Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Colorsa cabbage — This is a beautiful red savoy cabbage with a great flavor. It’s delicious cooked or chopped fine for a slaw.
- Carrots — Jeff sorted through all of our carrots to find you the prettiest ones this week. From here on out, they’ll get uglier (until spring of course).
- Parsnips
- Rutabaga
- German butterball potatoes
- Winter squash — This is the last of the 2010 winter squash!
- Red onions
- Garlic
Every year at this time, I joke that I have a brief love affair with Libertarian political ideals. Can you guess what inspires this shift in my personal politics? This is when I prepare our tax returns and write a big fat check for all the taxes we owe!
This year we owed a lot of money. As farmers, owing a lot of money in taxes is really a good sign for our business. We will always owe some money, seeing as how we don’t have employers to take it out of our paychecks for us, but this year it was more than ever because our spending on infrastructure finally slowed way down in 2010.
Actually, as we neared the end of 2010, we were getting nervous about how much money we had in our accounts and were weighing our options: Should we try to spend it to lighten our tax burden? Or, should we put it in savings for ourselves? (So far, we’ve only ‘paid’ ourselves a basic amount to pay for our ongoing living expenses — the idea of saving money for our family was pretty radical after years of reinvesting everything in the farm!)
In the end, we held on to it, which has turned out to be good now that we’re buying the land next-door. That money will make up the bulk of our down payment. But, of course, that meant we owed about four times as much in self-employment and income taxes as we did the year before! Ouch!
That little ‘Libertarian streak’ has had me looking more critically at the government’s role in our lives, especially as farmers. I remember a time when I described farming as being a ‘relatively unregulated industry.’ While it’s true that a farmer can ‘open shop’ without obtaining very many permits or licenses up front, I think this assessment was fairly naïve.
Casey and I entered farming from the side door — or, maybe even from the rickety forgotten door in the far backyard. We don’t do things the way they are done in most of American agriculture today.
As young entrepreneurs, we started our farm with some very basic knowledge about how to grow healthy vegetables, some big visions for marketing, a savings account, and a whole lot of empowerment. It never occurred to us five years ago to consider asking: “How is this typically done?” “Who should we ask for help?” “Who can give us money?” “What government agencies should we check in with?”
With the exception of the Oregon Department of Water Resources and Oregon Tilth Certified Organic, we were blissfully unaware of what other government resources even existed for farmers.
Over the years we’ve had more exposure to how ‘other’ traditional farmers operate — in a world much less independent than our own. We’ve learned how food safety concerns have led processors to mandate certain handling practices for their farms. We’ve learned about crop insurance and subsidies. We’ve learned about Farm Services Agency crop records. We’ve learned about farm extension services, farm consultants and spray schedules.
In short, we’ve learned about the various public and private helps that are used regularly by the majority of farmers in America. There is so much we didn’t know about (or only had the vaguest notions regarding).
Knowing what we know today, would we have done things differently five years ago when starting our farm? Probably not.
We have friendly professional relationships with a few great extension agents who can help us find answers to sometimes obscure questions. But, with a few exceptions, these helping voices are not farmers and do not have the day-to-day experiences of managing a profitable farm business. Ultimately, we’ve found the best resources for accurate, helpful information (and sometimes even hands-on help) has consistently been other farmers.
We’re fortunate to have a great community of organic farmers here in Oregon, who are open and willing to share business and growing information in the spirit of mutual betterment. In fact, this next weekend we will be heading to Breitenbush Hot Springs to talk shop with dozens of such farmers over an inspiring two-day event.
We have been less inspired lately with our further experiences with the government’s role in our farm life. A few recent negative experiences of note for us: the USDA approved the growing of genetically modified alfalfa and re-approved the planting of GM sugar beets (in spite of an ongoing lawsuit by some Oregon organic seed growers).
We’ve also been frustrated as we work through the loan application process for our land purchase. We were initially hoping to get a loan through the Farm Service Agency/USDA with great terms and were feeling great about the prospect of working with the government. But then we received news that the USDA funds have run dry.
And, so, instead we’re working on getting commercial loans that are ‘FSA guaranteed’ (so I guess the government is like our ‘co-signer’?), meaning that we still have to fill out the bewildering paperwork from the FSA. The logic of some questions had even the ladies at the FSA office stumped!
Finally, I had the basic realization recently that Casey and I run our business as free market entrepreneurs. Our farm receives almost no subsidies from the government (one exception being a partial cost-share reimbursement for our organic certification fees — but this program is constantly in a fluxing state of funding, making it inconsistent), and we operate our business with the goal of being profitable based on actual sales and market demand (the notion of a consistently profitable farm really is ‘innovative’ and ‘far out’ in American agriculture today!).
However, because we price our vegetables ‘fairly’ (i.e. to cover actual costs, including our time and labor), we fall into the category of food that gets labeled ‘elite’ by some critics. There is a strong ‘anti-foodie’ movement afoot in America, with the main criticism being that not everyone can afford to buy and eat quality food (which in of itself is a travesty!). While that may be a partially true statement, it hides the reality of the situation: poor quality food is heavily subsidized by our government through the Farm Bill. Farmers receive subsidies for producing commodity crops at scales that drop the prices tremendously for food processors.
This is something I’ve known for quite some time now, but what hit home for me just recently is that Casey and I are competing in a rigged economic system. Our food will always be more expensive, simply because we are playing a completely different game than the farmers who grow the crops destined to become convenience foods.
If this newsletter so far is reading like a random list of angsty complaints, that’s probably because it is. Even though I’m making a joke of my ‘Libertarian leanings,’ I don’t necessarily think there is an easy answer of less or more government. Clearly, in each of these scenarios, the situation is different and unique. But, to me, the clear trend of influence is (intentional or not) the encouragement of a kind of farming that is heavy on resources and the land and not terribly profitable for the farmers themselves. As small scale farmers who aim to be sustainable in all senses (for the land, for the community, for our own family’s livelihood), it’s frustrating to see this scenario play out again and again in the public and private systems surrounding mainstream farming.
Interestingly, even with a vastly uneven playing field, Oakhill Organics is holding its own. (Clearly, based on our 2010 tax returns!) Knowing what we know today, Casey and I are extremely grateful for the back-of-the-yard gate through which we entered farm. We are grateful to be free to farm in the ways we perceive to be best. We are grateful to be free to make a modest living while still providing what we think are actually quite affordable vegetables.
So, where do these realizations leave my politics? That’s my own private journey to travel. But even though government intervention in agriculture overall leaves a slightly rotten taste in my mouth (the taste of cheap, poor quality food!), there are good things happening too (including potentially our FSA-backed loan!).
Also, two weeks ago, Casey and I were guest speakers at a fantastic course for new and aspiring farmers put on by the OSU extension service. We’ve spoken at the course three years in a row, and the energy in the room is always inspiring — people are excited to farm, and the extension service is helping them get their feet on the ground. I want to be a part of that.
See you in two weeks (we get a week off for our Breitenbush trip!). Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
