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Hurting a Small Farm Near You
By Anthony Flaccavento
Washington Post
August 5, 2007
Reprinted with permission of Anthony Flaccavento. For more information visit Appalachian Sustainable Development.
If you've purchased organic produce at Ukrop's, Giant Food or Whole Foods, you may well have eaten some of the fruits of my labor.
My farm, nestled in the Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia, is about a six-hour drive from the nation's capital. Here, in the land of coal and tobacco, a momentous shift is taking place: Dozens of former tobacco farmers are raising certified organic produce, free-range eggs and other healthy products that we are selling to nearly 600 supermarkets in a five-state region.
We've built this system, which includes 60 farmers and a packing and grading facility, from the bottom up. But we have had help from our fellow taxpayers, in the form of a grant from the Agriculture Department's Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program. That, along with considerable investment from the Virginia tobacco commission, has allowed us to create a healthy food system that is once again making farming economically viable while helping to improve the diets of thousands of consumers.
For these reasons, we are unhappy with the direction of the current farm bill, which the House passed on July 27. Efforts such as ours, and many others across the country, prove that investments in local food systems and ecological farming are cost-effective in the short run and good for rural communities and the land in the long run. The same can no longer be said about subsidies focused on a handful of crops for a handful of large farmers in a handful of states.
There is something wrong with a farm bill that continues to miss three-fourths of the nation's farms; that subsidizes agribusiness and the food industry, enabling them to produce cheap foods that aren't very good for us; and that is reducing its commitment to conservation precisely at a time when climate change, water shortages and increasing urban pressure on the landscape make healthy soils and farms more critical than ever.
We've created a locally rooted, healthy, conserving farm and food system here in tobacco country. If you can do it here, with a little bit of help from the federal government, you can do it most anywhere in the United States.
-- Anthony Flaccavento
Abingdon, Va.
The writer is executive director of Appalachian Sustainable Development and a Food and Society Policy Fellow.
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Index of Articles
Beyond 'Green Shopping'
by Jerry Mander & John Cavanagh. Reprinted with permission from the September 24, 2007 issue of The Nation magazine. Portions of each week’s Nation magazine can be accessed at http://www.thenation.com.
Horse Power
by Dick Courteau. Excerpted with permission of Orion magazine September/October 2007 issue.
Hurting a Small Farm Near You
Reprinted with permission of Anthony Flaccavento. For more information visit Appalachian Sustainable Development.
Put farm subsidies out to pasture
by Brian M. Riedl. Reprinted with permission of the author.
One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum
by Wendell Berry. Excerpt reprinted with permission from "One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum,"which was part of the September 11, 2006 special issue of The Nation magazine. For subscription information, call 1-800-333-8536. Portions of each week's Nation magazine can be accessed at www.thenation.com.
Farm Economics 101
"You Kill It, You Eat It" and Other Lessons From My Thrifty Childhood by Jean Bethke Elshtain. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the John Templeton Foundation, www.Templeton.org
Study Shows Potential Economic Payoffs Tied to Healthy Eating from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Reprinted with permission. The full study may be read at:
www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/health_0606.pdf
Mid-sized Farms in a Squeeze
Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle? A White Paper for the Agriculture of the Middle Project
by Frederick Kirschenmann (reprinted with permission). The white paper included below originally appeared in the July 2004 issue of Juliens Journal. To support their initiatives on behalf of agriculture in the middle, please visit their website at www.agofthemiddle.org.
A Plea for “d”emocracy
The letter by Amalie Lipstreu printed below appeared in the Summer 2006 newsletter of the Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association (OEFFA). Posted with the permission of The Farmland Center www.thefarmlandcenter.org.
Water
“Since widespread irrigation began in the 1950s, the Ogallala has sustained a net loss of as much as 120 trillion gallons — 11 percent of its original volume. One entire Lake Erie, plus a little. Gone... (Quoted with the permission of William Ashworth)
Charlotte's Webpage: Why children shouldn't have the world at their fingertips
by Lowell Monke (reprinted with permission). This article originally appeared in the November/December 2005 issue of Orion magazine, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, 888/909-6568, www.oriononline.org. For a free copy, please visit their website.
the ostrich rhumba and the realm of the inevitable
preserving farmland
Copyright Lynn R. Miller. Reprinted by permission of the author, originally appeared in the summer 2005 Small Farmer's Journal.
Watch for Signs
By Kristy Hebert, Farm and Dairy Reporter reprinted with permission, July 14, 2005 issue.
Letter from Larksong
by David Kline, Editor, reprinted with permission from Farming Magazine's Summer 2005 issue.
Think Globally, Eat Locally
by Jennifer Wilkins, December 18, 2004, reprinted with permission from the New York Times
A Secretary for Farmland Security
by Victor Davis Hanson (reprinted with permission) from an op-ed piece in the New York Times, December 9, 2004
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