Tag Archives: USDA

Consequences, Intended or Otherwise

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All politics aside, the fact remains that the trade war implemented by our federal government is having a disastrous effect on agricultural exports.

Our $14B in annual soybean sales to China has quickly fallen to $0 as of November of 2018. They’re now buying their soy from Brazil. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement going into effect today, our ability to sell beef, pork, wheat and soy to Japan is going to be hampered due to trade discounts of 12% to 28%, which other countries will have, but we won’t.

So, what happens to the farmers, wholesalers, transportation operators, marketers, etcetera, who grow, process, move and sell these commodities? What does this mean for farmers who are already financially stressed?  Will we see another wave of family farms and rural businesses going bankrupt? Wil farmland go fallow and get swallowed up for other purposes? How long before the damage becomes a permanent drop in our ability to export agricultural products?

The government shutdown is not helping. It’s here at a time when most farmers are trying to plan and budget for the whole of next year. Financing for farmers is usually determined right now, but the USDA is closed for business and no one knows when it will open again.

Once the lack of exports and governmental assistance strains our agriculture system, how does that effect our domestic food sales? Will farmers be able to switch to other markets or will the financial strain be too great? How can farmers plan for next year when they don’t know what is going to happen next week?

There are just too many unknowns at this point. In this environment, how do farmers become more insulated from these market whims? Can we bring back a more local-based farm economy? What would that require: local processing, new distribution methods, new venues for retail? What crops would work best for this? How will climate change figure into all these other changes?

There are too many questions and too few answers right now.

Feb. 23, 2019 – Here’s a quick addendum to this post:

While agriculture bankruptcy rates across the US have remained steady, farms who regularly export to other countries are feeling the squeeze of our current tariffs. Bankruptcies across the upper Midwest have doubled since last year and are expected to skyrocket this year. See the Star Tribune’s reporting on this.

What Makes a Farmers Market a Farmers Market?

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When you shop at a farmers market, you see a large grouping of tents that have good, local produce ready for you to purchase. That sounds simple enough, but there is so much more to a farmers market than you may know. It takes planning, volunteer work, and monetary support to keep our local farmers returning week after week.

There are now over 50 local growers and processors that are actively participating in our local Port Susan Farmers Market. They must be in compliance with all local, county, and state regulations and must obtain the proper permits to provide samples or to sell wine. In addition, they must meet certain requirements in order to sell at a
farmers market. The Port Susan Farmers Market follows WSFMA Roots Guidelines in order to meet the consumer’s expectations of a Farmers Market:

  1. A Farmers Market is where a grower/processor can sell directly to the consumer and is most likely the small farmer’s best opportunity to profit from their land and efforts; and
  2. A Farmers Market is a marketplace where consumers can talk directly to the grower/processor, purchase the freshest produce and value-added products possible, and experience the health-giving effects of that freshness.

Volunteers have worked countless hours to make the Market what it is. A steering committee started planning the Market in 2011. That group then became the Board of Directors.  They spent hundreds of hours developing our market:

  • Bylaws
  • Vendor Rules/Guidelines/Policies, Vendor Handbook
  • Vendor Application Forms
  • Blank Vendor Sales Report Form
  • Business or Strategic Plan
  • 501c3

Vendor recruitment and market development have been ongoing for the past three years. Board members and the Market management have talked with vendors and spoken at meetings, including the Stanwood Chamber, the Lions, the Stanwood City Council, and others, to help promote and develop this market. We have volunteers setting up, running, and closing down the Market every week. Our volunteers have helped build not only a Market with a great vendor base but a great audience of shoppers for the Market, as well.

As a farmers market, we have been working for two years with the Snohomish Health District to create a Farmers Market Program for our vendors.  We’ve received assistance from Mayor Dianne White, Mayor Leonard Kelley, and Deborah Knight from the City of Stanwood.  Our manager, Leslie Collins, has attended the legislative session in Olympia in 2013 with the City of Stanwood to discuss the farmers market and our longer term goals of a four-season market.  All this was to lay the groundwork for future funding. Additionally, Leslie attends annual conferences, seminars, trainings, and webinars to help strengthen our market and learn how to better serve our vendors, community and program partners.

This year the market became qualified to receive SNAP/EBT benefits to increase food access for low income folks in our community. This means that the Farmers Market is truly a resource for everyone in our community. This process took months to complete and an investment of time and money to make it work. However, we’re already seeing benefits from it.

Support from the City and local business has been immense. Cash funding and in-kind donations, such as the space for the market, have made it possible to have a market at all. We received grant funding from USDA Farmers Market Promotional Program Grant and NW Farm Credit Services to help with our initial start-up costs. Since we were starting from scratch, expenses were not small. In turn, we’ve been spending money at local businesses for insurance, operating supplies, advertising, and power, to name a few. We also our refer vendors to local businesses for their needs and have helped increase foot traffic to our downtown core business during Market hours.

We spend a lot of time understanding how the market impacts the economic development of the city and surrounding businesses.  This year we will be doing a more in-depth Rapid Market Assessment (RMA) to better understand these impacts. We want to constantly improve operations at the market for better vendor sales, a better customer experience and a greater benefit to all surrounding businesses.

So, you can see that our Port Susan Farmers Market is much more than a collection of tents. It’s people coming together every week to support our local businesses, invest in healthy foods, and create a great community life.

Is it Organic?

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I have a strange, yet severe, reaction to milk. It’s not just any milk, however, only milk produced conventionally in the United States. When I went to Australia in 2008, I ate a lot of yogurt in the mornings as that is the common type of protein they have there. No problems! I can have double cream in my coffee in London (yum!) with no affect whatsoever. Milk in the United States is a completely different experience. If I add the smallest pat of butter to a whole pot of rice and eat a few spoonfuls of it, the muscles in my hands and feet start to ossify. They turn to stone and all the tissues around them swell. It is incredibly painful and quite disabling.

After I returned from Australia, I decided to try adding yogurt to my diet here in the states, to disastrous effect. I became disabled and could not work for 6 weeks. It took my doctors and I months to figure out that milk was causing the problem. Once I removed all dairy from my diet, the swelling and pain slowly went away, leaving, unfortunately, scar tissue in the muscles.

Since that time, I’ve been trying to determine what in the milk could be causing this. I started by testing a bite of conventional cheese and noting my reaction to it over the next two weeks. (Yikes! That was all I could say.) Next, I added a raw-milk cheese to one serving of dinner and had no reaction over the next two weeks. I added an organic cheese and again nothing happened. I then repeated the organic cheese and I had a huge reaction. (What the heck?) It didn’t make any sense. Why would I react differently to the same organic cheese?

Then I read this article: http://www.dairyherd.com/dairy-news/latest/Holes-found-in-organic-milk-certification-141103203.html

According to a USDA study, organic milk can, at times, be contaminated by conventionally produced milk in transportation or processing. They are recommending better controls and more stringent inspections to assure consumers that organic really means organic. For some of us, this can’t come soon enough. One way to circumvent cross-contamination is to find an organic dairy that pasturizes their milk on the farm and sells to consumers directly.

In the meantime, I can use some raw and my organic coconut milk to ensure that I don’t get anything that can cause these problems to recur.