Alex Tiller's Blog on Agriculture & Farming

Largest Produce Buyer In US Goes Local

If your farm is located within easy driving distance of a Wal-Mart, you may have just found a new market for your produce. The largest agricultural customer in the country has just announced a major commitment to purchase locally-grown fruits and vegetables in its stores throughout the country – and my suspicion is that this is not a fad, but a genuine trend.

Advocates for local agriculture have long argued that the environmental and economic impacts of trucking food great distances outweigh the benefits. In terms of dietary diversity, they’re probably wrong on this one; nobody wants to live on just the crops that will grow close to home. But there are a lot of crops that can be grown nationwide, or at least across huge areas of the country. It makes sense to import the crops that just won’t grow in a particular region, but it also makes sense to grow locally where that’s economically sensible. Rising fuel costs are making it increasingly economically sensible. 

Wal-Mart’s move is tied closely to the company’s emphasis on low prices. The company says that the average piece of produce in its stores travels 1,500 miles to get to the customer. No matter how efficiently they pack the trucks, there’s a pretty hefty fuel bill attached to that tomato. The company says that its new emphasis on locally-grown produce will save millions of food-miles each year. No word on what a “food-mile” is supposed to represent, exactly, but the key point is that this represents a great opportunity for local growers. More than 70% of Wal-Mart’s produce comes from US-based suppliers, so the potential market space is enormous. (Bad news if you’re a farmer currently shipping to Wal-Mart, unfortunately.)

One word of warning to farmers planning a selling trip to Wallyworld – the company is notorious for its stringent requirements for suppliers, and that includes farmers. You’re likely to have to invest in the “right kind” of containers, the right RFID tags for your flats, and other hoops to jump through. On the other hand, the upside of selling to Wal-Mart is that they’re likely to order in bulk. The company says it will top $400 million in local ag purchases this year. That’s a lot of asparagus and carrots.

One exciting opportunity for farmers looking to diversity their crop base – Wal-Mart says they plan to work closely with state agricultural departments to encourage new plantings of crops that aren’t commonly grown in the areas around their stores, like cilantro in Florida. Putting in a new crop is always a bit of a risk, but having a guaranteed buyer at the end of the season sure cuts down on the worry factor.

Rooftop Farms Could Feed City Slickers

They’re not likely to replace the large-scale farming anytime soon, but rooftop agriculture projects are sprouting all over the world these days. The basic idea is brilliant: there’s a huge demand in urban areas for fresh produce, particularly organic goods – but land costs in urban areas make urban farming completely nonsensical from an economic point of view. There’s one patch of land that’s usually not being used, however – the rooftop.

There are basically three ways of doing rooftop gardening. The easiest and simplest way is also the most inefficient – container gardening, where the rooftop is just used as a handy place to have lots of bins for growing crops. With a larger investment (and a stronger roof) it’s possible to fill the roof with a drainage system, a soil layer, and just plant crops in rows as though you were on the ground. And for rooftop gardeners who are serious about maximizing yields, it’s possible to deploy full-scale rooftop hydroponic systems, squeezing remarkable yields out of the rooftop environment. Hydroponic systems also dispense with the need for soil, which is tremendously heavy, making them more practical for rooftops that cannot bear a significant load.

The benefits of rooftop gardening are many. Most obviously, the building owner and/or the building tenants have a supply of fresh produce throughout the growing season, or even year-round with a well-designed system in the right climates. Whether growing herbs or organic tomatoes, this can be a serious benefit to the residents of a building. Produce can also be sent directly to local markets, turning the rooftop into an unlikely source of secondary revenue generation. A rooftop garden also can provide building residents with a cool, green place to spend time during hot days; commercial growing operations on rooftops can even employ residents as part-time gardeners. More generally, rooftop gardens cut down on the heat island effect of cities and remove pollution from the air. They also can serve as greywater recycling centers, since wastewater from the building can be easily routed up to the garden; most plants do just fine with greywater.

There are challenges facing the rooftop gardener. High winds and high temperatures are often a problem; windbreaks and heat-tolerant crops, among other solutions, have to be deployed in the rooftop environment. Pesticide use in densely populated areas can be a problem, and many rooftop gardeners go organic for this reason – and roof growers find the higher prices their organic crops command to be a welcome bonus. Liability concerns are a more difficult hurdle to overcome – for some reason, insurance companies get antsy when dozens of people are wandering around a rooftop ten or a hundred stories above the pavement! As rooftop gardens become more prevalent, however, insurance companies are climbing the learning ladder and will often have mitigation strategies (barriers at the edge of the roof, etc.) that can cut the expense.

I’ve only touched on this topic – there are people who devote entire careers to rooftop gardens. You can read a lot more about rooftop gardening and its potential at the Rooftop Gardening Source, among other places.

E85 Chopper Makes Ethanol Cool

Allow me to introduce you to the new E85 – It is a farmer-bikers dream ride!

The Teutels  of  Orange County Choppers are at it again.  This is the first Chopper of its kind.  It is America’s First Renewable Energy Chopper recently released at the Iowa Speedway.  Not only does it run on 85% Ethanol, but the boys at Orange County topped it off with other cool details to spread the word about Iowa’s prominence in renewable resources that benefit folks locally and  nationwide.  Featuring spokes designed after wind turbines, a Corn Head “Scoop”, Cowhide seat and exhaust designed to mimic an Ethanol Plant, the E85 puts a new twist on an old tradition.  The paint job even features corn and soybean foliage to remind users of biodiesel. 

This bike was designed for the Iowa Farm Bureau to promote the use of Ethanol within the state and beyond.  Iowa is one of the world’s leaders in renewable energy production.  They produce more ethanol than any other state as well as about a quarter of the nation’s supply of ethanol, which is blended with 40% of the gas supply in the United States. 

The campaign also emphasizes biomass, wind energy, biodiesel and carbon credits.  The conglomeration of these methods of renewable energy will revolutionize the way energy in the United States is used and produced.  All of these areas of agriculture reduce greenhouse gases produced using traditional energy methods.  They also reduce American dependence on foreign fuel.  In the mean time, the campaign goes to aid the rural community. 

To find out more about the campaign, visit the website at www.jointherideiowa.com.  Not only will it provide you with the most recent news regarding the campaign, the site also provides an Alternative Energy Locator allowing you to find the most convenient E85 and Biodiesel pumps in Iowa.  Check it out, take the Food vs. Fuel Challenge and Join the Ride! 

Little Farms in the Urban Landscape

It’s an idle fantasy for most homeowners – what if I took this side yard (the one where I just can’t get the bluegrass to fill in the dead patches) and turned it into a miniature farm? If a homeowner moves past the idle fantasy stage, they usually stop short at the realization of how much work farming is – particularly the non-mechanized variety that you have room to do on a typical home’s quarter-acre.

One entrepreneurial young man decided to exploit homeowner’s reluctance to become part-time yeomen by doing it for them. Kipp Nash of Boulder, Colorado has contracts with a dozen or so homeowners in his neighborhood – they provide the land, he does the work, and everyone shares in the resulting vegetable harvest. Kipp also runs a more conventional consumer-farmer partnership where a group of vegetable lovers club together to pre-purchase a share of the farm’s output – the farmer gets a guaranteed market and is prepaid for his time and effort, the buyers get a great price on fresh fruit and veggies.

Kipp’s motivations are partly ecological, and partly vocational – he’s always wanted to farm, but doesn’t have the land or the capital. By partnering with his neighbors, everybody wins; he gets to do what he wants for a living (although he’s not quite there yet in terms of earning a livable wage) and his neighbors get to blow off a large chunk of their lawn care expenses. No lawn equals no mowing time on Saturday, after all. Kipp is attempting to build community-based agriculture into a populist movement – I doubt that he’s going to be able to dislodge the commercial farm as our primary source of food, but local efforts like his could be a great contributor to things like dietary diversity. It makes economic sense to have our corn and wheat be farmed in large commercial operations; it might make just as much sense to have things like organic vegetables be grown locally.

“Tis Better to Give Than to Receive”

Our farming friends in the Midwest need your help.  I would highly encourage you to take a moment of your time to donate to the Farm Aid “Family Farm Disaster Fund.”

The Farm Aid “Family Farm Disaster Fund” was established by Farm Aid to help farm families survive weather-related disasters. Right now they are working with farmers across the country that have been hurt by the devastating flooding and severe weather in Iowa, Wisconsin and seven other mid-western states.

To donate to the Farm Aid Family Disaster Fund please Click Here

If you are a farmer dealing with this flood disaster, and would like to receive assistance please Click Here

The Great Flood of 1993 Compared to 2008 - Perspective

My grandmother use to tell me that ‘if I didn’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.’  Keeping that in mind, I’ve held off on commenting on the floods in the Midwest for long enough.  I kept thinking that things would get better and I could focus on the positive.  (no such luck)

So since I don’t have a single good thing to say about the flooding situation today, I started wondering how this flood compared to the Great Flood of 1993.  I did a little research and here is what I found.

When looking back on the last big one, it’s hard (at this point) to draw an exact parallel.  The 1993 flood affected 9 states, lasted almost 2 months, and caused roughly $15 to $20 Billion in damage.  There were almost 500 counties that were declared disaster areas, including all 99 in Iowa.  The conditions were ripe for massive destruction. In early spring 1993 a rapid melt of higher than average winter snows combined with heavy spring and summer rainfall to set up a catastrophic situation. In fact, the flooding persisted through late August 1993 across most key corn production areas.  

This year we have a smaller flood impacted area (so far), and reports indicate that the rain would have to continue through July in order to mimic 1993 conditions. 

So there it is; the most positive thing I could come up with for this post.  “It’s not as bad today as it was then.”  –That’s little consolation to our farming friends who have lost their homes, businesses, livestock, crops, community, and equipment.  For those of you under water right now, my heart goes out to you.  For those of you who are dry, please take a moment to say a prayer for our friends.  

Immigration Policy Increases Food Prices

As if farmers didn’t have enough to worry about, between floods and droughts and rising prices for fertilizer and fuel, now many farmers are reporting having severe difficulties in finding enough workers to bring in the crops. One small operator in upstate New York is trying to get twenty pickers in for his strawberry crop; to date, he hasn’t been able to recruit any.

It’s not a local problem. The state of California is estimating that it will lose 30 percent of its total crop yield this year because of a lack of farm labor, and reports from other agricultural states aren’t any more optimistic. What’s going on?

There are a few complicating factors, but the basic cause appears to be pretty clear: farm workers from Mexico are not coming across the border in the numbers that have been seen in previous years. Anti-illegal immigration sentiment is one cause; tightened border control is another. And unfortunately, native born labor is not stepping in to fill the gap. Farm work, especially picking, is hard, dirty labor – and most Americans just don’t seem to be willing to do it at the market wage rates. Part of that problem is, paradoxically enough, the result of a uniquely American success: back in the 1950s, about one American in ten graduated from college. Now about six in ten do – and college-educated people are generally not in the agricultural labor marketplace. On the tractor, yes – bent over picking vegetables, no.

Most advocates of strong border policies have also urged that seasonal laborers from our southern neighbor be permitted to make their traditional yearly journeys in a legal and controlled fashion. Unfortunately Congress has been slow to make the necessary changes. One analyst estimates that the demand for “unskilled” labor visas is around 485,000 per year, but Congress allocates only 5,000. In addition, the legal immigration process is Byzantine in its complexity – it’s difficult enough for a physician or an engineer to jump through all the hoops. Fruit pickers with a sixth-grade education? Forget about it.

Nobody wants uncontrolled immigration across our southern border, not even farmers in desperate straits for manual laborers. At the same time, most people want to see farmers able to get their crops in and do not want to food prices rise due to shortages. Until the government can get its act together and provide for the ability of labor to move across the border to where the jobs are, farmers are having to seek out alternatives. One major alternative on the horizon: increased use of robotics.

Robotic harvesting is different from mechanized harvesting. Mechanized harvesting is simply the use of machines to augment the labor of the workers. For example, a strawberry field might have a wheeled conveyor belt that fits between rows, so that workers can just place their filled box of fruit on the belt rather than having to walk it all the way back to the edge of the field or to a central collection point. But a robotic fruit harvester would do all of the work – leaving no role for unskilled labor at all. That would increase the reliability factor and allow farmers to know they had their “labor” in place for harvest, but would also require major changes in the way horticulture is practiced. It would also devastate many farming communities, where seasonal labor is a way of life for people. The sad fact is there are no easy answers here.

Are You Totally Cereal? Breakfast Cereal Prices Are Going Up, Portion Sizes Down

In an effort to offset rising input and transportation costs, Kellogg’s has announced plans to reduce the sizes of cereal boxes while simultaneously increasing prices. (the second price increase is in the last 6 months) A Kellogg’s spokesperson said that on average, cereal box sizes are being reduced by 2.4 ounces, which amounts to a “low to mid-single digit” price increase. This news comes after last months Bureau of Labor Statistics report that showed grocery costs had jumped 5.1 percent in 12 months, the latest in a string of increases, and experts are saying that the nation is undergoing its worst grocery inflation since the early 1990s. 

The cereal price increase comes despite the May 2008 Food Outlook report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that said that in 08/09 world cereal production is forecast to exceed total utilization for the first time in three seasons. The report said that recovery in global stock levels looks promising and world end-of-season cereal stocks for crop years closing in 2009 should increase by 3 percent (or 12.5 million tons) from their 30-year low opening level to 421 million tons.

Chart Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): Food Outlook May 2008

These significant cereal price increases also come despite the fact that only a small fraction of the cost of retail food is a direct result of farm inputs. For every $1 spent on retail food grocery products in the US, the farm input value is only around $0.19.  In a $5 box of corn flakes, there is less than $0.10 worth of corn.

The transportation cost increase makes sense, however I am always surprised when the argument goes against ethanol/biofuels like the Grocery Manufacturers of America did with their recent smear campaign.  We should remember that ethanol production puts more fuel on the market, which lowers fuel prices.  This is one of the few positive things we are doing to proactively lower/control gas prices and improve transportation costs.  (Don’t believe me?  Try taking the 9 billion gallons of ethanol we are creating this year off the market; then see what gas prices would be.)

One more thing about food companies and the things they are up to.  -The Associated Press reported that General Mills spent $160,000 in Q1 lobbying Washington against the farm bill and other food safety legislation. The Grocery Manufacturers of America, of which General Mills is a member, sided with President Bush when he vetoed the 2008 farm bill. (which was later overwhelmingly rejected by the House)

So what’s going on here?

Despite projected increased stocks, fractional actual input increases per box of cereal, and fuel being cheaper than it would with no ethanol on the market, the big food companies have decided to blame agriculture and ethanol (through the GMA) while they run up prices and play marketing games to downplay the effect.   This is opportunistic profit taking at its worst. 

Breaking OPEC, Building Agriculture

I had a truly amazing night last night.  I was fortunate enough to attend an event where Dr Robert Zubrin gave a presentation called, “A plan for breaking the economic stranglehold of the OPEC oil cartel.”

Let me start by explaining that Dr. Zubrin is an internationally renowned astronautical engineer and the acclaimed author of The Case for Mars, which Arthur C. Clarke called “the most comprehensive account of the past and future of Mars that I have ever encountered.” NASA even recently adapted Zubrin’s humans-to-Mars mission plan.  

-So, knowing that Dr Zubrin was a NASA guy, I assumed this would be a presentation that discusses all the different new energy technologies.  Boy I was wrong.  (but pleased)

Dr Zubrin stared by presenting persuasive evidence that our decades-long relationship with OPEC has resulted in the looting of our economy, and now the funding and protection of terrorist regimes and movements that are committed to our destruction.  Dr Zubrin then went on to actually solve the problem.  He explained that the single, most powerful way to stop the enormous transfer of wealth (thus power) to the Middle East is to enact a new US policy to make all new cars flex-fuel vehicles.  We must switch to “omnivore cars” that can run on crop grown Ethanol or Gasoline.  He pointed out that the rest of the world would certainly follow suite because they know we like to drive our cars, and they like to sell them to us. He also pointed out that this type of change would allow for distribution channels for alcohol fuels (ethanol) to catch-up and wouldn’t leave people with the “one filling station in 100 mile radius” scenario.  Most importantly, this type of solution would also support agriculture in the US and through out the world and reverse the stream of US dollars that currently goes to the Middle East.

I found Dr Zubrin to be a brilliant man with a solid understanding of all the topics he covered, - even when the crowd threw him some curveballs. (They had obviously read the bogus reports that ethanol was not good for the environment, starved people, and had poor energy value.)  He quashed every challenge to ethanol with science.  He was friendly, didn’t speak over peoples heads, and was quite funny.  If you ever have an opportunity to see him speak, do it.  –And bring your nay-saying neighbor or friend.

Zubrin covered a lot of additional information that was incredibly insightful and interesting.  I can’t give you a play-by-play of the entire presentation, but I do recommend you buy his new book.  (no, I don’t get paid to endorse products)  I personally bought 14 copies last night to share with others. 

Visit http://energyvictory.net to learn more about Dr Zubrin and check out the proposed legislation that could make this solution a reality.

Legislation Summary: Open Fuel Standard Act

Bill Sponsors: Set America Free Coalition