Lynn Freehill-Maye posted Nov 21, 2019 in Yes! Magazine

“PFI, in my view, is the best example in this country right now of the blending of science and local wisdom,” Laura Lengnick says. She’s a North Carolina-based resilient-agriculture researcher who travels the country talking to groups like these.

Organizations like Practical Farms of Iowa remain rare, Lengnick says. The group has “been a constant star in my career, literally from when I was an undergraduate student, because they’re so unique.”

Farmers are different. Weather doesn’t just affect their Saturday at the park; it dictates their livelihood, and they keep exhaustive mental and written records of it day by day, year by year.

That’s why in 2019, you don’t need to tell many farmers that climate patterns have been shifting. When Lengnick started working on her resilience book in 2012, things were touchier in agriculture. Many farmers didn’t want to go on the record about climate change. “I see a sea change since then,” she says. “Everybody’s talking about it.”

In August 2019, Alan Sano, a central California farmer, argued in The New York Times that drought, heat, and wildfires have put growers at the climate-change frontlines. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just warned that soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is forming. Each 1% increase in soil organic matter, scientists say, helps soil hold up to 20,000 gallons more water per acre. “We don’t need to read the science—we’re living it,” Sano declared.

Sano and his farm manager, Jesse Sanchez, are part of the Conservation Agriculture Systems Center, a working group at University of California, Davis. The working group pulls a mix of California farmers together to share eco-friendly practices such as reducing tillage. Like PFI, they often host field days to help farmers share techniques.

In New Mexico, the Quivira Coalition, which was formed in 1997 and believes ranching should support a healthy ecosystem, brings livestock producers together to build resilience. Today, Quivira includes 750 members of all political stripes. “Out here, people are coming from extremely rural areas, and there’s a complexity of views that is hard to characterize,” executive director Sarah Wentzel-Fisher says. “But I think the underlying commonality we have is that people really care about the land they steward and animals they care for.”

Practical Farmers of Iowa has a longer history. Fifty members formed the organization in 1985 to learn from each other. These days, it numbers more than 3,500 and prides itself on being big-tent—with wide-ranging views around politics and the environment.

Meet the Farmers Putting Politics Aside to Address Climate Change

The Practical Farmers of Iowa waste no time on partisan stances as they face the challenges of extreme weather and depleted soils.

Lynn Freehill-Maye posted Nov 21, 2019

Welcoming everybody to his farm on a searing August afternoon, Ron Rosmann lets the pleasantries go for 12 minutes before getting to the heart of things. Around him, about 70 growers sit like school kids on bales of hay, braced to hear him.

Rosmann has been farming organically for 36 years on western Iowa’s fertile hills, and his voice is as gravelly as the road that runs alongside his land. You might think farming without pesticides would get easier over time, but you’d be wrong. An impossibly rainy planting season and runaway giant ragweed have made this year his toughest yet.

“What are we experiencing?” he asks the group. “Warmer temperatures, more rainfall, warmer nights, 10 years in a row of cold, wet springs. I’m getting more and more nervous.”

The growers, all members of Practical Farmers of Iowa, are here to learn how Rosmann copes. A rare alliance of organic and conventional farmers, their views on climate change run the gamut of opinion. They meet on different farms around the state to share practices and today have come out for a “field day” to observe how Rosmann and his family produce beef, pork, chickens, eggs, popcorn, and grains on 700 acres—without chemicals.

While long-term climate change is prompting growing activism, farmers like these often register its near-term effects first. It contributes to soil erosion and severe weather events. It has increased annual precipitation in Iowa at least 8% over the past century, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. And the effects keep multiplying.

The field day includes a hayrack tour of the Rosmanns’ pesticide-free fields. On one section, turnips are planted as a cover crop, and volunteer oats and barley also pop up. Down the road, the group visits naturally ventilated “hoop house” pig shelters: metal arcs covered with greenhouse plastic, in which deep cornstalk bedding decreases manure runoff risk. They stand in front of long compost mounds, where butterflies land as Rosmann describes how to balance straw and manure. The farmers end their tour back in the barn, dining on the Rosmanns’ organic coleslaw and pulled-pork sandwiches.

As Rosmann, a self-declared independent Democrat, pontificates about climate change, Mark Peterson, a conservative Republican, studies his phone. The two Iowa growers admit they don’t see eye to eye on the issue.

Peterson, who grows grain conventionally an hour away, believes changing weather patterns may be cyclical. “I respect his opinion,” Peterson says after Rosmann’s climate talk. “It’s scary, there’s no doubt about that. But the cause—I’m not sure that’s as important as figuring out what we’re gonna do about it.”

While they may not agree on what has gotten them here, growers such as Rosmann and Peterson are thinking beyond politicized climate change arguments to figure out solutions. They’re trying to adapt to the differences they’re experiencing, and even trying to mitigate them.

Daniel Rosmann belongs to the Practical Farmers of Iowa, an alliance of organic and conventional farmers that meet to share practices in the face of extreme weather and soil degradation. Photo by Lynn Freehill-Maye/YES! Magazine.

Along with fellow practical farmers members, they’re approaching agriculture more regeneratively: focusing on soil health, planting cover crops, reducing chemicals, and minimizing the runoff that contributes to the Gulf of Mexico’s fishless “dead zone.” In the age of climate change, their sharing of experience is increasingly vital.

Most people don’t keep diaries of the weather. Only novelties, such as big storms or long stretches of unseasonable temperatures, register as unusual. It’s up to scientists—meteorologists and climatologists, mainly—to tell us about how today’s weather fits into larger patterns.

Farmers are different. Weather doesn’t just affect their Saturday at the park; it dictates their livelihood, and they keep exhaustive mental and written records of it day by day, year by year.

In August 2019, Alan Sano, a central California farmer, argued in The New York Times that drought, heat, and wildfires have put growers at the climate-change frontlines. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just warned that soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is forming. “We don’t need to read the science—we’re living it,” Sano declared.

Fred Abels, for instance, a staunch Republican, is passionate about improving water quality through environmentally sound practices like maintaining wetlands and buffer strips. Dan Wilson leans firmly conservative, but farms completely organically.

Iowa made national headlines for this spring’s record flooding that has the practical farmers members still reeling.

“Disgustingly wet,” the otherwise affable Peterson growls. At his Bent Gate Farm, Peterson’s two Labrador mixes, Emmy and Riley, jog out to greet a visitor. Dogs and cats are the farm’s only animals, but Peterson has a friend’s cattle graze on his cover crops.

It begins to rain, and from his Chevy Silverado, Peterson surveys the cover-crop mix of buckwheat, sunflower, radishes, and turnips he’s growing on 50 acres to help manage soil erosion. Each 1% increase in soil organic matter, scientists say, helps soil hold up to 20,000 gallons more water per acre.

The soil here is healthier now, Peterson says, and will yield more corn later. The field’s traditional wet spots haven’t been as big or lasting. The winter wheat will anchor the topsoil. As he talks, three geese alight. Lately, Peterson has seen three coveys of quail, and up to seven pheasants in a one day. “I see that as a sign of overall farm health,” he says.

Peterson still uses the herbicide glyphosate, in the form of weed killer Roundup, although sparingly. On fellow practical farmers’ member Denise O’Brien’s Rolling Acres farm 45 minutes northeast, even that would be anathema.

O’Brien has farmed organically for 43 years. On this day, she and a mentee, Amber Mohr, are digging up potatoes out back.

Denise O’Brien of Rolling Acres farm is also a member of the Practical Farmers of Iowa. Photo by Lynn Freehill-Maye/YES! Magazine.

Rows of veggies stand at attention around them. O’Brien is just as proud of her sustainable high tunnels. Working like greenhouses, they require irrigation but extend the growing seasons. O’Brien installed the hoop shelters on tracks in 2013. “This is the way vegetable farmers are going to be mitigating climate change, with high tunnels,” she ways. “It’s going to protect the soil.”

She and Mohr grab the harvested vegetables and move into a barn as storm clouds loom. O’Brien works barefoot as she hoses stubborn dirt clumps that stick to some carrots, later grabbing a higher-pressure hose to finish the job. Outspokenly liberal, she confesses to occasional frustrations with the practical farmers group.

She recounts losing her temper in August, when one farmer on the group’s general Listserv asked how to deal with sprayed pesticide drifting over from her neighbors’ farm. Pesticide drift is a hot-button issue with the farmers. During the Rosmanns’ field day, a crop-duster buzzed overhead. “Incoming!” farmers pointed. “Hope it’s not gonna spray us,” one muttered.

The pesticide-drift post was moved to the group’s smaller policy Listserv, which O’Brien protested. After nearly 40 years as a member, she threatened to quit. “I don’t like to end on a threat, but this … makes me sick not to discuss,” she wrote.

Such flare-ups aren’t uncommon. It’s the natural byproduct of bringing people together across ideological lines.

Within a couple days, O’Brien had decided to stay, though she wishes the group would take a firmer stand on agriculture policy. Still, she’s glad a rare organization like it even exists, with its mix of growers and ideas. “It’s really neat that conventional farmers are a part of PFI, because they to me are the farmers of the future, figuring out how to use more sustainable practices,” she says. “The other thing is, I’m still learning a lot from other farmers.”

A New Generation of Black Farmers Is Returning to the Land

They are working to repair harm inflicted over the past 400 years, with an eye toward reparations.

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Leah Penniman posted Nov 19, 2019

“Imagine your neighbor stole your cow. A few weeks later the neighbor comes over, laden with remorse, to offer a sincere apology and a promise to make it right. The neighbor offers to atone by giving you half a pound of butter every week for the rest of the cow’s life. What do you think of that?”

The challenge was issued by Ed Whitfield, board member of the Southern Reparations Loan Fund, during the E.F. Schumacher Center lectures in 2018. His audience was unanimous in its response: “We would want our cow back!”

And the United Nations agrees. The UN Principles on Reparations and Immunity, which provides basic guiding principles around gross human rights violations, holds that “reparation should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered.” In other words, society’s scant attempts to make amends for atrocities is the butter; reparations is the cow. Compensation for unpaid wages under slavery alone would add up to $5.9 trillion in today’s dollars. That doesn’t include damages due Black people because of such policies as Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, or other injuries.

Discussions around reparations in this country have been of special interest to Black farmers. The litany of societal abuses heaped upon them includes the broken promise of 40 acres and a mule, lynchings that targeted landowners, discrimination by the federal government, and heirs property exploitation. As a result, the number of Black farmers has declined from 14% of the nation’s farmers in 1910 to less than 2% today–with a corresponding loss of more than 12 million acres of land. Melissa Gordon’s thesis research at Tufts University shows wealth denied the Black community through farmland loss exceeds $120 billion.

In 1997, Black farmers drove their tractors to Washington demanding justice and sued the federal government for its leading role in their oppression. The Pigford v. Glickman settlement of 1999, widely lauded as the largest civil rights discrimination payout in the country’s history, awarded about $2 billion dollars, with a typical disbursement of $50,000 to an individual farmer. While significant, it still fell far short of reparations. The amount did not come close to the calculations of what is owed and was not enough to buy back the lost acres or pay off the crushing debt farmers had accumulated in their bids for survival.

While cynics predict the extinction of the Black farmer, the farmers themselves are not giving up. “Not on our watch,” says Rafael Aponte, livestock farmer in western New York, when asked whether Black farmers are dying out.

A new wave, part of the “returning generation” of Black farmers whose grandparents and great-grandparents fled the racial violence of the South, are now finding their way back to the land. They are building on the legacy of organizing and resistance in their lineages and working to create an infrastructure for reparations.

Three nascent, farmer-led organizations, formed within the last two years, are working to repair the harm to Black farmers over the past 400 years. “We are making the road as we walk,” Aponte asserts.

Black Farmer Fund

In Wake County, North Carolina, Olive Watkins operates a forest farm on land that has been in her family since the 1890s. It took a while for her grandmother to get on board with the idea of growing mushrooms and bees under the forest canopy. But now that she sees it in action, she declares, “The ancestors are so proud of you Olive, carrying on our legacy.”

Watkins is a full-time MBA candidate and a director on the founding board of the Black Farmer Fund, formed last year to seek reparations for Black farmers. It’s a charitable loan fund that pools money from investors to provide non-extractive loans to Black-owned farming and food businesses.

Olive Watkins at Oliver’s AgroForest. Photo from Olive Watkins.

“The Black Farmer Fund is a tool to make reparations happen, a vehicle to aggregate money so it gets invested in our farmers and builds community wealth,” Watkins says. “I realized that we need to develop financial literacy and finance vehicles in our movements in order to gain access to the capital we need to thrive on the land.”

The fund has been asking farmers what their ideal loan would be and shaping the organization around those needs. For example, the USDA has a practice of requiring farmers to pledge their land as collateral for loans, which has led to land seizures that dispossess black farmers. The fund does not place liens on land.

“We as farmers are still working at the scene of the crime,” Watkins said. “Something I can offer to this space is a vehicle to help us access the large sums that we are owed.”

Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust

“There is one Black farmer in Tompkins County, New York, and you are looking at him,” says Aponte, who operates Rocky Acres Community Farm. Despite farming in the same county as the state’s land grant institution, Cornell University, he had to start his farm “without any support from the government.”

Witnessing the diet-related health issues in the South Bronx community where he grew up motivated Aponte to start farming. He now raises meat, eggs, and vegetables for distribution at senior housing centers and within immigrant communities in Ithaca, New York.

Rafael Aponte of Rocky Acres Community Farm. Photo from Rafael Aponte.

“There are so many barriers to accessing land for farmers of color—legal, financial, bureaucratic, and just outright racial,” Aponte said of the process of finding land. This struggle drove him to join the board of directors for the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, an organization formed two years ago that is working to return land to indigenous people and Black farmers—“whose blood and bones are mixed with the soil through forced labor.” White People now control about 98% of the nation’s farmland.

The land trust receives donations of deeds and easements and then distributes those rights through leases or title transfer.

The trust recognizes that the genocidal theft of land from indigenous people was the original harm perpetuated by this nation and has consultation protocols with native communities regarding all lands it stewards. Its goal is to double the amount of land held by northeastern Indigenous and Black people over the next decade.

“At the core of reparations is the word repair, acknowledgement that harm was done and action to remediate that harm,” Aponte says.

Black Land and Power Fund

Lauded by her peers as the “Ella Baker of the Black food movement,” Dara Cooper is a behind-the-scenes organizer who helped bring together hundreds of farmers across the country to form the Black Land and Power Fund two years ago.

“A lot of us are conditioned to play small and not realize our full power,” says Cooper of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. “We have to intervene and confront the state and make sure our communities are ready and able to be self-determining. We need to build our own infrastructure. People are excited and ready!”

Dara Cooper from the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. Photo from Dara Cooper.

Cooper is a student of past Black Power movements that created institutions like the New Communities Land Trust and Freedom Farms. She notes the crucial role of land in “being able to manage our own resources, feed ourselves, house our families, protect a safe space, be self-determining, and be in right relationship to earth.”

Built on the legacy of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, which supports land retention for Southern Black farmers, the land and power fund is a democratically governed finance vehicle that invests in cooperatives, farmland, legal assistance, and food hubs. Through grants, loans, and technical assistance, it works to strengthen Black food and farming businesses.

Cooper notes that even if the organization were fully funded, that would not be enough for reparations. “Reparation has five components under international law; cessation of harm and guarantee of non-repeat, restitution, compensation, satisfaction, and rehabilitation.” Yet, the harm against Black people continues and a great deal would be needed to rehabilitate the cultural and emotional damages incurred through hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow, and land expulsion, she says.

The Reparations Now Toolkit from the Movement for Black Lives offers a detailed roadmap for society to return the “whole cow” to affected communities. “The requiem for Black farmers is a dangerous narrative,” Cooper says. “We are not dying out! We will invest in the continuation of Black people’s ability to feed ourselves and to have dignity in stewarding the land.”

Meet the farmers putting politics aside to share insights and make progress

Meet the Farmers Putting Politics Aside to Address Climate Change