Novice farmers bloom in gardens
Posted on Sunday, September 7, 2008
MARBLE — For 25 years, Dripping Springs Garden has been cultivating farmers as well as cut flowers and organic fruits, vegetables and herbs.
The five-acre garden is along Dry Fork Creek at the end of a five-mile gravel road in southwestern Carroll County, a spot that is remote even by Ozarks standards. It has three apprentices who arrived in early April and will remain until mid-November, said Mark Cain, the coowner.
The apprentices provide much-needed garden labor, Cain said. In return, he and co-owner Michael Crane provide the interns with a weekly stipend, room and board, and training in all aspects of organic farming techniques, including seed propagation, greenhouse management, field preparation, irrigation and marketing. Dripping Springs grows more than 90 crops, so the interns learn about plants ranging from blueberries to culinary herbs and shiitake mushrooms.
“The internship offers a seamless web of work and learning,” said Ryan Norman, 22, of Fayetteville, a recent graduate of Hendrix College in Conway. Norman majored in English but became interested in organic agriculture by reading the works of Wendell Berry, a Kentucky writer and defender of agrarian values.
Dripping Springs offers excellent on-the-job training, Norman said late last month as he harvested shiitake mushrooms. “There’s a lot to know.”
Most of the garden’s produce is sold at the Fayetteville Farmers Market, but some is distributed regularly to shareholders in Dripping Springs’ community supported agriculture program. Norman said his parents, who participate in the program, have a good appreciation for what he has been doing this summer.
“They can taste the relevance. It’s not an abstraction,” he said.
Two of this year’s apprentices at Dripping Springs came to the garden through a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit group, Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture. Also known as MESA, the group was established in 1997 and has sponsored nearly 500 international farmers who have come to the United States on J-1 training visas. The apprentices have worked at more than 200 farms that practice organic or sustainable agriculture.
Sandra Figueroa, 25, came to Dripping Springs from Arequipa, Peru, where she worked for several years on a farm that produces culinary herbs for export. She was one of about 700 Peruvians who applied for the exchange’s apprenticeship; 18 candidates ultimately were selected, she said.
Figueroa said she looks forward to seeing and possibly working with Norman in Peru, which he hopes to visit after his apprenticeship ends.
Suleka Paula Hewage, 34, from Galle, Sri Lanka, has worked for seven years for the Sewa Lanka Foundation, a Sri Lankan nongovernmental organization involved in environmental projects. Hewage has taught a variety of classes in Sri Lanka, including composting and recycling. Four Sewa Lanka Foundation employees are current exchange apprentices, Hewage said. Lauren Augusta, the exchange’s founder and executive director, said her group is eager for its apprentices to adapt and apply what they learn. “We raise funds for participants to go back to their countries and start projects in their communities,” Augusta said.
LEARNING BY DOING Farm apprenticeships have become a common model for teaching organic or sustainable agriculture techniques, said Katherine Adam, a Fayettevillebased specialist with the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service. Formally known as ATTRA or Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas, the nonprofit service provides U. S. farmers and ranchers with free information about sustainable and organic agriculture.
The service defines sustainable agriculture as farming practices that are adapted to local conditions and use environmentally sound methods to conserve and enrich the soil, protect water quality, and encourage a diversity of plant and animal species.
Certified organic farms must operate in compliance with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program, which was implemented in October 2002. Certified organic farmers cannot use synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, antibiotics, hormones or genetically modified organisms. Instead of depending on nonrenewable resources commonly used by conventional farmers, organic producers rely on ecologically based practices such as biological pest management.
Adam moderates the online listing of sustainable farming internships and apprenticeships on the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service Web site, www. attrainternships. ncat. org, one of the most comprehensive sources for such opportunities.
“When I first took it over in March of 1989, there were 12 farms on the list nationwide, all nonprofit farm schools,” she said. Now more than 400 small farms — including Dripping Springs Garden — are listed on the site, Adam said.
“This list is always in the Top 10 of our 400 publications in terms of the number of people who view it,” she said. Foundation Farm and Farming School near Eureka Springs, which also appears on the online list, has five apprentices, said Patrice Gros, owner of the five-acre organic farm that is now in its third year of operation. “I was an apprentice to a master [farmer ] for a year-anda-half,” said Gros, who supports apprenticeship-style training. “There’s no other way. It’s not like you can go to a school and learn how to grow,” he said.
GROWING INTEREST Farm apprenticeships require a certain “philosophical commitment,” Cain said. “Otherwise, it’s just a lot of weeding.” Cain, a native of Gulfport, Miss., worked on a German dairy farm in the Alps during his junior year of college in the mid-1970 s. After graduating from the University of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in biology, he spent a year at the University of California at Santa Cruz, which had established an innovative student garden project in 1967.
Today, Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems offers a sixmonth apprenticeship in ecological horticulture, said Jonathon Landeck, the center’s assistant director. Topics covered include soil management, composting, pest control, crop planning, irrigation, farm equipment and marketing techniques.
“[Apprentices ] come here to get the kind of experiential training that you can’t get in a traditional university ag program,” Landeck said.
The United States has more than 60 organic farming associations, many of which run notices for interns in their newsletters, he said. Since 1971, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, a British nonprofit, also has linked people who want to volunteer on organic farms with people seeking help. Its Web site is www. wwoof. org.
Student-run organic farms are increasingly common at U. S. colleges and universities, Landeck said, with more than 60 nationwide. Some of the better known are at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N. C.; Michigan State University in East Lansing; and Washington State University in Pullman, he said.
Heather Friedrich, a horticulture technician at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said GroGreen, a student organic farm, was started three years ago at the university’s Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Fayetteville.
About 20 students participate, each tending a 20 foot by 20 foot plot and contributing a portion of their production for sale at Fayetteville Farmers Market in the Mill District location, Friedrich said. The market operates 4 to 7 p. m. on Thursdays, April through October. Market proceeds help pay for supplies such as seeds and mulch, she said.
“We have engineers, we have art students, we have ag students, so it’s a very cross-disciplinary membership,” Friedrich said.
TRAINING PLUS LAND Most people underestimate the amount of training necessary for new farmers to be successful, said Cain, the Dripping Springs co-owner. Will Newman, research and education director of the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust in Canby, Ore., agrees. “You can’t be stupid and farm,” Newman said. “Farming is a very tricky business; it takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of work.” Apprenticeships are the ideal way to learn such a complex subject, Newman said. “You really need to be on a farm to learn how to farm,” but training alone can’t ensure success, he said. Access to land is another critically important factor for farmers, Newman said. Because small-farm mortgages are difficult to obtain, Newman’s organization seeks donations of land for use by farmers. The Oregon trust owns four parcels, each less than 20 acres, that are under cultivation, he said.
“We don’t have any trouble finding people who want to farm. We could staff 50 farms tomorrow if we had the land,” Newman said.
Creating the next generation of farmers also is a concern of Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute in Sebastopol, Calif.
Heinberg believes that modern industrial agriculture — which relies on farm machinery, irrigation, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers — is particularly vulnerable.
“We’ve created a form of agriculture that was perfectly suited to the 20 th century with cheap fossil fuel, but I’m afraid it’s going to be a catastrophe in the 21 st century,” he said.
The United States should begin now to train more farmers in small-scale, sustainable agriculture, Heinberg said.
“Even if the resource optimists are right, and we have another 20 years before global oil production goes into its terminal decline, we should be beginning that transition now. And, of course, if the resource pessimists are right, and we don’t have 20 years, then we should be doing this with all possible haste,” he said.
“You have to wonder, who’s going to be growing our food 10 years from now ?”
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