It’s hard to keep track of how things are changing when it comes to food. The ownership puzzle is hard to follow, with most of the brands we see on shelves belonging to a small handful of global mega-corporations. It’s even harder to keep track of the quality, supply chain, and ecological impacts of these food companies that are often obscured by friendly, consumer-facing marketing. Companies use terms like “all natural”, “GMO-free”, and “organic” on everything to try to catch your attention.
I understand if your eyes start to glaze over; mine do too. It’s overwhelming. And at the same time, I’m supposed to change – to eat the latest superfood (acai anyone?), understand where my food comes from, check the labels, know what’s in season, eat spray-free… what else? The challenge is knowing which messages to stop ignoring.
A good place to start is to borrow insights and learnings from people who have already spent time and energy in an area. Find experts you trust and expedite your learning by tapping into their knowledge. When it comes to food, I like Britt and Justin from Hearts and Roots. They have values that align with mine. I feel like they have my back; like they will make the right choices every step of the way, so I can rest assured when I buy from them. By supporting a place like Hearts and Roots, I’m choosing to support experts.
Justin (co-owner of Hearts and Roots) wrote a piece for their email newsletter last year titled “The Hows and Whys of What We Do” that provides some excellent and thoughtful insight. He illustrates the alignment with their customers’ values that I’m talking about. His words shed light on why it’s so important to find people like them and attach yourself to their expertise.
For example, one thing I learned is that many organic farms
use plastic to help heat the soil, get earlier harvests, and inhibit the growth
of weeds. I also learned that the plastics used have recently been banned by
Canadian Organic Standards, which has led many organic farms to use a heavier
plastic that ends up in a landfill at the end of the season. It’s a wasteful
solution. Hearts and Roots are different. They are focused on farming
sustainably, so they don’t use it. They don’t simply respond to regulators
because they’re interested in lowering their costs and increasing margins. They
are interested in being around for a long time. They are proactive.
Another thing I learned: Britt and Justin are happy to
employ people long-term. They aren’t interested in the temporary foreign worker
program or unpaid interns. I particularly like this line – “every year we try
and pay them a little more because we’d like to see a minimum wage increase
generally. The farm will have to figure
that out, or the farm just isn’t sustainable”.
The food business is big. The fertilizer and chemical
businesses are big too. How you choose to operate has a lot to do with the
reason you got into business and who you’re in business to serve. Justin
explains how they make decisions based on a more complex set of criteria than
simply profit and satisfying shareholders. To Hearts and Roots, success is more
nuanced than simply being a synonym for profit.
“This is why we don’t use certified organic, biological insecticides like Spinosad. Spinosad has many trade names, the most common out here being Entrust. It is produced by Dow Chemicals and is registered for use in organic production because it is a biologically derived insecticide that is non-toxic to animals and humans. However, it is toxic to bees and other beneficial insects. It is commonly used by spray-free and organic farmers to control flea-beetles, especially in years like this one when the spike in the population was so outrageous, that the beetles were migrating through the soil to take down plants underneath protective blankets. We will continue to abstain from using indiscriminate crop aids that threaten the well-being of the farm as a whole. This may mean that you miss out on some late season cauliflower and kale the odd year, but we’re working on new strategies and alternative crops so that hopefully you won’t even notice!”
Britt and Justin aren’t trying to fool people with a definition of “organic” to make more money. They are trying to serve healthy food to people that is grown on a farm that respects the environment around it and is trying to be around for a long time.
This piece isn’t meant to pit one farm against another.
Justin explains this well – “We didn’t write the above to discount the
hard work of all our peers, or to for one second pretend that we’re the ones
doing it right. But, we are trying really hard to do the best job we can do and
put the land first. We are incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to
care for a small piece of an endangered planet and it is not
something we take lightly. However, things do take time and we have a long way
to go. But it’s important for us to let you know the difference you’re making
by supporting our farm. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed it on the merit and array of
delicious vegetables alone. Thank you for all your support.”
Read the full piece by Justin by clicking “Read More”.
As things slow down on the farm, we have time to reflect on
the season that just ended and do more writing than we are able to do in the
summer. This newsletter will no longer be weekly, but an occasional opportunity
to share farm updates and salient news and events. Justin wrote a bit (okay,
more than a bit) about our practices below and if you are interested in farming
or how what you eat impacts our immediate and not-so-immediate environment,
please read on!
Weed control.
This season we jettisoned the use of single-use, plastic
mulches. These mulches are common practice in spray free and organic vegetable
and fruit production. For a large portion of their crops, farmers lay out rolls
of plastic over their beds. The crops are planted through the plastic and these
plastics, often black, heat up the soils, helping achieve early harvests while
inhibiting the growth of weeds. This saves a tremendous amount of labour, but
also creates a large amount of garbage. There are biodegradable plastics that can
be incorporated into the soils at the end of the season. We used these plastics
for our hot crops for the first 3 years. However, the incorporation of these
biodegradable plastics has been banned by the Canadian Organic Standards due to
a recent discovery that the ingredients used to make these plastics do not
actually meet the requirements for organic agriculture. Farms are still allowed
to use the biodegradable option if they promise to remove them from their
fields and dispose of them in a landfill. These plastics are all but impossible
to remove. This leads many certified organic farms with little option but to
use a stronger plastic that is more easily removed from the field and usually
ends up in a landfill, since recycling is rarely an option.
When we started farming, we were told by many people in the
industry that farming without these mulches was not a viable option. That the
garbage created was a lesser evil than the chemicals it replaced since the
labour it would take to grow organically would guarantee the farm’s financial
ruin. In the winter of season 3, we decided that our reliance on this style of
production was impeding our goal of farming sustainably. We spent a lot of time
redesigning the farm, to rely on smaller equipment and more had tools. In 2018,
season 4, we grew more food and had higher yields than all our previous years
on less land. We shrunk the farm from around 5 acres to closer to 3.5 acres. In
one acre we were planting 54 beds instead of 32 and we were putting more plants
in each bed. Because of the type of tools we’re now using, the land we’re
growing on is healthier. It only has to endure foot traffic and the occasional
pass with our two-wheel, walking tractor (a more substantial and versatile
version of a hand held tiller). This led to less compaction which means less
flooding and more life in the soil. Our walking tractor is also fitted with a
power harrow instead of a roto-tiller. This implement does a shallow stirring
of the soil instead of an aggressive flipping of the soil, helping maintain
soil structure and leading to less disturbance. We still rely on our four wheel
tractor and cultivator for certain tasks on the farm. We’ve inherited a pretty
nasty perennial weed problem in certain fields that we’ve had to try to aggressively
curtail. But, this seasons move to another system of production has given us
great hope for the future of our land and what we will be able to accomplish in
the very near future.
Our team.
Getting rid of plastic mulches did lead to an incredible
surplus of work. Often, Britt and I would comment that we didn’t remember being
so tired. Luckily for us, we had two incredible hires this year. Our employees
are paid. We do not use the temporary foreign workers program or unpaid
interns, another common practice among vegetable farms of all stripes to
attempt to curtail the costs of growing food. Our employees work 8 hour days,
with one hour paid lunch and get weekends off. We pay $12.50 an hour and hope
to increase our CSA this coming spring so that we can raise that to $13.00.
Farm work is hard and our season is unrelenting. From March to late October
Britt and I work non-stop, usually 7 days a week, averaging 70 plus hours a
week. But we own the farm, and this is our dream. Our employees do not get paid
enough to be expected to share that burden. Every year we try and pay them a
little more because we’d like to see a minimum wage increase generally. The
farm will have to figure that out, or the farm just isn’t sustainable.
Perennials.
As we are more and more successful at implementing actually
sustainable production practices a good team is even more important. Next
season, we’ll hopefully be even busier as we’ve added some new perennial crops
to our roster. In the future there will be an early flush of asparagus in June
followed by strawberries in July. These are two leaner months, when the
variability of annual vegetables is a little lacklustre. Perennial crops are
something we’re trying our best to invest in as we can. We’re trying to help
make healthy and productive the areas of the farm that aren’t fields by
planting fruit and nut trees which are expensive and will not yield any profits
for years to come. We’re hoping to make
some investments in our aging shelterbelts too, ideally planting a mix of
plants that will help create a landscape for beneficial insects. We’re also going to be putting a good chunk
of our fields into perennial pasture in the spring, that will have many
benefits, just one being that we’ll be able to use it to feed animals who can
feed the soil and produce our own compost. We’re doing our best to figure out
ways to ‘close the nutrient loop’ as best we can. We’re also doing a lot of
soil building with annual green manures, that we’ll be able to make greater use
of now that we’re growing on less land and can let more land rest.
Insect control.
Our goal with these perennial plants and pasture is to also
increase biodiversity on the farm. We’re happy people want to support the local
honey producers and save the honeybee. But, the honeybee has got nothing on our
native bees, especially our bumblebees who work way harder. Not to mention all
the other pollinators and beneficial bugs we need to keep things somewhat
manageable. This is why we don’t use certified organic, biological insecticides
like Spinosad. Spinosad, has many trade
names, the most common out here being Entrust. It is produced by Dow Chemicals
and is registered for use in organic production because it is a biologically
derived insecticide that is non-toxic to animals and humans. However, it is toxic to bees and other
beneficial insects. It is commonly used by spray-free and organic farmers to
control flea-beetles, especially in years like this one when the spike in the
population was so outrageous, that the beetles were migrating through the soil
to take down plants underneath protective blankets. We will continue to abstain
from using indiscriminate crop aids that threaten the well-being of the farm as
a whole. This may mean that you miss out on some late season cauliflower and
kale the odd year, but we’re working on new strategies and alternative crops so
that hopefully you won’t even notice!
Reducing plastic waste.
This year we drastically reduced our reliance on plastic
packaging. Our CSA only saw one piece of plastic, the garden growler saw three
and the only thing we put in plastic at the farmers’ market was corn because it
was husked. We husked the corn because we could tell that the population of
corn borers was up and we wanted to ensure that no one was getting any wormy cobs. Corn borers are
another pest that farms use spinosad insecticides to eradicate. We use paper
for almost everything now and many of you are coming to the farmers’ market with
tupperware and small produce bags, which is fantastic to see!
One last thing.
We didn’t write the above to discount the hard work of all
our peers, or to for one second pretend that we’re the ones doing it right.
But, we are trying really hard to do the best job we can do and put the land
first. We are incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to care for a small
piece of an endangered planet and it is not something we take lightly. However,
things do take time and we have a long way to go. But it’s important for us to
let you know the difference you’re making by supporting our farm. Hopefully,
you’ve enjoyed it on the merit and array of delicious vegetables alone. Thank
you for all your support.
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