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Sustainable Alternative Farming Institute

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Thinking Outside the Box Sustainably

Volume 1, Issue 1

Dear Friends,

Welcome to SAFI.

You are reading the first issue of Thinking Outside the Box Sustainably, our SAFI newsletter, which is just one of the many things we hope to accomplish in the years to come.

Our plans include:

• development of training for individuals and institutions seeking to put sustainable agriculture activities into practice;
• sustainable alternative agriculture “knowledge packets”
• research plots;
• a research hotline to provide research data to farmers and consumers; and
• a non-profit general store that will provide sustainable agriculture information in the form of books, seeds, small farm equipment and apropraite technology.

Agriculture is changing. The new farm bill is accelerating the rapid consolidation of the agriculture industry. Agriculture is evolving rapidly into a 2-tier or dualistic economy composed of the small and the large farms, with the mid-size farms being squeezed the hardest. Although this is today’s scenario, it doesn’t have to be tomorrow’s scenario.

In its broadest sense, SAFI was founded for and is dedicated to the preservation of the small family farm, the rural community and the sustainability of our society at large. SAFI, through its knowledge packets, the newsletter and monthly workshops and seminars will help farmers, lenders, consumers and institutions see that there is more than one way to farm.

Sustainable agriculture is a “thinking individual’s” way of farming, making use of all of a farmer’s resources for income production before thinking about purchased production inputs. It doesn’t deplete the soil, the farm family, the farm community or the world at large.

As you will note late in this newsletter, 163,000 farms received 61% of the farm sales but 63% of these farms are contracted to large corporations. If the present farming system were sustainable, why would these farmers be working for corporate America at a set wage and have no decision-making powers in their farm operation while the farmers stand most of the financial risk?

The greatest thing agriculture has furnished this country is not food and fiber, but a set of children with a good work ethic and a good set of values. These characteristics carry over into our society at large; whether these children are farmers or bankers or teachers or firefighters, society benefits.

Thirty percent of farm sales go to 575,000 medium-sized farms and nine percent of farm sales go to small farms—1,300,000 of them. The small and medium-size farms are the majority in numbers if not in size of sales.

These small and medium-size farms are the hope of the future for a sustainable type of agriculture for the following reasons:

1. They are not tied to corporate America.
2. They subsidize their farming operations with off-farm income.
3. They are open-minded to new ideas and are innovators and early adaptors for technology and marketing.
4. They sell direct to the consumers at retail prices.

Definitions are important! A small farm is 179 acres or less, grossing $50,000 a year or less; a medium-size farm is 180 to 999 acres, grossing $50,001 to 249,999, and a large farm is 1,000-plus acres, grossing $250,000 plus per year.

While everyone says there are no more small farms, small farms are in fact a majority of the farms left in the U.S. Many say you cannot make money on a small farm. If you just miniaturize a large farm and grow commodity crops like corn, wheat, and beans, that’s true, but if you sell added value products like cornmeal instead of corn or blueberry farm instead U-Pick berries, you give yourself a year-round market, plus you are selling at retail price instead of wholesale. One hundred bushels of corn is worth about $2 a bushel or about $200 on the commodity market. One hundred bushels of corn sold as one-pound bags of cornmeal at the farmers’ market, on the other hand, is worth about $84 a bushel or about $8,400 per acre.

The truth, of course, is that the farmer must be a producer and a marketer.

We can change and we can make a difference. SAFI has already received two grants toward making small farms profitable. We are on the right track. Won’t you help us by subscribing to the SAFI newsletter today?

Thanks!

Ron Macher
Publisher/Farmer for 38 years