Organic Farmers Can Feed the World!

It just takes a little time and organization. The key is to pay attention to your soil and ensure it is getting the nutrients, care and treatment that it needs. When you can do this, you create an ecosystem that will allow for easier work in the fields and higher yields.
It is true that current farming techniques lead to high yields, but we have to question at what cost. Our farmer friends stated after last year’s harvest they saw the best numbers in the history of farming; the same statement they made the year before thinking they couldn’t top those numbers. Piatt County has been the leader in the state for corn and soybean yields for many years. In 1994, Illinois average corn yields per acre were 156 bushels. Last year the average was 220.5 bushels. (www.nass.usda.gov) With this kind of data, it’s no wonder we can’t understand how organic farming can replace current farming techniques in order to feed the world.

Let’s take a look at Punjab, India who struggled to feed its people after a devastating drought in the 1960s. A new variety of wheat producing high yields was introduced to them and their people no longer had the threat of starvation. According to an article titled “The Global Food Crisis” (2009) written by Joel K Bourne (National Geographic) after the introduction of the new technique, “They could produce grain like no other wheat ever seen—as long as there was plenty of water and synthetic fertilizer and little competition from weeds or insects. To that end, the Indian government subsidized canals, fertilizer, and the drilling of tube wells for irrigation and gave farmers free electricity to pump the water. The new wheat varieties quickly spread throughout Asia, changing the traditional farming practices of millions of farmers, and were soon followed by new strains of “miracle” rice. The new crops matured faster and enabled farmers to grow two crops a year instead of one. Today a double crop of wheat, rice, or cotton is the norm in Punjab, which, with neighboring Haryana, recently supplied more than 90 percent of the wheat needed by grain-deficient states in India.” All good, right? Unfortunately, today yield growth has flattened, over-irrigation has led to a steep decline in their water source, and thousands of acres of land have been ruined and left nutrient deficient. Not only are they not able to farm their land anymore, their people are dying from pesticide use and are in debt due to the high costs associated with mechanized farming.

You may recall from a previous blog what Farmer Dave of PrariErth Farms in rural Atlanta, Illinois shared with us during our visit. He showed us one field that was flooded by a nearby creek during heavy rains last summer. Even though his crops were under water, they survived. He attributed it to organic farming practices and paying close attention to replenishing nutrients in his soils. If you take care of your soil, it will continue to provide for years and years to come and will be able to tolerate drought or flood.

We took that advice and have been busy applying it at Clean Acres. This past month we’ve added a spring cover crop of a hairy vetch, pea and oat mix to an acre of land. This fall we will mow it under and plant a fall cover crop of hairy vetch on top and let it overwinter. The cover crops will add up to 8,000 pounds of organic matter to our soil, will out-compete weeds and will fix nitrogen in the soil. According to cropnutrition.com, “Nitrogen is so vital because it is a major component of chlorophyll, the compound by which plants use sunlight energy to produce sugars from water and carbon dioxide (i.e., photosynthesis). It is also a major component of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Without proteins, plants wither and die. Some proteins act as structural units in plant cells while others act as enzymes, making possible many of the biochemical reactions on which life is based. Nitrogen is a component of energy-transfer compounds, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP allows cells to conserve and use the energy released in metabolism. Finally, nitrogen is a significant component of nucleic acids such as DNA, the genetic material that allows cells (and eventually whole plants) to grow and reproduce. Without nitrogen, there would be no life as we know it.”

We’ve also been adding fish emulsion to our soils. Fish emulsion is an organic farming method that has been around since civilizations have been farming. It is a non-burning fertilization method and will help replenish and rebuild the soil.

After we found some cucumber beetles and grubs, we decided to apply beneficial nematodes. Beneficial nematodes are a worm that naturally lives in soils, but organic gardeners can add them directly and increase their population when a problem occurs. Beneficial nematodes kill up to 230 pests. While it takes 2-3 weeks for them to take effect, we’ve already seen a decline in the number of cucumber beetles and the zucchini have doubled in size in the last week and half in appreciation of it!

Just by paying attention to the microscopic and macroscopic life of the soil, we will be able to create an ecosystem that will be sustainable.

In such a small operation, it’s vital for us to put the time and labor into making our soils work for us now so that our job can be easier in the future.

In addition to paying attention to our soil, we are now managing over 5,000 plants and have been keeping busy succession planting, weeding, harvesting, and supplying for our investors each week. To give you an idea of time, this area alone took us 20 hours to weed and is about 1/10th of the ground we are managing. We are looking forward to future years when the weed wars will become less tedious and our soil will be a sustainable, nutrient filled ecosystem!

Submitted by Tabitha Elder

Farmers Brianne Santoli and Tabitha Elder are Central Illinois residents and managers of Clean Acres Produce. Follow their journey of starting a Community Supported Agriculture program in the chemical free fresh food desert of rural Piatt County at http://www.cleanacresproduce.org, http://www.facebook.com/cleanacresproduce or @CleanAcres.

Before and after pictures: 20 hours of weeding:

White Ducks Can’t Jump

Or at least we don’t think they can. It was 7:30 or so Saturday morning and we met at one of our plot locations to start the task list for the day.  First up on the agenda…placing newspaper and then straw down between the rows.  The newspaper and straw method allows us to walk in the gardens when wet, keeps the soil moist after a rain, and kills weeds saving us a lot of time in our organic field.  Additionally, it has been raining quite a bit lately which is great for the garden.  Plants love rain water but weeds do too so we needed to get to this ASAP, making it first on the to-do list.  We would haul a load of 3 or 4 bales from the barn to the plot and then start chipping away at the 4,200 square foot garden.  After laying about 350 feet of newspaper and straw, our backs and knees needed a break so we sat at the edge of the garden, observing our work.  As we sat there, the flock was behind us pecking away at the bales eating whatever bugs they could find.  There’s a dark Muscovy, a white American Pekin duck, and a rooster.  All of a sudden the Muscovy stretches his wings out and jumps up onto the bale of straw.  It was the funniest thing to see a duck jump the same distance in the air as he is tall.

“That duck can jump!” said Bri. “Bet that white one can’t though,” we chuckled joking that white ducks can’t jump.

After a good laugh it was time to get back to work. It was going to be a nice weekend and we have to use that time to our advantage since we both work full-time and are the only two working on our CSA.  Farming an organic CSA is a lot of fun and a lot of work.  Helping those in Central Illinois have easier and cheaper access to organic produce is our passion and motivation and keeps us going.  Here’s some insight into the energy that went into Clean Acres CSA this past weekend to weekend.

You might remember from our last post that we planned to put 1,200 plants in the ground. Each weekend is loaded with so many tasks it’s hard to figure out where to start and of course, we always come across some things that need done that we had forgotten about.  For example, we realized we had some organic onion bulbs left that needed to go into the ground and some organic potatoes that were sprouted and ready to plant.  So….we thought we had better get to that before it’s too late.  Also, we had originally created the to-do list thinking the soil temp was too low for corn and beans however, we found out it was the ideal temp to plant.  You can see where this is going.  We ended up planting more than the planned 1,200 seeds and starts bringing our total to 2,360 in the ground from weekend to weekend.  It was busy but very productive.  We’ve been working pretty much from sunrise to beyond sunset every day making our CSA and full time job commitments, maintaining 3,027 plants in the ground and another few hundred pepper and tomato starts that we will plant soon.

Now we just need a little rain! Last night’s weather report said rain and it never rained, so it’s hard to tell if the forecast is going to be right or not.  Husband David who coaches track called a bit ago to say their meet was cancelled due to a storm.  They had tried to wait it out but as the storm produced hail and intensified, he called to warn me it’s heading our way.  Let’s hope our tiny plants survived!  Tune in next week to see.

Submitted by Tabitha Elder Tabitha is a Central Illinois resident and co-owner of Clean Acres Produce.  Follow their journey of starting a Community Supported Agriculture program in the chemical free fresh food desert of rural Piatt County at www.cleanacresproduce.org, www.facebook.com/cleanacresproduce or @CleanAcres.  

Clean Acres is the Place to Be!

Now if we could just find a pig like Arnold from Green Acres who attends school, can skate, read, and write and speaks several languages, we would really be the place to be!

Instead of a “talented” pig we’ve got six cats, a dog, two ducks, and one rooster between our properties and they are all very curious and sometimes even attempt to “help” when we are out taking care of our checklist.

Checklist for last week included:

• Plant carrots.
• String garden plot for square foot planting plan.
• Fix gaps in rabbit fence.
• Plant all broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage starts in the ground.
• Place garden quilt over plants for pest disease prevention.
• Mail member agreements.
• Figure out transition plan for acre from traditional corn and soybean to chemical-free.
• Find and purchase recycled food-grade 55 gallon barrels for rain harvesting.
• Re-check our plant start totals. Make sure we’ve got enough to keep successions going.
• Work on recipes to go with produce.
• Start more trap crop seeds.
• Stake tomato plants/transplant in larger containers.
• Build tomato cages.

As we attempted to check the list off, our first “Green Acres”-like mishap occurred last Monday evening. I took some time to fix the rabbit fence and gather as many large coffee cans I could find in preparation for the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage planting the next day.  Sundown was approaching and as I was about to string the garden I realized it was still too wet.  I frantically messaged Bri.  “We’ve got a problem.  The garden is still too wet over here so we aren’t going to be able to plant tomorrow.”  It was going to rain that next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and we were already a few weeks behind schedule getting them in the ground.  We are also working around our full-time jobs so timing is really important and when the weather doesn’t cooperate we have to figure it out.  Bri realized we were going to need to change the farm map around.  This is no easy task!  If we were to print it out, the darn thing would probably be a four foot by four foot poster.  Using an excel doc she has everything documented by earliest date we can plant, number of plants per square foot, and each succession noted for 25+ varieties of vegetables….that’s a lot of excel doc columns!  If we were on the set of Green Acres, you can imagine how red-in-the-face Oliver Wendell Douglas would be at this last minute change with his farm plan!  Later that night she was able to move the beans from one plot to another so that the cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage can be planted the next day as scheduled.  Crisis averted!

The next day we were in a hurry to beat sundown trying to plant 83 cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and we hear “Bagawaak!” and a really loud “flap, flap, flap,” and see this giant bird coming over the fence. Harry the rooster had decided he would fly over the fence into where we were planting.  “Get out of here Harry!” Bri yelled running after him.  As she slowly inched toward him and gets close enough to catch him Harry sees her and runs away just in time.  This goes on for a minute or two and after a “gen-yew-wine” farm game of chase the rooster, we were eventually able to corner him.  Bri quickly grabbed him by the feet and put him on the other side of the fence.  Thanks for trying to help, Harry, but we have work to do!

Our last “Green Acres”-like story happened on Saturday. We found food-grade plastic barrels for $5 each from a local recycling center that we are going to make into rain barrels.  Actually, Bri’s boyfriend Andy is going to make them for us….thank you, Andy!  Anyhow, I had to work so Bri made the drive over to Danville to pick them up in her new Jeep.  Soon after I get a message that they were from Quaker, needed to be cleaned and still had a little bit of chocolate and coconut in them and they smelled amazing!  The excitement of making rain barrels out of recycled materials eventually fizzled when we opened the back hatch to find that amazing smelling coconut had leaked out all over her new car on the drive home.

We put over 1,200 new plants and seeds in the ground this weekend and have more to do this week. Now that sounds like a recipe for some Clean Acres mishaps!  Tune in next week to see how it went.

Submitted by Tabitha Elder Tabitha is a Central Illinois resident and co-owner of Clean Acres Produce.  Follow their journey of starting a Community Supported Agriculture program in the chemical free fresh food desert of rural Piatt County at www.cleanacresproduce.org, www.facebook.com/cleanacresproduce or @CleanAcres.