Tag Archives: sustainability

The Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture and the Ag Funding Freezes

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When I moved back to Pennsylvania to start the farm at the end of 2012, I became a member of the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture. Their work includes research in sustainability practices like soil health, food safety training, farm policy advocacy, farmer education, direct support for new farmers, climate smart initiatives, and financial benchmark studies. They’ve been a vital resource for bringing new and beginning farmers from all walks of life into the business of farming, and they continue to offer resources to continuing farmers based on years of data-driven research. Their conferences are a yearly opportunity for farmers to gather and share resources, and I have met and made so many industry friends there in the last 13 years who are committed to feeding the region. Crooked Row would not be what it is today without their resources, community, and mentorship over the years.

We were working with them on some programs heading into this season that may or may not exist now – and we are going to be okay – but there are other farmers in the region have been left without funds they were expecting for this season, and PASA is going on over 40 days without access to promised funds. They are going to have to start furloughing many of their staff. If you are involved in your local food footprint, this is affecting folks you know.

I know how uncomfortable it can be to voice a concern with a legislator – but I had a really earnest conversation with someone in Senator McCormick’s office a couple weeks back, someone who wanted to know how Pennsylvanians and local growers were being impacted by the “unintended consequences of some of these freezes,” – and it reminded me how essential it is to share this sort of direct news with the folks around us. It’s hard to pick up the pen or the phone, but it’s important.

The link here offers some guidance on who to call and what to say, if you are interested, and it also provides a link to donate directly to PASA if you are moved to do so.

I hope you all have a beautiful day.

Some Notes on Pennsylvania, Farming, and Making the Calls

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I called my legislators for the first time this week.

It made me squirm, and it made me nervous, and it took me a couple of tries to actually leave the messages.

It also didn’t give me that good dopamine hit I get from a response to the newsletter or a positive review – this felt more like brushing my teeth or doing a load of laundry. It’s another weekly task to complete as part of adulthood, another facet of growing up.

Why call? https://5calls.org/why-calling-works/

I spent a week tinkering with my own words to say, but there are a lot of scripts out there you can read and edit to fit your particular concerns.

And, yes. Many American farmers and farm-support related agencies are worried and already hurting.

While some funds have been released, others have been cut and abruptly, as well as the staff related to them. A number of Climate Smart contracts I was implementing for the farm season were voided this afternoon. I’ll be okay – my projects were small and my outlays so far hadn’t yet hit a four-digit number – but there are people that you know and buy food from who are going to be gutted by this.

Pennsylvania ranks in the top five states in terms of number or organic farming operations, and we are second only to California in terms of the number of farms (and I mean all farms, not limited to organic farms) that sell directly to customers – at farm stands, through CSA programs, at farmers’ markets, and through other direct market outlets. It’s a pretty amazing statistic, and perhaps you can see why so many folks right here are expressing concern right now within the industry and as eaters.

-The National Young Farmers Coalition is asking farmers to share their stories about how these impacts will affect their farm here.

-The National Farmers Union sent out an email asking farmers and ranchers to share any personal anecdotes about how various agricultural funding freezes are affecting their farms. Their D.C. number is 202-554-1600. They are looking to know if:

  • A now-frozen federal program directly benefited you, your operation, or your community
  • You or someone you know was a federal employee who was fired, or you have struggled to access federal services because staff members providing the services were fired
  • You or someone you know are in financial distress after funding was frozen

-On February 21st, The Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture asked folks to take action to share their stories directly with the USDA. PASA distributes some ag funds through Climate Smart programs, which are infrastructure improvements, scientific studies and growing practices meant to mitigate the depreciation of soil and air quality, sequester carbon, and many other factors that play into our domestic role in land stewardship and crop production. This program runs in tandem with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Services.

NOTE: Some of this funding has been unfrozen since this call to action, and Secretary Rollins has stated that preexisting contracts within some of these scopes will be honored. But there’s no guarantee that won’t change, or that these programs will continue on in the years ahead despite outlays and promised funding from the last Administration. And a number of them have indeed been cut.

“Many federal funding recipients were notified in January that an Executive Memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget paused action on both existing and future federal assistance programs, including most climate- and equity-related grants—Pasa among them,” PASA writes. For the days these funds were paused, people I know were concerned. Some didn’t know if they were now suddenly going to be on the hook for money that they had already spent on projects – some half-finished, some just beginning – and how that was going to affect their entire season (or, in some cases, their entire farming career).

“While the duration and full impact of the recent federal funding freeze remain uncertain, our commitment to our mission, to farmers, and to our entire community remains unwavering. We will share updates as we learn more, and in the meantime, we invite you to take action with us.”

Here is the script they provided via email and on the Facebook Page:

Call (833) ONE-USDA or (202) 720-7100 or email AgSec@usda.gov to share your story and explain how this inaction is impacting you and your livelihood, If you’d like, you can use the below template to help craft your message:

INTRODUCE YOURSELF

My name is [YOUR NAME]. I live [AND/OR FARM, SUPPORT FARMERS, LAND STEWARDS, ETC) in [CITY/STATE].

EXPRESS YOUR CONCERN

I am very concerned about the current policies being put in place at USDA that will withhold funding, compromise the data of farmers and the community-based organizations that support them, reverse decades of progress towards achieving equity for underrepresented communities, and push our farmers off their land and communities into devastating economic and food insecurity.

ASK HER TO TAKE SPECIFIC ACTION

I am asking you to lead by example in holding the USDA to the Prompt Payment Act, and ensure that farmers and the community-based organizations that serve them can receive the Congressionally-approved funding they need to keep growing food for our communities. I urge you to defend this funding and to please convey my concerns to US House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson.

THANK HER

Thank you for your service to our nation’s farmers.

–Here is the note about her release of the first tranche of funds. As I stated earlier, not everything that was frozen is coming back.

-Pennsylvania Certified Organic is my state’s agency that oversees annual organic certifications for growers and producers. I’ve had one of these since 2017 – it’s a fair amount of paperwork to get started, it requires an annual audit and inspection from a licensed inspector (along with occasional tissue samples from crops to confirm organic status), and it’s expensive. It’s been getting more expensive each year. I do understand why farms will follow organic practices without obtaining the certification because of these factors.

The Organic Cost Share program is a reimbursement option for growers who pass the inspection each year. It can cover a small scope of the certification or re-certification fees – but for my first few years, skating on pretty thin to non-existent ice with the farm’s profit margins, it was imperative for me to even consider trying for the certification.

Here is what PCO wrote in its recent newsletter:

“Recent funding cuts to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the USDA Organic Cost Share Program put farmers, ranchers, and sustainable agriculture at risk. These programs provide essential resources that support conservation efforts and organic certification, ensuring a resilient and thriving food system.

These resources are critical for farmers to implement conservation practices, maintain organic certification, and sustain their operations. Ensuring full funding for these programs is essential to protecting rural communities and the future of agriculture.

Contact U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Rollins and urge her to uphold the binding agreements made by the USDA with farmers, ranchers, and supporting organizations, ensuring they receive the reimbursements they are owed.

Call (833) ONE-USDA or (202) 720-2791 to share your story and explain how these cuts are impacting you and your livelihood.”

–The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program has allowed food banks across the country to purchase from local growers at a scale not seen before. A number of growers I know and work with have become partners of this program, as have area food banks, and it’s been so amazing to watch this food access program grow over the last couple of years. Farmers are tweaking crop plans to grow more for the local community and simultaneously have an option for high-quality excess if there’s a bumper crop. It’s highly vetted. And it’s another program with a murky future right now.

Who to call? Locally, we’ve got:

  • Sen. John Fetterman, D
    • D.C.: 202 224 4254
    • Phila.: 215 241 1090
    • Harrisburg: 717 782 3951
    • Wilkes-Barre/Scranton: 570 820 4088
  • Sen. Dave McCormick, R
    • D.C.: 202 224 6324
    • Allentown: 610 782 9470
    • Phila.: 215 405 9660
    • Harrisburg: 717 231 7540
  • Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R
    • D.C.: 202 225 6411
    • Allentown: 484 781-6000

That’s all for now. It’s hard to aggregate news when the field of play changes so substantially so quickly, but I think these are all parts of the growing issues that will continue to fluctuate and should be addressed. We shall see.

Connecting the Dots

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When I finally decided I was going to give this farming thing a go, I had to make sure I knew what I was doing before I told anyone about my plans. Unfortunately, Craigslist doesn’t have a lot of agricultural job postings.

I am notorious for long, wordy, fruitless Google searches. I’ve spent hours searching through listings for the phrase “room into lake” to find this:

So I went into my search for “organic farming jobs” more than a little skeptically. All I knew was that a dear friend of mine from my days at the Collegian had said her friends were heading off to travel and do farm work – and I thought the program started with a W.

As it turn out, I would of course stumble upon WWOOF pretty early in this quest – though not as soon as PASA. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture offers a number of services for members and folks interested in sustainable and organic farming, which includes job postings. And that’s where I found Snipes farm, where I would have my first interview.

Snipes Farm was appealing for a slew of reasons. It was local (Bucks County), it was huge, it taught farm-to-school programs and summer camps and, on inspection, it was beautiful. The house that the interns lived in was quaint and beautiful, the growing fields were sprawling and diversified, and Brad, the guy who interviewed me and the young Jersey hippie who was also there for an interview, was passionate and engaging about his work.

I was still in the early throes of guilt about sneaking away on the weekends to potentially leave my job, but as we fed the chickens and tromped across the grounds on that unnaturally warm January day, everything about this trip felt right. I texted my roommate, my references, my sister, Nate. I wanted to be a farmer. And while I didn’t get the position at Snipes – they took a couple on for the season, though had they chosen to single folks as interns, I was told I would have been one of them – I had some reasonable idea of where to search next.

I fired another few letters of interest off into the Internet farming abyss and looked briefly into WWOOF – World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. This was what my friend on the newspaper had been talking about. WWOOF is wildly popular network which links licensed volunteers with organic farms across the world. Woofing is a great way to travel. You get to live in cool areas on the short term in exchange for labor, and I’ve met a bunch of folks who have done this to great success. But I wanted something a little more stable, somewhere I could stay for awhile and, if possible, something that paid. After all, I was going to have to look Glenn Wagner in the eye and tell him I was leaving my job for this. Something with a cash incentive would ease that pain.

Then I found NEWOOF. NEWOOF, or North East Farmers on Organic Farms, is a directory similar to WWOOF, but you don’t pay to be licensed. It’s sponsored by the New England Small Farm Institute and lists regional farm apprenticeship placements. I sent away a few bucks for the 2011 directory and found an amazing world I didn’t know existed – in Pennsylvania and in the surrounding states farmers were transitioning land, plowing with oxen and hiring young interns who wanted to learn how to get back to the earth the right way. And Keith Stewart was one of them.

Keith had a comprehensive listing and was engaging and helpful from my first tenuous e-mail. And when I knew I was going to send over an official letter of interest, I ordered his book, which documents his own adventures on his 13-acre vegetable farm. I took another weekend to drive up and spend the day meeting Keith and his wife and learning about the farm, and as we munched away at some mesclun from his high tunnels, I knew this was where I wanted to be. If you haven’t read any previous posts, let’s just say you’ll be hearing more about this farm soon.

That being said, I had heard back from a couple other farms in the meantime, and as Keith met with other applicants and geared up to call my references, I headed out to western PA with my mom to meet Carrie Megginson and Dan Earnest at Buckland Farm, a vegetable and hog operation that also operates a bed and breakfast near Raystown Lake, one of my family’s favorite haunts. Dan and Carrie were lovely and welcoming. We met their friends who come to help out with the farm, their most recent Woofer who was in town for a week, and a D.C. chef-turned-farmer who was taking a sabbatical to learn about the origins of food and to help the farm establish some more ties in the restaurant business.

These folks were relatively new to the farm scene, but their operation was incredible. Chickens ran wild near the house and the barn where over a dozen piglets slept in a giant pile under a heat lamp. This season they discussed planting morels and watercress along the stream for foraging crops. Dan took us through fields that grew a wide range of crops, from hops to salsa ingredients, up to the woods where their grown hogs lived, foraged and looked impressive. The pigs had cleaned out all the extraneous brush from the woods and were looking chipper and enormous.

The cutest little pigs you ever did see. I mean, besides Babe.

I stood petting the 850-pound papa pig and, while thoroughly struck by the magnitude of the project, I knew in my heart of hearts I was too much of a wimp to raise some pigs and then eat them later. Maybe that will change in time, but my head’s not there yet. But at the end of the day, I was humbled by Buckland Farm’s hospitality, and hope that I can someday be as diversified, ambitious and, well, cool, as them.

As I watched this 850-pound guy roll over for a belly rub, I knew I couldn't hack it on this farm - at least not yet. I may have to be a vegetarian veggie farmer for life.

I was on a weekday vacation with Nate up in the Poconos when my references began to text that Keith had called them. I raced us off to somewhere with actual Internet access and sure enough, there it was – an e-mail saying that he would be delighted to have me on board for the season.

And the rest, my friends, is watercress.

-Farmer Liz