Organic
Connections MAR–APR 2012
The AwArd-winning MAgAzine of nAturAl VitAlity
dan kittredge
Farming for nutrient Quality teMra COSta
the Feminine side of Farming
WOOdY taSCH
slow money— gaining some Control
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What’s So Special about Specialization?
In this issue
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ndustrialization brought many of us a standard of living the likes of which have been enjoyed only by royalty and the most privileged upper classes. The magic formula that kicked Earth’s productive capacity, and our good fortune, into high gear is specialization, economies of scale and trade. It’s all about efficiency, and that begins with being a specialist (“What do you want to be when you grow up?”). You do your part (man your station) and others will do their parts, and like interlocking gears, these specialists work together and out of this process comes the stuff we have all grown to know and love. Goods then get shipped from all specializing parts of the globe to distribution centers, warehouses and stores near you, so everyone gets what they need and want efficiently and, most importantly, cheaply. The theory sounds good and it does work. But, now that we’ve put it into serious practice for over sixty years, the collateral damage is all too evident. We’ve ravaged our natural resources, polluted our air and water, and generated continuously flowing mountains of waste—some of which is toxic. We’ve become unhealthy, overweight, alienated from our natural world and stressed. But it’s not all bleak. It just needs some—make that a lot of—adjustment. Our material wealth came at a price. In order to be specialists and fit into this brave new world, we needed to delegate parts of our responsibilities to others. We do what we’re assigned to or qualified for and leave the rest to other specialists. The trouble is that not everyone is holding up their end of the bargain. The economy is a mess (bankers). Much of our food is doused with toxic chemicals, is grown from GMO seeds, doesn’t have any taste (except added salt, sugar or fat), and isn’t all that good for us (industrial food growers and processors). Government is more about politics, elections and sound bites than really protecting and serving, and you can fill in the rest with your own list of pet peeves. Interestingly, generalist is not a dirty word. It means a person competent in several different fields or activities. A generalist is able to carry out a range of activities, or adapt to different situations. I’m thinking we need to take back some of the responsibilities we’ve delegated and do more adapting than adopting. Should we really depend on others (and thus the system) for almost everything? Pioneers and real farmers are generalists by necessity. Maybe in these interesting times we should take a page out of their book. What do you think?
Ken Whitman
Organic Connections magazine is an awardwinning publication brought to you by Natural Vitality—a purpose-driven human nutrition company. Our core belief is that you can’t be fully healthy in an unhealthy environment. We publish Organic Connections to help inspire and educate readers with profiles of people working to make our world healthier and more sustainable. To learn about Natural Vitality’s broader mission and our Natural Revitalization environmental action initiative, visit www.naturalvitality.com.
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Temra Costa Agriculture—the kind we all need a lot more of—is not just a man’s game. Author and sustainable food and farming advocate Temra Costa talks with us about the growing feminine side of farming.
8 Woody Tasch Money is flowing fast and the recent economic meltdown is clear evidence that it’s out of control. We talked with author and founder / chairman of Slow Money Woody Tasch to find out what can be done about it.
12 Dan Kittredge OC visits with second-generation organic farmer and head of the Bionutrient Food Association, Dan Kittredge, who is leading a new movement to teach farmers and gardeners a methodology of growing with nutrient quality as the main objective.
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Organic Connections™ is published by Natural Vitality 8500 Shoal Creek Boulevard, Building 4, #208, Austin, Texas 78757 Editorial Office 512.222.1740 • e-mail info@organicconnectmag.com Product sales and information 800.446.7462 • www.naturalvitality.com © 2012 Natural Vitality. All rights reserved.
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Temra Costa
The Feminine Side of Farming
Bittman share the good news of sustainable ag. But the women often remain in the shadows. Women such as Elizabeth Henderson of Peacework Organic Farm, who had the courage to take enormous risks for change. In 1979 Henderson retired from teaching at a If you grew up like most Americans, the university to start a farm. “I wanted to live in word farmer probably conjures an image of a way that was in concert with my beliefs a man in overalls, maybe driving a tractor about the environment and community,” she or standing by a trusty dog. Preschool songs says. Her farm debuted one of the first CSAs and television taught you that men farm and 23 years ago. women garden. To do this, Henderson had to break with In the past decade, however, the farmer the values she was taught in the 1950s, “that concept has evolved to also imply organic, there is only one true way to do things,” she local and farmers’ market. The evolution of the iconic farmer needs one more tweak to get us up to speed, says Temra Costa, author of Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat (Gibbs Smith, 2010). The farmer needs to be a woman. The last agricultural census showed womenowned farms have increased by 30 percent. Additionally, women are the founders and force behind much of today’s sustainablefood legislation and emerging businesses. “We know that women are there, very much involved in food, but for some reason those stories weren’t being told,” Costa says. Sustainable Renaissance
The burgeoning sustainable agricultural renaissance has been upon us now for about a decade. Farmers’ markets grew 17 percent last year. Small farms are popping up everywhere, many offering Community Supported Agriculture memberships that quickly sell out each spring. Most cities offer at least one says. Along the way she encountered many farm-to-table restaurant. Salad bars are even condescending and unpleasant men, “but creeping into public schools, some supplied that’s how social change is.” by local farms. Women stuck in behind-the-scenes agriThe sung heroes of this movement show up cultural roles is nothing new, according to in the media frequently. People like Michael Costa. “Before the Industrial Revolution you Pollan, Jamie Oliver, Joel Salatin and Mark had couples who were farming with their 4 organic connections
by Anna Soref
children and their families, and the women wouldn’t call themselves farmers. You still see that today; a woman will say, ‘My husband is the farmer and I’m the farmer’s wife.’ It wasn’t until 2002 that the U.S. Census of Agriculture added a place for a second signature to indicate more than one farm owner.” Costa got up close and personal with small farmers while working for the nonprofit Community Alliance with Family Farmers, in California. Her job entailed visiting area farms and getting to know the farmers. “I found myself driving around to different farms taking photos and writing down the farmers’ stories; I felt like Dorothea Lange. Meeting the people—that’s what hooked me,” she says. Throughout her six and a half years working with CAFF, a thread was constant: the large number of women in the sustainablefood movement. “It was something that couldn’t be denied. I became intent on helping them succeed and connecting them to the world,” Costa relates. The result was her book Farmer Jane, which profiles 30 women involved in sustainable food, from farmers to legislators and chefs. Was Costa worried about backlash from the male-dominated farming and ag community? Nope. “If anyone had a beef with me they could bring it up in a public forum and we could discuss why women are important in the movement, and why haven’t they been given their due attention?” she states. Women, a Natural Fit for Farming and Food
Women tend to possess characteristics that make them a natural fit for sustainable farming and food production, observes Costa. “Women are very relationship oriented, very community based. They’re connectors and they care about future generations. Many of them have children, and that was one of the
Women are very relationship oriented, very community based. They're connectors and they care about future generations. Many of them have children, and that was one of the things that drew them into the field in the first place—wanting to grow or produce food in a way that wouldn’t compromise the health of their children. things that drew them into the field in the first place—wanting to grow or produce food in a way that wouldn’t compromise the health of their children,” she explains. These skills translate to successful marketing as well. “The women that I know are interactive people and they love to bring their product to market; they love to meet the people and they love to create that relationship,” Costa says. For Nancy Vail, a farmer at Pie Ranch in Pescadaro, California, it was the relationship aspects of CSAs that lured her to farming. CSAs “went beyond the individualism of homesteading and created a context where eaters and producers can be in direct relationships,” she says in Farmer Jane. Community has certainly been a central part of the success at Three Stone Hearth in Berkeley, California. Opened in 2006, this women-run cooperative makes healthy meals with local sustainable meats and vegetables that are available for delivery or pickup.
Three Stone Hearth runs on what co-owner Jessica Prentice calls feminine-based principles. “The male restaurant world is often highly competitive, stressful and often fairly miserable,” she points out. At Three Stone, collaboration and no ego is the name of the game. There’s also a spiritual component. “We look at food as a gift and treat it as such, with respect,” she says. Given women’s common need for community, it’s no surprise that when women farmers and women in sustainable agriculture have struggles, it usually results from lack of community. According to Leigh Adcock, executive director of the Women, Food and Agriculture
Network, farming women are often isolated geographically because they are in rural areas. They can also face cultural isolation because they are practicing an alternative form of a very traditional field in a maledominated trade. “We find that providing even an online forum for these women helps them feel supported,” Adcock says. The two biggest areas of growth in sustainable farming are women inheriting their farms from their husbands and the growing market for local food. “The small and diversified farming that’s being demanded by eaters all over the world right now is the perfect place for a woman to start her own 2-acre, 5-acre or even 250-acre farm,” Costa organic connections
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continues. “Women are really into this connection between food and community, and it’s something that’s drawing them out to start their own operations.” When Costa talks of women being sustainable farmers, she means beyond organic farmers. “I’m talking about women in smallerscale diversified farming that respects the land and doesn’t compromise its ability to grow nutritious foods. Sustainable farming uses less machinery than conventional farms, and you typically see fewer women involved in farms that require more machinery. I say that as a generalization. Small, diversified farms use a lot more hand labor like picking, cutting, pruning and weeding. More women feel they can do that work versus running large machines,” says Costa. 6 organic connections
And they’re successful. Women are now the principal operators of 14 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms—a sea change from 1978, when the figure was 5 percent, according to WFAN. “We’ve found that when women run the farm as their primary source of income, they are successful,” Adcock reports. “They probably aren’t prospering, but they are making a living, which is the usual goal.” Sustainable agriculture also provides many women with part-time work that allows them to raise a family. Beyond the Fields
Historically men have dominated in government agricultural roles as well as farming. “It is largely still men in government roles,
although women are certainly making their way, like Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, and Michelle Obama,” says Costa. “I feel that both have made a real impact. Before taking office, Merrigan was a really strong supporter of local foods, and it’s almost as if the administration was trying to give the sustainable-food movement a bone. They had put in Vilsack as Secretary, who had very strong conventional farm ties, and it’s almost as if they wanted the Deputy Secretary as a balance to this.” Farmer Jane includes profiles of several women in government-related roles, such as Glenda Humiston, Director of Rural Development for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “I feel she has kept up with a lot of her community-based work that differentiates her from other candidates,” Costa says. “She pioneered land policies that have engaged a broad range of stakeholders— no small feat—and continues to listen.” Humiston has found that being a woman in what is often a man’s world has not posed too much difficulty. “I have done a wide variety of jobs throughout my career that would traditionally be called ‘men’s’ work. Although there was the occasional misogynist, most people were more interested in the quality of my work than my gender. Some of that had to do with my realization early on that women did have to produce very high quality work in those fields while also reaching out in appropriate ways to socialize and network.” Humiston is finding more women are involved in or passionate about environmental land issues and farming. “In many ways I think women are better at seeing how environmental and farming issues tie into food and family. Making those connections is vital if we are to develop good policy on agriculture, food safety, healthcare and related issues,” she says. In addition to working the land, women are making inroads fighting against issues such as GMOs. Claire Hope Cummings, author of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds (Beacon, 2008), is a lawyer, has been a farmer, and is an anti-GMO advocate. GMOs are inherently a women’s issue, remarks Cummings. “Because of both the way they are made, which interferes with the reproductive process of seeds, and the fact that they are patented forms of life, GMOs put a primary part of the food system— seeds—into the hands of private corporations. “And since women feed the world (almost 85 percent of farmers in Africa and Southeast
The women that I know are interactive people and they love to bring their product to market; they love to meet the people and they love to create that relationship. Asia are women) and all women care about feeding their families, they should be concerned that we no longer have control over our food system,” Cummings asserts. She points out that men are the ones primarily behind the creation of GMOs. “I don’t think a woman would ever give a name like Terminator to a life-giving source,” she says, referring to the Monsanto seed of that name. Farming Forward
Although budget cuts could hurt some of the inroads women have made in sustainable farming and leadership roles, Costa feels confident. “I think it’s always been the case that these programs are in peril. Look at how much our government has been supporting programs that are based on conventional crop production versus sustainable organic food production. There were a lot of great funding streams that were added to the last farm bill, and they are being threatened with cuts right now because of the economy. So it’s a very challenging time in keeping the
interest alive in the sustainable-food system in the country,” she says. Costa hopes her book inspires people to get more involved in community as well. “I think we are all craving more interaction these days, and I wanted to provide the information so that readers can make choices to interact more with people via food. If you look at our population that’s involved in farming, it’s 2 percent, whereas before the Industrial Revolution it was 60 percent. So you had more people connected to the land back then.” Costa believes that food is a powerful vehicle to address the economic and social
disparities and environmental degradation now occurring. “Food offers solutions that don’t have to cost a lot of money,” she concludes. “If you can spend a little bit of time every day learning how to work with it, to grow it, we could all eat more healthfully and be healthier people in this country.” Currently Costa is working on her next book, tentatively titled Farmer Jane’s Kitchen. To learn more about Farmer Janes across the country and to view links to organizations making a positive change, visit www.farmerjane.org.
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Woody Tasch
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Slow Money—Gaining Some Control by Anna Soref
Big number shock value aside, the issue is Thus, we want more money; we feel as really about acceleration, according to Tasch. though our lives depend upon it; and yet the “The global population in 1960 was probably numbers have become so staggeringly huge, only about 2.5 billion and it’s now 7 billion they’re almost incomprehensible. people; during that time the rate of stock At many of his Slow Money talks Tasch market exchanges went up like a thousand- or asks the audience to do basic math probtwo thousandfold, so the rate of increase is lems to help them conceptualize a trillion. disproportionate.” Tasch acknowledges that some people might question whether such an increase in exchange is a problem, that some people embrace speeding up. “You just have to use your own judgment. There’s no economist out there who is going to tell you that it’s too many transactions, but that is where common sense or intuition will answer these questions,” Tasch says. Alongside exponential growth of economic numbers, Americans’ obsession with acquiring more money and fear of losing it are also ballooning. Tasch attributes this to our reliance on consumerism. “A central characteristic that’s different about today’s citizen is that people produce practically nothing that they consume; we are almost all purely consumers. If you look
Most people don’t know or really understand how big the number a trillion is: that a trillion seconds is 32,800 years; that if you had earned a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have a trillion dollars. We live in a society largely governed by money and yet most of us don’t truly understand the numbers bandied about when discussing our country’s debt or defense budget. In many ways our relationship with money is akin to that of food: we all need both to survive, yet most of us don’t know much about either’s life cycle anymore. Response to our food disconnection has prompted a return to small farms and movements like Community Supported Agriculture and the Slow Food movement. Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered (Chelsea Green, 2009), wants us to apply these same principles to our economy, which is misunderstood and at your house, it’s filled with things that About half fail. “The scale is already so broken, he says. Tasch finds solutions to our you couldn’t make if your life depended colossal that we have kind of checked out economic woes, not in the government, but on it. You are completely dependent on on day-to-day understanding,” he remarks. in the ground we stand on. your purchasing power for everything that “We are living in a society where transacyou consume. tions and dollars are dictating our future. What’s Up with Our Money? “So if you live in a world like that, where You can’t just totally check out. You have to there’s no garden in the back and you don’t understand numbers enough to get a sense In 1960, 3 million shares were exchanged know how to repair a single thing in the that something is wrong so that you can daily on the New York Stock Exchange; house, then the normal reaction is, ‘I better take control again.” today that number is 5 billion. “The flow of have more money.’ There’s no such thing as money is now going so fast that it has gotten too much money in that world because The Journey to Write It Right detached from daily life or anything we re- the only thing I have as a lifeline is money. ally understand anymore,” notes Tasch. “Five That is what’s different about being alive The impetus for putting pencil to paper and billion shares—what does that even mean?” today,” he says. writing the book Slow Money was not fueled
Th e flow of money is now going so fast that it has gotten detach ed from daily life or anyth ing we really u nderstand anymore.
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by a single instance. No romantic epiphany occurred, no ‘aha moment’ in the middle of the night. Rather, the book and movement evolved from decades of life experiences and Tasch’s work in the financial sector. Prior to founding Slow Money, Tasch was chairman of Investors’ Circle, a network of angel investors, family offices, and social purpose funds and foundations that has, since 1992, invested $150 million in 230 early stage sustainability-promoting ventures and venture funds. “I could go back and say Slow Money was the result of reading Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, being introduced to Slow Food, or working in mission-related investing and the foundation world; but there’s no one factor— simply a certain stubbornness around recognizing that things are just so broken,” he says.
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literally at the root of our economic dysfunction, Tasch believes. “After doing some mission-related and angel investing work, I wondered why are we not having more impact?” Tasch continues. “The best-intentioned people and foundations are trying to do things differently, but there’s just a transaction here and a transaction there and it’s really not yet adding up to systemic change. I had the feeling that we weren’t addressing the root cause. “While working on the book I was trying to think of the cause, and I came around to this idea that the soil is somehow the ultimate metric. If we can’t take care of our soil, if we can’t grow our food without destroying soil fertility, what kind of civilization do we have? It’s like the ultimate artificial subsidy,” he says. Not taking care of the soil means not taking care of the air and water, as well. If we can’t take care of those things so as not to destroy the fertility of the soil that took eons to create, then we are going down a dead-end road, Tasch warns. Alongside soil fertility, Tasch points to soil erosion. “Every year we are losing between one half and one percent of the arable land on the planet due to soil erosion,” he says. “A half to one percent! That means we have somewhere between X years and Y years before we have lost it all.” While these statistics are very frightening, Tasch stresses that we must look beyond our own reaction of fear for survival. He believes the negative social and cultural consequences to living in a world that is destroying the soil in order to exist are linked to many of today’s problems, such as political dysfunction, terrorism, and economic collapse and dysfunction. “They are all interrelated,” he tells us. “I think that living in a time when life is taking subsidies from eons of history on the one hand and future generations on the other, just so that we can have an ‘economy that’s growing,’ has broad implications. So, to me, the soil is a very powerful metaphor.”
For Tasch, things began to break in the 1960s. “There was a vehement antiwar movement, people getting shot on college campuses,” he recalls. “There were the assassinations of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King. They were all a very big part of the fabric of American life for many years. If you weren’t alive then, it’s hard to imagine what that does to your consciousness, to have major political and cultural leaders shot. It gets your attention in a way that cannot merely be shaken off; it is not just a debate about ideology. There were broad cultural discussions about how broken things were or how inadequate institutions were, about government being broken—you can throw Watergate in there.” Now we are here, 40 years later, and government is still broken, but even more so, according to Tasch. Will the situation finally change? “Courtesy of climate change, maybe,” Tasch responds. “Climate change is such a big imponderable clamp on our consciousness. And then underneath that there’s Wall Street collapsing, Washington is dysfunctional— all of our systems are starting to hit limits. So we’ve gotten too big, too complicated, and the negative consequences are too great,” To explain our shortsighted economic he laments. structure, Tasch uses a plant analogy— GMOs. “We’ve created ways of making food From the Ground Up that we don’t really understand fully, just as we have with our economy,” he says. Our culture’s disharmony with nature that “We are changing the genetic nature of has led to years of living unsustainably is plants so that they will produce more but with
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significant long-term risk. That’s kind of what our economy is doing—you put debt in to create some growth, but long term you don’t have a fertile or healthy situation. We keep pushing out the day of reckoning; we sort of all know in the back of our minds that one day these unhealthy consequences are going to come home to roost.” That the health of the planet’s soil is intrinsically linked to money is reflected in the Slow Money movement’s six principles; for example, Slow Money Principle I: We must bring money back down to earth. “This means not merely bringing money back down to earth so that we can understand it, which it does mean, but it also denotes thinking about all of the impacts of what we are doing on soil fertility,” says Tasch. “And the good news is that it’s not an abstraction, because a growing number of food enterprises are doing just that. They are bringing money back down to earth and creating economic activity in a way that can preserve our soil fertility.” Forget Solutions from Washington
When you discuss next steps or solutions with Tasch, government doesn’t make the short list. He believes that national politics is not the right tool for our century. “The chances of real fixes coming from Washington or any election are so small that I think it’s somewhere in the realm of a national tragedy that so many billions of dollars are spent and so many zillions of hours are used tracking and arguing about politics,” Tasch remarks. “Our institutions have shown us that response to the changing realities on the planet is not a priority. “In the twenty-first century we need something in addition to philanthropy and government,” he states. “Our challenge is to create a new kind of economy that is creating jobs but is also healing social and environmental wounds. Not an economy that says, ‘Go as fast as we can and then at some time in the future we will try and clean up what’s broken.’ That was OK before we knew about climate change, or at least you could still make the argument that it was.” So Slow Money is a manifestation of that—a group of investors who are willing to make less money than they have historically been able to make by investing in smoke stacks in China, Tasch says. “We are willing to take some of our money out of that other system and put it to work in a way which seems destined to give us less financial
We are changing th e genetic nature of plants so that th ey will produce more but with significant long-term risk. That’s kind of what our economy is doing_you put debt in to create som e growth, but long term you don’t ha ve a fertile or h ealthy situation. We keep push ing out th e day of reckoning; we sort of all know in th e back of our minds that one day th ese u nh ealthy consequ ences are going to com e h om e to roost. return, but we feel the imperative to start having this discussion.” Building a New Solution
Instead of looking to government for solutions, Tasch advocates proactive steps that build the type of alternative future we want to see. He admits that’s a pretty abstract thing but says that when you start talking about building one enterprise at a time, it quickly becomes concrete. “So Slow Money is not trying to get into a fight with Monsanto or influence the farm bill or anything like that. Some of our members are; but we are really just on the path of getting investment into small food enterprise,” Tasch explains. One of the six Slow Money principles asks, What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we
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other system, but maybe we should take 50 percent out.” Again, Community Supported Agriculture: “We have to work in radically smaller units. And in Slow Money we are talking about the most radical of all, which is a CSA,” says Tasch. “It allows you to directly connect to the things you are investing in and directly bypass all those big macro scary things that no one can control anymore.” So far Slow Money has catalyzed $10 million of new investment in small food enterprises. “It’s small in comparison, but we’ve engaged thousands of people around the country in small enterprises and it’s beginning to feel like the start of something that’s getting important,” Tasch reports. The second annual Slow Money conference last October in San Francisco hosted more than 100 speakers and 850 attendees, who ranged from complete non-investors to high-level angel investors. “It’s very high energy and we’re all focusing on small food entrepreneurs around the country. It’s incredibly inspiring when you see 30 small food entrepreneurs on the same stage within a couple of hours,” says Tasch. Businesses included everything from a grain mill in Maine trying to resurrect local milling to a company growing indigenous varieties of rice and one making non-antibiotic treatments for treating organic dairy. In addition to the book and website, local Slow Money chapters are opening across the nation. Chapter meetings encourage discussion, reflection and action, Tasch says.
live? This means researching where to put that money by collaborating with neighbors— going down the street to figure out where the good things are to invest in. “It would take time and energy, and it’s going to be ‘harder’ and you might earn less, but it’s going to be infinitely more rewarding,” predicts Tasch. “It’s like what’s more enjoyable: eating a meal made of vegetables from the store or from your own garden? It’s more work, but the experience is more rewarding.” Tasch emphasizes that Slow Money is not Looking Forward a rigid philosophy. “We are not either-or. I’m not saying that we should all quit go- For Tasch, part of building the Slow Money ing to the store and grow all our own food. movement is accepting the unknowns And it’s the same thing with money: we but moving forward with the seemingly shouldn’t take all of our money out of the simple doctrine of slowing down. “If my
son looked at me and asked, ‘What are we supposed to do?’ I’d say, ‘I dunno.’ But I do know that taking our foot off the accelerator and trying to slow down and get some control of what is going on is the path forward—even though any one thing we do is woefully inadequate.”
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Tasch’s personal commitment to Slow Money is strong, even when his family questions his direction. “My son recently asked me why I was doing what I am when I still have such earning power in the conventional investment realm. I told him I am on a mission now; I am not in control of my own life. This job has captured me and I need to see it through. But I understand it’s just frustrating as hell to know he has a dad who could be getting rich but is doing this other thing.” A pessimist at heart, Tasch credits his determination to improve the world to waking up on the right side of the bed each day. “I’m 99 percent pessimist and 1 percent optimist. But each day I wake up on the optimist side of the bed. “I really believe, based on the experience I’ve had with Slow Money for the past three years, that there’s a difference between how much money you make and what kind of a reward you get,” Tasch concludes. “And sometimes doing a different kind of investing can be far more rewarding even if it generates less money.” To find out more about Slow Money and sign the Slow Money Principles, visit www.slowmoney.org. organic connections
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Dan Kittredge
W What if the criteria for success in agriculture were the nutrient content of produce, rather than quantity of yield per acre? Farmers growing high-nutrient crops could command a higher price by delivering greater value, and consumers would reap the healthful benefits. This might seem like a dream— but for Dan Kittredge it’s a vision and a passion he works at daily. Remarkably, his seven-year journey to realize this vision all began with one simple, pragmatic decision: he just wanted to be a better farmer. When Dan was four, his parents purchased an organic farm in Barre, Massachusetts. He grew up on that land and in his adult years managed it. But after he got married at age twenty-six, he saw that something had to change. “I realized that I needed to be able to make a living, not just subsist,” Dan told Organic Connections. “I wasn’t making very much, and I didn’t know how to create a higher income. The only thing I knew how to do was farm, so I figured I should actually learn how to do it instead of just going through the motions that I’d been brought up with.” Dan set about reading books, attending seminars, and asking questions of those more knowledgeable. He was trying to get to the bottom of how a biological system worked, and as he researched he began applying what he was learning to the land. “When I first started doing this, I was struggling with the fact that I was an organic
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Farming for Nutrient Quality by Bruce Boyers
farmer yet regularly experienced high levels of pestilence and disease in the crops that I grew,” he related. “It seemed to me there was something wrong with that picture. So I began initially by reading and by talking to people, then started applying various locally occurring basalt and granite materials to the soil. I next moved on to volcanic materials; then I deeply engaged in specific minerals, soil testing, and a whole array of management, monitoring and fertility practices.” Quality, Not Volume
“As part of the process it became clear to me that the objective of agriculture should be quality and not volume,” Dan continued. “No one was really talking about quality and focusing on that as the objective. To obtain this quality, I found that there are basic principles involved in how biological systems operate—soil and plant interaction being the key one in this case.” It wasn’t long before Dan realized that, as a farmer, he had struck pay dirt. “When I really began putting these factors into practice, I found that it was remarkably easy to make a living through farming. Pests and diseases do not have to be present in your fields. Yields can be much larger than you’ve ever experienced. Flavor can be augmented dramatically through fertility and management practices.” As to that flavor, Dan certainly isn’t alone in the observation that high-nutrient crops yield the best taste. Some of the world’s top chefs—such as Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, Dan Barber and Suzanne Goin, to name but a few—firmly agree, and will only cook with ingredients that possess this exact quality. “We’re talking about a living system,” Dan added. “The real essence of what we’re trying to do is remove the limiting factors in that living system. If we assume that the genetic potential of our crops is far beyond what we experience—which is what the
As part of the process it became clear to me that the objective of agriculture should be QUALIT Y and NOT VOLUME. No one was really talking about quality and focusing on that as the objective. To obtain this quality, I found that there are basic principles involved in how biological systems operate—soil and plant interaction being the key one in this case.
Dan Kittredge
Whitman clearly perceived the importance of Dan’s work and, through his company’s While conducting his research, Dan con- Natural Revitalization environmental action nected up with like-minded individuals and initiative, he and co-owner Justin Farmer organizations with similar paths. One notable provided the necessary funding. “As a counexample was Remineralize the Earth (RTE)— try, we eat too much and get too little from a nonprofit organization assisting the world- it,” Whitman said. “Nutrition is, after all, the wide movement of remineralizing soils with purpose of eating. I have tasted high-nutrient finely ground rock dust, sea minerals, and produce grown by boutique farmers in the Getting the Word Out
We’re coining a new term— BIONUTRIE NT— that doesn’t exist anywhere. We’re going to use a term that describes
that goodness — the nutrients that are biologically viable and valuable. Our focus is a shift from only concentrating on
various standards and processes to a QUALIT Y metric— the bionutrient level.
Remineralizing with rock dust
geneticists will tell us—then the simple objective is to remove the stresses to our plants that are keeping them from fulfilling their full potential. If we’re viewing it from that lens, we need to talk about mineralogy, biology, hydrology, irrigation, tillage and structure. There are a number of components to this living soil system. What we’re trying to do is lay out what the normal stumbling blocks and limiting factors are, help people understand them, and give people the tools to address them.” 14 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s
other natural and sustainable means to increase plant growth, health and nutrient value. He became a board member of RTE and its president. While working with RTE, Dan founded the Real Food Campaign—since renamed the Bionutrient Food Association—a nonprofit research, education and advocacy organization whose objective is to apply bionutrient farm techniques to improve quality in the food supply. The needed change of viewpoint in produce quality is expressed in the name of Dan’s organization. “We’re coining a new term—bionutrient—that doesn’t exist anywhere,” Dan explained. “We’re going to use a term that describes that goodness—the nutrients that are biologically viable and valuable. Our focus is a shift from only concentrating on various standards and processes to a quality metric—the bionutrient level.” The Bionutrient Food Association was, however, without funding. Thanks to the intervention of RTE board member Ken Whitman, president of the environmentally conscious supplement company Natural Vitality, that was to change. “For about a year after starting the Real Food Campaign, I had not done much,” Dan said. “I had given a couple of courses to growers, but had to work a full-time job at the same time as trying to get the organization going. At an RTE board meeting we discussed what we wanted and what it was we were able to do, and I said basically that if I could work at this full-time we could really kick the campaign into gear.”
field and prepared by top chefs in their restaurants. The truth is in the tasting, and I’m a believer. Supporting Dan and the BFA is an opportunity to be part of changing the way we farm, the way we eat, and, most importantly, opening the door to improved health simply from enjoying this good food.” With that support, and the blessings of RTE, Dan was able to hire employees and garner a number of enthusiastic regular volunteers as well. He went out full time, giving talks and traveling around his native New England, teaching growers through handson workshops and classes how they could achieve these incredible results with their crops. Just a few short years later, some 700 farmers, landscapers, home gardeners and other growers have come through Dan’s training—with outstanding results. “We give 30- to 40-hour year-long seminars for growers, starting in the fall and going through the entire growing season,” said Dan. “We’ve seen some really major successes. One farmer’s produce became so popular that nobody would line up at any other farm stand at a farmers’ market because his tasted so much better. On another farm, four years ago they were grossing about 60,000 pounds of produce, and this year I think it’s somewhere in the ballpark of 150,000—without expanding their production space. Elsewhere, we’ve seen decreases in harvest times and 40 percent to 100 percent increases in yield. Pests don’t attack anymore.”
the methods he learned in Dan’s training, his results have also been exceptional. “The qualThese are remarkable claims—but the farmers ity of the crops definitely improved; there’s back them up. Farmer Phil Jones of Chelms- no doubt about that,” Hess said. “The plant ford, Massachusetts, raises vegetables, has vigor, productivity and taste all changed. It about 180 CSA customers and also sells was really excellent. The first year I applied through farmers’ markets. He has had amaz- the methods it was also a fantastic growing ing success with methods he learned from year here in southeastern Connecticut; so Dan. “The beauty of it is that what you’re do- those two things combined just pushed the ing is really interpreting what Mother Nature productivity of the farm. It had to have at and God are telling you,” Jones said. “I think least doubled, if not a little more. the wonderful part of the course is that you “The best crop I had this year was garlic, and learn to really read the plants and the whole a lot of people at the market said we had the thing becomes part of you. To be able to see best garlic going. People are also pretty much four flowers in my tomato cluster, to watch as amazed at the fact that they can keep our letI input more nutrition and more balance, and tuce for two to three weeks, and can keep then all of a sudden see six, eight and ten on a arugula for three or four weeks.” cluster—I can read that and watch the leaves change and see so many things that the plants Only the Beginning are telling me.” Jones also noticed the distinct difference in But the training is only the base. Dan has seen flavor. “It’s much smoother on the palate,” he the future—and the future is bright, tasty and said. “To me, that’s the most phenomenal very healthy. thing—when you think that you’re going to be getting something that will be a little bitter at the end of it and then that doesn’t come. The smoothness of the vegetable and the sweetness of it is what changes.” Jones has been witness to the truth of Dan’s words regarding pests and their reaction to truly healthy crops. “It’s fun to see the insects go away,” he told OC. “You might have them for a week or two until the plants photosynthesize the complex carbohydrates, but then they kind of disappear. You change the frequency of the plant, or you make it so that they don’t want it. The initial part of his plan, which is well “We experienced a great learning session about two years ago when there was a drought. underway, is to get a high number of growers We had a field of potatoes, and potato beetles using bionutrient farming methods and rehad been in the grasses, not on the potatoes.” cord the practices in a way that they can be With the nutrient levels as high as they were, broadly disseminated. “The first step that the beetles were leaving the potatoes alone. we’ve been focusing on the last couple of years But then conditions changed. “We got into a is codifying the how-to principles for the drought situation and ran out of water,” Jones general public,” Dan said. “This would exist continued. “The nutrient levels dropped, and in something like a handbook. While a largerthe beetles just moved right in. All of a sud- scale farmer might be able to hire a consultant den the complexity of the plant altered; it to help with these issues, the average small became simple sugars again and there they organic farmer does not have access to the were. But it was interesting to see that whole foundational principles about how to maxithing happen where they left, then they came mize vitality. It’s not that this information isn’t known—it’s just not well disseminated. We back when it was good food for them.” feel it’s very important that a clear how-to Farmer Hess guide be presented and made publicly available to anyone on the planet as a first step.” Farmer Don Hess raises vegetables and blueDan is also aiming at broadening the berries in Oakdale, Connecticut. In applying Bionutrient Food Association’s website so Farmer Jones
that growers can interconnect and benefit from each other’s knowledge. “We really want to build out the website so that farmers—and everybody who is engaged in this mission— can find each other. Right now there is no facility for people to coordinate around quality in the food supply. It’s all relationship based; if you’re not in the know, you’re not in the know. There’s no easy way, if you’re a farmer, to find consultants or mineral distributors—or if you’re a consumer, to find farmers and so on. We don’t have the infrastructure for communication in place, so that’s one important piece we’re working on.” Measuring Nutrient Levels
A key part of Dan’s mission is the objective quantification of plant nutrient levels. He is working with a scientist to develop a device that would measure crop nutrient levels in detail. Not only would such a device allow growers to evaluate their own efforts, but it would eventually give retailers and consumers the facility to measure nutrients in produce as well. “What we’re proposing is a near-infrared spectroscopy device, which looks like a little flashlight or a pointer,” Dan explained. “Basically you flash the light at a carrot and monitor the light that bounces back in the near-infrared spectrum, which contains the vibration of the minerals in compounds. The technology for this exists currently and is used to a large degree in pharmaceutical industry manufacturing. We’re looking at two to three years to develop it for our uses.” Boiling It Down
“We figure if we broadly put out the information about how to grow high-nutrient crops and the ramifications of doing so, we can then expose these farmers for the quality of their produce. Then we can really drive consumer power to bring about different fertility practices in agriculture,” Dan concluded. Real food is for everyone. With Dan’s vision brought to full reality, the standards of highnutrient crops will become mainstream—and change the whole dynamic of how produce is grown, processed, distributed and purchased. For more information on the Bionutrient Food Association and their work, visit www.bionutrient.org. organic connections
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