Young farmers, Water, and Instability

This bright and beautiful morning finds me hiding as best I can from the rays of sunlight just brimming over the Sangre de Cristos Mountains.  The sun's intensity through the house's panoramic windows happens each day and we all attempt to avoid the blinding affect it has for about 30 minutes each morning.  This morning I am alone on the ranch except for the bovines, horses, and four furry house creatures.  My tea is steeping and I'm pondering water, the young farmer movement and all the instability we face as a nation and a world.  I cannot solve much of the worlds problems or heal the fear that is rampet, but all in all I have been considering how I am a part of it.

I chatted with my father yesterday and our conversation moved towards how to feed ourselves.  I had been reading a short article on how Wal-Mart, since 2010, has been attempting to increase the percentage of local produce that is found in their USA stores.  They pledged by 2015 to have their national sales be at nine percent.  It happens that as of today their sales are at 11 percent.  Good for them, I guess.  The thesis of this article was more on the fact that small local producers cannot cash in on Wal-Mart's local movement. (Some would say local = small medium producers not just giants). Wal-Mart has many hoops a producer must jump through (federal regulations--nothing wrong with that to a point) for them to even be able to sell in the stores.  Often small/family owned operations have a heck of a time keeping up with the necessary bureaucratic paper work that qualifies whether a floor or truck was washed out after each use, etc.  The real hang up for many small producers and even middle sized, is the issue of year round supply.  Wal-Mart and many other large grocery chains want a dependable year-round supply of one single variety of produce.  Trouble, eh? The producer either must grow enough and place the produce in cold or CO2 suppressed storage and then retrieve it throughout the year for the store.  Now, that in many ways is how our agricultural system supplies us year round, but for small and medium producers the cost of storage is often on the backs of the producer.  Cash flowing storage has the potential to put the nail in the coffin.  I'm not well enough informed to know about the cost of storing peppers, tomatoes, or cabbage in storage, but I do know from the beef side, if your storage is not conveniently placed for a distribution route it can hinder and double your cost of getting the goods to the store, effectively killing your profit margin. 

What I would like to get at is the fact that if "Sally" is going to eat local produce, she should also understand that tomatoes do not typically grow or are picked in the month of December (unless you live in the American Southwest or near Mexico).  As consumers we must be conscious of agriculture's rhythms and cycles.  If we are going to go out and eat locally from our neighbors, we should remember not to ask for tomatoes in April, but for peas and Kale (yeah, yeah...some producers are able to raise tomatoes in April, but they have to have a hot house for most regions of the US).  Now, this needs to trickle back up to the executives and produce managers at national stores. 

I'll conclude with my current modus operadi: We need to all grow some of our food.  Let that be a pot (or a few) with soil and lettuce greens.  Or a 100 square foot section of yard that has a diversity of greens, brassicas, beans, cucumbers, etc.  Or for the real green thumb, a whole backyard of multiple beds with a crop rotation.  Along with growing it, preserving some of it is also important.  Neighborhood canning parties, eh?

Thank Y'all. I'll have to write later about young farmers and water. 

Wal-Mart Story:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/04/171051906/can-small-farms-benefit-from-wal-mart-s-push-into-local-foods

Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away;
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).