Category : Methods

The Many Benefits of Multi-Year Crop Rotations

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 October 29

Farmland LP’s agricultural practices are based on good science and agronomic principles, and a 9-year research project from America’s heartland continues to support what we do.  “Increasing Cropping System Diversity Balances Productivity, Profitability and Environmental Health” is the title of a research paper by scientists from Iowa State University, University of Minnesota and the USDA published earlier this month in the journal PLOS One.

Mark Bittman in the New York Times called this report “the most important agricultural study this year,” saying, “It’s becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals.”  In addition, the report has been covered by Wired, Grist, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.  We summarized the work leading to this publication over two years ago, including how it relates to Farmland LP.  The Union of Concerned Scientists blog has a good overview (copied portion below):

  • More complex systems enhanced yields and profits. Over the course of the experiment, average corn yields were 4 percent higher, and average soybean yields 9 percent higher, in the longer rotations compared to the conventional system. Furthermore, the researchers found that the longer rotations were just as profitable as corn-soy alone.
  • Conventional corn-soy rotations require more chemical fertilizer and energy inputs. Fertilizer use was higher in the 2-year rotation than in the more complex systems. And this difference increased over the course of the experiment, with the 3- and 4-year rotations requiring even less of these inputs in the later years, probably due to cumulative improvements in soil quality over time.
  • Diversification controls weeds while slashing herbicide applications. The longer rotations reduced herbicide use by a whopping 88 percent compared with the conventional system, with little difference in weediness. Furthermore, the ecotoxicity of the systems (as measured by the freshwater toxicity of the herbicides used) was 200 times less in the longer rotations. Given everything we know about weed resistance and rising herbicide use on U.S. farms (including this new estimate), strategies that help farmers control weeds with less herbicide are critically needed.
  • Longer rotations substitute labor for other inputs. Some people will no doubt see this as a strike against crop diversification. But with energy costs on the rise and unemployment stuck just under 8 percent, that’s starting to seem like seriously fuzzy logic.

Relevance to Farmland LP

At Farmland LP we describe what we do as converting conventional farmland to Organic, sustainably-managed farmland.  While getting the land certified Organic is helpful for marketing, the broader benefits are in our land-use rotation practices.  Since our full cycle crop rotation can easily span 10 years—five to seven years in pasture or perennial forage crops followed by three to five years in vegetables and grains—it makes it a challenge to scientifically benchmark our soil-biology-driven practices vs. current chemistry-driven practices.

The irony is that our rotation style was the norm for centuries.  Farmers rotated by necessity for thousands of years to maintain soil fertility and lower disease risk.  Agronomy advanced by increasing the number of crops in a rotation, such as the innovation in the 16th century of adding legumes to European crop rotations.  In the mid-20th century U.S. farms averaged five commodities per farm, including crops and livestock.  Only in the past 60 years have farmers had the tools (i.e., synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to deal with the problems of reduced diversity) not to rotate, and now farms are highly specialized with low diversity of about 1.2 commodities per farm (see graph below).  Some see this as modern progress, but at Farmland LP we view this multi-decade chemical binge as an abandonment of centuries of wisdom that is causing both ecological and economic damage.

From defenders of the status quo I can hear the following argument:  “Yields of today are so high that adopting historic practices will put farms out of business and not feed the world.”  To those who understand the research study, this argument is silly.  Current yields are not a result of simplification and won’t be undone by diversification.  We can still use modern crop breeds and modern equipment while adopting soil practices that dramatically lower external inputs and avoid the externalization of costs, such as pollution.  A more diverse system will be a net benefit for the farmer while making the food production system more resilient and environmentally positive.  This has been the position of Farmland LP since our inception, and was a strong impetus for our business.  Our goal is to be a successful model of more diversified, sustainable farming practices that re-integrate crop and livestock production.

A single chart from the paper (shown below) does an excellent job of telling the whole story.  It shows that key production metrics that farmers care about, including profits, yields and weed pressures, are the same or better than conventional in longer rotations, while the longer rotations prevent most pollution and lower the need for synthetic inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides.  Labor costs are higher in more complex rotations, which we view as providing opportunities for meaningful work. Profitability is the same due to reduced expenses for synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and fuel. That’s a good trade that will get better as inputs costs keep increasing.

 One of my favorite paragraphs from the paper is:

Reintegration of crop and livestock production, as represented by the forage legumes and manure applications present in the more diverse systems, is not simply another aspect of cropping system diversification. Instead, it embodies an important principle in sustainable agriculture: system boundaries should be drawn to minimize externalities. Animal manure is produced regardless of whether feed grains are shipped to centralized concentrated animal feeding operations, or produced within integrated crop-livestock farming operations. In the former case, the manure may become a waste product and water pollutant if quantities exceed available land area for field application [33], whereas in the latter case, it contributes directly to crop nutrient requirements, improves soil quality, and reduces fossil fuel subsidies associated with grain transport and external N fertilizer inputs [14].

How Farmland LP’s Rotations Improve On The Research

While the research design and conclusions here are very relevant to what we do at Farmland LP, there are some differences.  Here are a few points of how our systems further improve upon the system presented in the research paper:

  • Certified Organic Price Premiums.  Some synthetic fertilizers and pesticides were used in all rotations, but they were just not needed much in the longer ones.  Taking it just a little bit further would have enabled them to get the Organic price premium in the 4th year and beyond. Even with the potentially higher costs of Organic versions of external inputs when available, the net returns would be higher in a Certified Organic system.
  • Livestock Grazing on Cropland.  The forage crops were mechanically harvested, not grazed.  Farmland LP puts a lot of our land in diverse pasture and  grazes livestock intensively, whereas the research system harvested alfalfa as hay which was then transported to livestock.  The manure of livestock was then brought back to the research plot for fertilizer.  So we differ by having even more plant diversity than the study (better for the soil) and by getting the benefits of direct grazing, such as further reductions in fuel use.
  • More Complex, Longer Rotations.  The study was made feasible by its relatively short rotations of 2, 3 and 4 years.  Our rotations are more complex and reflect more natural economic and biological rotations and durations.  For example, an alfalfa-orchard grass stand should last five years or longer, same as pasture.  Many crop options were not included in the study, such as vegetables.  With our program the environmental benefits should be even greater than shown in the study, including significant carbon sequestration.

We applaud the scientists who carried out the work and the USDA for lending support too.  We certainly hope it leads to more sophisticated discussions among stakeholders in the food system, whether policy-makers, farmers, and eaters of food.  And we thank those who’ve supported us at Farmland LP for your role in fostering much needed change.

 

from -> Economics,Health,Methods,Sustainability

Google Earth, Rotational Grazing and Mineralization, Part 2

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 September 30

Or, What You See from Space (and What You Don’t)

Part 2 of 2

In the first post of this series, I explained how rotational grazing quickly builds soil organic matter (SOM).  In this second part I discuss the importance of SOM for organic farming.

Mineralization for Organic Farming

Mineralization is the process by which SOM, which consists of large and complex organic molecules, breaks down or decomposes into simpler, i.e., mineral, forms.  These simpler forms are called Plant Available Nutrients, or PAN, and standard soil tests measure PAN levels of various minerals and nutrients.  In conventional agriculture fertilizer is applied to compensate for any measured deficits.  In organic farming systems we can make up for deficits with approved inputs, such as pulverized rocks high in certain minerals and animal manures, but we also rely more on the mineralization process for release of nutrients from the soil organic matter.  In the agronomic system used by Farmland LP, deep-rooted, perennial plants and associated fungi are sown to both increase SOM and access minerals from well below the soil surface and bring them up to enrich the topsoil.

To an organic farmer this means one of the most critical parts of a soil test is the level of organic matter.  Prior to the wide-spread availability of synthetic nitrogen and other fertilizers, farmers essentially used accumulated stores of SOM to grow crops.  The following is a quote and graph from the 1938 USDA Yearbook and was written by University of Missouri professor William Albrecht:

In addition to carrying nitrogen, the nutrient demanded in largest amount by plants, soil organic matter either supplies a major portion of the mineral elements from its own composition, or it functions to move them out of their insoluble, useless forms in the rock minerals into active forms within the colloidal clay. Organic matter itself is predominantly of a colloidal form resembling that of clay, which is the main chemically active fraction of the soil. But it is about five times as effective as the clay in nutrient exchanges. Nitrogen, as the largest single item in plant growth, has been found to control crop-production levels, so that in the Corn Belt crop yields roughly parallel the content of organic matter in the soil (184). On a Missouri soil with less nitrogen than that corresponding to 2 percent of organic matter (40,000 pounds of organic matter per acre of plowed surface soil) an average yield of 20 bushels of corn per acre can hardly be expected. For yields approaching 40 bushels, roughly double the amount of organic matter is required. With declining organic matter go declining corn yields and therefore lower earnings on the farmers investment. Thus the stock of organic matter in the soil, particularly as measured by nitrogen, is a rough index of land value when applied to soils under comparable conditions. According to studies in Missouri, for example, the lower the content of organic matter of upland soil, the lower the average market value of the land.

Original caption:  Decrease of organic-matter content in a fallow, untreated soil in contrast to the gain in soil treated with 2 1/2 tons of red clover annually, representing over 500 pounds annual increase in organic matter per acre.

If you have the time and interest, the entire Albrecht article is very interesting as it gives an historic perspective from one of the most important soil scientists of the 20th century.  Many of his views and insights are still valid today.

SOM values thus have very practical applications, including planning for fertilizer needs.  The linked chart (from an agronomy handbook sent to me by soil testing company Midwest Laboratories, Inc.) shows the relationship between SOM and nitrogen availability.  Here’s the math behind that chart.

Stabilized SOM has a ratio of carbon to nitrogen atoms of 12:1.  As explained by Albrecht, this nitrogen becomes available to plants as soil organic molecules are broken into parts.  The top 6 inches of soil is typically considered to have a mass of 2 million pounds, and so 5% SOM is 100,000 lbs.  The nitrogen is usually about 5-6% of the SOM mass (other parts include C, P, K, S, etc.) and 6% of 100,000 lbs is 6000 lbs of N.  If 2% of this N mineralizes, then 120 lbs is available for plant growth, which is a good amount for most crop types.  The nitrogen has an economic value in that it is a form of fertilizer that farmers don’t need to purchase, giving us an additional source of value from the diverse pasture aside from just the revenue from grazing ruminants.

What Farmland LP does during the conversion of conventional farmland to certified organic farmland is place most of our acres into perennial pasture and/or forage crops that are rich in legumes.  These perennial crops are growing year-round, not just for a season or two like an annual plant, and become very effective givers of organic matter to the soil.  As I’ve explained before and touched upon in the first post in this series, the livestock actually increase plant productivity by grazing enough to foster renewed plant growth 5-7 times per year while depositing manures that activate the soil microbes and speed the nutrient cycle.  Rotational grazing not only leads to 25-50% greater plant productivity than set stocking, but results in perhaps 10 tons of dead organic matter added yearly:  on the surface as manure, trampled leaves and stems, and via the sloughing of roots.  Some fraction of this, about 15-20%, is converted to SOM and thereby enhancing the value of the farmland we manage.

Measuring SOM

We measure soil organic matter in two ways.  The first is through standard agronomic sampling, which is done every 2-3 years and on a broad scale using “Smart Sampling” guidelines to help us plan for fertility inputs and to see how our soils are doing from field to field.  This sampling method gives us a picture of SOM over a wide area, but a shallow depth (6-8”).  For this kind of testing we may sample at a scale of one per every 2-6 acres at a cost of about $20 per sample.  A farm service company manages this sampling, gathering the soil at specific locations that are predetermined with geo-coordinates and so are moderately replicable.  Below is an image of the mapped SOM for our Wattenpaugh Farm as an example.  The area shown is about 90 acres.

The second measurement method is much more detailed, and includes soil properties that should change with SOM, such as bulk density and infiltration.  We select a “representative” site at each property we manage.  A non-profit called Soil Carbon Coalition, run by Peter Donovan, does the sampling work using a protocol meant to be accurate and repeatable.  The goal is to measure change at a specific location, not give us a broad view of the farm and its various fields, and since it is measuring something that changes rather slowly the intention is to re-sample every 2-3 years also.

To see the Soil Carbon Coalition reports for our farms go to this url: and in the “Plot report for:” box type in “FR” for Fern Rd Farm and “FL” for our other properties in the area.

What You Don’t See

We love that Google Earth can take pretty pictures of our farmland, but there is so much happening beneath the surface that a satellite just can’t see, at least not directly.  But as good soil practices spread to cover thousands and millions of acres, it is our hope that Google Earth will be able to see more lush landscapes and healthier waters.

Not only are we invisibly building healthier soil beneath the ground, but we are also invisibly restoring balance to our planet’s atmosphere by creating SOM from the air we breathe.  The nitrogen in our organic system comes from the 78% of the atmosphere that is nitrogen, which is plentiful and free.  The carbon of SOM comes from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which at over 390 parts per million is too high and already changing our climate.  Given the high price of fertilizers made from fossil fuels, and the rising costs to society of the pollution caused by their use, we believe in the wisdom of letting ruminants eat pasture while building wealth and health beneath their hooves.

from -> Economics,Methods,Sustainability

Google Earth, Rotational Grazing and Mineralization

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 September 24

Or, What You See from Space (and What You Don’t)

Part 1 of 2

A key to the success of Farmland LP is having great livestock managers to make the most out of our high quality pasture.  In Oregon, Mac Stewart of Vitality Farms runs sheep on over 900 acres of Farmland LP property.  And now you can see his work from space.

New Google Earth Imagery

Google Earth recently updated the satellite imagery covering our properties in Oregon.  The resolution is so good that in the image below you can see individual sheep grazing in a paddock.

Our western property boundary is shown with a blue line.  A wheel line (for irrigation) is adjacent to the property line.  Off-white oval specs are the sheep.  They are in a paddock made by temporary electric fencing that is about 160 ft from north to south and 820 ft from west to east, about 3 acres.

To the south of the current paddock is the previous paddock.  It is less green because much of the vegetation was eaten by the flock a couple of days before.  The dark green paddock to the north was set up just prior to when this image was captured.  The sheep will be moved there later in the day.

Shepherd Mac Stewart changes the length of stay for the sheep based upon the size of the flock, the pasture quality and growth rate, the weather, and many more factors—all to encourage the pasture and lambs to grow steadily.  In two separate posts, I’ll explain a number of key concepts in pasture and flock management (Part 1) and how good management leads to an increase in the quality and value of the soil (Part 2).

Pasture Diversity and Productivity

Some people think pasture is just grass on poor quality ground, but great farmland can also be extraordinary pasture in terms of productivity and environmental and economic yields.  There is an entire science behind it.

As a simple example, our custom blended pasture mixes include a lot of plant diversity with the goal of evening out the productivity of the stand over the year, since the sheep need food for 365 days.  For our Oregon properties and their associated climate, the grasses, such as tall fescue, orchard grass and perennial rye grass, do best in the cool months.  To take advantage of growth over the summer we also sow forbs that like it warm, such as chicory and plantain.  Clover diversity, including red, white and alsike, also extends the season of legume productivity.  The chart below (from this University of Arkansas web site) shows how the growth of different forage classes is distributed during the year.  The growth curves in Oregon are not exactly the same as what is shown below, but the concept applies everywhere—add diversity to enhance and spread-out the productivity.

The picture below shows the same location as the Google Earth image above, except viewed from the ground (you can see the lone Oregon Ash tree in the background).  It was taken August 15th, about a month after the Google Earth image above (July 9th), and you can see the plant diversity in our pasture and that it is ready to graze again.  Healthy pasture makes great lamb.

Payse Smith, a student at Oregon State University, is shown above.  He is taking standardized samples of the field to determine the standing biomass.  We use this information to study the growth and recovery rates of our pasture, which ultimately determines the optimal number of animals for the field.  I’ll explain how this works with some illustrative numbers to keep it simple.

Rotational Grazing by the Numbers

A flock of sheep eats about 5% of its body mass in dry matter each day.  If we have 1000 sheep with an average weight of 90 lbs, the total biomass of sheep in the flock is 90,000 lbs.  Multiply 90,000 lbs of sheep by 5% to get 4500 lbs of dry matter per day required for the flock.  Now we don’t want the sheep to eat ALL the vegetation in the paddock, and a good rule of thumb is to only consume half the total biomass so that the pasture has leaves available for a fast recovery.  I explained this in a post from two years ago, and the relevant portion is repeated here:

Pasture experts talk about the S-curve.  This refers to changes in the rate of growth of the stand of plants.  When plants are very small, they put on only a small amount of biomass per time.  But at a certain size, the amount they add each day increases rapidly.  Of course any exponential rate of growth must end, and so growth slows and halts as the plants reach maturity.  S-curves are common in all biological growth systems.  What good pasture management does is keep animals eating much of the pasture before it reaches the mature, no growth stage, but not so much that the pasture has a very long recovery time because the plants have been eaten back to the slow-growth portion of the S-curve.

Back to our example of the flock of 1000 sheep…If the flock needs to eat 4500 lbs of dry matter in a day we need a paddock with around twice this amount, or 9000 lbs.  Since each acre has a standing dry biomass of about 3000 lbs when it’s at the top of Stage 2 in the S-curve, a 3 acre paddock will comfortably feed those 1000 sheep for a day.

This is good forage management and gives us the ability to grow high quality lambs as quickly as possible during the main months of productivity, which here in Oregon is April through October.  But it also does something else very important to the soil.  As the plants grow, are eaten just right, and regrow again—a cycle that repeats up to seven times per year—the soil organic matter (SOM) increases.  Instead of buying in tons of compost per acre, at a cost of many hundreds of dollars, our pasture produces tons of soil organic matter per acre.  SOM does many things to improve soil quality, including increasing water holding capacity and improving soil tilth, and, as I’ll explain in Part 2 of this post, it stores nutrients that become available to plant roots through a transformation termed mineralization.  So even though you can’t see it from space, what is happening below ground may be more beautiful than what is happening above.

from -> Economics,Methods,Sustainability

Flurry of Press Attention

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 May 30

The Oregon press has been busy covering Farmland LP over the past month.

First, the Gazette Times of Corvallis and its sister paper in Albany put us on the front page  (Sunday above the fold even).  Photographer Amanda Cowan took some nice pictures, including the one below.  The writer Bennett Hall framed the story in a way that I think will interest a broad audience.

Bennett did a great job describing how we manage farmland and produce delicious food:

To rebuild the natural fertility of the soil, the land has been replanted with a complex mix of forage crops and is being used to graze sheep. Once depleted soil nutrients have been replenished, it will go into a rotation of annual food crops and pasture.

In the meantime, the land is already supporting a thriving sheep business. Vitality Farms, a separate entity run by Bradford and livestock manager Mac Stewart, is leasing the Corvallis-area property from Farmland LP.

“This spring we’ll lamb about 750 ewes, then another 150 this fall,” Stewart said.

“Per capita consumption in the U.S. is pretty low, but lamb is kind of on the upswing,” he added. “It’s one of the new ‘in’ foods.”

Prices are good right now, and Vitality Farms should be able to command a premium from health-conscious foodies for certified organic meat. To make the most of that marketing advantage, the company is bringing in some new sheep-handling equipment, including a computerized ear-tagging system for tracking information on individual animals.

“It will allow us to do more precision management. It’ll allow us to say, ‘This lamb came from this farm,’” Bradford said.

“We’re really excited about that. People want to know, just like the terroir of grapes, what’s the terroir of this lamb?”

Next up we had some attention from Christine Williams of The Portland Business Journal.  Her article was about sustainable agriculture and business in the region, covering Farmland LP along with several  investment funds such as Meyer Memorial Trust and Equilibrium Capital.  In a companion piece, I was honored to be named as a “Leader of Oregon’s Sustainable Economy” along with nine others doing excellent and vital work.

Most recently the nation’s only newspaper dedicated to agricultural reporting, Capitol Press, put us on their cover.  The story was later picked up by the Daily Astorian and cross posted by Oregon Public Broadcasting.  Writer Mateusz Perkowsky also took the pictures and got a good one of Mac Stewart and me.

The Capital Press article was generally about the Slow Money investment movement, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest.  A section about Farmland LP explains:

Bradford is making costly improvements to 2,000 acres of farmland in Oregon and California. His company, Farmland LP, will obtain organic certification on the properties and install irrigation equipment, fencing and other amenities in hopes of attracting farmers to lease the land.

“We make all that investment up front,” Bradford said. “There’s an infrastructure investment that’s needed to do that.”

I like that part of the article because it explains how we are different from other land owners in that we are willing to make capital improvements.  A problem farmers often face with leased land is poor development of major infrastructure.  A non-owning farmer does not have the long-term incentive to make expensive, slowly depreciating investments while many farm owners are using land as passive income vehicles and lack the resources or interest to make significant improvements.

It is interesting that all this attention came at once.  Perhaps it is the season?  Thanks to all the writers and photographers who’ve taken time to listen to and report our story.

from -> Local,Methods,News

My Interview with Big Picture Agriculture

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 April 25

This blog has been around for more than two years and I thought it might be good to bring back some old posts that are still relevant.  The one below appeared in Nov., 2010 on the blog Big Picture Agriculture and I’ve been given permission to re-post here.  Although some of the details have changed since it was published, it does provide a great overview of our philosophy and methods.

A Socially Conscious Way to Invest in Farmland: An Interview with Dr. Jason Bradford about Farmland LP

The following post is an interview with Dr. Jason Bradford, who answers questions about his business, Farmland LP, which is an investment vehicle that allows its investors to own farmland which is farmed using organic and sustainable practices.

There are many people interested in investing in farmland who visit my blog, and I hope they share my own enthusiasm about what this LP is doing and trying to achieve. As you can see from the interview, Dr. Bradford is a truly unique and special forward thinker, a leader, in fact, in the area of agriculture. Even if you are not interested in farmland investing, the sharing of his “big picture” knowledge here makes this a very valuable and fascinating interview, not to be missed.
–Kalpa

Kalpa: Please start by giving us a small background on Farmland LP. What is it, what are its goals, and who might be interested in investing in it?

Jason: We are an investment fund that buys conventional farmland and converts it to certified organic, sustainably managed farmland. Historically, farmland has been an excellent, inflation-hedged investment. Our firm, Farmland LP, adds value to farmland by converting it to organic farmland and managing it ongoing. Our goal is to play a role in the transformation of the food system while benefiting the environment, people, and our investors.

Potential investors include any accredited individual investors (an SEC requirement) and institutions such as pension funds, university and charity endowments. They are often interested in holding tangible, inflation protected, cash flowing assets, and farmland meets those criteria. Also, since we are an environmentally and socially responsible management company, we attract those interested in making sure their money is doing good work.

Kalpa: Is Farmland LP your personal brainchild? Please tell us how it came to be.

Jason: It was co-created with my business partner, Craig Wichner. I had the basic agroecological model in my head and was looking for a way to make it happen, knowing that it required financial capital. Craig’s expertise is in building companies, and he came up with the specific financial structure that makes this work.

Kalpa: Jason, when I first became aware of you was from your agricultural related posts over at The Oil Drum. To some readers here, that is perhaps how they know of you. When did you become a contributor there and how did you become involved in energy issues and The Oil Drum?

Jason: I have been following The Oil Drum for about five years, started posting guest articles four years ago, and have been a staff contributor for the past two years.

My interest in energy issues stemmed from a National Science Foundation grant I managed. I led a team of researchers to set up long-term monitoring of ecosystems and species in Manu National Park in Peru. We set up a series of plots that began at the high elevation tree line and went down to the Amazon basin lowlands.

Biodiversity is being stressed by human impacts, whether from direct takeover of land or changing climate. All this connects to energy because economic activity is almost exclusively fossil-fueled. I started studying economics so I could understand what the threats were to the habitats we were researching.

Ultimately, our future, as human beings and all species on the planet, are deeply intertwined with the future of energy.

Kalpa: Did you grow up on a farm, and if so, where and what type of farm was it? If not, what made you become interested in agriculture?

Jason: I grew up in suburban California, the part of the San Francisco Bay Area now called Silicon Valley. I saw the last bits of Santa Clara Valley orchards convert to condos and tract houses while I was in grade school. But I was always nuts about biology and had a lot of freedom to explore my neighborhood.

I became interested in agriculture because I see it as central to the way humans relate to the planet. Through our food systems we literally dominate the landscape, and we consume and waste huge amounts of non-renewable resources. From an ecological perspective we are horribly inefficient and clumsy. Almost none of the bad stuff we know of in agriculture is necessary to provide plenty of food for people. It is quite possible to feed the world while also improving water and air quality, and while restoring soil fertility and building soil carbon. In fact, I am quite confident that in the long run only an agriculture that benefits the broader environment will persist.

So I consciously switched careers and started training as a farmer, eventually founding and operating an organic vegetable CSA. My background in biology made this a relatively smooth transition–in addition to great support from my wife and many others who were members of the CSA.

Kalpa: Are you a hands-on farmer for your land? Describe your role in the operations and which aspects you enjoy the most.

Jason: Modern farms are generally highly specialized in what they produce, and the people who work on them are also usually specialized, such as a full time equipment maintenance person. My job is to enhance and protect the value of the land while working with partner farmers to achieve production and economic goals.

For example, this year I coordinated the establishment of pasture on 150 acres. This had me working with businesses doing the soil testing, the application of lime and other inputs, three different farmers with equipment to prepare the land and sow the seeds, the seed company to purchase and mix the seeds, and a few different businesses for irrigation equipment.

Because I did all this work, a young rancher is gladly running his sheep on the land. He is a full time rancher that doesn’t own any land. Not only couldn’t he have come up with the funds to buy land, but the money to get pasture established would have blown his budget. Instead, he can focus on buying animals and specialized equipment to manage them, and this is doable.

I develop all the long-term management plans for the properties, keeping track of inputs and landscape level strategies to deal with issues of pests and fertility for the organic certification. Meanwhile, different specialty producers are using the same farm in a sustainable and economically beneficial rotation. There’s a ruminant livestock operator, a pastured-hog and poultry producer, and a vegetable farmer on one property right now. I keep tabs on their needs and we all work together to make sure the land-use is appropriate and synergistic.

I do get a lot of exposure to the day-to-day experiences of farmers, helping them move or feed livestock, set up fencing, repair equipment, and manage irrigation systems. This is pretty enjoyable and we get to talk through issues while working together, which is the best way to just get it done and quickly resolve any potential conflicts.

There’s also much that needs to be done that the renting farmers just don’t have the direct incentive to do. Arranging grants or work parties to restore riparian forest along the river and planting hedgerows is something I am taking on. Common infrastructure such as gravel for roads or irrigation pipe for a particular field is my responsibility because it adds value to the whole property over the long-term.

Kalpa: How many farm workers does Farmland LP have employed at this time?

Jason: To be clear: We don’t employ farmers. We make land available for lease to self-employed farmers. At this time we are leasing to three different operators. Several others have been paid to do custom farming and some of them may lease from us in the future. These are the seed farmers that will benefit primarily after we are certified organic.

Kalpa: I saw on your website that your first property, Fern Rd Farm, is 150 acres and came under your ownership in February of this year. Do you expect to own more farms for the 2011 growing season? Do you plan to only own land in Oregon, or are you considering other states, as well?

Jason: We buy farmland as investment capital comes in. We will be buying more land this winter as our fundraising is proceeding nicely. The fund will target three regions in the U.S. Oregon’s Willamette Valley is where we are starting, but after the first $10-$20 million or so we will expand elsewhere.

Kalpa: From what I read on your Farmland LP blog, it appears that this year was dedicated to get soils prepared for eventual production. Please name some of the crops you hope to produce on your farm/s.

Jason: The organic transition period is three years, but part of our job and role is to generate revenue during the transition period while also building soil fertility. Pasture for livestock is one great way of doing this. The best time to plant pasture is in the fall, so most of the land was prepared this summer for fall planting. It won’t be ready to graze intensively until the summer of 2011, though we did have one field sown in a pasture mix in May and were able to run livestock from July until mid-November. And hogs were produced on a few acres of another field, which is going to be a very fertile for the next few years.

After the livestock and pasture rebuild fertility and we are certified organic, we will begin a rotation into other crops. The Willamette Valley is a great place to grow seed crops. Not just edible ones, like wheat, but also cover crops such as clover. My job is to see that the soil is in great shape to bring on a seed crop specialist for a few years. I will then make sure they are doing proper crop rotation planning, and after a while it will be time for them to move on to another field that can come out of pasture.

The same is true for vegetable production, which is the most intensive and so benefits the most from enhancing soil fertility during conversion. Imagine it is the spring of 2011 and we know that next year a vegetable farmer will be on a 20 acre field that is currently in pasture. We will not only run sheep on that field, but also poultry and perhaps hogs. This will give the vegetable farmer plenty of fertility to work with, and a field clean of common soil borne pathogens that plague producers without access to fresh ground.

What’s great about this system is that the farmers are very excited about it and are already making connections among themselves. The neighbor runs a large CSA, restaurant, farmers market and wholesale vegetable operation and his waste veggies are going to the hog producer. In turn, the hog producer needs to be in the barn during the winter months and will gladly let the vegetable operator scoop out the manure-laden straw to be composted. In fact, the veggie farmer bought the straw. Next year the hogs are going onto a field most attractive for future lease to the vegetable farmer.

Furthermore, since we had a number of custom seed crop farmers help us sow pasture, the hog producer is bypassing the feed store for some of his major inputs and getting them direct from local farmers. Everybody’s costs go down and their profits go up, and they feel really good about working with each other.

Kalpa: Who do you plan to market your organic crops and livestock to? Are you planning to work with your local grocery stores or farmer’s markets and CSA’s, or larger distributors?

Jason: As the land manager, we won’t really be doing the marketing. Our farmers typically have pre-existing distribution channels, and we’re just helping them scale up production. However, we do talk about marketing together, and the fact that this whole farming system deserves to be showcased. Everybody in the social network markets for everybody else, to some extent.

Sales outlets range from CSA and farmers markets all the way up to large distributors. Our neighbors include local-only vegetable operations that manage 60 acres, to large food processing and distribution companies that draw on 10,000 acres of land for fruits and vegetables, are vertically integrated, and ship anywhere. Most seed crops sales will be dominated by large buyers. If you plant just one acre of soft white wheat around here you may harvest 10,000 lbs of seed. Bulk sales to millers and bakers are needed to clear a hundred acres of wheat.

Kalpa: In reading your progress reports, I assess that your land is raising sheep, goats, and hogs now. Is that correct? How soon will any of these animals be “processed” and do you know of small meat processors in your locality?

Jason: That’s right, and many have already left the premises. We are fortunate to have a few small, USDA inspected, processors in the Willamette Valley. Folks are working on mobile facilities too, for poultry, hogs and ruminants. The Oregon Department of Agriculture also licenses small poultry processing facilities on farms. These are limited to 20,000 animals per year, however, which under-utilizes the infrastructure quite a bit.

Kalpa: You made a comment that you know Wes Jackson, who founded the Land Institute. Is your farm using some perennial grain? If so, I presume this would be Kernza. Please tell us more.

Jason: I met Wes Jackson at a 3-day workshop for Fellows of the Post Carbon Institute (I am on the board). We are not using any perennial grain yet, but would like to. I am trying to get a local wheat geneticist interested. Local farmers and seed companies certainly are. I’d like to put the pieces together and collaborate with the right people to get breeds developed that are adapted to this region. The genetics really needs to be correct for each place and this takes a lot of time and expertise.

When I spoke to Wes about this, I asked him about rotation between harvesting for seed, grazing and haying because if you let a plant produce seed each year it can wear down. He said that this was the right way to manage perennial grains, but they aren’t doing any research on forage quality. What I’d like to do then is include some tests on the palatability of the leaves and responses to managed grazing. Therefore, selection for cultivars can include both seed and leaf traits. The forage specialists at Oregon State University in Corvallis, which is where I live, would be ideal partners in all this.

Kalpa: Are you aware of anyone else out there doing what you are doing, that is, making it possible to invest in organic farm ownership?

Jason: We are unique as far as I know. A number of other entities are offering investments in farmland through investment funds, but they all appear to be for conventional agriculture. This means that your income is typically tied to GMO seeds, herbicide and fertilizer costs, and commodity crop prices. And those aren’t trends to which we want to hitch our wagon.

My belief is that if you are going to buy farmland you will want the value of that land preserved, and enhanced, over time, all while generating premium cash flows. This is possible by using management practices that improve the soil and biological resources. Organic farming is scientifically documented to enrich soil biology, build soil carbon, and reduce agricultural disease and pest problems by providing good habitat for a diversity of species. This reduces input costs, while the organic price premium increases revenues. And there is plenty of research shows that organic practices increase the profits to farmers and farm owners. What we’re doing at Farmland LP is showing that this can be done at a large scale, and that working smartly with nature provides a better outcome for all.

Kalpa: I understand that Oregon’s Willamette Valley farms have been hit very hard financially due to the financial crisis because many grew grass seed and that market has dried up. Does this help you acquire farmland there at more reasonable prices for this time being?

Jason: That’s a possibility. During the good times the grass seed farmers bought up a lot of land, and due to the troubles in the housing market the sales of seed for lawns has significantly declined. We do see some opportunities to convert some of that land to organic, food-producing farmland, and price is a factor when we look at regions and properties to invest in.

That said, I do not think we will see prices of farmland drop as much as they did in the 1980s after a debt boom and bust. About 70% of farms are unleveraged today, so they learned their lesson about debt and haven’t gone back, so fewer are going to be forced to sell. On the other hand, because credit is tight and commodities volatile, I don’t expect many farmers to be aggressively expanding their operations. So, buying opportunities exist for those with cash.

Kalpa: How do people usually find out about your fund? Are you advertising?

Jason: We are not permitted to advertise since our fund is only open to qualified investors. Our website attracts a lot of requests for investment materials and my partner Craig has presented at several investment conferences. For example, the head of theSlow Money due diligence committee recently called us the “Quintessential Slow Money investment”. We were also just selected to speak at Investor’s Circle, a prestigious investment group. In a B-Corp survey by Investors Circle we possibly had the highest score they’ve ever recorded. Our name is getting out there, and we’re on the radar of some large investors. But it is important to us to have individual investors in the fund, since ultimately part of the joy of what we do is that farmland is very personal, and it re-connects people to things that really matter.

Kalpa: One of my primary reasons for blogging about agriculture (although it is not obvious on some days) is my concern for its transition off fossil fuels, or ratcheting down, in an optimal way. That is, a way in which we continue to feed everybody during and after energy costs become expensive. It fascinates me that you are already making that happen, or at least planning on making that happen. Do you have any comments about your vision to farm using fewer fossil fuel inputs?

Jason: Ha! How long is this interview?

Part of the fund strategy is buy farmland close to cities, as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We are keenly aware of the dependence of “conventional” agriculture on oil…and the risks to supporting a very large (and growing) population on a depleting resource such as oil.

Let me try to be brief. I view this in stages.

The first is transitioning the land to organic. This gets the soil weaned off fossil-fuel derived pesticides and fertilizers. It also redevelops soil organic matter and soil biology—both of which improve disease resistance, water holding capacity, resilience to weather extremes, enhance nutrient cycling and promote high yields. With this one step we cut out about a third of the fossil fuels that go into on farm production, and the resulting carbon sequestration may make the farm carbon neutral.

The second part is the development of on-farm synergies among producers to dramatically reduce waste. In nature the waste of one organism is the food of another. Most contemporary farms have waste problems that become costs, whereas we won’t see anything as waste, simply another input that doesn’t need to be brought in from the outside and purchased. You already have a feel for this from my description of the hog-vegetable-grain connections being made. I’d love an expert in Life Cycle Analysis to tell me how much energy this saves. I am sure it is substantial.

Third is the use of renewable energy on the farm. The biggest nut to crack is liquid fuels for tractors. Fortunately a lot has already been done in the Willamette Valley on this, mostly related to straight vegetable oil or biodiesel from local oil seed crops. These work well in crop rotations because oil seed species are usually in the Brassicaceae family, which inhibits nematodes that feed on the roots of grasses. With reduced tillage methods, probably only about 10% of the cropland would need to be set aside for tractor fuel.

The design of the farm itself can reduce the need for inputs. Livestock may not need de-worming agents, for example, if they have access to shrubs like willow and the pasture is rich in herbs such as chicory. Hedgerows create windbreaks to reduce animal stress, and habitats for beneficial species, such as raptors, pollinators and predatory insects that mitigate pest outbreaks. I am trained as an ecologist and could go on and on here, but the gist is that diversity and smart design prevent problems in the first place.

A lot needs to happen off the farm too. Producers are keen on developing local and regional markets. The farmers I know believe whole-heartedly in the local food movement and are sorting out ways to cut out transportation distances. Many are upgrading storage facilities, adding processing equipment, and connecting to the local populace in multiple ways—not just farmers markets, but also the major grocery chains.

Ultimately, we can’t have a viable agricultural system that is a linear. Right now we mine the inputs to farm, spread them on the land, harvest the crops, transport the food to cities, and flush the waste out to the ocean. We like to think of ourselves as being so advanced and knowledgeable, but this is one case where Chinese peasants of 2000 BC understood something we are still clueless about.

Kalpa: Is your farm’s windmill working for you? How old is it and does it require much maintenance? Are parts available?

Jason: Yes, it works great. It is an Aermotor Windmill. It needed some minor repairs, but only required a trip to a local store. We use it to fill up a 1200 gallon tank for livestock drinking water. I don’t know how old ours is but it is in very good condition so not that old. Needs a replacement quart of oil twice a year and the well pump packing wears out eventually. The technology is 19th century but very functional. The company is still in business and sells replacement parts.

Kalpa: There was a photo of a white cat with large black spots lying in the grass near your irrigation equipment. Does Farmland LP also own a farm cat?

Jason: What a great cat. She showed up in early spring, a bit shy, following me around like a puppy dog for a week but not getting too close. Now she will approach anybody and demand attention. My son named her Fluff, but that belies her predatory nature. Twice I have seen her devour a vole within a minute of capture. A totally self-sufficient animal and the best mascot a farm could ask for.

Kalpa: In wrapping this up, my conclusion after studying Farmland LP’s website is that what you have set out to do is brilliant on several levels. One, you provide a niche that is very popular right now, investing in farmland, with the option of investors doing it in a socially conscious way. Two, your inputs are low by utilizing organic farming systems, while your production should be high with lower input costs. This fact is contrary to popular understanding, of course, since agribusiness messages have infiltrated minds everywhere. Three, as the costs of fossil fuels go up, your farming methods will especially prove cost-efficient and productive.

Jason: Yes, we have a great model. And you have identified one of the hurdles we face—the false perception that organic methods are more costly and decrease yields. I ask people to go look at the research being done by major universities in the Midwest, Iowa State for example, that falsify agribusiness propaganda. And we go well beyond the simplistic “replace conventional grains with organic grains” model by creating a holistic farming system that indeed dramatically lowers the cost of production and will be much more resilient to volatile and generally rising input costs. Ultimately, if we’re going to create a sustainable future for humanity quickly, which I think we need to do, it’s got to be aligned with the systems of both nature and capitalism. And we’ll be spending the next 30+ years scaling it up.

Kalpa: As a final note, I’ll add that I suspect your model will be studied and achieve at minimum, the level of fame that Polyface Farm has reached. Might I be on to something here? If so, am I one of the first to cast a spotlight on you, or have you already received a bit of publicity?

Jason: Joel Salatin is amazing and we definitely stand on his shoulders. Our publicity thus far has been minor, such as a few investment newsletters that give a couple hundred word summary. As you know, the story here is truly rich, complex, and potentially transformative. Blogs like yours are very much appreciated because of the depth of coverage and insightful analysis that connects the dots and sees the “big picture” context. I’ve been a reader from the beginning so thanks for your work and helping others understand mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Bradford received his Ph.D. in Evolution and Population Biology from Washington University in St. Louis and his Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of California Davis, with High Honors.

from -> Methods,Sustainability

Water, Water Everywhere

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 February 13

The rich soils in Oregon’s Willamette Valley are a gift from the Missoula Floods at the end of the last Ice Age.  Between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago as glacial ice sheets melted and retreated, the valley was flooded about 40 times–essentially becoming a temporary lake hundreds of feet deep, over and over again.

For 13,000 years now, rivers have sculpted this once flat, lake-bottom landscape into well-defined channels that don’t meander frequently like they would in a delta zone.  But over the past several thousand years Willamette Valley rivers have jumped out of their main channels hundreds of times and occasionally even found new routes, leaving behind clear signs of their movements in features such as oxbow lakes.

When looking over farm fields in the area, the best soils are adjacent to rivers that jump their banks.  River-flooded fields tend to have undulations across them, which signifies the deposition of silt, and possibly sand.  By contrast, clay is a sticky substance that doesn’t settle out fast during a flood, but will come to rest in calm waters at the bottom of a lake.  A good loam is a balance of silt, sand and clay, conditions typically mediated by active river deposition.  This means that if we are going to farm on the best soils, we should expect the sporadic flood.

Farmland LP manages three properties in  Willamette Valley south of Corvallis.  This particular area, and our farmland, was recently subjected to the highest flood waters in about 100 years.  The river that set a record wasn’t the Willamette, but a tributary called Marys River.

This image combines nine into a 360 degree panorama and was taken in the early afternoon of Jan. 20th at Fern Road Farm. The waters were still near record high levels but beginning to recede and 6″ below their peak.  
An historic flood event is an opportunity to observe, learn and be in awe.  For this post I’ll review the value of the flood for our management choices and practices.  I will also explain the unique circumstances that caused the flood, and, getting to the “awe” part, show you some of the best images I captured.

What Was Learned and Reinforced

Seeing what happens at high water is very instructive.  We now know where the river may jump the bank with force and can design mitigation strategies accordingly.

For example, our new fence is made with flexible posts that can take the weight of a tree or the impact of rushing water and debris and stand back up after the force is removed–something metal T-posts don’t do.

Woody vegetation in the riparian zone and along edge spaces has economic and ecological values, including acting to absorb, deflect, and spread the force of flowing water.  Our riparian restoration project at Fern Rd Farm (funded by a state OWEB grant through the Marys River Watershed Council) was too young to protect the farmland this year, but will provide a stronger buffer in the years ahead.  A hedge row north of the gravel drive at Fern Rd Farm may have protected it from erosion, for example.  A thick riparian forest at Wattenpaugh Farm may prevent an overflow channel from down cutting and forming a gully in the farm field.

Our pasture-sown land greatly reduces the risk of erosion.  Organic farmers, even if they are not planting pasture, tend to do a good job getting a cover crop on fields to keep soil from washing away and to build organic matter and nitrogen stock.  This is both a discipline and a necessity since the soil IS the fertility and synthetic inputs can’t be used to make-up for poor land cover and soil loss. Whereas our land is becoming more resilient over time, the downsides to the shortcuts taken by chemical-based farming are revealed most clearly in times of extremes, such as floods or droughts.

Record Snow and Rain

A very unusual sequence of events led to the flooding.  Snow began falling on the valley floor Jan. 15th.  It stuck around and accumulated through Jan. 17th.  And although snow depth was shallow in the valley proper, the surrounding foothills and colder, outlying valleys had several inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground.

Then came Jan. 18th and the beginning of record rainfall.  The rain gauge at the Hyslop Weather Station just north of Corvallis recorded  2.55 inches on Jan. 19th and a record-breaking 4.05 inches for Jan. 20th. Nearly 3 more inches came down over the following seven days, which kept the water near or above flood stage for almost a week.

The water level gauge for the Marys River is situated near Bellfountain Rd, which is between two of our properties.  Observation and forecast hydrographs are updated regularly and this one shows the river near its peak on Jan. 19th.

I visited Fern Rd Farm prior to the flooding and while snow was on the ground.  I wanted to check on the status of trees planted this fall in the riparian forest, and remove any equipment that may be carried away with high water.  Below is an image showing the river level and snow cover on Jan. 17th.

And this was taken about 24 hours later.  The river is at flood stage and all the snow is gone.  River levels crested over a foot higher than what is shown here.

Landscape Perspective

It is helpful to see where the rivers are in relation to the farms and how the landscape copes with so much water.

Below is a map of the three Farmland LP properties in the area, which are outlined in dark blue.  Fern Road Farm is in the northwest of this image, Wattenpaugh Farm is northeast, and A2R Farm in the south.  The Marys River creates the northern border of Fern Road Farm, and a southern and eastern border of Wattenpaugh Farm.  Muddy Creek, which joins the Marys River at the southeast corner of Wattenpaugh Farm, cuts through the A2R property.  Both rivers flow, in general, towards the north and east, with the Marys River entering the Willamette in downtown Corvallis.

Normal river channels are revealed in dark green, which is tree cover.  With light blue lines I have traced the approximate additional paths the rivers took when the flow rates exceeded the main channel capacity.  For scale, the N-S blue line representing the Muddy Creek overflow route runs just over one mile through the A2R Farm.

Back to Ground Level

Here are some images of what these overflow channels looked like.

Muddy Creek spills across Airport Road the morning of Jan. 20th.  Buildings of A2R Farm are visible about a mile in the distance to the left.  Any tree or hedgerow plantings along Airport Road should leave ample room for water passage at this location.

Marys River crossed Fern Rd Farm in a braided swale complex (as opposed to a single, wide channel for Muddy Creek at A2R) and took paths that went different directions, including southward to Evergreen Creek.  The above image shows where a large ditch adjacent to a gravel road is insufficient for the record flows.  The top layer of gravel washed off and will need to be re-applied.  In the background it is clear that the well pump and irrigation pipe are on high ground.

The south field at Fern Rd Farm has over a foot of water on it while flowing slowly towards Evergreen Creek. Litter on the wheel line indicates it had been higher.  In the foreground is a tall stand of forage brassica, which shelters a fall sown pasture.  

The riparian forest is absent from a portion of the Marys River as it passes along the south-eastern edge of Wattenpaugh Farm.  Here is where the river jumped the bank and flowed vigorously northward across the field.  Planting trees here would slow this flow.

Damage Assessment

The properties held up well to the record flood with very minimal impact.

Some of the gravel roads need to be topped off and graded. We lost a few of the trees planted in the riparian zone this fall.  Our infrastructure and management plans in the works will make these farms even more resilient in the future.

How Are the Sheep?

This is the first question from many concerned friends and colleagues. During the floods the entire flock was at A2R Farm. This was an ideal place as the flooding was restricted to an impressively wide and deep, but single, channel with plenty of high ground on both sides.

So, as you can see below from a picture taken a week ago, the ewes and their babies took the weird weather in stride and are as happy as, well, lambs.


from -> Local,Methods,News,Sustainability

One Acre Feeds a Person

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by Jason Bradford | 2012 January 13

With the holiday season behind us many are feeling the effects of eating a bit too much and are working on a New Year’s resolution to shed some pounds.  This reminds me of a question I have been asked numerous times, i.e., “How much land does it take to feed somebody for a year?”  To rid you of any suspense, I usually give the answer as about one acre when referring to the U.S. today.

For those who want to understand why, what follows is an explanation.

Start with the Diet

A precise answer is impossible because so many variable factors are at play, including the productivity of the agricultural land.  But actually, the first step in answering this is to know the diet being considered (including any big holiday turkeys consumed).

The current U.S. diet is shown nicely in the graph below from  Visual Economics.

To summarize, the average American consumes about 2000 lbs of food per year, which works out to about 5.5 lbs and 2700 calories per day–or nearly your entire body weight in food per month.  Divide those daily 2700 calories by 5.5 lbs and you get 490 calories per pound of food, on average.

There are differences in the quality of various parts of the diet that are important to appreciate, including caloric density.  Fruits and vegetables are abundant in the diet by weight and give us the flavors, fiber, vitamins and minerals we crave, but only typically provide 50-150 calories per pound.  By contrast, a single slice of my favorite bread (pictured below) has 110 calories and only weighs a tenth of a pound.  Oils and fats are about three to four times more dense, calorie-wise, than bread.  Meat tends to have slightly fewer calories per pound than high starch foods.  For example, boneless lamb chops without the edge fat are around 976 calories per pound, according to the USDA’s Food-A-Pedia, which I could peruse for hours.  Low-fat milk, which is mostly water, still has about 200 calories per pound (about a pint).

Converting to Area

If we take the average U.S. diet as our starting point, we can convert each component of this diet into the area needed to produce it by using average U.S. harvest yields.  For example, the USDA reported recently that the average corn harvest was 147 bushels per acre, or about 8250 lbs.  It takes a true professional to sort out how much of this corn gets into the human food supply, since corn is normally eaten in highly processed and modified forms.  The vast majority of corn is roughly split between ethanol factories and animal feed, with perhaps 10% or less used for food directly (e.g., polenta) and via food processing (e.g., gummy bears).

This sort of complexity is why I must rely on others to make the diet to area conversion.  The most recent studies I am aware of were done for the state of New York by a team of Cornell scientists led by Christian Peters.  Here’s a link to one of the published papers, but a more accessible review is also available and highly recommend for those who hunger for more information.

Below I have posted a key summary graphic from the paper.  Along the Y-axis is land area in hectares needed to feed one person for a year, which is dependent upon the model diets shown along the X-axis.  Each model diet is labeled by two dietary factors:  meat and fat.

Adding Meat Feeds More People

The finding that gained headlines from this study some years ago had to do with the fact that adding some meat and dairy to the diet, while increasing land area, actually fed more people.  This is because much land is not suited to annual crops but can be sown in pasture (most of the “perennial crops” shown in the bar graph are pasture).  Cutting the average meat consumption roughly in half, which would de-emphasize hogs and poultry in the diet as these rely on grains, actually feeds more people than a vegetarian diet.

And the Answer Is…

Since the area of production needed is most sensitive to meat and fat consumption, we can see which of the model diets in the Cornell study is closest to the typical American diet to estimate the per capita area given current habits.  To gauge the average, look at the middle of the chart above the 190 grams of meat per day and you’ll see that this converts to about 0.45 hectares, which is just a bit over one acre.

It is fair to ask if New York is representative of the U.S. in terms of agricultural potential.  I actually think it is pretty “average” having a mix of both good and poor soils, mountains and plains and a climate that is neither the most benign nor most extreme.  Certainly California and Iowa are not average so we shouldn’t be extrapolating from those best cases.

It would be nice, and possibly critical, to have this sort of research done more extensively.  To that end, the Cornell group has a grant to develop a Local Foodshed Mapping Tool.  It is being created for New York but the methods should be applicable anywhere.

Connecting Issues

Those who are savvy about how food is produced will have many follow-up questions to this direction of thought.  For example, crop yields are no longer a simple function of Nature’s endowment of soil, the blessings of good weather, and irrepressible seed germination. Nearly all farmers rely on a steady stream of outside inputs in forms such as ammonia-nitrate and super phosphate.  These derive from concentrated below ground sources of energy and raw materials deposited over geologic time.  As I’ve explored before on this blog, food supply is over-correlated for my comfort zone with oil supply.  Over the past few years I’ve also written about techniques for de-linking food production from massive external inputs.  But that is a long discussion that has no easy answer either.

I’ll just add that addressing the outside inputs conundrum makes one consider the role that well-managed grazing systems have in an agriculture that can sequester carbon, clean water, and build soil fertility more endemically.  And for those who claim we don’t have the land area to do this, take a look at the acres of corn sown each year (about 100 million acres) and how much of that is used for direct human consumption (about 10 million acres) in the U.S.  Looking at the numbers clearly shows we have a problem of too much artificially created demand.  Why not put pasture on 90 million acres of cropland and let the ruminants eat their evolved diet?

Most people are not looking forward to a 10 minute lecture when they ask me a supposedly simple question.  So while there are many variables and lots of imprecision when answering  “How much land is needed to feed a person,” for today’s American diet, with today’s agricultural system, I’ll stick with about one acre.

from -> Health,Local,Methods

Ethics and Swine

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by Jason Bradford | 2011 December 6

The restaurant company Chipotle gets it.  The current front page text on their web site goes:

It is not just a burrito.  It’s a foil-wrapped, hand-crafted, local farm supporting, food culture changing cylinder of deliciousness.  Learn more about food with integrity.

It is fantastic to see major buyers take “food with integrity” seriously.  Getting significant change at scale in how farmland and farm animals are managed requires a market demand.  We know it exists in abundance for certified organic food, but farming doesn’t require the organic label to be ethical, nor may the organic label be sufficient in all cases.  I commend anybody who takes the time to consider how the choices they make impact others, including non-humans and the environment all living beings share.

Chipotle has a series of videos that educate their customers on important agriculture topics and the ones I’ll share are about hog production and confinement production systems in general.

The first video features Paul Willis, an Iowa pastured hog farmer and co-founder of Niman Ranch pork.

Overall, the message is very positive, but I was also struck by something Paul says, which is pretty hard hitting:

If you took dogs and put 5000 of them in a building, in cages, people would go absolutely crazy.  I mean there would be an uprising, but’s it okay with pigs.  It’s sort of out of sight out of mind kind of thing, but for me that is not good enough.

According the video, 95% of U.S. hog production is under the conditions Paul describes.  It is great to see somebody motivated by a sense of ethics and is able to do something tangible about it.  I also find it interesting that Paul discusses how producing hogs on pasture was common when he was a kid but is now rare.

This brings me to the second Chipotle produced video I’d like to share (h/t Big Picture Agriculture).  The title is “Back to the Start,” which is the refrain in a Coldplay song sung here by Willie Nelson.  The obvious implication is that we, as a society, need to bring back to the fore many of the livestock practices that were common up until the middle of the last century.

In the context of ethical swine, I want to thank Chris Hansen for producing on Farmland LP land.  He now has two outdoor seasons behind him and is getting better at what he does through successive planning, trial, and observation.

Whenever I give farm tours the pigs are typically a crowd favorite.  They are playful, often active, have distinct personalities, and make amusing sounds. It is great that we can give them a joyful life.  My wish is for 95%, not 5%, of hogs to be treated as well as Chris treats his.

from -> Health,Methods

Fall Scenery

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by Jason Bradford | 2011 November 3

We have had a relatively dry and warm fall so far here in Oregon, although the forecasts suggest this is going to change.  The cooperative weather has let us get some last minute field work accomplished and has  allowed already established pasture build up biomass for the winter.

I thought I’d just post a few nice scenes from the past few weeks, and add commentary to them.

This year Farmland LP received a grant through a partnership with the Marys River Watershed Council from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.   Funds are going towards restoration of riparian zone habitat along the Marys River at our Fern Rd Farm.  In the image above you can see an excavator removing blackberries along the river bank.  We are also planting native trees and broadcasting native grasses to hold on to the soil and re-establish a riparian forest.

This was a large area of blackberries.  We had goats run through it during 2010 and the excavator finished the job this year.  Sheep are shown there now.  They are hoofing in grass seed we spread and browsing on the shrubbery, which is mostly willow.  We will use sheep for managing the regrowth of blackberry while the trees become established. Blackberries don’t grown under the shade of a forest.

Mac Stewart looks over a group of Dorset ewes feeding on forage brassica.  These plants taste great and are actually a variety of kale and turnip.  Markings on the back of the animals are paint brands.  The electromesh fencing seen behind the sheep allows us to precisely manage where they graze and for how long.

A common fall-winter weather pattern around here is for fast-moving low clouds to dump rain for several minutes, followed by sunny breaks.  Catch one of these breaks in the evening and the light is fantastic.  This image shows both the health of the established pasture, which we won’t graze again for another 2-3 months or perhaps until April.  In the background is Chris Hansen’s laying operation.  The hens have lots of room to roam and are taking advantage of it.

Well that’s just a sample of what is going on, and I have a backlog of more detailed posts, but those will need to wait until winter truly sets in.

 

 

from -> Methods,News

Farm Management Update: Fall 2011

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by Jason Bradford | 2011 October 8

I’ve put together an 8-page document reviewing the major events on the farm(s) over the past several months.   It is easy to read and full of images.

You can download it here as a pdf and I hope you enjoy it.

from -> Methods,News

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