Buying from local sustainable farms ensures healthy Midwestern communities
America’s breadbasket. America’s dairyland. The corn belt. Heartland.
These familiar phrases gloss over the difficulty of bringing a harvest to market in the Midwest. To put nutritious, delicious foods in your hands, sustainable farmers like Jack Hedin dig deeper than simple passion. The work includes building and sustaining the land for generations to come.
Recently I took a visit to Jack’s farm – Featherstone Fruits & Vegetables near Rushford, MN – with one of PFC’s produce managers, Kathy Smith. Along with 70 produce buyers from the region, we were invited to look inside the operation, to learn how one small farm is managing its production and to learn why local organic agriculture in the Midwest takes much more than determination. Jack identifies a “triple premium” which reflects pillars of local, organic, and ethical transparency in this approach to farming. Featherstone Farm seeds first went into the ground in 1995.
With vision, ingenuity, and a bit of good luck it now has 250 acres under management and sells to CSA customers andwholesale customers in Rochester, La Crosse, Twin Cities and Chicago. That may seem like a large-scale farm, but the challenges facing Featherstone are more like any grower around here than like massive operations elsewhere.
Most of the produce you see in a typical grocery store is grown in the dry climates of California and Mexico, where water conditions are carefully titrated, and plants can be protected from dampness issues like disease and discoloration. Growers in the Midwest take important, expensive measures to buffer against the issues that come with rainfall.
For Jack’s farm, that means high tunnels, raised beds, miles of mulch, and far fewer planting days than its global competitors. These add a base layer of extra costs.
Next layer of cost: the annual operations expenses that come with land rental. For many farmers in the US, access to land ownership is a serious barrier to cost-effective market pricing. Land access issues are complicated, highlighting deep inequity in a system favoring consolidation and commercial zoning. Land access is key to increasing economic justice in our rural communities.
Next layer: the general public’s expectations of picture-perfect fruits and vegetables. Unlike the bred-for-shipping-not-flavor varieties brought in from elsewhere, a superb local vegetable might go to waste when it doesn’t look as beautiful as its neighbor in the produce display. The waste adds to the farm’s cost of production.
Next layer: paying workers a fair wage, and maintaining a knowledgeable, long-term, seasonal workforce. Featherstone Farm is committed to fair wages and benefits for its workers.
Next layer: a commitment to organic practices. Though infrastructure for organic agriculture is stable, crop insurance reform would reduce costs for farmers using soil health and conservation practices.
What does this add up to? That maintaining organic agriculture in our region takes investment, and it’s worth it.
The kale and melons Kathy brings us from Featherstone Farms will never be the same price as California produce, and they shouldn’t be. The cost is what it takes to invest in quality soil, in good jobs and in food security for you and for your family. Whether or not we choose to be active in it, we are each part of the food system. Our actions can make that system stronger. We should invest in it by buying locally grown food at prices which ensure independent, transparent, and sustainable agriculture.
Our deep gratitude to Featherstone Farm for 25 years of leadership in sustainable farming. It is just one among many one-to-one relationships we are honored to have with producers in the region. When we buy from these farms, you get nutritious delicious food grown right here, while ensuring future generations have an opportunity for clean water, nutritious soil and healthy communities.
-Lizzy Haywood, CEO