JUNE FEATURE
The Science of Sustainable Agriculture
How growers and scientists team up for research and education.
From beef to carrots to breakfast cereal, foods labeled as “organic” or “natural” —once relegated to a few specialty health stores or cooperatives—are now commonplace on the shelves of your neighborhood grocery.
According to some projections, the U.S. market for organic foods will reach a value of more than $30 million by 2007.
This is good news for Wisconsin. In a 2003 report, the state ranked first for livestock and milk cows raised according to federal organic standards, second for organic hay and silage, and third for organic corn, soybeans, oats, barley and turkeys.
Positioned within a convenient distance of the markets and restaurants of Chicago and Minneapolis, Wisconsin organic farms cover 91,000 acres—or 4 percent of the nation’s total organic acreage—according to the 2003 study. That’s nearly a 100 percent increase in acreage since 1997. Wisconsin ranks fourth in the nation in organic cropland acreage, behind California, North Dakota and Minnesota.
Brent McCown, director of the college’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS), talks with graduate student Caroline Brock and undergraduate Mike Noltner in the F. H. King garden, used to demonstrate sustainable and organic gardening techniques. Campus and community volunteers operate the garden, while CIAS provides the basic operating budget.
Brent McCown, director of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences’ Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS), isn’t surprised by the increased consumer interest in buying organic and locally produced food.
“There is a growing realization that we have to live with our rapidly urbanizing environment and cannot just move to another pristine spot,” he explains. “Along with this intensified interest in improving our living environments comes a stronger connection to the land and our neighbors and an interest in connecting to our food systems.”
An evolving industry
Although organic farming is still a small part of Wisconsin’s overall agriculture sector, it’s a dynamic system, one that will continue to grow and evolve. That’s where the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and especially the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, enters the picture.
“The CIAS was established in the late 1980s to focus on sustainable agriculture, including organic,” McCown says. “This not only provided staff within CIAS to work with farmers and consumers on this issue, but allowed faculty and staff to come out of hiding, so to speak. In the last few years, organic activity has skyrocketed.”
McCown acknowledges that the university sometimes gets criticized for not doing enough in this area, but says that appearances can be deceiving.
“We have a problem of visibility—many of the projects are offshoots of other research and extension activities in individual faculty and staff programs. So from the outside, it looks as if UW-Madison is not doing much in this area, but in reality there is considerable effort.”
CIAS works closely with the college’s Integrated Pest Management and Nutrient Pest Management programs and with academic departments on issues involving sustainable agriculture and environmental problems related to agriculture, McCown says. The university also cooperates with state agencies and the governor’s office to help build infrastructure for continued rapid growth in organic agriculture. Two products of this collaboration include a recent publication on the status of organic agriculture in Wisconsin and the governor’s statewide summit on organic agriculture, he notes.
Helping apple growers spray less
One CIAS success story is the Eco-Apple project, part of the larger Wisconsin Pesticide Use and Risk Reduction Project managed by outreach specialist Michelle Miller. This project, a partnership between the college and the Wisconsin Apple Growers Association, supports farmers who want to reduce pesticide use in their orchards. It relies heavily on research and extension work by college faculty, including plant pathologist Patricia McManus, entomologist Dan Mahr and horticulturist Teryl Roper, as well as Matt Stasiak, a researcher at the college’s Peninsular Agricultural Research Station. It is a prime example of the Wisconsin Idea: applying findings from research on insect, disease and weed control to commercial agricultural operations.
Miller calls integrated pest management a toolbox—one that both conventional and organic farmers can use to maximize the benefits of natural cropping systems and minimize the need for pesticides.
“Putting toxic chemicals in the environment is a risky business for a lot of reasons,” explains Miller. “Toxins affect air and water quality. They hurt the ability of soil to regenerate itself. And they can be harmful to agricultural workers, rural residents—especially children—and animals. Farmers know this and can make great strides if they are supported in their efforts to farm bio-intensively.”
Although there is no documented health risk to consumers from pesticides on conventionally grown crops, Miller says that some people believe that organic produce is better.
“By purchasing local and organic foods, consumers are confident that they are supporting our rural communities and aren’t contributing to the harm of others or of the environment,” she says.
Helping first-time farmers grow
Say you were interested in starting your own small farming operation—maybe growing fruits or vegetables to sell at a farmers market or producing organic milk. How would you go about it?
One place to start might be at a CIAS workshop for aspiring market growers or dairy farmers. Outreach specialist John Hendrickson has taught the three-day School for Beginning Market Growers for seven years. He sees a strong demand for workshops such as these.
“There are not many focused learning opportunities available in these areas,” he says.
Hendrickson introduces future growers to everything from soil science to marketing. He covers disease and pest management, irrigation, and tax and insurance requirements, among other topics. For the past two years, the workshop has focused specifically on organic farming.
Patricia Bross harvests herbs at Luna Circle Farm, her six-acre organic vegetable operation near Rio. The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences has tapped Bross as an instructor in its “School for Beginning Market Growers.”
“There’s a critical need to sustain agriculture and a critical need to train new farmers and innovators who will treat the land responsibly,” says Hendrickson. “There’s also a great willingness from organic growers to share information. We use growers as instructors to pass on knowledge.”
Tricia Bross, who owns Luna Circle Farm, a six-acre vegetable and herb operation near Rio, is one of the growers Hendrickson regularly taps for his class.
“It’s a good way to get the information out,” Bross says. “I know people who have taken the class and started their own business. People see me at my stand at the Dane County Farmer’s Market who were in the class, and they tell me they’re now successful.”
Another of Hendrickson’s projects, Profit by Planning, helps growers evaluate their economic performance and make informed decisions to improve their profitability. From 2002-04, he collected labor and financial data for 19 organic vegetable farms. Now he is sharing the results through a series of publications to give beginning growers an idea of what to expect in terms of startup costs, operating budgets, labor requirements and income.
Easing the squeeze on mid-sized farms
Not all CIAS projects focus on small farms. Sociologist George Stevenson is concerned with the disappearance of mid-sized family farms—operations too small to market bulk agricultural commodities globally but too large to sell directly to local customers.
“This so-called ‘agriculture-of-the-middle’ has been Wisconsin’s historical agricultural base and currently accounts for nearly half of the state’s agricultural lands,” he says. “Mid-sized farms have the flexibility and capacity to produce significant volumes of the differentiated, high-quality foods that are the fastest-growing sector of the market.”
Stevenson says that organic agriculture has potential as a strategy to reinvigorate mid-sized farms. But for this to work, he says, something must be done to counter pressures on the organic food industry to replicate the structure of the conventional food system—characterized by very large and very small farms and a disappearing middle.
“There is an increasing interest in going beyond federal organic standards to new models that address issues like family management, fair profit margins, fair wages and healthy working conditions,” he says.
Stevenson calls this approach “organic-plus.” Much like the existing fair-trade programs used to market coffee and bananas, the idea of organic-plus is to inform consumers about how their food is produced so they understand the environmental impacts and the business practices involved.
“Consumers can see the transparent supply chains that are built on business relationships they can trust and want to support,” says Stevenson.
The college and the growers
The Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and organic agriculture work at the college rely heavily on cooperation from growers—but the industry gets returns on its investment, says McCown.
“Even if we don’t change how they’re farming now, we’re going to change how they farm in the future. For example, the potential for developing much better crop varieties that are responsive to low-input and organic systems of farming will have a major impact—just as it had with conventional, high-input-based farming.”
Bross says that while she has university contacts through her work with CIAS, it is sometimes hard for farmers to know what resources are available to them.
“The CIAS basically runs on a half-full tank,” concedes McCown. “Most of our talented, hard-working staff work part time—and farm the rest of the time—and my appointment is only 50 percent. We have only one administrative assistant. Yet we have over 30 projects, an increasing demand for our services—and a shrinking state budget contribution.”
Tossed salad takes on a new meaning as Simone O’Donohue and John Mattes harvest cabbage at Tipi Produce near Evansville. The farm’s operators, Steve Pincus and Beth Kazmar, see plenty of potential for the college to connect with Wisconsin’s community of sustainable growers.
Another pair of growers who have UW-Madison connections are college alumni Beth Kazmar and Steve Pincus, who own Tipi Produce near Evansville. Pincus moved to Wisconsin on a whim in the late 1960s and became interested in natural foods. He experimented with farming but realized that he needed more education to be successful. He enrolled at the UW-Madison and earned a degree in horticulture—and also met his future wife, who was working on a master’s degree in plant pathology.
The pair—along with Sophie, 6, and Ari, 3—now market everything from broccoli and bell peppers to snap peas and sprouts directly to food stores in Milwaukee and Madison as well as through their Community Supported Agriculture program.
Kazmar and Pincus also teach in Hendrickson’s school for beginning market growers, participate in his economics study and guest-lecture in other courses. They’ve also welcomed students to their farm for field days and sent samples of insects and diseased plants to the college’s diagnostic labs.
They see plenty of potential for the college to expand such connections.
“We’d welcome them becoming a larger part of the organics community,” says Kazmar. “It’s really important to have work done here—there are always new questions, and there are so many local variations that no one state can be the complete source for research in this area.”
Visit our archives to read articles from previous issues of the UW Business Wire.