Food Security United States Project #9956

Growing Healthy Families

by Hidden Villa

Project Report | Jul 7, 2014
How Our Farmers are Responding to Changes

By Jason McKenney | Farm Manager

Pattypan Squash!

The most successful growing strategies and the best farming practices are ones that are adaptable. As much as an engineering mindset can project into scaling up operations to larger sizes with greater assumptions of efficiency, the reality of agriculture is that we are producing food in a dynamic and ever-changing environment that will never conform to a single, uniform, repeatable method for very long. I feel grateful for practicing a kind of farming that does not rely too heavily on assumptions about weather and climate, pest control, and disease problems. Invariably things change and the assumptions lead to enormous crop losses.

Here we are in the midst of a very serious drought and we have ever-increasing evidence that our climate is in the process of changing into a hotter, drier and less predictable one. While the predictions about the effects upon agriculture are stark I would like to suggest that our choices to buy and support smaller-scale, localized organic food are both an antidote to CO2 intensive conventional agriculture and the exact kind of methods most capable of weathering the coming changes.

Small-scale farming involves growing methods that require minimal initial investment, have a planting model that uses a more resilient diversity of crop varieties, and because of their small size are capable of making decisions and changes that turn the production on a dime into something more appropriate. Small-scale organic farms typically rely upon cover crops for generating fertility and this practice yields a CO2 sequestering solar powered base of nutrients. This combined with less energy intensive packing, storage and distribution systems make this kind of farming the greenest way to eat.

As a small farm operating for our local community and neighbors that frequent the Community Services Agency of Mountain View, we are thankful for your continued support.

Farm Crew in the Fields

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