Articles
22 February 2012

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Local Farmers Fight for Agricultural Survival

by Dianne Lewis

22 February 2012—

Charlie Black stands squinting into the afternoon sun.

            “Our biggest crop is the corn maze,” he says. “Financially, the corn maze keeps us going.”

            Behind him, buildings that once used to store onions are being used as the entrance and exit to the haunted corn maze and harvest market. For Black, the second of four generations to work on Black Island Farms, the future is uncertain at best.

            The problems facing agriculture in Utah are complex. Farming is threatened by development; protection of agricultural land is minimal and has loopholes. An oversupply of food has made it so cheap that making a profit is difficult. And labor is fraught with issues, most surrounding immigration.

            At nearly 15 percent of the state economy, any ripple in agriculture can have long-lasting impacts. While Utah ranks only 36th in the country for number of farms, it’s still a $16.3 billion business, and that’s before you count businesses directly tied to food like restaurants and grocery stores, says Randy Parker, CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau.

            Like a game of Pick-Up-Sticks, a small movement in one issue nudges everything else. One farmer going down could mean it’s no longer profitable for processors or equipment suppliers to stay, which raises costs for everyone remaining. A new highway can put a family farm out of business.

            There are no easy answers, and farmers and ranchers, especially those with small to medium-sized operations, are caught in the middle, just figuring out how to make it through the next year.

 

Protecting the Land

A banner hangs at the entrance to the harvest festival, the stark lettering spelling out Black Island Farms’ most imminent threat. “Stop UDOT – help save farmland and open space.” The farm, with the help of the Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF), has been trying to convince the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) not to plow the Legacy Highway extension through this and other farms.

            There are a few protections for farmland. Farmers incur lower taxes and can utilize agricultural protection zones, which protect them from nuisance complaints and condemnation, but even that can be circumvented, as Black has discovered. Despite a conservation easement and being in an agricultural protection zone, UDOT can still build a highway through the middle of his property if it chooses to do so.

            Parker says Black Island Farms is in a unique microclimate, with just the perfect soil, water and weather conditions to grow what they do (West Bountiful was once known by the name Onion Street), but none of that seems to matter. “Federal law says the state of Utah or whoever is encroaching has to look at unique farmlands and protect those, and we aren’t seeing that,” he says.

            Commercial development is perhaps the largest long-term threat to farmers. Every year, more farmland disappeares. Between 2002 and 2007, Utah lost more than 600,000 acres of agricultural land. Many farmers lease a lot of land in addition to owning some. They don’t have the money to buy it, because the development rights on the land are three-quarters of the cost.

            “We lose more rental property every year,” says Cache Valley farmer Keith Meikle. “Every year, one of the people we rent from dies and their kids get it and sell it. They say, ‘That’s just dirt.’ To a farmer that’s not just dirt—that’s got a soul.”

            Meikle supports the views of Envision Cache Valley, a group with the vision statement “Keep the City, City and the Country, Country,” but notes the organization has no enforcement power. People crave the country, he says. They use wheat fields to take family pictures. They feed ducks living in farm canals and enjoy getting away from the city for walks. “It’s a healing thing to them,” Meikle says. “There’s a magic in seeing that green patchwork laid out.”

            Farmers are fiercely protective of their land, but are divided about whether protecting private property rights requires governmental intervention. Leonard Blackham, Utah commissioner of agriculture and food, says the UDAF supports conservation easements, strengthening agriculture protection laws and keeping a critical mass of farmers in an area to support infrastructure necessary for processing and production.

            Whatever happens, Black says he’s afraid the only way agricultural land will get saved is when food is scarce enough to make agricultural land worth more than what developers will pay. “Someday we’re going to need all the land we can get—and we’re getting close.”

 

Fighting to Survive

“My concern as a farmer is to protect [agricultural] land, but I don’t know how to do that, except to make farming financially viable,” Black says. “If you save the land from UDOT, that doesn’t mean it’s saved.”

            That’s because plenty of other things threaten the Utah agricultural industry. Everyone’s trying to make a living, but it’s not as easy as it seems. Three-quarters of the food in Utah is produced by only 3.7 percent of the farmers. Only 9.7 percent of Utah farmers in 2007 were making more than $100,000 in gross sales.

            Part of the problem is food has only had modest price increases, but everything farmers need to grow the food—gas, fertilizer, equipment—has far outpaced food prices. If farmers are going to survive on food prices similar to the 1970s, says Meikle, they have to quickly increase their efficiency, but even that can’t fully close the gap.

            Black says the Syracuse vegetable farm began diversifying when it became clear that farming alone couldn’t pay the bills. They’ve started selling at farmers markets, offering community-supported agriculture (CSA) and moving into agri-tourism: corn mazes, hay rides, harvest festivals and the like.

            He’s not the only one looking for a creative way to stay afloat. Farmers across the state are branching out. And several have found CSAs and farmers markets are a boon to struggling farms.

            East Farms, in West Pointe, attends three farmers markets and has the largest CSA in the state, with more than 600 member families. “The CSA has been big for us,” says owner Jeremy East. “We were almost bankrupt, so we needed another form of income that’s more sustainable…. Now grocery stores around here are on a local kick and that’s really helped in the last three or four years.”

            The CSA now makes up about a quarter of the farm’s revenue with wholesale completing the rest. But East says that much wholesale work was impossible when he started because newer farms don’t have the “in” they need to sell. The CSA saved his farm in the beginning.

            The increased interest in fresh, locally grown food has provided a lift for many Utah farmers. And there’s value in seeing where the food comes from, East says. “Having a food source near where you live is really important to teach kids food doesn’t come from Wal-Mart. You’d be surprised how many children don’t know that.”

 

Looking for Labor

Despite recent efforts to make money from different ventures, the payoff isn’t always big enough for the effort and some farmers have toyed with the idea of getting out. Jordan Riley, with Riley Orchards in Payson, says his brother Christopher is in the process of buying the orchards from his dad, Alan. But that was once up in the air.

            “In our family’s experience, my Dad was about ready at one point to tell my brother not to worry and it wasn’t worth it anymore. And that was over labor,” Riley says.

            The labor debate in agriculture is a touchy one. Outsiders are upset by the use of undocumented immigrants as workers; farmers say they wouldn’t have a harvest without immigrants.

            Blackham says some farms and dairies have tried to employ only people whose legal status could be verified, but that was impossible to do and still have the workforce needed. “People who say there would be people to take those jobs don’t know what they’re talking about,” he says.

            Utah farmers would like to have legal employees, Blackham says, but he believes it would devastate the agricultural industry if the state implements an E-Verify system before creating a solid guest worker program.

            Parker says the situation is the same across the country. A lettuce farm in Arizona paid workers from a local employment service $25 an hour for the harvest and none lasted past noon. This echoes Riley’s experience; he says the longest someone lasted this year was three hours. Last year one guy made it a whole day.

            Aside from the impossibility of finding enough verifiably legal labor, traditional workers simply don’t work hard or fast enough to get the job done, Blackham says. In studies, a team of four migrant workers outpicked 12 traditional workers. With farmers typically paying based on the weight picked, slow pickers make well below minimum wage, whereas fast pickers can make a living.

            Like the other problems facing Utah’s agricultural industry, immigration and labor concerns will not be resolved anytime soon. Agriculture is one of Utah’s bedrock industries, and with an annual contribution of more than $16 billion to the state’s economy, the fate of agriculture in Utah reaches far beyond the dinner table. 


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