 a farmer has the option to raise two types of crop on his land, barley and wheat. If the farmer chooses to raise wheat exclusively on all farmable areas he can make $22,100.00 in direct payments. If the farmer chooses to raise barley exclusively, his payment would be $10,200.00. But, if he choose to raise 1/2 wheat and 1/2 barley, his direct payment would be $16,150.00. If the farmer decided to do the traditional 1/4 of the total acreage of fallow land per year and raised both crops, his payment would be $12,112.50.

CCP controls are the antithesis of free market controls. These payments kick in only when the food price drops below the target value assigned by the government in and are based on the theory that these payments are needed for the survival of a farm which chooses to produce one of the crops designated as eligible under the CCP or DCP. Farmers are paid the DCP rate plus the higher of the national market price or the national commodity loan rate.

Fiscal Impact and Distribution

The 2008 Farm Bill allowed for for $4.3 billion in DCP payments.  Billion.  With a B. Where does the money from these this multi-billion dollar subsides come from? They come from the same place all government monies do, from us. In exchange we are told that we secure the health of our farms and a steady supply of food into our shopping carts. However, the United States is actually a net exporter of food, which means we send more food to other countries than we import to our own. What happens to all the food these farms produce? Some goes to market where consumers can purchase it at a price less than it cost to produce (although they will pay the additional costs through their taxes), some does go to aid third world countries suffering from various natural and man made catastrophes, some is traded at or below market rate to trade allies such as Mexico and Canada, and some is actually repurchased by own government for various nutrition programs, such as school lunch programs.

So, there you have it:  it costs us more to raise food because we are paying the actual cost for doing so, but for most farmers it still makes more fiscal sense to raise one type of crop at a high subsidy value than to practice sustainable stewardship on the land.

At last, at last, the sun has come

Last week the sun made an appearance and the planting was on!  For the most part everything is going well, although the hops are not doing so well and will need to be transplanted to a more sunny spot.  

One of our chickens seems to really dislike fireworks and has been shaking in her nestbox the past couple of days.  She's still eating, walking and doesn't seem to have anything exciting going on in the rear end so I guess we will just wait it out and see what she does.  Speaking of chickens one of the laid a GIGANTIC egg yesterday...here it is:

I am hoping this little blueberry will be the beginning of berry empire.

Potatoes still going strong

Our "Pot Garden" (not that kind of pot people)

Lemon cucumbers peeking through

Our first "seed saving" success!  This is from the pie pumpkin we saved from last year.

An unexpected harvest

I had not planned on harvesting any potatoes until Mid-July/August but the patch with the Chieftain and yellow potatoes were just not doing that well. So, dig we did and got a decent harvest for the amount of time those little guys were in the ground.

With the weather I admit I’ve been a little depressed, but yesterday the sun (along with a Summer Solstice sale from Farmington Gardens) encouraged me to do the rest of the buying for the season. So, I now have:

1 hops tree (yay hops)
2 bushes of Willamette raspberries
2 bushes of Toro blueberries
2 lipstick strawberry plants
1 San Marzano tomato plant
1 Zebra tomato plant
1 black plum tomato plant

I totally forgot to get the tomato frames so I will have to run out and get those today.

Diversify, diversify, diversify…right?

I'll get to work...eventually

I was going to work on my intro to psychology final, but two 7 year olds, a sick 1 year old and a feisty 2 year are currently making that impossible. I still have, what, 26 hours to do it?

Weeded the garden a little bit of the potato patch today, mostly just getting grass out of there. I’m really itching to plant something more…the little patch of bare dirt where our tomatoes will go is sooo bothering me.

The local power company came by yesterday to top our ornamental cherry trees for being too close to the power lines. They have also stated they will rip out the alder trees which are in the far corner of the lot. I didn’t plant them, they just kind of…grew there, but I loved it because Max called it his “secret place” and they would play in there all last summer. So, now it will be gone. We are going to plant our pie pumpkins in the spot.

Here is how baby potatoes sprout, by the way.

One potato, two potato

I’m not sure I did the right thing by taking out the weed barrier and loosening up the volcanic rock underneath. I suppose time will tell.

The fence is finally up around the root garden and the potatoes are in. This year I planted four varieties, French Fingerlings, Chieftain, Baker, and Red. I’m trying the “straw” method where you basically throw the potatoes onto the ground and cover them. I’m excited to see what our yield will be.

 Speaking of the chicken proof fence…turns out, it’s not so chicken proof after all, so we had to put a piece of wood between the 2 inch gap at the back. Who knew chickens were like cats that way?

So, planting season is finally underway. I feel like all I have been eating for the past four months are carrots, potatoes and chard.