Susana Lein's bountiful harvest this year was gathered from her gardens and fields at Salamander Springs Farm, in the mountains south of Berea.
Through sustainable agricultural practices, this ridgetop farm flourishes on marginal land that had been depleted of topsoil and had no existing infrastructure.
Since 2001, Lein has used the principles of permaculture to build the farm and buildings from scratch and produce non-mechanized, no-till corn for ground corn meal, popcorn, dry beans (pinto and black turtle), and a diverse supply of local and organic produce including garlic, onions, squash, herbs, flowers, and year-round greens and root crops.
Lein grew up on a small farm in Iowa in the 1960s and '70s before the farm crisis changed the agricultural landscape.
"The farm community in which I grew up no longer exists," she said. "Huge-scale production of commodity corn and soybeans, and enormous hog factories have replaced smaller, diversified farms. Semi-trailers and giant machinery dominate the landscape. Former farmers now drive miles to work in 'rural development' factories. I was one of a new category of exports of the early '80s — our educated young."
After college, Lein worked almost seven years as a landscape architect and planner in Boston. She began to manage large projects for her firm.
"I recognized my role in paving over the land with unsustainable development and realized that my work in life must support my spiritual values and not be separate from it," she said.
After that, she spent weekends learning about permaculture and sustainable design at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, Mass., and reading works by E.F. Schumacher, Helen and Scott Nearing, and Wendell Berry that agreed with her new philosophy.
Wanting to use her skills to serve others, she left Boston in 1991 and lived seven years in Guatemala, where she worked with a non-profit organization, Altertec, helping campesino farmers implement permaculture practices while building well pumps, wood-cooking stoves, composting latrines and other technologies.
"I learned the joy of living more simply with less resources," she said. "My life was enriched by people grounded in the land. I saw how their poverty and oppression stem from the economic system we support here in America with our dollars.
"We've removed ourselves from the responsibility for how and where our food and resources come to us — and at what cost."
Lein returned to the States to work toward change at the source of the problem. A change from petroleum-based agriculture, she says, is imminent.
"The food Americans eat uses more petroleum to produce and get to their table than it takes to run their cars or heat their houses," she said.
Combining "permanent" and "agriculture," permaculture employs principles and methods to develop systems that mimic patterns and relationships found in nature to yield food, fiber, housing and energy for local needs.
Natural ecosystems serve as models, teaching how to develop energy-sustaining connections between resources and users.
Salamander Springs Farm mimics natural systems by not tilling but building the soil up with compost, cover crops and mulch. The soil is kept covered to protect organic matter from erosion and discourages weeds from doing that job. Earthworms improve soil structure and make tilling unnecessary.
Diverse crops are grown intensively, unlike large mono cultures with rows of bare soil. Water, energy and nutrients are recycled. Crops and elements of the farm perform multiple functions and create symbiotic relationships: In Lein's orchard, the tap roots of comfrey, an herb used in salves, loosen clay soil while creating a weed barrier around the root zones of fruit trees.
Lein walks her talk. With limited financial resources, she has made marginal land into a thriving ecosystem and has moved from a tent into a solar-powered, spring water-fed home.
The home and outbuildings were built using recycled and salvaged materials and wood from the farm that was logged with human and horse power. Solar power is used for drying and home energy, and water is supplied from a natural spring box via a gravity-fed water line, and it's supplemented by roof-water collection systems.
Lein's no-till dry bean field was inspired by Japanese rice farmer Masanobu Fukuoka's book, The Natural Way of Farming. Bean production per acre is more than twice that of a conventional field, which requires wide rows for tractor tillage. Garlic and onion production is almost four times that of conventional fields, with no petroleum consumed, she said.
Lein teaches at seminars across the country and at the farm through workshops and apprenticeship programs.
She sees two kinds of poverty in the world, she said, and she works to alleviate both. The first, she said, is economic poverty. The second is a poverty of spirit, a deep longing in people who have access to resources but want to reconnect with the source of our sustenance.
"We lost our commitment to creation," she said. "We need to become partners and work to become closer to the land."
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Farmers in several counties will be able to tap into more than $1.2 million set aside for agricultural investments.
The Kentucky Agricultural Development Board approved the money last week.
The Boyle County Farm Bureau will receive $324,000, the largest single amount announced. The Washington County Cattlemen Association will receive $315,000, followed by the Todd County Conservation District that received $300,000.
The money will go to farmers primarily for agricultural diversification projects.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By LIZ SWITZER, The Daily News, lswitzer@bgdailynews.com
Farm producers who missed out on federal energy stimulus funds in 2009 may get another chance to qualify in 2010 through the On-farm Energy Efficiency and Production investment area of the Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund’s County Agricultural Investment Program.
The energy efficiency incentive - lauded by state agricultural policymakers as a means for farmers to boost their bottom lines as energy costs rise - will be open to agricultural producers in all Kentucky counties in 2010 with any funds that remain from the 2009 sign-up, which ended Nov. 13.
Another application period is likely in late February or early March, said Bryan Thomas, compliance specialist with the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy in Frankfort.
“It is a given that our energy costs are going to continue to go up, and the sooner farmers can adopt some of these energy-efficient practices, the quicker they will get the return on it,” Thomas said. “And it helps our utility providers. If we can lower the overall demand for energy, then they don’t have to build new power plants that put so much strain on the existing infrastructure.”
Through the cost-share program, many energy upgrades are likely to pay for themselves in one to two years in energy savings, but if a farmer has to initially make a choice to fund such items on an individual basis, the choice is more likely to be a quicker pay-back item instead of an energy-efficient choice, said Timothy D. Hughes, GOAP senior policy analyst.
“The advantages of the program are that it helps the individual producer to move in a direction to make decisions on energy efficiency that they would not do otherwise,” Hughes said. “It provides them with the incentive to do that at the on-farm level.”
On-farm Energy Efficiency and Production is one of the 11 investment areas under the County Agricultural Investment Program, which offers assistance to agriculture producers for energy efficiency in farm operations, production of biomass crops or production of alternative energy for on-farm use.
Gov. Steve Beshear announced in September that more than $2 million in stimulus funds would be available to Kentucky agriculture under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act for on-farm energy conservation, renewable energy production and regional renewable fuel projects.
As a result of a partnership between the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet and the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy, two energy-related programs are being implemented using federal stimulus funds.
A portion of the funds will provide a variety of opportunities for Kentucky farm families to increase farm energy efficiency and renewable fuel production, working in tandem with the On-farm Energy Efficiency and Production area of CAIP.
The remaining portion is earmarked for a Multi-county Collaborative Agricultural Energy Initiatives Program and will be used to complement tobacco settlement funds for grants to multicounty collaborations in order to enhance and advance renewable energy production at the farm level. Funding will be made available there for energy efficiency applications and renewable energy production.
“These are the type of investments that will make a farmer money long term,” Thomas said. “A lot of times we think it may cost a lot of money to do something, but we are finding that some of these are very inexpensive type upgrades so we want to get farmers thinking about making some of these investments.”
Sam Lawson, a Kentucky Agricultural Development Board member from Warren County, said: “The farmers out here are pretty creative. Give them a little bit of support and a little guidance and there is going to be a whole shopping list of ideas to get them started, from solar panels on their barn facilities to some wind opportunities.”
Energy stimulus incentives provide 25 percent reimbursement of the actual cost of a federally qualified energy saving item, up to $10,000. Permissible items include, but are not limited to, energy audits, energy efficient farm building components, on-farm energy upgrades and on-farm energy efficiency training.
All applications received from across the commonwealth will be reviewed and scored by a committee composed of representatives from GOAP, the Kentucky Agricultural Development Board, the UK College of Agriculture and a Rural Electric Cooperative.
— Questions about the application process may be directed to Bryan Thomas at (502) 564-4627 or bryan.thomas@ky.gov.
Within the next three weeks, State Sen. Joey Pendleton plans to take a group of Kentucky farmers to study the industrial hemp trade in Canada where the crop has been grown legally for the past 10 years.
Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, has introduced a bill for 2010, renewing a push to legalize industrial hemp in Kentucky as a cash crop and as a source for alternative fuels.
"The timing is right," Pendleton said. "It would give farmers another crop to raise." Production of hemp is already legal for research purposes in Kentucky but is untried due to federal barriers.
Pendleton's bill comes at a time when federal legislation decriminalizing hemp for industrial use has been introduced in Congress and proponents are encouraged by stances taken by the Obama Administration.
In Versailles, where the remnants of an old hemp processing plant still stand on property that Margaret McCauley's family owns, McCauley said she hopes Pendleton is successful.
"I think industrial hemp would do a lot for the farming community," said McCauley, who has preserved artifacts from decades ago when hemp was grown legally in Kentucky.
McCauley said she hopes lawmakers won't confuse industrial hemp with its controversial cousin, marijuana.
Although industrial hemp comes from the same plant species as marijuana, industrial hemp does not have enough THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, to produce the "high" marijuana users feel, proponents say. Hemp and marijuana look alike. But hemp is grown for fiber found in the stalk while marijuana is grown for leaves and flower buds.
Industrial hemp is used in alternative automobile fuels and in such products as paper, cloths, cosmetics, and carpet.
Pendleton's bill would require that individuals wanting to grow or process industrial hemp be licensed by the state Department of Agriculture. The legislation would require criminal history checks of growers and would require sheriffs to monitor and randomly test industrial hemp fields.
The bill calls for an assessment fee of $5 per acre for every acre of industrial hemp grown, with a minimum fee of $150, to be divided equally between the state and the appropriate sheriff's department.
Phillip Garnett, a Christian County farmer, said he plans to go to Canada with Pendleton to investigate industrial hemp farming as a potential "new source of income and energy." Pendleton said he'd pay for his portion of the trip.
Garnett who raises tobacco, corn, wheat, and soybeans, said he wants to know more about the economics before he would consider raising industrial hemp. But he said "I'm always looking for alternative crops, and it sounds like it makes sense."
Because of current federal law, all hemp included in products sold in the United States must be imported.
Federal law includes industrial hemp in the definition of marijuana, and prohibits American farmers from growing hemp.
But the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced in Congress in April by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, would require the federal government to respect state laws allowing hemp production.
Pendleton says he sees new hope that federal barriers will be lessened, pointing to positions taken by the Obama administration.
In February, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the federal government was going to yield medical marijuana jurisdiction to states. As a state lawmaker in Illinois, Barack Obama voted for a resolution urging Congress to allow the production of industrial hemp.
In addition to production of hemp, research on hemp has been affected. A federal permit is required for industrial hemp research, Laura E. Sweeney, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said Friday.
The University of Kentucky would probably grow industrial hemp for research if allowed in the future, said Scott Smith, dean of the UK College of Agriculture.
When UK applied for a federal permit to grow a research plot of industrial hemp after Kentucky passed the 2001 law allowing analysis, the federal government denied permission, Smith said.
Kentucky is one of eight states that allows hemp research or production.
The federal government has given North Dakota State University permission to grow industrial hemp for research purposes under strict security measures, but money has been an issue.
In Kentucky, a similar bill filed in the 2009 General Assembly by Pendleton was not given a hearing.
But for 2010, state State Sen. David P. Givens, R-Greensburg, the chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee, said he is interested in seeing new economic studies.
The most prominent studies on the profitability of industrialized hemp in Kentucky are a decade old. They reached conflicting conclusions.
A study released in 1998 included work by researchers at UK's Center for Business and Economic Research. It showed that had hemp production been legalized at that time, Kentucky would have benefitted, with farmers making profits of between $220 and $605 an acre.
The returns would have fallen somewhere between tobacco and other crops that were already grown in Kentucky, the research showed.
However, a study released in 1997 by the UK College of Agriculture did not find much of a market for Kentucky hemp.
Smith, who served on an industrial hemp study commission convened by then Gov. Brereton Jones in the 1990s, remains skeptical of the potential profits from hemp.
Givens said he is also interested in hearing from law enforcement officials, who have expressed misgivings in the past.
Christian County Sheriff Livy Leavell Jr. said additional revenue for sheriff's departments "would be a plus" and that he hoped members of the Kentucky Sheriff's Association would take a close look at the legislation.
By Pork news source (11/19/2009)
The U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division and the USDA will hold a series of joint public workshops to explore competition issues affecting the agricultural sector in the 21st century and the appropriate role for antitrust and regulatory enforcement in that industry. The first workshop will be held in early 2010.
These are the first joint DOJ/USDA workshops ever to be held to discuss competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture industry. The goals of the workshops are to promote dialogue among interested parties and foster learning with respect to the appropriate legal and economic analyses of these issues.
The workshops will address the dynamics of competition in agriculture markets, including buyer power and vertical integration. They will examine legal doctrines and jurisprudence, as well as current economic learning, and will provide an opportunity for farmers, ranchers, consumer groups, processors, agribusiness, and other interested parties to provide examples of potentially anticompetitive conduct and to discuss any concerns about the application of the antitrust laws to the agricultural sectors.
Topics that will be covered during the workshops include the following:
• Application of antitrust laws to monopsony and vertical integration in the agricultural sector, including the scope, functionality, and limits of current or potential rules
• Impact of agriculture concentration on food costs
• The effect of agricultural regulatory statutes or other applicable laws and programs on competition
• Issues relating to patents and intellectual property affecting agricultural marketing or production
• Market practices such as:
o Price spreads
o Forward contracts
o Packer ownership of livestock before slaughter
o Market transparency
o Increasing retailer concentration
The 2010 schedule and topics are:
• March 12, in Ankeny, Iowa — Issues of Concern to Crop Farmers. Will focus on seed technology, vertical integration, market transparency and buyer power.
• May 21, in Normal, Ala. — Poultry Industry. Production contracts will be a major focus. In addition, they will look at concentration and buyer power.
• June 7, in Madison, Wis. — Dairy Industry. The focus may include concentration, marketplace transparency and vertical integration.
• August 26, in Fort Collins, Colo. — Livestock Industry. The session will address beef, hog and other animal sectors and may include enforcement activities of the Packers and Stockyards Act as well as a discussion of concentration.
• December 8, in Washington, DC — Will look at “discrepancies” between the prices received by farmers and the prices paid by consumers.
