Better to Work than Whine- What We're Up To

Report from first DWPA Meeting- 020213

(Deep Winter Producers' Association)

Our first meeting was invigorating, except for the people who couldn't make it. It was informal, with just enough structure to be coherent. The dozen folks were excited to meet others who shared their new passion. It had that perfect feel, a neighborly gathering of people who share a wholesome, inviting idea with high potential for good.

We met at the new Elk's Bluff greenhouse, just outside of Montevideo. Tim Elkington had thought ahead to creating a producers network- he built a meeting room in his barn as part of the greenhouse's processing area. It was fine to be sitting around, talking and drawing ideas on a white board, while just through the windows was the greenhouse packed with fresh growing things, on a windy February day. Tim's wife, Shelly, made a tasty salad from Chinese cabbage that they'd raised, and Lorri Maus brought home-made scones.

Of the dozen people, six already have Garden Goddess-type greenhouses. One mother and grown son came for advice- they'd had to adapt the design in extreme ways, and wanted help with how to correct some problems. Two other groups wanted to talk about their greenhouses-in-planning. Everyone knew others that were thinking of building.

One idea with great potential came from a farmer from near Albany, Minnesota. He wants to build a large greenhouse on the south face of his barn, and turn the old silo pit into a fish tank! I was especially happy to hear about his ideas. Aquaponics, the joining of fish farming with greenhouse growing, can produce extremely high densities of good food. He is also an expert on heating and related ducting, with ideas for the rest of us to tighten up our systems.

Every greenhouse is a bit different. We shared design tricks, and ideas about what crops grow better under what conditions. With our diverse, grass roots attitude, everyone's approach brought something that the others hadn't thought of.

We talked about the concepts of the DWPA. Local chapters will concentrate on an area of roughly an hour's drive, with some overlap of territories, and much cooperation between chapters. From the emails and phone calls that I've received, there are already about ten chapters sketched out in Minnesota and the Dakotas. The focus will be on raising and selling food within the chapter's territory. There will of course be some “exports,” but the stress is on Local-ness.

A big discussion point was markets. Everyone who runs CSAs from these greenhouses, across the continent, has waiting lists far longer than they can possibly handle. All of us get requests from chefs and grocers for our product. We can name our prices. Back-of-the-envelope calculations tell us that we could have a dozen or more units like ours in our area and still not fill the demand.

We gathered contact information from everyone, and will be planning more meetings soon. Our focus for now will be:

• Helping everyone to get the best production they can from their units
  
• Helping others who want to build to get started
  
• Setting up communication for sharing ideas and insights
  
• Planting other active chapters in other areas.
  

If you're interested in being a part of this new movement, send me a message. I'm here to help.

Build a greenhouse! Start a Chapter! Change the world, at least a little!

Willmar League of Women Voters Speech- 04/09/12

Open

Rural America is colluding with those who would destroy it.
That's the bad news. I'll get to the good news.
I first became aware of this trend while researching a class I taught at the University of Minnesota, Morris- Social and Ethical Implications of Technology.
This shouldn't have been a surprise. It's part of an overall trend in our society. Look at the election ads and corporate propaganda- human beings are not valued as persons, but as units of production and consumption to be used and manipulated.
This is called “Colonization.” It's what the European powers did to Africa, Asia and America in centuries past. They turned living places into resource bases, homelands into commodity dumps- not to serve the people there, but to serve powerful people somewhere else. I'm pleased to see East African and Hispanic folks here- You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's being done to us, right here and right now- if in a sneakier way.

Problem

In their 2009 book, Hollowing out the Middle, Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas talked about the Rural Brain Drain, that how we educate our kids, how we train them to view rural life, ensures that the best and brightest grow up, excel in school, graduate- and leave. If they come back with “foreign ideas,” even wonderful ideas, it's an uphill battle to get anyone to listen to them.
But it isn't just education. We are doing the same thing with food- sending it away, and buying it back in inferior forms. We have some of the best soil on the planet, but many of our towns and counties are USDA-designated as food deserts.
Most farmers today aren't growing food, but producing industrial feedstocks. Old MacDonald's farm is a thing of the past. Look beside the highway-Those aren't farms in the sense we all used to know, but factories: They use highly mechanized and energy-wasteful methods to extract commodities which are useless without intensive processing. It isn't the farmers' fault- they know that the system is rigged against them, but what can they do?
According to a report by the Rural Economics Researcher Ken Meter of Crossroads Resource Center, once you compile all the numbers:

Nearly two-thirds of food consumed in Minnesota is produced out of state

and

Farmers (in Western Minnesota) lose $150 million each year producing food commodities, and also spend $ 600 million buying outside inputs, while consumers spend $ 250 million buying food from outside. This is a total loss of $1 billion of potential wealth each year. This loss amounts to 70 % of the value of all food commodities raised in the region.

So. We export our children through education. We export our soil, our water, and our true wealth through agriculture. This is not a good plan for long-term sustainability.
There is an oft-quoted Cree prophecy:
"When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money."

Relief

I should tell you who are at Garden Goddess. We're a good example of what's possible. We have seen huge changes in these last ten years:

Greenhouse/CSA Story:

In the Fall of 2002 we were getting our vegetables from the Easy Bean, a large CSA farm east of Milan, MN. When we opened that last box of the season, when we realized that we'd be dependent on grocery stores for “fresh” vegetables, Carol said, “Ya know, somebody ought to do something about this.”
“Somebody” soon became US. We spent three years in research, reading books, combing websites, visiting other installations, playing with and arguing over designs, before we came up with the Garden Goddess Greenhouse. We went back to first principles, as “standard” greenhouses are little changed from the first one built in 1843 in London. They are inefficient energy hogs. Our design uses something like 3% of the energy that a conventional greenhouse would. Others have built greenhouses based on our design, and their figures show the same savings.
In 2009 we published the Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual. It's sold well, and is in its second printing. The book has led to requests for design help from all over North America, as well as Ireland, Bolivia, the Isle of Man, even Iran. Dozen or so greenhouses operating because of the book, and constantly hear second- and third-hand reports of others.
We've traveled tens of thousands of miles, presenting at conferences, conducting workshops, and helping others rethink their food options. We've spoken in big cities and teeny prairie villages. We've been before crowds of middle-aged hippies, and of tea-party enthusiasts. We've spoken with non-profits, farmers, and government officials. People have actually cried after some of our messages, since we brought them hope.
A concept that we've developed is “Building the Fifty Dollar Table.” When trying to recreate the food system into something more just and environmentally sound, you can't take on the big players in the current system, like Cargill and Monsanto, head-on. There is an old saying: “If someone asks you to sit down at the poker table, but they have $5000 and you have $50, DON'T SIT DOWN!” We are building that “other table” rather than playing an unwinnable game.
The most powerful force keeping things the way they are is ignorance. We believe that feeding ourselves is hard, maybe even illegal. We don't think that we can do much- but WE CAN DO MORE THAN WE THINK WE CAN. In our travels we've seen this time and again.
We've seen Community Gardens reduce crime and build community- what's more fundamental than food?
Neighborhood Gardens have created community among neighbors.
Locally prodeced foods have given small grocery stores a new lease on life.
West Central Minnesota is a hotbed of these activities, with dozens of local-food-dedicated producers, organizations providing training and support for them, and active projects to increase our ability to feed ourselves.

There are several worthy efforts in the Willmar area already:

Willmar High School runs a large greenhouse that we helped renovate from a semi-derilect unit on the MinnWest Technology Campus.
The East Side Farmers mMarket has been oiperating for decades, and is still going strong.
The Becker Avenue Farmers Market, right downtown, is a great operation, with a big year-opening event coming up next month.
The Community Owned Grocery, COG, is in its planning and fund-raising stage. It will be a full-range food store, with other services and products, centered on locally-produced goods, local ownership, and the local community.

So far, these are rather “traditional” ideas. But moving on from there:

According to the AURI (Agricultural Utilization Reasearch Institute) report- “Minnesota Food Production Sector: Growing Green Jobs,” some of the growing opportunities are in:

• Producing Local Foods: People increasingly want to know where their food comes from.
• Distributing Food: Is this “commuter food,” or truly fresh?
• Locally-Sourced Food Service: Chefs and other food-service people know that freshness and quality are paramount.
• Organics: How food is raised, and what extra is in it, is a growing concern.
• Health and Food Safety: The more steps that food goes through, the greater the chances of contamination.
• Livestock Production: Locally raised, free-range meats are a growing market
• Urban Agriculture: People growing their own foods, in their own communities, share many benefits, including food security.

We're working on next steps, to implement these ideas. Two promising areas are-

C-squared

This is what we're calling a sort of “cooperative of cooperatives,” as local foods groups from around the region have been discussing how to organize a decentralized food distribution network.

Food Hubs

These a growing and highly profitable business for communities. To quote a new USDA study, Food Hubs provide:

• Expanded market opportunities for agricultural producers.
• Job creation in rural and urban areas.
• Increased access of fresh healthy foods for consumers, with strong potentials to reach underserved areas and food deserts (that's us)
  

A typical food hub:

• Is a socially driven business enterprise with a strong emphasis on “good prices” for producers and “good food” for consumers.
  
• Employs 6 full-time or part-time staff and uses volunteers regularly.
• Works with 40 regular food suppliers, many of whom are small and mid-sized farmers and ranchers.
• Offers a wide range of food products, with fresh produce being its major product category, and sells through multiple market channels, with restaurants being an important entry market.
  
• Is actively involved in their community, offering a wide range of services to both producers and consumers.
  

Payoff

Whenever I consult on such a project, I warn my clients that there are three main kinds of problems in a foods project- horticultural problems, engineering problems, and people problems, with people problems being the hardest. Building structures and raising crops are almost trivial compared to dealing with:

• well-meaning but ignorant nay-sayers- people who say, “If I don't already know it, it isn't worth knowing;”
  
• power-hungry manipulators- people who want nothing to happen unless they're in charge and get credit;
  
• petty bureaucrats enforcing inappropriate rules- people who don't understand that rules can become obsolete, or that sensible rules for Big Business are fatal to Mom and Pop operations;
  
• vested interests fearing a loss of power- those same Big Businesses that will claim “fairness” and “safety,” when neither is accurate, actually to shut down competition;
  
• dog-in-the-manger folks who will stop things just because they can.
  

I've seen projects sunk, delayed, or tripled in cost by all of these.
R. T. Rybak and Megan O'Hara came by our place last winter to discuss greenhouses, and they agreed. Witness the crazy wrangling over the City of Minneapolis' recently passed food policy, in the face of people raising tons of food in back yards and community gardens.
The League of Women Voters is dedicated to the American way of Politics- working with the craziest, most vital kind of people problems. You know that it all boils down to serving the community. You, here, are the people who can tackle the people problems that stand in the way of our thriving. Look up the people who raised their hands earlier- they can tell you where to start.

Sources-

• Ken Meter, Crossroads Resource Center, Minneapolis, 2008- Western Minnesota Local Farm & Food Economy (summary) http://www.crcworks.org/lea/wcmnsum06.pdf
• Ken Meter: Who Produces Minnesota's Food? http://www.crcworks.org/mnfoodimp81.pdf
• Hollowing out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means For America. Carr, Patrick J. and Kefalas, Maria J. ISBN-978-0807006146
• Regional Food Hubs: Understanding the scope and scale of food hub operations. 2012. Jim Barham. USDA Agricultural Marketing Service “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Regional Food Hub Subcommittee Team Lead http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5088011
• AURI report “Minnesota Food Production Sector: Growing Green Jobs,” http://www.auri.org/wp-content/assets/legacy/research/MN%20Food%20Production%20Sector%20Growing%20Green%20Jobs.pdf

PreOccupied

Like everyone else, I find the Occupy Movement inspiring- sort of. Who doesn't thrill to the idea of the 99% rising up to protest the System that's turned them into wage slaves? How can you not admire people fighting back against those who are erasing all the gains we shed blood to make in the Twentieth Century? What's more historically amazing than people all over the world taking to the streets, mostly non-violently? It makes a '60s kid like me feel right at home.


Almost.

I have two main problems when comparing Occupy with the mid-century's movements. First off, it isn't really clear who or what these folks are fighting, or whether “They” can even be reached. The Civil Rights struggle was pretty straightforward- end Jim Crow and other such discrimination. Ditto the Women's Movement. The early Environmental Movement had equally clear goals: stop dumping crap in our air and water; stop poisoning the land and People. Stopping the Viet Nam war was also a pretty clear goal. Who was responsible for each of these was obvious. The problems could be remedied by cultural change, laws and regulations. We could vote out the “bad guys” and replace them with more enlightened souls. None of this involved a major overhaul of The System. It was all a logical progression of the earlier gains in the Twentieth Century.

Today the “enemy” is a nebulous agglomeration of corporations. They hold our credit cards, our bank accounts, our pensions, and the bonds and Certificates of Deposit of our local governments. They manage our currency. They dictate trade and monetary policy. They aren't even human persons, but legal persons, with the sole ethic of power and profit. They own politicians and shamelessly biased media outlets. They fund fake grass roots operations like the Tea Party. Aside from some obvious names like the Koch Brothers, this oppressor wears no human face. They are not answerable to us- socially, morally or politically. They don't care what we think, because they make the rules, unchallenged. As long as we participate in their financial and mercantile system all our daily living only strengthens them, like a horde of possessing demons in a B-grade horror flick.

The second problem is that it really doesn't matter. In a very real sense, we're like kids squabbling over sand castles on the beach while a tsunami is coming. We've already felt the earthquakes that have launched it toward our beach. I've talked with long-time Civil Rights, Farm, Women's and other activists; Many are fighting despair because they see that what’s coming will erase every gain that they fought for over decades. Anyone who tells you that Climate Change and Peak Petroleum aren't about to radically change our entire civilization is: A) Lying to protect their own power, which is indescribably despicable; B) In ignorant, fearful Denial, which is pathetic and self-defeating.

What I'm saying is that Occupy, however noble and exciting, is a possibly fatal misdirection of energies. It's trying to fix a system that doesn't want to be fixed, which will be swept away in the next few decades no matter what we do. It's like standing outside in a storm, yelling at the wind and rain to stop, instead of going inside.

So, what IS “going inside?” It's going into our communities. It's becoming locally resilient and self-sufficient: not cut off and isolated, but acting out the truth that the days of resource-guzzling economic giantism has come and gone. It means getting involved, as we have, with Local Foods, the Transition Movement, Slow Money and the like. It means disconnecting from “Their” system, stopping feeding the monster which is devouring us. If Occupy leads to that kind of long-term action, it will be worthwhile; If not, it will just be a flailing about that feels good but signifies nothing.

The Presidents Day Blizzard (and other snow jobs)

OK. This is officially getting old. I've lost count of how many “record weather events” we've had in the last six months. I expect that even that number is itself a record.

I worked the morning shift at KDMA-AM on Sunday. When I got there the station parking lot was mostly bare, with no snow falling and no real wind. Still, there was that slight electrical tang in the air that Minnesotans know means a big storm is coming. I set up the studio news computer to continuously show weather radar and road condition maps.

As the morning progressed the “big blue blob” on radar crept nearer and the road conditions deteriorated. The phone rang constantly with church cancellations. I started to get nervous, since I live 20 miles from the station. I found someone from town to cover and left early- an hour later and I'd never have made it home. Carol and I hunkered down for the duration.

The next morning a four-foot drift lay in front of the door to our garage and greenhouse, and the south face was buried five feet deep. It took quite a bit of digging just to get inside.

Once inside, we found-

plenty of happy greens, part of our lunch reward for hard work.

The moral of the story is the triumph of the Garden Goddess Greenhouse. It's withstood the worst that the prairie can throw at it and kept on producing. We don't get Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don't get the blahs from eating stale long-distance vegetables.

We're all going to need many more such greenhouses, and soon. Besides the obvious health and economic benefits, crazy weather and unworkable fuel prices will soon seriously endanger our food system.

***

Speaking of endangering the System, like everyone else we're watching the situation in Wisconsin. It's clearly another sign of the Social Contract breaking down, as is the shrill tone of most political discourse today. You may be tempted to see the marches and sit-ins as like the protests of the 1960s, but they're radically different, pun intended. The folks marching in the streets today are a kind of reverse mirror image of the hippies and students fifty years ago.

Back then, the country as a whole had a positive attitude. The “rebels” operated from Love, simply wanting us to apply that attitude to living up to the promises of our founding values.

Today, people are afraid, made so by constant harping on their worries. Today's rebels have gotten themselves elected to many offices, crusading in Fear and Hate, believing that “only people like us must triumph.” They don't realize that their fears have made them cat's paws of plutocrats

The Local Foods Movement is rooted in those older values of acceptance, diversity, and community mutual aid. The antidote to political and societal madness is coming together to create the “Beloved Community” spoken of by Doctor King, to take care of each other's needs. We have to- the Big Guys won't. In a world going crazy in so many ways all we have is each other. We can do more than we think we can.

Working Together

There's a phenomenon that we run into wherever we go in Local Foods Land. Picture it: An outfit that nobody ever heard of comes out of the blue and announces their Big Event Where They'll Explain How To Fix Local Foods. Folks who've been working on these complex issues for years, even decades, feel shut out and insulted. This happens on both local and regional scales. Nationally, this has been happening wherever Jamie Oliver goes with his “Food Revolution.” I've heard innumerable complaints from hard-working, long-suffering folks. They appreciate what he's doing, but feel that his attitude, and lack of involving prior efforts, is a slap in the face to them.

The flip side is also true. Newcomers with new ideas can feel shut out. We've experienced this ourselves: Even back in the planning stages, there were loud voices from some Sustainability Old Timers that we could never do what we were talking about- it was just plain wrong, not How Things Are Done. Who did we think we were? We're thankful for folks like the Land stewardship Project's Farm Beginnings instructors who encouraged us. There are still organizations that want nothing to do with us as presenters, while others can't get enough of us. Blessings on them both.

Anyone who's read the works of Saul Alinkski or other great organizers knows that these sorts of problems are common in any Social Change movement. Don't kid yourself- in the last few years Local Foods has gone from a fad indulged in by yuppies and others of the “Comfortable Class” to a for-real Movement. It's as much about Societal Reform as the Civil Rights, Environmental, or Antiwar Movements. Community gardens, all manner of urban farming, Farmers' Markets taking SNAP benefits, churches buying CSA shares for poor families, these and more prove that this is a revolution against a broken food system.

We've seen how the problems I started out describing are hurting the Movement. They waste our time, energy and resources. They sap enthusiasm from our souls. When we're fighting or snubbing each other, we're building NOTHING. We need to talk and work together, respectfully, with our eyes on the prize. Certainly, we need to feel ownership of what we're doing, but we shouldn't get proprietary.


This doesn't mean that we need to move in lock step, all coordinated from on high by some central planning committee. I like John Michael Greer's word- dissensus. To be honest, none of us really knows what's going to work, so we need to each pursue our own visions and plans- but we can do that respectfully, purposefully and with coordination.

This isn't easy.


Another thing that I've noticed in Local Foods Land is many people of faith. They don't all have the same faith, but a shared concept of how things could and should be, embodied in whatever religious tradition works for them. I've sat at the table with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and Druids, even some radical Secular Humanists, and what we had in common was far more than what we disagreed about.

In fact, I don't believe that you can effectively work for change unless you feel you're “On a mission from God.” You need that moral compass when making hard choices. You need to feel that something bigger than you is backing you up when The Man says that you're nuts. You need to “hear that real, though far off, hymn that heralds the New Creation.”

As Shepherd Book said in Serenity, “I don't care what you believe. Just believe it!” I believe that we all have a huge task ahead of us. I believe that we'll hit both passive ignorance and active opposition. I believe that we must respectfully work together. I believe that we can do more than we think we can.

The Pessimistic Optimist

I'm starting this blog because I'm a “pessimistic optimist,” someone who believes that we'll eventually have a sane, just and Green civilization, but in the meantime things are going to get very rough. I want to say things that need to be said but haven't been said nearly enough. We can only deal with our predicament by facing squarely the things that are really happening. It's not the End Of The World, but it IS the end of a certain way of running our civilization.

Remember the old Stages of Grief list? When people are facing a tragedy they tend to first deny it or get angry, then try to bargain or blame, but most eventually accept what's happening and can work through it. That's where we are with Climate Change and Peak Petroleum. Plenty of voices are loudly and angrily denying that anything's wrong- Sorry guys, the evidence is in; It is. Others are bargaining that energy conservation or ethanol or wind power will see us through the transition to pretty much the same habits but in a new style- Folks, I hate to tell you; The physics and agronomy just don't work. The thing is, we CAN work through this situation once we accept it. I'm serious. We can build a new kind of world- a very different one, but a better one.

In a recent group conversation with an African American activist friend, someone said, “You know, these two gorillas in the room are going to devour everything we've accomplished in the last fifty years.” Maybe it won't be quite that bad, but the concept is valid. ANY planning for the future, from ANY philosophy, faith or political party, has got to include the fact that “business as usual” for the last couple of centuries is OVER. Done. Finis. Kaput. “Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.”

What has this got to do with Local Foods? Simple- people have to eat, and we have to start preparing somewhere. The average pound of industrial food eaten by a North American travels thousands of miles, and consumes upward of five gallons of petroleum and similar amounts of water. That just isn't going to work with the southern ag states getting blizzards and hard freezes, or with gas prices expected to top $5 per gallon by late 2011. In about 2005, when gas was over $4/gallon, the grocery store in our little town ran out of many items because the supply trucks couldn't afford to stop there. At the fuel prices they're talking about in the next few years, there'll be stores in mid-sized towns and core urban neighborhoods running dry. That's bad enough even if there is industrial food being grown through the crazy weather- and it might not be.

My wife and I grow and sell fresh vegetables through the Minnesota winter, on the prairie where it's seventeen below Fahrenheit today, not counting the wind chill. We do it using very little energy. You can too. Other people have more great ideas like ours. We can do this. We have to roll up our sleeves, put on our thinking caps, and work together as communities.

That's what this blog is about. I'll get picky about some things, tell some stories, whine and cry a bit, pass on some news and sound some alarms. Not every posting will be obviously about Local Foods, but will be about the ideas behind what we need to do. We can do more than we think we can. I know. I have.

---Garden Goddess News: 01/22/11---

The first printing of our book, The Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual, is sold out. We're now offering emailed PDFs of the Manual for $10, or deluxe CDs of the Manual, my novel Phoenix, Minnesota, and an archive of construction photos for $15. If you're interested, contact us at info@gardengoddessenterprises.com

Calendar:
On Friday February 4^th, 2011 Chuck and Carol will be presenting at the Northern Plains Sustainable Ag conference in Fargo, ND (http://www.npsas.org/)
On Saturday, February 12, 2011 Chuck will be presenting at the Avon Hills Conference at St. John's University (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/lothe013/mnats/2011/01/feb-12-2011-living-the-avon-hi.html).