Sustainable/Organic agricultures hobby image

Greg & Lei Gunthorp (hey4hogs@kuntrynet.com)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 08:58:41 -0500

I promised to post this story a while back so here goes. Lei and I
served on the Indiana Farm Bureau State Young Farmer Committee. The
committee puts on a Leadership conference every January. Being on the
committee, I decided that we should have some type of sustainable ag
program as one of the break out sessions at the conference. There are
normally about 5-7 break out topics each year. Last January, I got Steve
Bonney, President of Sustainable Earth, to come and talk. I had tried for
three years and finally succeeded. It was a good thing because it was our
last year on the committee. His topic was Farm Profitability Strategies.
He gave an excellent presentation. He talked briefly about increasing
marketing margins, increased input costs, decreasing farm numbers and then
shared how sustainable farmers are doing things to decrease input costs and
increase their market price. I shouldn't have mentioned briefly because
the presentation was 90 minutes. It was a good presentation explaining the
need then the practical issues around sustainable agriculture. I thought
he did a good job of presenting the issues in a manner to not offend a Farm
Bureau Crowd. (He did better than I would have but I guess we are trying
to make friends not enemies.) There apparently were others that felt the
same way because quite a few came up to talk with him after the
presentation, including one of the members of the State Farm Bureau board
of directors who is now processing organic beans. I didn't even know we
had FB board members growing and processing organic crops.

The ironic part of the whole story is I have a good friend who is still on
the state young farmer committee who was talking to some very "large"
farmers after the presentation. They were apparently upset because one of
the things Steve was talking about was watering vegetables and the
possibility of farm ponds for this need. Well, that didn't set well to a
12,000 acre crop farmer who thought he would need a reservoir the size of
the Ohio River to irrigate out of. I think he missed the point. This
friend of mine, who didn't attend the session, decided that we should have
labelled the session strategies for hobby farms instead of strategies for
farm profitability. That is very ironic for two reasons. The first is
that Steve used examples of farms that are supporting families and his
whole talk was centered around ways to get started farming and ways to quit
the off farm job! He talked about a grass dairy that supports two
families, a CSA that supports a family, organic crop farms, etc. And the
second reason it was ironic was my friend asked in the same phone call who
he should talk with to find out the regulations to set up a retail pork
store. Steve covered how to find out about regulations that need to be
considered when attempting to move closer to consumers. Perhaps, if he
attended the session he would have found the answers to his questions and
seen that sustainable agriculture, at least in Indiana, is very concerned
about our ability to support families. I gave him Steve Bonney's phone
number as the best source of information on regulations in food
processing/retail anyhow. Regulations are a serious marketing concern,
especially in the livestock industry, and Steve did an excellent job of
covering that.

I think all of this brings up one point to me. One of the largest reasons
sustainable agriculture is not taken seriously is we have a hobby farm
mentality. What can we do to get rid of that stereotype?

Best wishes,
Greg
Gunthorp's Pasture-ized Pork
LaGrange, Indiana
visit our farm at www.grassfarmer.com

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