A climate-friendly rebuttal

(CSA Newsletter: Week 12)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

Every Tuesday morning, Casey and I read the Oregonian’s Food Day section while we eat our breakfast. This is a great way to start CSA day: our spirits are lifted by the recipes, market watch column, and other fun articles about our favorite topic (food!).

Last Tuesday started out well. The main article headline read: “Your climate-friendly kitchen: Take some simple steps toward a low-carbon diet.” We settled in for a good read. Some of the advice was great and hard to argue with: compost food waste rather than adding it to landfills; buy whole foods rather than processed foods; bring your own bags to the market.

However, there were a few suggestions that surprised and disturbed us. The writer spent a disproportionate amount of space quoting Helen York, the sustainability manager for Bon Appétit, a food service company that promotes sustainable practices.

Given her title, I’m sure that York has dedicated a great amount of time to analyzing the carbon footprint of different decisions. However, many of her unsupported claims in the article fly in the face of how Casey and I understand what we’re trying to do as farmers (and presumably what you’re trying to do as eaters).

The big claim that irked us was that eating local food isn’t really that important after all. What? Huh? The article went on to quote York discussing the ‘mode’ of transportation and later quoted her at length about efficiency in farming scale:

Stacked up against California’s huge agricultural system, buying vegetables from a Willamette Valley farmer isn’t as energy efficient, York says. “Products that are grown efficiently in large fields in the Central Valley,” says York, “can be trucked up to Oregon in great quantities, using a fairly efficient truck … The same quantity could be produced by 50 small farmers in Oregon who all drive inefficient trucks and bring relatively small amount of produce to farmers markets.”

Woah. There are a lot of broad claims here without any specific evidence.

First of all, what does “efficient” mean and to whom? There is the illusion of efficiency in big agriculture, because it is often far less labor dependent than smaller acreage. But, more often than not that labor is traded for fuel use (and consequently polluting emissions).

Also, the larger the acreage on one farm and in one crop, the lower the yields per acre — period. Yields per acre and size of farm are inversely proportional. Even on our small scale, we can see that.

Secondly, if it is going to be contrasted with the Willlamette Valley, we have to address the nature of agriculture in California. Agriculture in California is highly subsidized: through land, water, and marketing.

Water alone is a huge issue in California. The Central Valley is a desert that is being irrigated with stolen water. As a consequence of the intense irrigation schedules (and lack of natural leaching rainfall), the soils are quickly being salinized. On many farms, you can actually see salt crusting on the surface of the soil. Because of the salinization, build up of plant diseases and other agricultural problems, the Central Valley soils are on track to become unusable within our lifetime. And, the water to irrigate is being diverted from other watersheds and greatly affecting those ecosystems. I can’t even begin to explain just how not sustainable big agriculture is in California. (For the most part — there are large organic farms that are truly committed to changing things, but the vast majority of the acreage is not in their hands.) For a more thorough discussion of California’s water supply, read Cadillac Desert.

So, again I ask: what does York mean by “efficiency” in this context? Certainly it might appear more efficient to consider large semi-truck trailers filled with nothing but lettuce — but let us think about this further. How many restaurants, grocery stores, food services, and individuals need an entire semi-load of lettuce at once? Very few. Therefore, even though the lettuce might traveling the bulk of the distance in one truck, it soon gets parceled out into many different trucks and shipped all over the state. Plus, since we’re talking about fresh vegetables in this scenario, all of those vehicles and storage facilities will need to be refrigerated — in most cases for a week or two before the lettuce finally reaches its final destinations.

The final claim is perhaps the most bothersome, because it makes some very broad and vague claims about vegetable growers here in the Willamette Valley. Yes, it would probably take 50 small growers to grow all the lettuce grown on one vastly large Central Valley farm, but that is probably a good thing. Diversity is one of the keys to sustainable farm health. Growing one crop on hundreds of contiguous acres creates a perfect environment for pests to thrive, requiring heavy amounts of spraying to combat. Instead, smaller growers can rely on diversity and crop rotation to foster a healthy system.

Also, since when do all small farmers “drive inefficient trucks”? This claim is particularly vague and slanderous. Our Isuzu NPR (the truck of choice for many Willamette Valley market gardeners) gets 13 mpg on country roads (better on the freeway), and we run it on B20 (a 20/80 biodiesel blend that reduces polluting emissions by 80%). All our produce is driven 13 miles to its destination. That’s it.

Additionally, since when do all small farmers bring “relatively small amounts of produce to market”? Every farmer I know strives to bring as much produce as possible, in order to “efficiently” use the expensive space in their truck and booth. Of course, what that looks like varies with scale. Some growers are bringing up to $8,000 worth of produce in their packed box trucks; and others are bring $400 worth of produce in their packed Subaru hatchback. But, these farmers are typically driving enough produce to market to feed hundreds of people in a vehicle that typically gets the same gas mileage as the vehicles consumers are driving to the very same market. Often they are driving farther than their customers, but I’d wager that the fuel used by the farmer’s vehicle is a still a drop in the bucket compared to all the visitors to markets.

Also, small growers can also work through the “efficient” distribution streams that York seems to favor. We know of farms as small as five acres that sell produce through OGC (Organically Grown Company) — a local, farmer-owned organic-only distributor. In other words, small farms can and do effectively tap into some of the large efficient distribution channels too while still retaining the benefits of being small: increased yields, diversity, and improved farm health.

So, obviously this article struck a nerve with us. The easy dismissal of small farms in the Willamette Valley was disturbing, because it was vague and unfounded — plus it ignored the hard work these small growers do towards being efficient and sustainable as well.

Finally, I was especially dismayed and surprised that the word ‘organic’ was not used in the article even once. You’d hardly even know that organic farms exist reading this article, let alone that they are making great strides towards reducing agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuel and consequently reducing the emissions involved in producing in food.

Because of the values inherent in their growing choices, organic farmers often think about sustainability in many parts of their operation. Efficiency is important for reducing carbon footprint, but there are often steps that can be taken towards sustainability that might cost farmers more money. For example: using biodiesel in place of petrol diesel. Biodiesel costs more right now, but for us — and many other organic growers — it is worth the extra cost to know that we are significantly reducing the emissions of our machinery and vehicles.

Ultimately, I’m sure that York knows a ton about the subject. But, I also get the sense that her analyses are biased towards the needs of a food service company that operates on 400 campus across the country. From that unique perspective small growers undoubtedly seem less efficient than large growers working through the larger distribution channels. And, it’s almost certainly not efficient for food buyers on these campuses to work with countless small growers rather than a few distributors.

But for consumers, to whom the article was directed, buying locally from small farmers can be as functionally efficient as any other method of purchasing. Farmers markets today offer such a wide array of food choices. A market shopper hardly needs to visit a grocery store at all — perhaps just every few weeks to buy bulk ingredients for the pantry. CSAs also continue to offer a streamlined purchasing option: a week’s worth of fresh vegetables in one stop. Pick up your veggies on the way to the grocery store, and you’re set for the week! That’s a very different scenario than trying to purchase food to feed 3,000+ people.

So, that’s the food for thought this week. I think the lesson is that we all see the complex problem of global warming from our own perspectives. As we continue working towards solutions, I hope that we can share ideas and thoughts between those perspectives. But, I would also hope that as we do so, we can make claims based clearly on evidence that takes into account many different factors of sustainability, including: energy use, polluting emissions, social impact, political context, long-term feasibility, and economics.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla