The West's Farm to School Assembly

Last Friday I attended the Western Region Assembly for Farm to School, hosted by the lovely Michelle Ratcliffe at Ecotrust in Portland, OR. She/Ecotrust serve as the western region lead for the National Farm to School Network.

Sound like another boring meeting? NOPE! This was truly inspiring and exciting—more like a party than a meeting! First of all, many states arrived with GOOD NEWS! (Watch out San Francisco - we want to be cutting edge, but we are SO behind the times!) Representatives from Oregon, Washington and Montana shared new policies that they have passed in support of school gardens and farm-to-school programs. Their states are MAKING IT HAPPEN! Students are learning to love veggies by growing their own food, and school cafeterias are serving products grown and prepared fresh from their local farms, while strengthening the local economy at the same time. We even got to taste some local school food. Yum!

The major theme of the meeting was, with all this energy and forward momentum, how do we "think like a region" and support each other to make our efforts even stronger and more impacting! Any thoughts, all you westerners?

Also, I finally met in person many of my role models, like Rose Hayden-Smith of Victory Gardens fame, and Sandy Curwood, Director of Food Services for the Ventura public schools (who has made huge strides in getting local farms' fresh food into the school cafeterias!). Plus I spent time with many other amazing Farm-to-Schoolers representing California, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. San Francisco was quite conspicuously missing, while Davis, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles were out in full force!

For a great overview of the research to date in support of school gardens and farm to school programs follow these links. (If anyone tells you it's not working, don't believe em!!)

And, join our new Facebook group to keep in touch! Props to everyone who is creating the Farm to School revolution!

Urban Sprouts is Starting a Chicken Coop!

Urban Sprouts is starting a chicken coop in collaboration with June Jordan Small School for Equity! The coop is a wonderful way to learn about where eggs come from and how they are produced. It is also a wonderful opportunity to explore chicken diversity, biology and to understand how chickens fit into garden and farm ecology.

Just yesterday the chicks arrived! The Urban Sprouts Program Manager has a coop of her own and they chicks are being fostered at her urban farm in sunny Oakland until they are old enough to be moved to their new coop home. Some interesting notes to take on keeping chicks, straw is too difficult for them to walk on. Their tiny wings and feet get caught and they tend to fall over. Ground corn cob works better. Also, we located an excellent source for all things fowl: Concord Feed. They carry the exact feeders and water containers and other supplies needed for tiny babies. The staff there is also very knowledgeable about livestock. For now the little peeps will grow strong in their chick hut.

Food class visits Small Farm

Yesterday the June Jordan Food class took a trip to Hidden Villa ranch, an educational organic farm and ranch. As we drove by the farm fields near the ranch's entrance, a student yelled out, "Look! It's just like the small farms we learned about!" As in, small farms versus industrial farms. I was happy.

Another student had attended summer camp at Hidden Villa recently, at the program for 11-14 year olds. Mr. Olsson (pictured with cow) and I were both counselors there back in the olden days.

It turned out our group had a lot of knowledge of this place to share! We visited the cows, pigs, goats, sheep and chickens. We laughed a lot at animal antics! We walked in the woods and a student pointed out a banana slug! The garden was full of food crops, and gave us many ideas for crops to grow back at school.


The baby animals were the CUTEST!! Most of all, we were excited to visit the chickens, to get ideas about our own chickens who will soon move in at June Jordan. First we have lots of work to do to get ready! The chicken coop at Hidden Villa, with its peek-a-boo nesting boxes, gave us some great ideas.


Click on the last photo to see more!

Urban Farming Gains Attention

San Francisco Chronicle's March 22nd paper featured a series of articles on urban farming. The many innovative approaches to growing food in an urban setting, such as school gardens, appear to be attracting the attention of city planners. The series ends with an invitation to us readers to share our own thoughts on urban farming with the Chronicle's Kitchen Gardener. Email them and share!

Farm Field Trip in Salinas

Last Friday the June Jordan Food class took a field trip! We had a fabulous time visiting ALBA, the Agriculture and Land-based Training Association in Salinas, CA.

ALBA offers a training program in organic farming that helps limited-resource farmers and farmworkers to manage their own sustainable farm buisnesses. Very inspiring. ALBA Organics is the marketing and distrubtion arm, that sells produce through a CSA and wholesale distributor.

Our farm guide, Karina, a farmer from Peru, explained to us how the farm operates and the farming methods used. We walked on a road that forms the border between ALBA and the neighboring conventional/industrial farms.

To our left, conventional/industrial farms spread out for miles, as far as the eye could see, most of them dusty brown and empty of any crops (because it is March).
To our right, ALBA farmers' organic plots were lined with hedgerows of flowering trees and shrubs buzzing with insect life, and the fields were colorful rows with a diversity of crops, like ruffly purple lettuces, spiky green onions, and even some shiny red strawberries!
Karina showed us how ALBA uses hedgerows and interplantings (flowers planted directly in the rows among the crops) to attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and parasitic wasps that eat or kill the "bad bugs" that eat the tasty crops. The contrast was obvious - ALBA's hedgerows were the only trees or shurbs for miles in any direction. ALBA looked like an oasis surrounded by the desert of endless dusty brown conventional fields.

When our group spotted some shiny red strawberries, they went running . . . straight into the muddy rows that made some serious shoe-cleaning necessary later on. Anyway, we enjoyed the delicious fruit.

Our group visited the farm's cooler and distribution shed, where small trucks arrive to load up and take the crops to market. We ran into an old friend of Urban Sprouts, Martin Bournhonesque, who was packing up his famous arugula and other veggies to take to San Francisco's best restaurants and grocery stores (like Bi-Rite Market and NoPa Restaurant, also friends of Urban Sprouts!). Martin gave us a bag of fresh greens to eat on our sandwiches at lunch.
Our last stop was to visit the chickens, and then we got back in the car for the long trip home. It was great to get out of the city and have fun together in such a beautiful place! More pictures HERE.
organic farm
Salinas

Big vs. Small Farms: who wins?

For the last unit of the Food! class at June Jordan we compared the economics behind large industrial farms and small organic farms in the US. Our project may not be completely scientific, but it was extremely interesting.

We compared USDA data for the average "large" US farm - definied as a farm with over $250,000 of income. The USDA says there are 151,000 large farms in the US - this makes up 7% of all the farms, but 59% of all farm production. That means a small number of big farms are growing most of our food.

Then, we called up a small organic family farm to see how they measured up. Small farms (income is less than $250,000) make up 90% of all US farms. But organic farms are less than 1% of all farms - there are only 8,000 certified organic farms in the US.

So, we compared the annual financial statement for a large farm and a small, organic farm. Here is what we found.

	Large Farm	Small Organic Farm
Total Income	$1.4 million	$76,800
Net Profit	$200,000	$32,000
Amount of Government direct payment	$95,000	$5,000
Profit Margin	14%	42%
% of Costs spent on Fertility	7% (fertilizers and pesticides)	3% (compost)
% of Costs spent on Labor	8%	26%

What do you think? Which is more productive?

Where would you rather raise a family? The small, organic farm is eating all its own food, and trading for other foods the family doesn't grow. The large farm eats less than 1% of its own food - most of what it produces is only good for animals to eat or to be processed.

Pictures of another small farm by Farmgirl of the wonderful Farmgirl Fare.

P.S. Read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma to learn more about industrial farm production and small-scale farming.

industrial farm
small-scale farm
organic farm