It is somewhat amusing to see the Wall Street Journal cover this topic.  After all, they are the paper of Wall Street, which I imagine has a “look down the nose” attitude about the people who grow food for a living, especially small-scale farmers who don’t use giant machines or buy inputs from Fortune 500 companies.   Perhaps I need to get over a prejudice?

 

Check out what this reporter did…and on page A1 to boot:

 

Green Acres II:
When Neighbors
Become Farmers

Suburban Arugula Is
Organic and Fresh, but
About That Manure...

By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882472974233235.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

 

Not bad!  The people doing this work are good looking, young, suburbanites.  Probably makes it more palatable to the readers because they can relate to them. 

 

The music on the video included at the web site, however, is kinda hill-billyish.  I enjoy banjos and blue grass myself, but don’t know any farmers of the generation depicted who listen to it regularly.  If more young farmers are needed, it might be better to associate them with rock stars instead. 

 

I appreciated the coverage of the SPIN farming method:  http://www.spinfarming.com/

 

It is great that there is now a marketed entry path to farming in urban/suburban areas.  I would like to point out where SPIN differs from what we are advocating in the Energy Farm Program.  The article explains:

 

Start-up costs for a one-eighth-acre farm run about $5,500, says Ms. Christensen of Spin-Farming. That includes a walk-in cooler to wash and store fresh produce, a rotary tiller and a farm-stand display. Annual operating expenses, including seeds and farmers-market stall fees, can add about $2,000. Such a farm can generate $10,000 to $20,000 in annual sales, she says. That's "an entry point into farming to see if they have a talent for it," Ms. Christensen says. "Those that do will eventually be able to expand and increase that income level quite substantially."

 

Where we differ is in the use of hand tools instead of rototillers, and passive cooling techniques instead of walk-in coolers requiring electricity.  Also, we would probably be more circumspect about the inputs of manure and other fertilizers and ask farmers to work on green manure cover cropping and compost making on site instead.  This is all about the need to “get off the sauce” of oil, and fossil fuels in general.  Good hand tools are incredibly efficient at the scale needed for home-scale veggies (http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1509 ).

 

The Wall Street Journal does have some great reporters.  Good going Kelly!  Too bad the editorial pages of the WSJ are full of garbage about energy and climate issues. 

Last year we developed a toolset that allowed us to clear an abandoned baseball field of perennial sod and convert it into a vegetable producing mini-farm. This petrol-free toolset included a low-wheel cultivator made by Glaser and a two-foot wide broadfork. It is quite likely that we used these tools in a more rigorous way then they were intended, (opening new land instead of working pre-established vegetable beds), yet the tools withstood hours of work with only a handful of needed repairs. After last year’s experience we consider the combination of the broadfork and the low-wheel cultivator to be an appropriate toolset for small-scale vegetable cultivation because they efficiently use manual labor in place of fossil fuel powered equipment to prepare vegetable beds.

This blog will revisit our method for preparing vegetable beds in light of the fact that we are no longer fighting against tough perennial sod, and instead, we are removing our over-winter cover crops.

Step 1: Removing Cover Crop

We use a sharp scythe to cut the cover crop off as low to the ground as possible. Once the crop has fallen we rake up the remains and cart it off as a nitrogen input to our compost piles. In the earliest part of spring, we are careful to remove only the cover-crop from the vegetable beds that we immediately plan to prepare for transplant or direct seeding. This allows the other areas of cover crop to continue growing as much as possible in the increased temperatures and daylight hours of spring.

Jason Using Sharp Scythe to Clear Cover Crop

Cover Crop Cut Close to the Ground With Scythe

Step 2: Breaking Ground

After the cover crop has been removed we are left with the gentle stubble of annual cereals and legumes. We have noticed that the loam soil is quite soft and easy to work with, and we attribute this to the fact the area we are working was established last year. A prime consideration at this stage of bed preparation is soil moisture. We want to be careful not to work the soil too wet or we will remove an unnecessary amount of soil as we cut through the stubble of the annual cover crops.

Low Wheel Cultivator Cutting Into Soil

Step 3: Loosening the Bed

After the stubble of the previous crop has been broken free from the soil, the next step is to broadfork the soil. The broadfork is two feet wide and includes five tines that sink into the soil about ten inches. It is amazing how much easier it is to broadfork the soil this season than it was last year. We have changed the width of our beds this year from 5-foot wide beds to 4-foot wide beds. This change has put us into some areas of soil that is similar to last year when we had to combat the sod. Pushing the broadfork into the previously worked sections versus the reclaimed sod sections really shows what one-years-worth of work accomplished for reducing compaction and improving aeration. Again we want to be aware of soil moisture, so that we do not smear wet soil together in the prying and lifting action of the broadfork.

Chris Sinking Broadfork into and Prying Down

Step 4: Cross-cut the sod and rake

After the bed has been forked, there are entire clumps that have been lifted and are uneven. We use the low-wheel cultivator with a 3-tine cultivator attachment to cross cut the bed and thereby remove the clumps. By the time we are finished with cross cutting we have up to five inches of loose soil on the surface which makes a good seedbed. It is also easy to transplant into the newly cross cut bed. If we intend to seed the bed we rake the surface smooth and make sure there is no trash that could interfere with the drill-seeder.

Jason Cross-Cutting Bed with Three-Tine Cultivator

We like this toolset because it clears an area of grass or cover crop and produces a vegetable bed that is suitable for direct seeding or transplant. In this method the soil remains loose and aerated up to ten inches and it does not entail the soil disruption of double digging or rototilling. By making sure to compost the soil and debris that is removed from the area in which you intend to make a bed, you make a good step toward sustainable soil management in which no soil is lost and on-site nutrients are cycled back into the beds in the form of compost.

If you are curious you can click here to check out and contrast our bed preparation method from last year.

Brookside Farm has accomplished an initial goal of getting our veggies to young children and into a local institution! North Coast Opportunities pre-school has agreed to purchase two shares from the CSA at Brookside Farm. The kitchen staff is looking forward to utilizing fresh farm produce and cooking according to the harvest season. It is exciting to see that there is demand for our produce and the goods of a Relocalized food system.

View of North Coast Opportunities Preschool

To meet the demands of the CSA, we set to work preparing our first beds in order to transplant spinach and lettuce and to direct seed onions, beets, carrots, lettuce, and parsnips. We removed cover crops with a scythe, broke the soil with the low-wheel cultivator, loosened the soil with the broadfork, and cross cut a final time with the low-wheel cultivator in order to ready vegetable beds. The following is the sowing dates and area for the crops that we direct seeded.

February 22nd Direct Sowed Sweet Peas; 66 sq. feet

March 15th Transplanted starts of Spinach (Monster of Virolat); 40 sq. feet

March 18th Direct seeded Beets (Chioga, Mixed Heirloom); 100 sq. feet

March 18th Direct seeded Onions (Allisa Craig); 120 sq. feet

March 18th Direct seeded Parsnips (The Student); 120 sq. feet

March 25th Direct Seeded Onion (Giant Zittau); 50 sq. feet

March 25th Transplanted starts of Lettuce (Mixed Varieties); 96 sq. feet

March 25th Direct seeded Carrots (Early Nantes); 100 sq. feet

March 25th Direct Seeded Lettuce (Mixed Varieties) 100 sq. feet

Direct Seeding Beets by Hand

According to our planting schedule, March was slated to be one of the most active months in the greenhouse. Lettuce, cabbage, chard, spinach, kale, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tomatillo were on the list of a scheduled 1600 starts. Unfortunately, we had poor germination on many of the starts that were seeded early in the month (kale, spinach, and cabbage). We monitored the Max-Min thermometer in the greenhouse and were noticing overnight lows in the 30 and daily highs in the 70’s. After considering what might have led to the poor germination and we finally concluded that the average soil temperatures and nighttime temperatures were too cold. We utilized the warming temperatures toward the middle of March to catch-up on the plants that did not do so well earlier in the month and continued to sow starts to remain on pace with our greenhouse schedule. By the second week of the month we had sown our peppers and tomatoes in David Drell’s greenhouse. David used electric heating mats to secure sufficiently warm germination temperatures, and by the end of the month we had excellent stands of little peppers and tomatoes awaiting transplant from their seed-flats into four-inch pots. It was amazing to see the difference between plants started with the heated soil mats and those that fended for themselves in the early part of March.

Tomatoes and Peppers in Four-Inch Pots

This month we also began a relationship with a local welder to make adjustments to our low-wheel cultivator and the broadfork. Last year we had a terrible time shearing off the bolt that connected the stirrup hoe implement to the low-wheel cultivator. Kevin, at KLR welding, suggested that he weld a small plate near the back of where the stirrup hoe connects to the frame. By adding the plate excess and needless motion has been eliminated, the implement base remains rigid, and we have significantly reduced the threat of shearing the bolt. We are also asking Kevin to weld reinforced tines onto the broadfork. This should make the tines sturdier and less apt to bend and break off as they did last year.

Glaser Hoe with Metal Block to Limit Excess Movement

Broadfork with Reinforced Tines

I saw this today, had a morbid laugh, then got pensive.

(cartoonists web site: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/cartoons.aspx#cararch)

A couple of years ago, biofuels were hot. There were the promoters touting "green" fuels, getting off "foreign oil" and helping "American farmers." A perfect set of environmental, geopolitical and populist allies created a basket of incentives to boost corn-based ethanol production.

A few of us were decrying this as bad policy. The net energy of ethanol was around break even, so it couldn't be climate neutral or help with oil dependency. The rise in food prices would impact the poor around the world, causing much pain and unrest that could destabilize nations. And American farmers would go through another painful boom-bust cycle rather than transition to a sustainable agriculture system that is realistic about energy constraints.

Other issues are exposed by this fiasco. Why is it that so many people ARE dependent on cheap, often imported grains (especially in Africa)? Some have ridiculed the local food movement for potentially depriving farmers in the developing world of their markets in the wealthy nations. But if these developing nations are ones who can't feed themselves, shouldn't we ask if it might be better for them to focus on food self-sufficiency rather than production for export? Especially if our energy and financial policies can cut them off from our food so blithely.

Take a look at not only corn in the fuel tank, but coffee, tea, coconuts, palm oil, cane sugar, papayas, bananas, out of season vegetables, etc. All these tropical products may be produced in places dependent upon trade for money that is used to buy imported staples such as grains. What if they decided to relocalize instead? Would they be better off?

As crude oil reaches record highs of $110 a barrel, the connection between the cost of food and the rise in energy prices can no longer be ignored. In a recent statement, Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN's World Food Program, said the global economy had created "a perfect storm for the world's hungry, caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks." Sheeran continues, “Higher food prices will increase social unrest in a number of countries which are sensitive to inflationary pressures and are import-dependent. We will see a repeat of the riots we have already reported on the streets such as we have seen in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal."

Sheeran notes that food prices have been aggressively increasing to historic highs and cites four major drivers for this:

1. The rise in oil and energy prices which affect the entire value chain of food production from fertilizer to harvesting to storage and delivering and access to water;

2. The economic boom in nations such as India and China, creating increased demand for all commodities including food and forcing China, which was a major food exporter just a little more than one year ago, to now being an importer of food;

3. Increasingly harsh and frequent climatic shocks like hurricanes, floods and drought, have made for some bad harvests in particular regions like Australia and regions of Africa;

4. The shift to increased biofuel production that has diverted hundreds of millions of metric tons of agricultural output out of the food chain, and has caused food prices to be set at fuel price levels in many places, including, for example, palm oil in Africa which is now being priced out of household reach because it is being set at fuel prices as a biofuel addition.

On the energy front, Sheeran's claim is supported by recent reports coming from farms across the globe. Although farmers appear to enjoy record commodity prices, the recent spikes in the cost of fertilizer and fuel are eroding gains. Not only has the price of nitrogen fertilizer risen 113% since 2000, but also potash has risen from $225 a ton to nearly $500 a ton and increasingly scarce phosphate has gone from $312 to between $800 and $900 a ton this year. The ingredients of these fertilizers are often imported to the United States from other countries and these resources are mined and processed using markedly energy-intensive processes that consume diesel and natural gas.

In other news, the world’s largest poultry processor closed a U.S. processing plant-cutting 1, 100 jobs. The processor blames record feed prices and U.S. ethanol policy for the current industry-wide crisis. Even if you are a vegetarian, the implication of this news is still hard to hear, as it is illustrates the fact that agribusiness is designed to grow food in a way that creates high profit. Once the profit margin is challenged the corporate producers of food may simply quit the job of growing food.

These trends should be clear indicators to all of us to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources and begin to support those that are willing and capable of producing food, fuel, and organic fertilizer close to where we live. Click here to see if there is a CSA or farm in your area.

 

Winter is the time for making plans for the main growing season. While the sometimes frenetic activity of a farm is invigorating, I really enjoyed the time to study and think for the past few months. January was filled with bouts of mouth-watering pleasure when considering which peppers and melons to eat in August.

One of my main projects was developing detailed plans for what to put in the ground when, and the natural implications for preparing of beds, distributing finished and building new compost, space-time relationships in our little greenhouse, harvest duration, and number and varieties of seeds in stock and to be ordered. I like working with numbers and wanted a way to efficiently go through iterations and refinements of our crop plan. There are so many variables that optimizing one can cause problems elsewhere. As we explore these relationships we find compromises and end up with a plan we have confidence in—knowing that the real world will “interfere.” Plans are useful for organizing time and resources, and signaling to us when we are ahead or behind, but we also know that a change of course may be needed if new information demands it.

Attached below is a spreadsheet file with many linked pages. Each page is drawing attention to a particular issue of farm life. It starts with the decisions of what crops to grow (e.g., tomatoes), and how much of each we want (e.g., pounds per week). The amount of food can be translated into approximate areas (e.g., 200 square feet). Each plant that gets put in the ground starts as a seed, so we can estimate backwards from harvest time to seed time and therefore greenhouse space if required (e.g., tomatoes harvested in early July begin in the greenhouse in early March). When clearing an area for a vegetable crop, the cover crop sown in the fall is removed. This becomes material for compost piles that are applied a year later. Does our crop plan allow cover crops to fix enough nitrogen and produce enough carbon to make sufficient compost for our site (ca. 2600-5200 lbs per year)?

The spreadsheet is made specifically for Brookside Farm, but could readily be modified to suit farms of different sizes and locations. It is modeling the annual pattern of intensive vegetable cultivation with cover crops. If you find this useful for your situation please let us know.

 

"Can we rely on it that a ‘turning around' will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer "yes" would lead to complacency; the answer "no" to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work." E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

I would rather have titled this essay "Where the Hoe Meets the Soil" but that phrase is not part of our cultural lexicon, which is itself a symptom of the problem I am working to address. Setting aside any prolonged discussion of whether or what about the modern world should be saved, this essay is primarily about what it means to "get down to work" as Schumacher puts it. But very quickly, to me saving the modern world means setting a goal for the human economy to be properly scaled relative to the global ecology, and maintaining a sufficiency of social stability necessary to manage a transition.

 

Before getting to work, I want to make sure the work I do is useful. This is where a clear understanding of the big picture helps.

 

Ecological Economics

The question of proper economic scale is examined by the field of ecological economics. In the ecological economics model, the human economy is a subset of the Earth system, and therefore the scale of the human economy is ultimately limited. The human economy depends upon the throughput or flow of materials from and back into the Earth system. Limits to the size of the human economy are imposed by the interactions among three related natural processes:

(1) The capacity of the Earth system to supply inputs to the human economy (Sources),

(2) The capacity of the Earth system to tolerate and process wastes from the human economy (Sinks), and

(3) The negative impacts on the human economy and the resources it relies on from various feedbacks caused by too much pollution.

 

 

Fig. 1. The ecological economics model of the relationship between the human economy and the Earth system highlighting the importance of sources, sinks, feedbacks and scale.[i]

For an expanded look at the relationship between our economy and the planet see the engaging on-line film "The Story of Stuff."[ii]

One measure of whether the human economy is too large is the ecological footprint (EF), which calculates on a nation-by-nation basis the consumption of resources and the build-up of wastes relative to resource regeneration rates and the waste-absorbing capacity of the environment. According to two independent EF analyses (which I will call EF 1 and EF 2) the human economy (population plus consumption and waste generation) is in a state of overshoot, meaning it is too large relative to the long-term capacity of the planet to cope.[iii] The Earth can provide for us beyond its means for a long time before the consequences become severe, just like a millionaire can, for a time, live high on the principal in a savings account instead of the interest. The degree to which we are drawing down principal as opposed to living on interest is called our "ecological debt."

 

 

Figure 2. Change in ecological footprint over time according to EF 1 with our cumulative ecological debt in blue.[iv]

 

Getting More Specific: Fossil-fuel Depletion and Climate Change

 

Indicators like the ecological footprint are important for understanding we have a problem and giving us a sense of the scale, but they aren't very specific. In order to do something about reducing our footprint, it would help to know what is causing the ecological footprint to be so large. A significant portion of the ecological footprint represents consumption of fossil fuels and the resulting waste, mainly greenhouse gases. The "carbon" footprint component is about 52% for EF 1 and the similar "energy land" is 88% for EF 2.[v] According to EF 2, "energy land" is 93% of the North American footprint. A priority on reducing fossil fuel consumption appears justified. The human ecological footprint can be lowered below "1 Earth" only by eliminating the pollution from fossil fuel combustion.

 

EF analysis uses the capacity of the environment to absorb greenhouse gas emissions, which, as seen in the model shown in Fig. 1, means EF measures "sink" capacity. The real picture is more complex and more disturbing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, fossil fuel extraction is reaching limits sooner than expected. Since we have not been weaning our economy off fossil fuels steadily for the past few decades, rapid energy price inflation will likely make it difficult to maintain the kind of economic vitality and stability needed for a smooth transition to renewable energy alternatives. Secondly, recent evidence suggests that climate change is happening faster than expected. Ice sheet destabilization is one major indicator that the Earth system is more sensitive to greenhouse emissions than most scientists and policy-makers have presumed. Recent articles by Kurt Cobb[vi] and Richard Heinberg[vii] review all these points, and the "Climate Code Red" report[viii] goes into truly excruciating detail so I won't elaborate further here.

 

The bottom line is that every measure must be taken to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel consumption and dependency in every component of our lives. The key word is "rapidly." Don't passively assume inexpensive alternative energy substitutes will arrive to replace fossil fuels-we may have waited too long to respond to have a smooth transition. Therefore, focus most attention on reducing energy demand rather than substituting a new energy supply. And finally, in the context of ecological economics, fossil fuel depletion and climate change, ask whether what you do in your life, vocation, hobbies, and habits, contributes to the long-term function (or dysfunction) of society.

 

The U.S. Food System and Fossil Fuels

It would be hard to argue against a claim that a secure and healthy food supply is indispensable to society. A widely known and troubling fact is that the current food system in the U.S. (and most highly industrialized nations) is very dependent upon fossil fuels.

 

As far as I am aware, the most comprehensive study on the topic of energy use in the U.S. food system is by Heller and Keoleian of the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems.[ix] The report is from 2000 and makes use of data from the mid-1990s. Although the data are about 10 years old, I don't believe the basic structure and function of the U.S. food system has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. In fact, current trends of increased industrial meat consumption[x] and biofuels[xi], which both rely on grains, make the following case even stronger.

 

We learn from the study that over 10% of the energy consumption in the U.S. can be attributed to the food system, and that about 20% of this occurs in the agricultural production sector. Home energy consumption (e.g., refrigeration and cooking) consume the largest share at about 30%. Between the farm and the home are everything else (transportation, processing, packaging and retail). Much of this middle portion is a function of the geographic disconnection between production and consumption. Eating food out of season either requires long-distance transportation or energy demanding processing. Both transportation and processing require investments in storage.

 

Sorting out the proper scale of operations for farms, processing and transportation systems is very difficult, however, because optimization for one factor (e.g., transportation), may be sub-optimal for another (e.g., heat intensive food processing). Within a category, such as transportation, the technologies analyzed may be limited too. A study comparing rail cars, large semi-trucks and small produce trucks may conclude that bigger is better, but what about hyper-local transportation systems using bikes, small electric vehicles and bipedal locomotion? Another complicating issue is that studies may assume the U.S. food system should be more or less similar in its mix of products while lowering energy consumption. For example, tomatoes can be processed using canning or drying. Canning lends itself to centralized operations and so does drying if fossil fuels are used as heat sources. But a naturally decentralized and fossil-fuel free technique such as passive solar dehydration may not even be considered. Large energy savings can be found everywhere in the food system, but especially so if assumptions about scale and consumer-level demand are allowed to change.

 

Fig. 3. The energy inputs to the U.S. food system are several times larger than the energy content of the food. A life-cycle analysis identifies how energy consumption is partitioned among economic sectors.[xii]

 

Another graphic from the Heller and Keoleian report clearly identifies a huge savings potential. Over 50% of U.S. grains are fed to domestic animals, and most export grains go to animal feed as well. Overall, only 26% of U.S. grain production in 1995 went to domestic human consumption.

 

Although poultry need grains, red meat and milk products dominate the feed market and grains are not a natural part of their diets. If red meat and dairy production were reduced to only what harvested hay and pasture could provide, perhaps half of annual U.S. grain production could be eliminated. The acreage out of food production could be used for green manure crops to build soil and fix nitrogen. A 2004 Congressional Research Service report showed that fertilizers are the largest part of farm energy use, and that natural gas to produce nitrogen comprised 75-90% of the fertilizer input (Fig. 5).[xiii] Fixing nitrogen naturally, therefore, saves significant energy. Some of the vast cropland area no longer producing grains could then be used for appropriately scaled biofuels to power farm equipment instead of fossil fuels.

 

 

Fig. 4. A reprint of Fig. 3 from the Heller and Keoleian report. See graph label above.

 

Fig. 5. A reprint of Fig. 2 from a 2004 Congressional Research Service report. See graph label above.

 

An older and less comprehensive on-line review paper[xiv] titled "Energy Use in the U.S. Food System: a summary of existing research and analysis" by John Hendrickson of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, UW-Madison concluded that:

 

"It appears that some of the greatest saving can be realized by:

 

• reduced use of petroleum-based fertilizers and fuel on farms,
• a decline in the consumption of highly processed foods, meat, and sugar,
• a reduction in excessive and energy intensive packaging,
• more efficient practices by consumers in shopping and cooking at home,
• and a shift toward the production of some foods (such as fruits and vegetables) closer to their point of consumption."

 

Hendrickson's paper is helpful in republishing and comparing tables from many previous studies, including "Table 5" reprinted here on the energy consumption of home grown versus market-purchased fruit and vegetables.

 

Taking Responsibility: Brookside Farm Examples

 

With this extensive background I introduce the project I have been working on for about two years now, Brookside Farm. This is a 1-acre mini-farm in Willits, CA. It operates as a program of the non-profit corporation North Coast Opportunities, functions as a working farm with a community supported agricultural program serving 15 "shares" per year, exists at an elementary school and is therefore open to classes and tours, and conducts research and demonstrates aspects of a local food system with the collaboration and support of Post Carbon Institute.[xv]

 

Brookside Farm thinks about food from a "farm to fork" and back again perspective. Farmers create artificial ecosystems, and we therefore look to ecology to guide our practices. Highly productive and stable ecological systems are noted for a diversity of species both in kinds and functional forms. When these diverse species interact effectively, they maximize the rates of productivity and nutrient retention in the system using ambient energy sources. We view ourselves as human members of the farm ecosystem with our labor and wastes as parts of the whole.

 

To get by on ambient energy as much as possible, we have sought alternatives to fossil fuels in every aspect of the food system we participate in. Table 1 considers each type of work done on the farm, to the fork, and back again and contrasts how fossil fuels are commonly used with the technologies we have applied.

Type of Work	Common Fossil-Fuel Inputs	Alternatives Implemented
Soil cultivation	Gasoline or diesel powered rototiller or small tractor	Glazer hoe, broadfork, adze, rake and human labor
Soil fertility	In-organic or imported organic fertilizer	Growing of highly productive, nitrogen and biomass crop (banner fava beans), making aerobic compost piles sufficient to build soil carbon and nitrogen fertility, re-introducing micro-nutrients by importing locally generated food waste and processing in a worm bin, and application of compost teas for microbiology enhancement.
Pest and weed management	Herbicide and pesticide applications, flame weeder, tractor cultivation	Companion planting, crop rotation, crop diversity and spatial heterogeneity, beneficial predator attraction through landscape plantings, emphasis on soil and plant health, and manual removal with efficient human-scaled tools
Seed sourcing	Bulk ordering of a few varieties through centralized seed development and distribution outlets	Sourcing seeds from local supplier, developing a seed saving and local production and distribution plan using open pollinated varieties
Food distribution	Produce trucks, refrigeration, long-distance transport, eating out of season	Produce only sold locally, direct from farm or hauled to local restaurants or grocers using bicycles or electric vehicles, produce grown with year-round consumption in mind with farm delivering large quantities of food in winter months
Storage and processing at production end	Preparation of food for long distance transport, storage and retailing requiring energy intensive cooling, drying, food grade wax and packaging	Passive evaporative cooling, solar dehydrating, root cellaring and re-usable storage baskets and bags
Home and institutional storage and cooking	Natural gas, propane or electric fired stoves and ovens, electric freezers and refrigerators	Solar ovens, promotion of eating fresh and seasonal foods, home-scale evaporative cooling for summer preservation and "root cellaring" techniques for winter storage

 

Table 1. Feeding people requires many kinds of work and all work entails energy. In most farm operations the main energy sources are fossil fuels. By contrast, Brookside Farm uses and develops renewable energy based alternatives.

 

Our use of food scraps to replace exported fertility also reduces energy by diverting mass from the municipal waste stream. Solid Waste of Willits has a transfer station in town but no local disposal site. Our garbage is trucked to Sonoma County about 100 miles to the south. From there it may be sent to a rail yard and taken several hundred miles away to an out of state land fill.

 

We are also planning to irrigate using an on-site well and a photovoltaic system instead of treated municipal water or diesel-driven pumps.

 

How much energy does Brookside Farm save?

The complexity of the food system makes it difficult to calculate how much energy Brookside Farm is saving. A research program at UC Davis now devoted to just this sort of question is recently underway, but with few results to share thus far.[xvi]

 

From previous studies we can find clues about the high energy inputs to fruit and vegetable cultivation. From Fig. 4. above, we can see that fruits and vegetables account for (102,370/921,590) 11% of crop production by weight. Table 3 (given below) of the Congressional Research Service report shows that energy invested in fruit and vegetable production is proportionally higher, accounting for (3759/18364) 20% of the energy for crops at the farm level.

 

 

Much of the savings at Brookside Farm occurs off the farm by replacing what would normally be imported, through passive solar preservation and storage techniques, and by shifting consumer habits towards seasonally fresh cuisine proportionally high in vegetables.

 

Does Brookside Farm Scale? Lawns to Food

Before it was Brookside Farm, it was a field of mostly grass at an elementary school. The school district watered and mowed it (Fig. 6).

 

Fig. 6. Brookside Farm in early spring, 2007. The image shows the farm site adjacent to the forest and bordered by grassy fields, school buildings and a residential neighborhood. Arrows from a home contrast distance and direction of food coming from the local Safeway supermarket and Brookside Farm. The 1 acre Brookside Farm occupies about a quarter of the available play field at Brookside Elementary School.

 

Using satellite imagery, the area of lawn in the United States has recently been estimated:

"Even conservatively," Milesi says, "I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn." This means lawns-including residential and commercial lawns, golf courses, etc-could be considered the single largest irrigated crop in America in terms of surface area, covering about 128,000 square kilometers in all.[xvii]

 

 

The same study identifies where and how much water these lawns require:

That means about 200 gallons of fresh, usually drinking-quality water per person per day would be required to keep up our nation's lawn surface area.

 

Let me put the area of lawn from this study into a food perspective. The 128,000 square kilometers of lawns is the same as 32 million acres. A generous portion of fruits and vegetables for a person per year is 700 lbs, or about half the total weight of food consumed in a year.[xviii] Modest yields in small farms and gardens would be in the range of about 20,000 lbs per acre.[xix] Even with half the area set aside to grow compost crops each year, simple math reveals that the entire U.S. population could be fed plenty of vegetables and fruits using two thirds of the area currently in lawns.

 

Number of people in U.S.	Pounds of fruits and vegetables per person per year	Yield per acre in pounds	People fed per acre in production	Fraction of area set aside for compost crops	Compost-adjusted people fed per acre	Number of acres to feed population	Acres in lawn	Percent of lawn area needed
300,000,000	700	20,000	29	0.5	14	21,000,000	32,000,000	66%

 

Labor Compared to Hours of T.V.

 

For its members Brookside Farm's role is to provide a substantial proportion of their yearly vegetable and fruit needs. Using our farming techniques, we estimate that one person working full time could grow enough produce for ten to twenty people. By contrast, an individual could grow their personal vegetable and fruit needs on a very part-time basis, probably half an hour per day, on average, working an area the size of a small home (700 sq ft in veggies and fruits plus 700 sq ft in cover crops).

 

American's complain that they feel cramped for time and overworked. But is this really true or just a function of addiction to a fast-paced media culture? According to Nielsen Media Research:[xx]

The total average time a household watched television during the 2005-2006 television year was 8 hours and 14 minutes per day, a 3-minute increase from the 2004-2005 season and a record high. The average amount of television watched by an individual viewer increased 3 minutes per day to 4 hours and 35 minutes, also a record. (See Table 1.)

 

So if we imagine families having the discipline to cut out a single sitcom viewing per day, or one baseball or football game per weekend during the growing season, that would free-up sufficient time to become self-reliant in fruits and vegetables and likely improve overall health.[xxi]

 

(A note of caution though, an article from The Onion warns "that viewing fewer than four hours of television a day severely inhibits a person's ability to ridicule popular culture.")[xxii]

 

Conclusions

 

For those wanting to contribute to a lower-energy food system, starting with fresh produce makes sense for several reasons:

(1) Significant production is possible in a small area, often what people already have,

(2) Tools and equipment are simple, inexpensive and readily available,

(3) Fruits and vegetables are heavy due to high water content, and therefore energy-intensive to transport and process either by canning or dehydrating,

(4) Growing vegetables and fruits is generally more energy intensive than other crops because of high fertilizer and irrigation inputs,

(5) Quality declines rapidly after harvest, so home or locally available food has higher nutritional value and usually tastes better,

(6) Labor, packaging and storage demands of fruits and vegetables are high in mechanized production systems, making the investment in home-grown produce financially competitive, and

(7) Gardening and small-scale fruit and vegetable farming lend themselves to physical and social activities across generation and income gaps that improve health and enhance a shared sense of purpose and fun.

 

---

[i] This graphic was developed based on the principles discussed in Chapter 2 of Daly and Farley "Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications" (2004, Island Press)

[ii] http://www.storyofstuff.com/

[iii] http://www.footprintnetwork.org and http://www.rprogress.org/ecological_footprint/about_ecological_footprint.htm; the original ecological footprint analysis (EF1) is at the first reference, and the second type (EF2) at the second. The major difference between the two is that the second attempts to incorporate aquatic systems (e.g., oceans), total terrestrial productivity, and biodiversity reserves.

[iv] Graphic from: http://www.footprintstandards.org/

[v] For the 50% figure see: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=global_footprint; for the greater than 90% and discussion of differences between methods see: http://www.rprogress.org/publications/2006/Footprint%20of%20Nations%202005.pdf

[vi] http://scitizen.com/screens/blogPage/viewBlog/sw_viewBlog.php?idTheme=14&idContribution=1397

[vii] http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_big_melt_meets_big_empty

[viii] http://www.climatecodered.net/

[ix] http://css.snre.umich.edu/main.php?control=detail_proj&pr_project_id=29

[x] See especially Table 2. in: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/AC911E/ac911e05.htm

[xi] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431

[xii] Graphic from: http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS01-06.pdf

[xiii] http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/04nov/RL32677.pdf

[xiv] Although no date appears on this paper, it is clearly related to a 1994 conference and workshop: http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/energyuse.pdf; http://www.cias.wisc.edu/archives/1994/01/01/energy_use_in_the_us_food_system_a_summary_of_existing_research_and_analysis/index.php

[xv] http://www.energyfarms.net/

[xvi] http://asi.ucdavis.edu/conferences/farmtofork/; http://californiaagriculture.ucop.edu/0704OND/editover.html; http://asi.ucdavis.edu/Research/ASI_Program_Proposal_Brief_-_Energy_Life_Cycle_Assessment_in_Food_Systems_9-13.pdf

[xvii] http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Lawn/

[xviii] http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodGuideIndex.htm

[xix] An acre is ca. 43,000 sq ft. Our experience at Brookside Farm suggests about 1 lb of produce per square foot of cultivated space is to be expected, with infrastructure and paths requiring significant area. Fruit orchards in Mendocino County yield about 20,000 lbs per acre: http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/agriculture/pdf/2006%20Crop%20Report.pdf

[xx]http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=4156527aacccd010VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD

[xxi] http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

[xxii] http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30863

Brookside Farm provides produce year-round. After all, people eat even when the days are short and cold and plants go into a hibernation mode. Before supermarkets could place a call to a vegetable broker and have a truck deliver boxes of tomatoes from anywhere in the world, humans planned for seasonality by growing during the summer the kinds of foods that would keep during the winter. Brookside Farm is a bit unique among veggie CSAs (locally at least) by growing storage crops. As a result, our baskets in January are still pretty hefty.

 

 

These baskets are from January 15^th. Potatoes, onions, shallots, and winter squash make of the bulk, and are all from storage. Carrots, beets, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, tree collards and kale are still harvested fresh.

 

The farm has experienced a cold and wet January, including a few days of snowfall, but without much accumulation. Snow is not very troublesome, even to the greens. Much more concerning would be a severe frost at night (in the low teens) and bright sunny days. The wet soil can expand and contract, harming root crops in the ground. Above ground greens can be tissue damaged by extreme lows and fluctuations. A sunny day could light and warm the leaf surface enough to provoke strong photosynthesis, the need for gas exchange and the opening of leaf pores, but since the soil is still frozen root activity could be limited and the leaf could become water stressed.

 

We don't get a lot of snow in Willits, so its presence is an exciting novelty and the transformation of the beautiful landscape is captivating. The picture is from January 31^st, and shows in the foreground a row of kale and cabbage, middle of the frame are former potato beds in compost crops, and the conifer trees from the neighboring property dominate the background.

 

 

A particularly hardy crop around here is a variety of leek known as "elephant garlic" (Allium ampeloprasum). Once established, it is practically impossible to get rid of because it propagates by sending out subsidiary bulbs that form new plants the next year. During the summer it goes dormant and can be harvested for the edible bulbs. Like regular leeks, you can try eating the immature leaf stalks, though these are generally tougher than the familiar leek. Two big advantages to elephant garlic are that the plant requires no watering around here to produce well, and it is high in calories. Most don't think it tastes as good as true garlic, but it is milder and so can be eaten in larger quantities--providing some significant calories if need be. I think of elephant garlic in the same way as Jerusalem Artichokes-not the best to eat but oh so easy to grow.

 

 

I don't have a lot to do on the farm this time of year, but work for the farm is continual. A tree pruning is scheduled for next week as we expect a break in the weather. Seeds have been ordered and organized. I started some flats of leeks in the greenhouse. Going to get some folks to look over the work plan for the coming season and refine as I see fit. Should probably take stock of tools and equipment, making sure everything is in good repair and blades are sharp; organize the workshop so it is ready when called upon. And there are relationships to cultivate with the school system, the after school program, community service clubs and potential farm volunteers and donors. Oh, and my wife reminds me to do sit ups and push ups regularly!

I wasn't happy with the news in Part 3 of this series, which basically concluded that Mendocino County could not be food self-reliant.[i] To quote the most relevant and discouraging passage from that essay:

 

The Caltrans EIR implies that in about a ca. 20 year span, Mendocino County went from 69,000 to 35,000 acres of prime farmland, down from and original endowment of 94,000 acres. This does seem like a remarkably high rate of loss, totaling 34,000 acres or about 1700 acres per year for 20 years. In either case, whether the real figure is closer to 69,000 or 35,000, both are far from the estimated need of ca. 95,000.

 

However, I knew that this conclusion rested on certain assumptions, and that changing these might alter the conclusion. In the end we may be left having to decide which assumptions are more realistic, or whether what may be theoretically possible is probable given human nature/folly, or, if you are more inclined, human spirit/ingenuity.

 

So I went in search of better news (and the resulting dopamine reward this could potentially provide) by re-performed some calculations, starting with the diet. I will call the diet from part 1 of this series diet 1, and the one presented in this essay diet 2.[ii] Before creating diet 2, I wanted to be clearer on what the dietary needs and expectations are in North America. The USDA has a fascinating set of web pages. Included is a survey from the Agricultural Research Service of what several hundred people eat during a day, which can be extrapolated to the whole population (standard errors noted) and then broken out by demographic category.[iii] According to this data set, on average, people eat about 2200 calories per day. As expected, the very young and old eat the least, and females eat less than males. Another branch of the USDA, the Economic Research Service concludes that people consume closer to 2700 calories per day on average.[iv] Changes in American consumption patterns over time are also discussed in a report by the same sub-agency.[v] In general we are eating more calories than 30 years ago, but we are consistently wasting about 25% of the food produced.[vi]

 

New Diet Assumptions

 

For my second go at a model diet, I selected the 2200 calorie per day figure, and I assumed we could get by with half the food waste of today, which means a production system is required that produces about 2600 calories per person/day. By contrast, diet 1 used the figure about 3000 calories per day as a guide, which is still about 700 calories per day lower than what Americans have available to them from the current system. Diet 2 therefore has less calories available than diet 1, and far less than current U.S. diets, but is still enough food overall if food waste is half of current percentages.

 

Diet 2 is given below, and for comparison I give the current U.S. consumption patterns for the modeled foods. I have made a change in the fruit and vegetable category, where potatoes are segregated for analysis purposes. Significant differences between diet 2 and U.S. averages include much lower meat, sugar and egg consumption, and much higher dry bean consumption. To compare U.S. consumption of sprouting seeds (sunflower seeds in my model) I used data on nuts, which are nutritionally similar. In the U.S. this mostly means peanuts, but locally it could be walnuts and filberts/hazelnuts. I believe diet 2 is a much healthier diet than current U.S. habits.

 

Food	Pounds/year/ person	Current U.S. average	Oz/day/person (dry)	Oz/day/person (wet)	*Calories per pound	Calories/year/ person	Calories/day/ person
grains	230	200	10.08	30.25	1550	356,500	977
dry beans	50	2	2.19	6.58	1600	80,000	219
oil	40	65	1.75	1.75	4000	160,000	438
sugar	30	150	1.32	1.32	1380	41,400	113
sprouting seeds or nuts	20	17	0.88	2.63	2560	51,200	140
fruit and vegetables	650	570	28.49	28.49	150	97,500	267
potatoes	180	150	7.89	7.89	350	63,000	173
dairy (cheese)	30	37	1.32	1.32	1500	45,000	123
eggs	10	28	0.44	0.44	650	6,500	18
meat	50	180	2.19	2.19	925	46,250	127
Totals	1290		56.55	82.85		947,350	2595
			Wet lbs per day	5.18
*calorie figures from Jeavons, 7th edition and USDA (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR20/nutrlist/sr20a208.pdf)

 

Diet 2 also took into account the calories yielded per area for different food items. This is one reason why potatoes were given stand-alone status-they efficiently make human food. When grains are fed to animals, as in chickens and dairy cows, area efficiency is very low. Diet 2 therefore has fewer animal products than diet 1, and more veggies and potatoes. I limited potato consumption to 180 lbs per year because potatoes are typically edible for only 6-7 months at a time and eating more than one pound of potatoes per day would get tiresome. Even with the extra load from vegetables, fruits and potatoes, the total diet weight is still low, ca. 5.2 lbs, because the total calories are reduced and grains and dry beans still form the core of the plan.

 

New Inputs and Yield Assumptions

 

In addition to fiddling with the diet, I made a giant change when modeling the land-area required for the diet-I assumed no limits to irrigation, which essentially doubles the yields of grains and dry beans.[vii] Remember also that sugar is modeled as honey and, perhaps optimistically, is given no direct land area requirement.

 

So what's in going to be? Will eating lower on the food chain plus more intensive inputs change the results? Are we gonna make it? Drum roll.....

 

First, we look at the acres per person for diet 2:

 

Food	Pounds/year/ person	Yields/lbs/acre/ year	Acres/crop/ person	As percentage	*Calories per pound	Calories per acre	Class of farmland required
grains	230	2,000	0.12	0.38	1550	3,100,000	I or II
dry beans	50	1,800	0.03	0.09	1600	2,880,000	I or II
oil	40	835	0.05	0.16	4000	3,340,000	I, II or III
sugar	30				1380
sprouting seeds	20	900	0.02	0.07	2560	2,304,000	I or II
fruit and vegetables	650	20,000	0.03	0.11	150	3,000,000	I or II
potatoes	180	20,000	0.01	0.03	350	7,000,000
dairy (cheese)	30	1,249	0.02	0.08	1500	1,873,500	I or II
eggs	10	440	0.02	0.08	650	286,000	I, II or III
meat	50	6	8.33		925	5,550	I, II, III or greater
		Total acres/person	8.63
		Total acres minus meat	0.30

 

Not bad! The "acres minus meat" for diet 1 was 0.76 per person. Next, multiply by population size:

 

Food	Acres/crop/ person	Acres for County Population	Irrigated?
grains	0.12	10,139	yes
dry beans	0.03	2,449	yes
oil	0.05	4,223	yes
sugar	0.00	0
sprouting seeds	0.02	1,959	yes
fruit and vegetables	0.03	2,865	yes
potatoes	0.01	793	yes
dairy (cheese)	0.02	2,118	yes
eggs	0.02	2,004	yes
meat	8.33	734,675	Acres of Non-prime farmland
Total acres/person	8.63	761,225	Acres Total
Total acres minus meat	0.30	26,550	Acres minus meat = Prime farmland

 

If you read previous essays you may recall that meat is assumed to be produced on subprime farmland plus prime farmland in a green manure rotation. This brings up the need to account for crop rotations and green manure, thus:

 

Crops needing prime farmland and rotation with green manures (fruit and vegetable area given as 2/3 toward vegetables)
Food	Acres/crop/ person	Acres for County Population	*Green manure factor	Actual Acres	**N lbs/acre/ yr	**P lbs/acre/ yr	**K lbs/acre/ yr
grains	0.12	10,139	1.50	15,208	50	8.8	24.3
sprouting seeds	0.02	1,959	1.80	3,526	80	8.8	48.6
vegetables	0.02	1,920	2.00	3,839	100	13.2	64.8
potatoes	0.01	793	1.70	1,349	70	13.2	97.2
dairy (cheese)	0.02	2,118	1.50	3,176	50	8.8	24.3
eggs	0.02	2,004	1.50	3,005	50	8.8	24.3
		18,932		30,104
*Irrigated clover can fix nitrogen at a rate of about 100 lbs/acre for a year's growth and is appropriate for Mendocino County climate
**Estimates from Appendix II of "Successful Small-Scale Farming: An Organic Approach" by Karl Schwenke, referencing the "Missouri Balanced Farming Handbook
**P and K are often reported in compound forms such as phosphoric acid and potash. I am calculating elemental mass only: P is about 44% of phosphoric acid, K is about 81% of potash.

 

And finally, adding rotation-demanding to non-rotation demanding areas gives:

 

Prime land required
Area needing rotation	30,104
Area not needing rotation	7,618
Total	37,722

 

So the number here, ca. 38,000 acres, compares favorably to the amount of prime farmland currently remaining according to the Caltrans EIR.

 

Rwanda

Before getting too pleased with the results, I want to put them into perspective. Let's assume for the moment that Mendocino County does have 38,000 acres of prime farmland left, which equates to 0.43 acres per person, or in metric terms 0.17 hectares. The arable cropland per capita in Mendocino County is currently slightly less than what Rwanda had during the genocide period (0.20 hectares).[viii] Scholars have suggested that the tensions that eventually led to the bloodshed came from the fact that the land base was barely able to provide enough for the population, and that few subsistence farmers had the cash to buy imported food.

 

I am not predicting that the same kind of events would unfold in Mendocino County under similar circumstances. The point is that when populations are up against their resource capacity it is normal for stress to build, which increases the probability of violence.

 

Fertilizer Impact

Because irrigation is now assumed, the yields of the grains and dry beans, and by extension the dairy and eggs, increase substantially. Crops remove nutrients from the land in proportion to their yield; therefore quantities of fertilizer are increased per unit area. Three factors offset increased fertilizer demand per area: (1) green manure crops are also irrigated and increase in yields at the same proportion as the crops they support, (2) increased yields means a decrease in total area required to support the population, and (3) diet 2 is smaller than diet 1, with fewer animal products.

 

My estimations are very crude right now, but the overall impact is that much less fertilizer is required for the diet 2 plus irrigation model than with diet 1 and no irrigation.

 

Fertilizer Requirements per capita
Food	Acres/crop/ person	**N lbs/acre/ yr	N lbs per capita	**P lbs/acre/yr	P lbs per capita	**K lbs/acre/yr	K lbs per capita
grains	0.12	50	5.75	8.8	1.01	24.3	2.79
sprouting seeds	0.02	80	1.78	8.8	0.20	48.6	1.08
vegetables	0.02	100	2.18	13.2	0.29	64.8	1.41
potatoes	0.01	70	0.63	13.2	0.12	97.2	0.87
dairy (cheese)	0.02	50	1.20	8.8	0.21	24.3	0.58
eggs	0.02	50	1.14	8.8	0.20	24.3	0.55
			12.67