Harvesting a living
WINCHESTER, N.H. — Jenny Wooster is tending to a tray of cabbage seedlings, careful to make sure they have enough room to spread. Crowding means competition for light and moisture, and the risk of premature death.
She finishes when the delicate sprouts are evenly spaced, poking their tiny heart-shaped leaves through the soil. They’re safe. For now.
In a few weeks they’ll be transplanted from the temperature-controlled greenhouse to the fields of Picadilly Farm where new dangers — weather, animals, disease — threaten their growth and the livelihood of Jenny and her husband, Bruce.
If all goes well, those cabbages will earn $1 a head. The sweet potatoes, $2 a pound. Carrots, $1.50 a bunch. And crop by crop, the Woosters will start paying back the $560,000 they borrowed from friends, family and the federal government to start this 71-acre vegetable farm last year just over the Massachusetts state line.
“It’s pretty scary when you measure your income in quarters and your outgoing expenses are in the thousands of dollars,” said Jenny, 36.
It’s a risk few are taking as the costs of land, fuel and equipment increase.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t keep track of how many farms start each year, and many of those going into business are doing so with plans that don’t rely on a traditional wholesale market.
Dairy farmers have found success making artisan cheese rather than simply selling milk. Others have lured customers to their farms with tractor rides, restaurants and gift shops that sell raw produce along with crops that have been processed into jams, pickles and relishes.
And some new farmers, like the Woosters, have modeled their businesses on community supported agriculture programs which rely on customers who pay a fixed price at the start of the season in return for a certain amount of produce.
But the startup farms are clearly outpaced by those going out of business. And the decreasing number of smaller farms could have an impact on the nation’s food supply.
Fewer local farms could lead to a lack of diversity in available crops, a hit to rural economies and a more vulnerable supply as dependence grows on large centralized farms that transport their harvests across the country.
“I wouldn’t say there is a disaster looming,” said Jerry DeWitt, director of Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. “But if there’s just one big problem on a huge farm — whether it’s something like bad weather or terrorism — that could have a dramatic, dramatic impact on the rest of the food system.”
Between 2005 and 2006, the number of farms in America dropped by 9,000. Currently, there are just more than 2 million farms, 160,000 fewer than there were 20 years ago, according to the USDA.
“Kids who grow up on a farm are being encouraged to leave and make money elsewhere,” said Judith Gillan, director of the Belchertown, Mass.-based New England Small Farm Institute, which provides workshops and assistance for people thinking about starting a farming business.
“The idea that a farm in itself could provide a sufficient income for a family is rarely a reality,” Gillan said. “But it can happen.”
And the Woosters are betting all they have that it will.
Why?
“Farming is very here and now and the results are right in front of you all the time,” Bruce said as he watered trays of onions, shallots and leeks in the greenhouse. “You depend on the food, and your community depends on the food.”