Food Subsidized by the Tragedy of the Commons

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FEED THE SOIL, FEED THE PLANET

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Hi Friend,

At the ROP Dartmouth symposium, Emily Oakley provided the most honest presentation I’ve heard about whether or not fertility can truly be farm-derived. This question, obscure as it may seem, is the essence of organic farming.

Emily Oakley has made it a priority to grow as much fertility as possible right on the farm. Using a variety of covercrops, she rotates her fields between growing produce to sell and planting to replenish nutrients and organic matter.

Of the 60 pilot farms I visited last summer, I was perhaps most impressed by Emily and Mike’s Three Springs Farm in Oklahoma. From just 2.5 acres (half veggies, half cover crop) they’ve built a financially sustainable operation with no off-farm income, all while holding true to their strong environmental goals to minimize external inputs.

The best organic farmers are constantly thinking about how to reduce their purchased inputs because ultimately everything brought in off the farm has a story, and as Emily puts it, “it’s not always a story we want to know.” She would know - she’s been researching the allowed inputs in organic farming (the National List) as part of her National Organic Standards Board duties.

While she has documented that a cover crop of peas on her farm can bring in 100 additional lbs of Nitrogen to the acre, for example, is it enough to replace the veggies that leave the farm?

A thick cover crop of peas and vetch is mowed and tilled under before planting, adding nitrogen and organic matter to the soil.

While many organic farmers rely on excess animal manure from CAFOs for their fertility, they might not think about the damage that these CAFO’s inflict on the land and communities where they are located.

Three Springs Farm is unfortunately in a part of the country that is becoming more and more inundated with chicken CAFO’s which has had an effect on the air, soil, and groundwater in Emily’s backyard.

Showing that organic farming can be done in a way that doesn’t depend on external sources of fertility is groundbreaking research that is often conducted by the farmers that care the most about these issues.

Emily and daughter pull the water wheel transplanter with Mike in tow.

Francis Thicke’s symposium presentation compares the vast differences and resulting consequences between ecologically-based farming systems and industrial systems. Hydroponics and CAFOs are input/output industrial systems compared to the soil-building systems like cover cropping and pasture-based dairy on his farm, Radiance Dairy.

Francis Thicke at Radiance Dairy in Iowa. Radiance Dairy’s rotational grazing system mimics the movement of the bison that created the deep Iowa soils. Resilient pastures have deep rooted grasses which are pulse grazed, afterwhich the sloughed roots leave behind organic matter and hold onto soil moisture.

Francis harnesses nature’s efficiencies at Radiance Dairy by letting the cows harvest their own feed and spread their own manure, right where it needs to be - on the pasture.

Francis challenges us to use what nature can teach us in our production systems. As he points out, it's the nature of grass to stand in one place and the nature of cows to move about, but CAFOs make the cows stand in one place and the feed move to the cows! This insanity is only possible because of cheap oil.

We’ve learned that breaking nature’s efficiencies come with significant costs as well. Red tides, depleted soils, loss of biodiversity, and climate change induced extremes to name a few. Food subsidized by the tragedy of the commons.

We know better. Let’s reward the farmers that aren’t polluting our commons. Our futures depend on it.

Yours in the dirt,

Linley

Francis and I at Radiance Dairy during the Real Organic Project inspection last summer.

Linley Dixon
Associate Director / linley@realorganicproject.org
Real Organic Project / realorganicproject.org

"Give a farmer a shovel and some seeds and they're on their way to sustainable farming.”

-Eliot Coleman

Farm Inputs: All food that leaves a farm, be it meat, dairy, fruit, or vegetable, takes with it some nutrients from the Earth where it was raised. Left with soil that is like an overdrawn bank account, a farmer must replace those nutrients - called inputs - before the next crop can be successfully grown. Inputs can be granular, liquid, plant-based, synthetic, storebought, or homegrown. Homegrown (or "on-farm") inputs like compost and covercrops are more sustainable than purchased inputs (also called "off-farm" or "external inputs") such as hydrolyzed soy, fish emulsion, mined minerals, and packaged fertilizers.

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www.RealOrganicProject.org
The Real Organic Project has been created to help educate and connect those who care about organic farming.

Our mission is to grow people’s understanding of traditional organic values and practices. Our first goal is to create an add-on label to USDA certified organic to provide more transparency on organic farming practices.