FooD Access and Farms as Hope

It's spring, and the CHUM Food Shelf in Duluth is fund-raising for its innovative CSA program.  The food shelf raises money every year to purchase CSA shares from area farmers, and then distributes that produce to families in need.  Let me tell you why this is amazing, and why we can take some hope from farms in these turbulent times.

Having access to healthy food helps reduce stress and fend off all the diet-related health issues that make our life-spans shorter than the last generation of Americans.  Farmers are wired to feed people, but we are generally doing everything with almost nothing, and need partners to help improve our ability to offer food at a price low-income people can pay while we still make a livelihood.

Here's a radical proposal: what if farms were community farms?  What if each community raised the capital to provide a fair living to farmers? (Because that's not the reality in America right now, and which is why HALF of all farm workers are undocumented.). I have spent the last twenty years living on less than a minimum wage because I believe strongly in building food systems for the future, and I have the freedom in my life, by living modestly,  to develop a system that will work.  (More on that in a minute.)  But what if, going forward, food sovereignty and food security were tied to fair trade?  Or, even better, what if food was not a commodity, but a community good?  A right, defended by the economic decisions of each region?

There are great examples of this right now in tribal food sovereignty projects all over the U.S., where the tribes pay farm coordinators to grow the food that is shared in the tribe.  This model should be everywhere and provides a completely alternate system to the U.S. agro-economic industrial formula.

What CHUM in Duluth is doing is the first step towards this kind of future of mutualism.  Farmers are paid for their CSA shares in full, and this gives us the freedom and security to keep experimenting and keep growing. 

Specifically, on my farm, CHUM's support of my CSA, in addition to the support of all my CSA members, has let me focus on three things: solo farming, stability, and stewardship.

I have spent the last two decades developing a model of solo farming where I do all the work.  Over the years I've seen lots of farm workers have a hard time going from the large farms where they learned farming, to figuring out how to start their own farm.  Large farms have a capital overhead that's very challenging to replicate.  We need more models of small farms with easier up-front investment plans.  Additionally, more farm business owners in a region also means more civic engagement -- a more active community that comes to decisions that support everyone in the community.

There are excellent newer models out there that show a modest income on a small scale, but what happens in the next pandemic or other disaster when supply chains are again disrupted and inputs like fertilizer and compost and plastic are less available?  Or floods or droughts threaten production?  I have been working on a model of a low-input small farm that also is diversified enough that nature is my crop insurance.  I talk in other blogs about my interconnected system, and the pieces I still have to figure out.  The main point here is that the CSA model, and CHUM's investment in my farm allow me to keep experimenting with this while growing quality food.

Lastly, CHUM's support of my small farm means I also have the support I need to continue innovating on environmental stewardship.  I have been able to implement no-till practices on most of my farm, preserving soil structure and thus drought tolerance and nutritious veggies.  My farm is a bird sanctuary.  The creek that runs through the corner of my land runs clean.  And pollinators thrive on the range of flowers and insects that live in my production areas.

CHUM's CSA program is the leading edge of what's possible when a community comes together around food access in addition to local self-reliance.  If you would like to support their work, you can donate to them here:  www.chumduluth.org/waystogive