Farming Renaissance
The following article appeared in the Summer 2009 Piedmont View.
Brian Walden and Mihr Wishingrad, who are raising canola on their Albemarle County farm, took part in PEC's first Exploring the Small Farm Dream course.
--Photo by Rose Jenkins
The Piedmont Farm and Food Connection helps bring a new vitality to local agriculture.
PEC's newest Buy Fresh Buy Local guides are out, and this year they're going to every home in our nine county region-about 240,000 homes!
PEC now produces Buy Fresh Buy Local guides for the Charlottesville Area, the Northern Piedmont and Loudoun County, and is a partner on the Northern Shenandoah Valley guide. Although there are 73 Buy Fresh Buy Local chapters across America (coordinated by Food Routes), PEC is the only organization that distributes the guides for free to every household. As a result, our Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign is significantly boosting the momentum of the local food movement in our area. In a survey of producers listed in PEC's 2008 guides, 90% reported that their customers mentioned the guide and over 50% said they have seen an increase in sales since being listed.
But linking more customers with local farms is just part of PEC's larger vision of keeping the Piedmont an agricultural region where small farms can thrive.
Statistics show that the agriculture industry in Virginia is losing ground-literally. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, between 2002 and 2007, 500,000 acres of farmland were either developed or taken out of production. And the average age of farmers-currently at 59-is growing steadily older.
But, rapidly growing interest in local food offers an encouraging counter-trend. One recent study shows that 17% of American adults buy local food as often as possible, while another 30% are "aspiring locals" who would buy more local food if they knew where to find it. Already, in the last five years, the number of farmers markets in Virginia has doubled. Farms that sell to local customers get a larger share of our food dollar, meaning that more farms can stay in business, more farmland stays in production and local economies see the benefit.
But, the local food movement can go only so far if farmers aren't producing enough to meet that demand, if communities lack infrastructure for processing local food, if large-scale purchasers can't buy local, if too much farmland is lost to development, or if would-be farmers lack access to land because it's too expensive. So, PEC is working to address these challenges through a network of programs we call the Piedmont Farm and Food Connection-an extension of our 37-year tradition of preserving farmland.
Cliff Miller of Mount Vernon Farm near Sperryville is one of many people involved in the local food movement to observe, "Demand is not the problem. Supply is the problem." As he sees it, customers are interested enough to buy all the food that farmers have to sell locally-and then some.
But a farmer who reorients his or her business to meet local demand is taking a considerable risk. To help aspiring local food entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities and risks, PEC collaborated with the Local Food Project at Airlie and with experienced local farmers (including Mr. Miller) to host this area's first Exploring the Small Farm Dream course last fall. The course was fully enrolled with 26 students who ranged in age from their early 20s to their mid 60s, exploring plans that ranged from supplying a local food bank to raising honeybees and sheep. Now, during the growing season, some of these plans are taking root.
Brian Walden and Mihr Wishingrad travelled from their farm south of Charlottesville to attend the four-session course in Warrenton.
The young couple, who welcomed their first baby in May, are starting to raise grain and oilseed crops on the 90-acre farm where Mr. Walden grew up. "Two of the hardest things to find locally are grains and oils," Mr. Walden says. "Nobody provides them. This is small, but it could get big." They recently acquired a set of milling equipment that had been out of use, since no one in the area was operating a mill. They're also pursuing a plan to network with other farmers-rotating crops among their fields and cooperating on milling, marketing and distribution. These collaborations could streamline work and cut costs, helping them to achieve their goal of selling grains and flour at affordable prices, so ordinary people can eat bread that originates in local fields.
Mr. Walden says the Exploring the Small Farm Dream course was useful because it gave them the chance to learn from established local farmers and because it provided a structure for organizing their thoughts, working toward a business plan.
Ms. Wishingrad says. "One thing we took away from the course is to find that starting place and grow from there."
This spring, on part of their 90 acres, they were growing a field of canola that bloomed glowing yellow, with wooded Blue Ridge foothills as a backdrop. But much of their farm is too hilly for grain crops, so they were also preparing a field to grow wheat on their neighbors' land.
While their neighbors are not farmers, they want to see their land used for agriculture-an arrangement that gives them the benefit of careful stewardship by farmers they trust, spares them maintenance tasks and offers some financial advantages.
This spring, PEC helped more landowners explore the possibility of partnering with farmers, through our Hosting the Small Farm Dream seminars. About 90 people participated in the seminars, where they heard from landowners and farmers currently in creative tenure arrangements
The start of the growing season, always a busy time for farmers, also saw a lot of activity in PEC's food-and-farm programs. This spring, PEC sponsored the Virginia Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship Program, and we produced our first Farmer-Chef Express directory. The directory lists the local products chefs are looking for and those farmers are selling, offers guidelines for doing business with each other and provides contact information for over 100- farms and restaurants.
PEC also helped to get the Local Food Hub, in Charlottesville, off the ground this spring. PEC serves as a fiscal agent for the Local Food Hub, a new non-profit whose services include linking small farms with large buyers, like grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Many of these large buyers are interested in local foods, but don't find it practical to arrange purchases with an assortment of small farms. The Local Food Hub removes logistical obstacles by coordinating large orders and by providing liability insurance, refrigerated warehouse space, a refrigerated truck and centralized pick-up and delivery. The Local Food Hub will also facilitate contributions of local food to the Blue Ridge Food Bank and coordinate a network of volunteers. The second phase of the project will include an FDA-inspected commercial kitchen, where people can produce value-added goods from local farm products.
Kate Collier, the founding director of the Local Food Hub, says, "Our main goal is to have most of the food we eat locally grown locally and to solidify farming as a viable profession, so we can get a younger generation involved in it, so we can continue to have food grown here."
