I have been looking for a graph that shows the number of US farmers and the average age of farmers on the same graph, but looking at the graphs separately, the impression is still strong. We have less and less farmers each year (2% of the population) and the ones that are left are aging faster than many other industries (average 58.3 years) due to the very small numbers of young people joining the increasingly slim ranks.For the young people that do want to grow food for a living they must first overcome the high land and capital good costs to get started as well as knowing they are pursuing a career that expects much of them physically and mentally but that society as a whole does not particularly esteem. So I get very excited about the future of food when I see young farmers like these on Jenny Jack Sun Farm making a go of it on their 4 acres with sustainable practices that are not generally found in industrial agriculture.The next thing young, small-scale food growers have to overcome is the notion that somehow they are only playing at farming if they can't "feed the world" with their output. The history of this phrase and it's attendant expectations can be traced directly back to the "fence row to fence row" and "get big or get out" exhortations of 1971-1976 USDA Secretary, Earl Butz. Before Butz moved the finish line to feeding the world, US farmers were only expected to feed themselves and their own communities to be considered successful.For an interesting perspective on how far we have moved away from community farming, this timeline begins with the percentage of US workers being farmers in 1790 at 90% and details the steady, downward shift from there to 38% in 1900 and down to 2.6% in 1990 where the timeline ends. We will never have a farming population of even 25% again in the US, but something more than a mere 2% will be needed to return to a food system that is healthy and sustainable for both the US population that depends on it and for the land that will be expected to continue to produce food for many generations to come.And the current trend of less and less farmers that are getting older and older is not sustainable even in the short-term. With many of today's farmers already approaching 60, how many more years before our current 2% retire from their physically demanding jobs? Young people making a choice to farm and trying to feed their communities should be celebrated for taking on a tough job that we all depend on but clearly, not that many people want to do themselves.Kudos to the farmers of Jenny Jack Sun Farm and all the others like you!
On Kaizen and Garden Logs
Kaizen is a word that has one meaning in the dictionary sense and a wholly different meaning in the popular mind. The dictionary definition is "change for the better", but over time, this word has morphed through its adaptation both as a business philosophy and a motivational concept into something more akin to "constant, incremental improvement" - that we should seek to do each and every thing we do, no matter how small or great, a little better than we did the day before. The philosophy that has grown up around kaizen doesn't contemplate ever actually reaching perfection, only continually striving to be closer to it. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a fantastic documentary that displays the heart of kaizen.Gardens are a great place to embrace the practice of kaizen as they will enthusiastically share with us laundry lists of ways that we could plan, execute, research or just plain do better each day, week, month and year. And luckily we can keep garden logs (or journals) to make note of all of those over and under-estimates, the good ideas and the bad, the lucky guesses and unlucky ones, and of course, how much produce was grown in the garden during the year.Gardens and gardeners are both works in progress, but it is the gardener that must implement the incremental improvements. Noting in my log that my cilantro and spinach bolted this year during the week I was in DC this May, I can plan to harvest a couple of weeks earlier next year and keep more of my spring harvest. Garden logs are also helpful to review in fall/winter when planning the following year's garden. What varieties did well and which did not? Was one variety slower to bolt?Approaching our gardens with the philosophy of kaizen, not always getting it right but always improving and logging on a regular basis what we see happening in the garden is less discouraging when things don't work out as envisioned than "anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time" for new growers.Here's to always growing!
A Few Good Documentaries
If sustainable food/agriculture is a documentary genre, it has seen something of an explosion over the past few years. Super Size Me (2004) was probably the first food documentary to gain traction in the public mind and get us to consider what we are eating followed by Food Inc (2008) for those who wanted to take it one step further and think about where what we are eating comes from.Since then there have been a quite a few documentaries to jump on the food consciousness bandwagon. Here are a few of my favorites:
- The Fruit Hunters
- Vanishing of the Bees
- Growing Cities
- Eating Alabama
- To Make a Farm
- Fresh
- Food Fight
- King Corn
- Dirt! The Movie
- Fed Up
In the queue:
- More Than Honey
- GMO OMG
- The Organic Life
- Ingredients
- In Organic We Trust
- The First Season
- Betting the Farm
- Meat Hooked
- As We Sow
Getting Fresh. Really Fresh.
The food-documentary-athon continued this week and I was very pleasantly surprised to find a feel-good movie tucked into the lineup.The documentaries so far have been very good and have altered the way I am connecting with food. 'Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead' really stands out among these for several reasons but the biggest take-away was how easy it can be to add fresh fruits and vegetables into an always busy family.The movie follows the journey of Joe Cross, an Australian on a road trip across America with his Breville juicer to regain his health. Joe is on a 60 day fast, consuming only fresh juice from his juicer. It was inspiring to watch as he lost the pounds and found himself.While I won't be attempting any juice-only fasts, there was a Breville juicer ordered and I am looking forward to adding some more fresh fruits and vegetables into my life in the form of fresh juice. Watch for seasonally fresh recipes in the near future.If you are interested in learning more, check out fatsickandnearlydead.com for information on the movie, the juicer, some recipes and other goodies.
Pandora's Seed
I have just finished a second reading of 'Pandora's Seed' by Spencer Wells. I read this book a year ago when it was first released and wanted to revisit it after watching a series of documentaries on the food industry (Food Fight, Food Inc., King Corn and Vanishing of the Bees).Spencer Wells is a geneticist, anthropologist and Exporer-in-Residence for National Geographic. His previous book 'The Journey of Man' was my introduction to him and his work. In 'Pandora's Seed' his focus is the dramatic changes in humans, both culturally and biologically, that are a result of the agricultural revolution around 10,000 years ago.This book is a great read that details the good, the bad and the ugly of the expected and sometimes unexpected consequences in the way we eat and live that came with agriculture.