Farm Philosophy & Practice

Details of my farming system in this article are Circa 2019. In the time since I have moved the farm and am transitioning away from tillage to low- and no-till methods.

Backstory

I first arrived at my current occupation through a belief that food was the best available tool for connecting people to an idea and vision of sustainability. Food is essential for human life and pivotal to our experience of culture and community. Agriculture is one of our indelible connections to the land, being neither completely natural nor human-made. Food or its absence has the capacity to demonstrate either incredible abundance or scarcity. And food production is inherently tangible. A rare thing in modern society.

It is best to start with the basics. My aim is to produce sustainable vegetables, with no regrets. I don’t want to regret the foods the I put into my body or sell to my customers. I don’t want to regret my relationship to the land nor the hours that I spent indoors. I want to work through my farm to build a world that I can be proud of and a product that I can be proud of.

Sustainability

It is said that sustainability is like a three-legged stool that needs to balance considerations of environmental longevity with social responsibility and economic viability (three pillars). For a farm, even a very small one, these are all pressing concerns.

In the agricultural sector, social sustainability is often the most challenging pillar to achieve. Conventional agriculture and food systems often takes advantage of farm owners, farm laborers or both. Why? Two of the most obvious issues are the low price of food and reliance on either interns, immigrants or temporary laborers to do the work. Small farms have an opportunity to work around these issues, but just being small is no guarantee that you are providing equitable compensation and security for the efforts of either the farmer or farm workers.

For the time being, my farm consists of just one person. Me. So I do not yet have to worry about how to fairly compensate my employees while providing enough for myself. To ensure my own livelihood, I work a second job that gives me excellent health insurance and enough money to support myself. This job also gave me the nest egg necessary to get the farm off the ground. For now, the farm supports itself. In time, I hope it will support me as well. This is where social and economic sustainability entwine.

There is also the issue of pricing. How price affects my ability to make a living, to keep farming. And how price affects access of those with little money to delicious, nutritious vegetables. My prices also affect the ability of other farmers to make a living. We do other farmers no favors when we undercut the prices of those around us. And so, we see that it is a balance between the needs of my peers, my customers and myself. For now, my approach is simple. I try to stay on the lower end of prices set by more experienced farmers in similar markets. As I go into my second year, I am also tracking my time more carefully, to measure my costs of production for specific crops. Moving forward, these calculations will increasingly influence my prices.

When it comes to environmental sustainability small farming lights the way. We are developing slick new tools, better work flows and stronger markets. But there is no way to avoid the fact that farming sustainably and providing livelihoods is a manual labor of love. This can’t mean that we break our backs to put veggies on the table, but we will be out there every day working smart to get the job done.

How do I understand environmental sustainability in the context of global agriculture and Thousand Furrows Farm?

It was not long ago that humans feared nature, and with good reason. The elements are harsh without modern utilities and mistakes were often fatal without the medical care we now take for granted. As civilizations gained the power to do so, they began to lord over nature. To make it submit to their will. We do so to this day and in this aim we are astonishingly effective. For some time, this proceeded happily enough. There were fewer humans and nature was still strong.

But stump by stump, plowshare by plowshare we have cleared the land. I will not burden you with the statistics, but they are damnable and difficult to comprehend. Wild nature is just a fraction of what it once was. And there is no doubt that agriculture has played a large role in the destruction of the natural world. To this day we clear the rainforests of Brazil to make way for soy production and the cloud forests of Indonesia for palm oil. Nature continues to dwindle, taking rhinos, tigers and countless smaller creatures with it as it goes. Conversion of the land from its natural state (i.e. the physical destruction of habitat) is almost certainly agricultures largest environmental impact.

My farm is in Troutdale Oregon. This land was likely cleared in the 1800s along with so much of the land in the Willamette Valley. The original act of destruction has passed. It is important that we put this land to use, producing the essentials of human life in hopes that some untouched lands elsewhere will be spared. We should build up the quilt of the American agricultural landscape producing as much as we can in as little space as possible. This is one virtue of the burgeoning small farms movement. Through intensive cropping, close spacing and multiple plantings per year, we have the capacity to produce more food per acre than is yielded in conventional, large scale agricultural systems. Ideally, we can do this with less waste as well.

At bottom, sustainable agriculture is about producing what the land is able to sustain, and to do so indefinitely. The history of American agriculture is the history of the plow and the slow consumption of the soil by carrying off nutrients in the form of food and through the oxidation of soil carbon and other volatile nutrients as soils are repeatedly tilled and subjected to the consumptive powers of a soil biology made ravenous by exposure to the air. This pattern cannot continue.

The Soil

How do I care for the soil and build its physical, chemical and biological components in a way that promotes indefinite production? I do till my soil, but I aim to reduce this tillage as much as possible and to make each tilling less aggressive. This way I can accomplish what I need to while protecting the soil.

For primary tillage I use a spader, which does a great job of incorporating cover crops while avoiding the pulverization of soil and allowing it to maintain a high degree of aggregation (structure). Secondary tillage, when necessary, is done with a rotary harrow run shallowly (2-3”) to mix in amendments, kill sprouting weeds and create a fine seed bed in one pass. A considerable expansion of my use of tarps would be required to eliminate the need for tillage if I hope to continue cover cropping. At this point I prefer to grow my own soil carbon and maintain a tillage-based cropping system as opposed to alternative systems that rely on purchased compost and less cover crops. So long as my soil structure remains intact and soil organic matter levels are building over time, I am achieving my goals.

Benefits of Tilling and Cultivation:

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Termination of cover crops;
Seed bed preparation;
Weed control;
Increasing soil temperature in spring;
Promoting soil drying in spring;
Promoting the incorporation and break-down of organic matter;
Incorporating soil amendments.

To monitor the health of my soils I perform annual soil tests looking at both macro- and micronutrient availability. Using the ideal soils method, I add mineral and animal-based inputs to the soil to provide balanced nutrition to my plants. All the inputs I use are certified by OMRI or State certifying bodies for use in organic agriculture. My belief is that fully mineralized soils yield healthy plants that are more nutritious and less susceptible to pests. Typically, these are mined products (zinc sulfate, agricultural lime, boron, etc.) or by-products of industrial agricultural systems (feather meal for Nitrogen). I believe this is a necessary evil. Either you mine the soil or you mine elsewhere. It is more sustainable to mine in concentrated locations and build the health of our soils than it is to slowly deplete global agricultural soils, diminishing the health of our food supply and ultimately the health of our people. I hope that in the long-run a robust, farm based composting system can eliminate the need for many of these inputs.

Cover cropping too provides a share of the nutrients I need by fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere, pulling up nutrients from deep in the sub-soil and even breaking down rock itself through the action of weak acids exuded from plant roots. Cover crops also fix carbon from the atmosphere, and when mowed down and tilled, this carbon enters the soil. There a portion of it goes to feeds the life of the soil and a small fraction eventually makes its way into recalcitrant soil humus that stores carbon over long periods of time and provides binding sites for essential minerals. Humus acts like a battery of plant accessible nutrients. As plants remove these nutrients from the soil solution, humus lets go of some of its stock to maintain the necessary balance. The list of benefits from cover cropping is a long one.

Benefits of Cover Cropping:

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Build soil carbon (fight climate change);
Fix nitrogen;
Hold the soil in place. Protect against erosion; 
Prevent the leaching of nutrients;
Feed soil organisms;
Draw up nutrients from the subsoil;
Create soil structure through the exudation of soil glues and the formation of passages as roots grow and die;
Outcompete and smother weeds;
Contribute to humus formation;
Increase water holding capacity;
Increase nutrient holding capacity;
Break up compacted soils;
Attract beneficial insects;
Facilitate rotation of crops;
In college, my soil science professor used to say. “What’s the question? It doesn’t matter. The answer is to add organic matter.” How do we do that? Plant cover crops.

This leads me to a second major environmental impact of global agriculture, its contribution to anthropogenic climate change. The majority of this impact has come through the historical and systematic reduction of soil organic matter levels through destructive tillage practices and agricultural soil mining (i.e. the transfer of carbon from the soil (and from native vegetation) to the atmosphere). Organic matter levels in my soils are between 4% and 8%. Nationally, soil organic matter levels are well below 2% and dropping. Sequestration of carbon in soils is one of the only ‘natural’ means of carbon storage, and if we hope to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change we must begin pumping carbon into every acre of global agricultural soils.

Almost everyone knows about the importance and severity of climate change. We understand what contributes to the problem, and technically speaking we know how to solve it. Our issue is one of behavior and policy.

Nutrient Management

Believe it or not, imbalances in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles may actually be more acute issues than those of climate change. And sadly, they involve agriculture as well. For those who aren’t aware, nitrogen and phosphorus are two of four plant macronutrients that are essential to the growth and development of healthy plants (N,P,K,Ca). Phosphorus is mined for use in agricultural systems, while nitrogen is most often chemically fixed from the atmosphere via an energy intensive industrial process. In the case of both nutrients, global agricultural systems are speeding up the cycling of these elements pumping them onto agricultural soils in vast quantities. Often using wasteful practices. From here a large percentage of these nutrients make their way into freshwater systems via leaching and erosion.

In inland waterways (i.e. freshwater), phosphorus is most often the limiting nutrient for algal growth. Systems of crop and animal agriculture have mobilized these nutrients spurring algal growth and a subsequent decline of freshwater ecosystems through changes in available oxygen, light, temperature and trophic structure. In marine ecosystems (saltwater) nitrogen is often the limiting nutrient, leading to similar effects in ocean environments. In situations of extreme imbalance (excess N & P), this can lead to hypoxia (lack of oxygen) and the creation of dead zones where no life is sustained.

Several practices work together on Thousand Furrows Farm to limit my contribution to this issue. First, and most importantly, I apply limited quantities of nitrogen fertilizer based on the results of my soil tests. Cover crops and feather meal are my two primary nitrogen sources. Pelletized feather meal provides a slow release source of nitrogen that helps mitigate problems of soil leaching. Cover crops planted in the fall capture available nitrogen in the soil solution as we head into winter, when rain is plentiful, limiting the potential for soil leaching. Nitrogen is re-released the following growing season when cover crops are incorporated into the soil. Additionally, my farmland is located in an upland region high above freshwater bodies. This limits the potential for nitrogen to make its way into freshwater ecosystems due to the large distance that nitrogen will need to travel through the soil before reaching surface water resources. Due to the volcanic nature of our Western soils, we are naturally flush with Phosphorus. The slow weathering of our soils is sufficient to maintain what I need to grow my plants and no phosphorus-based fertilizers are applied.

Water Use

Freshwater consumption is another environmental challenge that looms large over the farming community. Vegetables need water to stand upright and mobilize nutrients within the soil. Agriculture is the largest consumer of freshwater in the U.S. vastly exceeding the consumptive use of households and industry. In certain regions of the country this is a pressing issue as groundwater levels drop and climate change threatens to alter historical patterns of precipitation and increase global temperatures.

Thousand Furrows Farm uses municipal water provided by the Corbett Water District. I pay municipal rates for this water and have every incentive to use it efficiently. All of my crops are watered using drip irrigation systems, and not a drop is spared. This season I will be using tensiometers to monitor soil moisture levels at 6” and 18” depths to more accurately target the need for and timing of irrigation events. We are also blessed with plentiful rain in the Pacific Northwest and our prospects look good for the future.

Inputs

On the issue of pesticides. I am not opposed to the use of organically certified pesticides, but as yet this has not been required. Our produce is pesticide free. 100% pure plant. Finally, there is the issue of consumable goods: gasoline, electricity, tarps, landscape fabric, tools, etc. When it comes to farming, the use of such inputs has far less importance on a global scale than do issues of land use change, nutrient mobilization and water consumption. We should focus on the big problems first, and to the extent that we can use inputs to maintain soil health and minimize waste of water and nutrients, we should. Every input on my farm is justified by some aspect of economic, social or environmental sustainability that I deem to be of greater value. Silage tarp (plastic) is used to minimize tillage and cultivation (environmental benefit), minimize my human labor (social and economic benefit) and allow earlier planting (increased output). Gasoline consumption is necessary to get me to the farm and my veggies to the market. Every purchasing decision is made deliberately with the three pillars in mind.

We live in a small world stuffed full with humans. And sustainability is at best a work in progress. Even on my small plot of land this holds true as I grapple with hopes of reducing my reliance on fossil fuels and other consumable inputs. As I aim to incorporate more perennials and flowering plants into my agricultural system. And as I seek to provide a more solid economic foundation for myself.

It has been over a decade now, but I still believe that food has the capacity to connect us more solidly to the land beneath our feet, to key us in to the mysterious ways of nature and to show us a path forwards.

These ideas are the core of why I farm. Supporting Thousand Furrows Farms supports myself and these ideals. I hope you will.