Winter, 2010-11 Vol. 2, No.

87 Publication of the Northeast Organic Farming Association 1077-2294

37th Annual NOFA

Summer Conference
Set for August 12-14
at UMass Amherst
by Ben Grosscup, Conference Coordinator

Having served in different roles on the NOFA

Summer Conference Committee since 2006,
it is an honor to take on the new role as
Conference Coordinator for 2011. I have big
shoes to fill, as I take on a key leadership role
in a conference that Julie Rawson and Jack
Kittredge guided for twenty-four years. I know
that I speak for the entire Interstate NOFA
community when I say, thank you, Julie and
Jack, for the leadership youve provided all this
time! Your example and vision have helped us
become more effective at what we each do in
the many roles we play in what 2009 NOFA
keynoter, Will Allen, called The Good Food
Movement.
Coming into a well established position like this
involves negotiating between tradition on the
one hand and innovation on the other. For many
people the Summer Conference has become a
cherished vacation that they enjoy each year
with their families. Traditions like the Saturday
Fair, the Local Meal, the dancing, and the many
wonderful workshops are part of what supports
our commitment to what we do, so we make a
commitment to keeping these traditions alive.
At the same time, each and every one of us
NOFA Summer Conference committee
members and attendees alike bring our own
visions for a healthy ecological food system to
the conference, hoping to see them reflected
in the experience we share together in August.
Every year, the Summer Conference Committee
works to make the conference a fuller (and
better organized) experience. As people bring
up their own ideas for discussion through
written evaluations, phone calls, and meetings
the conference can incorporate them and
maintain the dynamism for which it is known.
Innovation, too, is on this committees agenda.
Our committee met in October, 2010 to recap
what we had learned from the past years
conference. I felt lucky to be working beside
such a committed and experienced group of
people. One thing that someone pointed out to
me was that the average age of people in the
room seemed to have dropped by about 15-20
years compared to some committees in previous
years. Nobody actually did a precise analysis,
but I think that elders of the organic movement
can feel confident that young people are taking
on roles to carry on the work that they helped
start many years ago.

The extent to which poultry are allowed full choice access to outdoors pasture is
becoming a defining issue in organic production. At the recent Madison meeting of the
National Organic Standards Board, passionate farmers spoke for requiring full access.

NOSB Madison Meeting Report

by Mark A. Kastel
The Cornucopia Institute

The National Organic Standards Board (NOSB)

concluded its four-day semi-annual meeting
in Madison, Wisconsin on October 28 with
votes and decisions on several issues impacting
the organic industry. The meeting began on
Monday with a comprehensive progress report
by USDA deputy administrator Miles McEvoy
who heads the National Organic Program
(NOP).
It is hard not to be impressed by the ambitious
agenda McEvoy has put forward and the
eminently qualified team he has assembled
of dedicated veterans and new recruits in the
rapidly growing program.
One of the most pressing issues to be
considered was a decision on what access to
the outdoors constitutes for poultry. Do small
porches provide real access? Dozens of egg
farmers and marketers, joined by retailers and
consumers, had traveled to Madison from as
far away as Seattle to passionately appeal to the
NOSB and the NOP to aggressively enforce the
requirement for access to the outdoors in the
poultry industry.

With youthfulness and wisdom combined in

every committee member, regardless of age,
we are still making adjustments based on the
evaluations weve received, and were also
generating new ideas from within our group.

In testimony, certified organic egg producer

Loren Yoder, of Riverside, Iowa said, My birds
are outdoors 24/7. Yoders barn holds 9000
birds and he has a 14 foot door at one end that
the birds use.

One change involves the organization of Work

Exchange volunteers who put in 20 hours during
continued on page 41

Matt OHayer, of Vital Farms in Texas,

criticized confinement egg-laying operations
continued on page 41

Inside This Issue

Features

Full Circle Farm: Threat or Boon?

Garden Notes
NOFA-NY Gets Beginning Farmer Grant

40
42
42

Supplement on Organic Farms & Co-ops

A Short History of Agricultural Co-ops
Park Slope Food Co-op
Farm Co-ops: Their Economic Impact
My Experience with Organic Grain Co-ops
Working Together in the Northeast
Finger Lakes Growers Co-op
Neighboring Food Co-op Association
Organic Valley and Its Tough Decisions
Deep Root: Growing Cooperation

9
11
17
21
22
23
28
32
39

Departments
Editorial
Letters to the Editor
NOFA Exchange
News Notes
Book Reviews
NOFA Contact People
NOFA Membership
Calendar

2
2
5
5
43
46
47
47

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

Letters
to the Editor

Why Co-ops in Farming?

Dear Readers,
The Summer, 2010 issue of this paper, which focused on Small Farms & Government Regulation,
stirred up more comment than we usually get in a
year! To encourage full discussion we are printing
not just the initial letters we got, but responses to
those letters and in one case a response to a response. Read on!
August 13, 2010
Hi Jack and Julie - Rainy morning, cleaning off desk, read summer
TNF. What a fantastic issue. Every article enlightening, maddening, encouraging. Clippings all over the
desk. Into files for safekeeping. Wonderful work.
Praise and hurrahs. Keep it up. Best,
Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm

photo courtesy Erbin Crowell

by Jack Kittredge
Farming is the one profession where one buys retail
but sells wholesale. Working collectively with other
farmers on either side of that equation can make
a huge economic difference. Buying as a group,
farmers can take advantage of volume discounts.
Selling as a group, farmers can avoid distributors or
transportation monopolies and take their products
directly to final markets.
But farmers are an independent and proud lot. It is
not easy to get them to associate in business ventures. The cooperative form of organization makes
such association more palatable. For one thing,
co-ops are usually formed for a very specific pur-

The Natural Farmer

Needs You!

The Natural Farmer is a quarterly membership

journal of the Northeast Organic Farming
Association.
We plan a year in advance so those who want to
write on a topic can have a lot of lead time. The
next 3 issues will be:

Spring 2011:

Organic Tree Fruit

Summer 2011:

Legumes as Cover Crops

Fall - 2011:

Seeds

If you can help us on any of these topics, or have

ideas for new ones, please get in touch. We need
your help! Deadlines are same as for ads ***
Moving or missed an issue? The Natural Farmer
will not be forwarded by the post office, so you
need to make sure your address is up-to-date if you
move. Those who regularly send us a subscription
fee should send address changes to us. Most of
you, however, get this paper as a NOFA member
benefit for paying your chapter dues and should
send address updates to your local NOFA chapter
(listed at the end of each issue).
Archived issues from Summer 1999 through Fall
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downloadable at www.nofa.org as pdf files.

Jack Kittredge and Julie Rawson

411 Sheldon Rd., Barre, MA 01005
978-355-2853, fax: (978) 355-4046
tnf@nofa.org

ISSN 1077-2294
copyright 2010,
Northeast Organic Farming Association, Inc

pose buying farm supplies, affording specialized

services or equipment, storing crops to stabilize
seasonal price fluctuations, reaching distant markets.
The value of such voluntary cooperation is clear and
measurable and does not compromise ones independence.
In addition, co-ops avoid the hierarchical nature of
the more prevalent form of business model corporations. Corporations are owned by stockholders,
some of whom own more stock and thus have more
votes. Cooperatives are owned by members, each of
whom has only one vote, no matter how big or small
that members operation.
In this issue we explore how co-ops play a role in
agriculture, and look at some of the ones that are
active in organic food and farming in the Northeast.
We look at the history of cooperatives, their form of
organization, and how economically significant they
are.

August 29, 2010

Dear Jack,
I am writing to you to express my disappointment at some of the things you included in the Small
Farms and Government Regulation supplement. I
did not get to read the entire piece until a long airplane flight this week and I was surprised at some of
what I found.
As the lead article, you use an old piece of writing by Jocelyn Engman from Iowa, instead of something by a NOFA member. I guess it would be all
right if you had taken the time to intervene a little as
We illustrate these points by examining various coops from small and informal ones to those that are
huge and dominate an industry. We look at how in
some ways cooperatives are innovators, and in other
ways they are bound by market forces to behave
much as other businesses do.
Co-ops have a long and honored tradition in American agriculture, and during the last generation have
played a large role in connecting organic farmers
and consumers in the region and have been crucial
to the viability of many of our farms. We hope you
enjoy this issue and learn more about how cooperatives can be helpful to you.

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

editor and bring it up to date. The opening message

from Wendell Berry Tell the Government to Get
Out of the Way is a popular one these days, but
look at what is going on this weekend in DC. [ed.
Note she is referring to the Glenn Beck Rally] I
dont think we should yell this out without providing some context and reflection about what parts of
the government we mean. Bald, this message plays
into reducing social security and medicare, cutting
back on welfare and other parts of the safety net
for the poor and weak. The get rid of government
talk also comes out of the mouths of people who
want to increase some parts of the government our
military presence on the borders with Mexico and
Canada, our bases for defense against terrorists,
etc.
To get back to Jocelyn she is worried about
FDA and the labeling of supplements. There is a
loud effort to prevent this much of it supported by
the large scale manufacturers of supplements who
also have other motives. Some of the viral messaging against the Food Safety Bills have come from
these folks and made the small farm message sound
really stupid because of the admixture of semi-and
untruths. Jocelyn makes a big deal out of the NAIS
which is now dead. An editorial note could have
pointed this out. The huge outcry from small-scale
farmers and their advocates did have results.
While I agree with many of Jocelyns points
about what is needed the list on p. 12, her conclusion Lets get rid of the farm bill plays into
peoples ignorance about what that bill contains. A
major part of the bill and its funding covers all the
nutrition programs. It is stupid to call for its elimination without some better analysis. I find Jocelyns
rhetoric facile and unenlightening.
Your piece on Red Fire Farm is excellent, as
your reporting usually is!
Then we come to Winton Pitcoff. I suspect his
problem is that he is using Joel Salatins writing as
his template. Salatin may have some delightfully
eloquent ways of criticizing the excesses of government regulation, but he is one of the right wing libertarians. On his farm, women do not drive tractors
they cook.
I am not familiar with the regs for livestock processing, so I cannot comment on Pitcoffs accuracy.
He complains about the FSIS proposal but does
not mention that this is another one that massive
consumer and farmer comments were able to kill.

Please help us thank these

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Supporting a Food Culture that is

Regional
Sun-based
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The Natural Farmer

Finally, he does get to a NE example Morse Pitts,

but the quote from him is also idiotically one-sided
ideally, says Pitts, there would be no regulations
dictating how he raises, processes and produces his
greens Pitts is selling on government owned
land, at a farmers market constructed and maintained by public dollars. The City of NY has every
right to ensure the safety of the food sold there
buttheir regs must be appropriate to the scale of
the farms involved.
Pitts statement on the contradictions of USDA
policy deserves further analysis. USDA is not a
single person with one mind. It is a complex agency
where the battle between industrial ag and organic,
small-scale ag is taking place a very interesting
dynamic where the NOFAs and NSAC and NOC
are active players.
Salatin is clever about pointing out the contradictions of government policy on young people
working on farms but short on useful analysis
and how to deal with this. The regulations protecting farm workers have been earned by the blood of
many people. Those regs provide a few meager protections for migrant and seasonal farm workers in a
system that exploits them, takes advantage of their
lack of power and then tosses them out when they
get too old or sick to produce at top speed. Eliminating the few laws that govern conditions for farm
workers is throwing out the baby with the bathwater
and will not lead to good policy for farm interns.
Salatin thinks organic certification siphons off creative energy. Do you agree to that? Yet you print
this piece with no editorial comment. As editor,
you might have asked Pitcoff for better writing and
clearer thinking. How about asking him to explain
to the rest of us why Salatin does not certify.
But the conclusion takes the cake:
Pitcoff quotes Salatin as saying: Culturally the
movement has grown out of the liberal background
in which the government is considered benign, he
says, but now that more conservatives are getting
interested their tendency to oppose over-regulatiion
could ultimately strengthen the movement. Were
not going to turn a corner on this until its so serious
that all the foodies start not being able to get what
theyve been getting.
Im sorry, Jack. Either you agree with this and
then we need to have a really long talk at the next IC
meeting. Or you were asleep at the wheel as editor!
We are living in hard times. TNF is a bright

light in the darkness. It is your responsibility as editor, and our responsibility as the NOFA policy folks,
to make sure we provide clear thinking and good
energy for our members and whoever else has the
good luck to read our excellent publication!
For Peace in Our Lifetimes,
Liz Henderson
Aug 31, 2010
Hi Joel,
I guess not everyone liked that issue of The
Natural Farmer on Government Regulation!
Along with your supporting email, I was going
to run this critical letter from Liz Henderson in the
next issue as letters to the editor. I plan to answer
some of her criticisms, but since she uses your name
I thought it proper to give you a chance to respond
too. So if you want to weigh in, feel free and Ill be
glad to print it.
JackKittredge
August 31, 2010
Hi Jack- Thanks for the chance to respond. Ill be brief.
Interesting that while Ms. Henderson accuses
me of shallow conclusions and accuses Kittredge
of not being up-to-date, she creates a lie out of thin
air that at Polyface women dont drive tractors: they
cook. I invite anyone to come and visit the farm.
You will not only see women driving tractors, you
will see men cooking. In fact, one of the farms we
lease is completely operated by a former intern, single woman subcontractor who moves cows, drives
tractors, builds fence . . . and cooks. Ms. Henderson
could not be more wrong. Goodness, I even had the
ladies out running a chainsaw two weeks ago. How
about that?
The reason many of us entrepreneurs sweep
government involvement with a broad brush is
because we have the wisdom to realize that bureaucrats sweep with a broad brush. It would be nice to
have regulations that work like a scalpel on only
universally-accepted nasty things, but that is not the
way government works. It always moves toward a
lowest common denominator and regulates with a
one size fits all mentality. Part of that is because by
the time the regulations actually get implemented,
theyve been vetted through the sieve of large interests who have the political clout to wine and dine
the officials.


When the FDA puts in writing its legal position
that citizens have no fundamental right to choose
what food to eat, what kind of regulations do you
think the agency will promote? The so-called safety
net is actually a straight jacket for freedom. I for one
dont want social security, medical care, workers
protections or housing regulations. Social security is
the worst investment of any money anywhere. Medical care: I resent the fact that I have to pay to care
for a smoking, drinking, beer-gutted couch potato
who thinks organic food is too expensive and lives
on microwavable frozen DiGiornio pizza dinners.
Why on earth should the government hold a gun to
my head to force me to take care of that guy?
In the name of workers protection, weve
exported most of our manufacturing jobs and destroyed the hopes and dreams of countless
young people who would love to farm, but cant
get any experience because the farmer is afraid of
regulatory paperwork and fines. I have young people
begging me to come and learn how to farm, and
they say theyd be glad to live in tents for the opportunity. But if the government finds out about that
arrangement, I could lose the whole farm. Anyone
who has not faced these bureaucratic police has no
idea how unreasonable they are--and how intimidating and powerful. After all, they have the full power
of the U.S. military behind them. Thats scary.
The bottom line: government officials are just as
sneaky, untruthful, and greedy as any average citizen or business person. To assume that something
about drawing a government paycheck suddenly
creates internal morality and ethics is both naive
and foolish. The question is this: Do we centralize
the propensity for human depravity in the hands of
government officials, or do we decentralize it in the
hands of thousands of citizens? This is the difference between tyranny and freedom. Concentration
of food production and processing leads to arro-

The Natural Farmer

gance and abuse. Decentralization creates checks

and balances. Its the same in politics, religion,
education, medication, retirement, and recreation.
Society does change without government intrusion.
Within 6 months of Upton Sinclairs The Jungle
being published, industrial meat consumption in
the U.S. dropped by 30-50 percent, depending upon
which historian you read. That was devastating to
the troublemakers. And they would have gone out of
business had it not been for the creation of the Food
Safety and Inspection Service which give them a
government stamp of approval, and gave them back
marketplace credibility. Now, a century later, plants
are dirtier, more centralized, and more worker abusive. Weve come a long way, baby. If the informed
marketplace had been allowed to work and destroy
those terrible meat packers, today we would have a
much more safe, decentralized, professional industry. People who put their faith in the government
have no faith in their neighbors. And thats a shame.
And certainly no way to build a vibrant community.
Best regards,
Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm
October 31, 2010
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your critical but thoughtful letter on
the Summer 2010 issue on Small Farms and Government Regulation. I dont get a lot of feedback on
the paper, so anything that indicates people are reading it is good news to me!
Im sorry a couple of the articles upset you, but
Im happy to tell you why I chose them. As I indicated in the lead editorial, government regulation is
controversial and almost all of us would call for it
in some instances, and reject it in others. But I think
the case for regulation health, safety, public order,
etc. is constantly made in our schools, newspapers, public halls. I thought it would be educational
to examine the other side, particularly as it affects
small and organic farmers.
Yes, the Jocelyn Engman piece was written a
couple of years ago, but I thought it expressed very
eloquently the view of many small farmers that
regulation is stacked against the little guy. Failure to
regulate GMOs or regulatory efforts to suppress voluntary testing for mad cow disease can only benefit
the corporate hegemons of agribusiness. So also do
efforts to require licensed commercial kitchens for
you to do something your grandmother did over her
woodstove. Do we see a pattern here?
Just because there are businesses that oppose
FDA regulation of supplements does not tar everyone who feels that way. Lots of people feel that
traditional herbal and natural products should be
available for consumption on the basis of individual
decision.
As far as Wendell Berry telling the government
to get out of the way if we want farms to be viable
and attract young farmers, I think he is right on
target. As the two features in that issue illustrated,
unreasonable regulatory burdens can stifle farm
profitability and potentially even destroy the farm.
No one is calling for anarchy here, just a better balance between government authority and individual
rights. Many people in this country are uneasy about
that balance having tipped too far, and as long as
progressive people ignore that and instead shoot
at the messenger they will just erode their political
credibility.
NAIS is not yet dead. After a huge effort on the
part of thousands of people at the grass roots we
beat them back in the political arena, but the war is
not over -- as those of us who have been closely following the USDAs follow-up meetings with NIAA
personnel and continued funding of state enforcement of mandatory registration realize.
As for the Farm Bill, I would love to see a vigorous debate in NOFA about whether it really serves
the interests of small farms or not. True there are
significant hunger and nutrition programs funded
this way. But perhaps it would be better to decide
about those programs openly on their own merits,
rather than as a bone to urban legislators in exchange for huge subsidies for the empty calories of
industrial agriculture which then undercut unsubsidized organic and sustainable farming and make
healthy food seem expensive.
Thanks for the compliment on the Red Fire article. I find Ryan and Sarahs situation, as that of Pam
and Ray Robinson, cause for real anger. These people have been playing by the rules and contributing
to their communities for years, and dont deserve to
be ground down by petty bureaucrats.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

On Wintons article, I think he is accurately

reflecting the views of many farmers around the
country about food safety regulations that they
do not necessarily have the effect of ensuring safe
or healthy food. If they did, we wouldnt have all
the food scares of recent months. What they do is
impose heavy burdens on smaller operations that are
not proportionate to the risks they pose.
I am sure that USDA and FSIS and the FDA and
OSHA and the rest all have many fine individuals
working for them who do not deserve to be demonized. But, as you admit, those institutions are battlegrounds where the battle between industrial ag and
organic, small-scale ag is taking place. We need to
educate people that these are not, to use Salatins
term, benign institutions. They can be liberating
or they can be oppressive, depending on who gets
control of them. Id say right now that industrial ag
seems to have the majority share.
Julie and I still proudly certify our farm every
year and have done so since 1987. But I know
plenty of people in NOFA who have decided not to
do so. I certainly dont think NOFA ought to lecture
them about it. If we want certification to be attractive and valuable for farmers, lets insist on tough
standards (including outdoor access for poultry)
that really mean something and that consumers can
rely on. Then, I think, we will see farmers coming
aboard.
At the end of your letter you ask whether I agree
with Joel that: Were not going to turn a corner on
this until its so serious that all the foodies start not
being able to get what theyve been getting. I wish
it were so simple! As the inclusion in this issue of
the story on Full Circle Farm and its 12,000-member produce delivery service indicates, I think the
market is creative enough to get foodies what they
want without necessarily empowering small and local farms.
I appreciate your support for The Natural Farmer. I hope to continue to raise issues that need discussion and get a spectrum of coherent, thoughtful
articles in the paper, without necessarily agreeing
with all of them. I figure our readers are plenty able
to sort through and find what makes sense to them!
Respectfully, Jack Kittredge
November 7, 2010
Dear Jack,
Thanks for giving me a few days to respond
again!
The sentence in Pitcoffs conclusion that made
me scratch my head was this one: Culturally the
movement has grown out of the liberal background
in which the government is considered benign, he
says, but now that more conservatives are getting
interested their tendency to oppose over-regulation
could ultimately strengthen the movement. What
does this mean? Who are these liberals and who are
the welcome conservatives who will straighten them
out? The organic movement has never identified as
liberal, nor have we made the assumption that the
government is benign. Labels like these just add
to the atmosphere of misunderstanding and contention that turns most people off from civic discourse.
I like the German Green Party assertion We are
not right or left, we are ahead!
I also like your idea for redesigning the Farm
Bill to separate out the nutrition programs and redirect them so that our society guarantees food as
a right with nutrient dense organic food grown as
locally as possible for everyone.Lets cut the subsidies that support GMO corn and soybeans and big
cotton and figure out how to end food insecurity and
hunger.
In these days of the Tea Party funded by the
Chambers of Commerce and the Koch brothers, we
need to be very careful to explain what we mean
when we call for less government. The Kochs
want less government so that they can go on polluting. Corporations like theirs must be controlled
and only government has the power to do that.
No government leaves the big boys to control
themselves.That is how the meat supply became the
horror described in The Jungle and after a few decades of reform has reverted to the horror described
in Fast Food Nation. I suggest that we do not need
less government we need better government
controlled not by big corporations but by us, the
people.
Best regards,
Liz Henderson

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

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But there is still more work to do. We need your
help!Experience with tractor maintenance, power
tools, carpentry, livestock, slaughter, fieldwork, marketing, and contradancing desired but not necessary.
Variety of positions available April - Dec. Salary,
housing, produce and exhaustion provided. www.
fullmoonfarminc.com

The Natural Farmer

Positions at Tracies Community Farm: 3-4 Field

Workers, Assistant Farm Manager: Were in our
13th year of diversifiedvegetable and fruit production with a 270+ family Summer CSA, Fall CSA,
spring CSA, onsite farm-stand, farm-store and
restaurant sales. Looking for hardworking, enthusiastic, self-motivated team players, serious about
farming, with a positive attitude, stamina to work
10+ hour days, move 50# bags, while having a good
time. Knowledge of equipment repair, chainsaw,
carpentry and a desire for long-term employment a
plus. We provide long-term employment opportunities, hourly pay, potential housing, farm produce,
and hearty lunches Mon-Fri.Contact Tracie, (603)
209-1851 www.traciesfarm.com.

News Notes
compiled by Jack Kittredge

Julie Rawson &

Jack Kittredge
Barre, MA
farm@mhof.net
www.mhof.net
978-355-2853

Vegetable and Flower Shares, Chicken,

Turkey, Pork, Lard and Eggs available
Certified by Baystate Organic Certifiers

Subscribe to:
Send $15 for U.S. address,
$20 for foreign address to:

Wanted: Summer internship position for an undergraduate student on a small, diverse organic operation in CT, MA, NH, NY, or VT. Ideally, the farm
would include an orchard and raise some livestock
as well as vegetable crops. An AgriTourism-minded
operation would be nice as well. I dont have much
experience, but I work hard and Im a fast learner.
In terms of compensation, I am looking for room
and board at minimum. Available between June 10
and August 15. Contact Kristina Runde at krunde@
rams.colostate.edu.

411 Sheldon Rd.

Barre, MA 01005

The Innerfence processing app on a smart phone

lets you take credit cards without a terminal.
Smart Phones and Credit Card Processing
New applications for iPhones and some other smart
phones enable a farmer at a farmers market to take
credit and debit cards right on her cell phone without benefit of things like phone lines or credit card
terminals. One Washington DC farmers market
farmer says accepting credit cards increased his
sales by 30 percent. The apps require a processing
service, which entails a monthly service fee as well
as a transaction fee, as is necessary for any card processing. Innerfence is compatible with the iPhone,
iPad, Mac and Android -- transactions are keyed in
manually, without swiping technology. PAYware
Mobile from VeriFone includes a swipe attachment
for an iPhone. Intuits GoPayment has card reading
and even printing options, which reduce the transaction cost from keyed in sales. PayPals Send Money
allows cellphone login to PayPal accounts, where

Our future depends upon

our choice between death
forces and life forces;
upon whether or not we
will return in humility to
the soil.
BRH customer Eddie Taylor with
BRH customer Eddie Taylor with
BRH Dealer Ed Fry, Chestertown, MD
BRH Dealer Ed Fry, Chestertown, MD

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer

GARDENING, BEEKEEPING, & MORE

The Pfeiffer Center

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January 14-17

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Because year-after-year we provide organic farmers with a
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extensive network of dealers.
To locate a dealer go to:
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for email updates on our website:
Corn | Soybeans | Alfalfa | Red Clover | Sudangrass | Sunflower

www.pfeiffercenter.org

users enter pin numbers to move money, or bump

two phones together using a Bump Technologies development. Square is still in development, but will
offer a free app and card reader that plugs into the
audio jack of an iPhone, droid, or Blackberry. All of
these systems protect transaction information should
your phone fall into someone elses hands. And to
think a few years ago we made do with a cigar box!
source: Growing for Market, August, 2010
U. S. Challenges Gene Patents
Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government has asserted that human and other genes
should not be eligible for patents because they are
part of nature. The new position could have a huge
impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry. It was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief
filed by the Department of Justice in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. In its brief the government said it now
believed that the mere isolation of a gene, without
further alteration or manipulation, does not change
its nature. However, the government suggested such
a change would have limited impact on the biotechnology industry because man-made manipulations
of DNA, like methods to create genetically modified
crops or gene therapies, could still be patented.
We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and
Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the
National Institutes of Health and other government
agencies that have in the past sought and obtained
patents for isolated genomic DNA, the brief said.
It is not clear if the position in the legal brief, which
appears to have been the result of discussions
among various government agencies, will be put
into effect by the Patent Office. If it were, it is likely
to draw protests from some biotechnology companies that say such patents are vital to the development of diagnostic tests, drugs and the emerging
field of personalized medicine, in which drugs are
tailored for individual patients based on their genes.
source: New York Times, Oct. 29, 2010
CCOF ED Heads OMRI
Peggy Miars, executive director of the California
Certified Organic Farmers, has become executive
director of the Organic Materials Review Institute.
source: Acres, U.S.A. , September 2010

The Natural Farmer

Conflict of Interest in NY Times Report of Colony Collapse Disorder Cause

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease that
causes honeybees to become disoriented and die
far from their hives, has kept scientists desperately
seeking for the cause. One suggested culprit has
been pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, which
kill insects by attacking their nervous systems. Their
leading manufacturer, Bayer Crop Science, has
been fending off lawsuits from angry beekeepers
for years now. But recently, a front-page New York
Times article pointed to another solution. Running
under the headline Scientists and Soldiers Solve a
Bee Mystery, the article reports that a new study
claims the cause is actually a fungus tag-teaming
with a virus.
However, one fact that the Times article did not
mention is the relationship between the studys lead
author, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science. Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer -- and failed to disclose the
conflict of interest to the Times. As Fortune Magazine reports:
The Times reporter who authored the recent article,
Kirk Johnson, responded in an e-mail that Dr. Bromenshenk did not volunteer his funding sources.
Even more suspicious, Bromenshenk was reportedly all set to serve as an expert witness in 2003
for beekeepers involved in a class-action lawsuit
against Bayer. He dropped out without explanation,
however, and subsequently received the grant from
Bayer.
source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/
archive/2010/10/29/is-the-reason-for-bees-dying-incolony-collapse-disorder-finally-solved.aspx
Environmental Contamination Role in Cancer
Rises From 10% to 70% - 90% in Under a Year
Famous epidemiological work by Doll and Peto in
the early 1970s concluded that exposure to chemicals in the environment might account for up to
10% of human chronic disease, such as cancer. This
10% number became, and persisted for 40 years,
as conventional scientific wisdom. In the early
days of the Human Genome Project, some scientists
suspected that our genes play the dominant role in
predisposing a person to either succumb to, or successfully combat cancer and other chronic diseases.
So some geneticists speculated that environmental

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

factors might not even account for 10% of chronic

diseases.
In May, 2010 the Presidents Cancer Panel report stated bluntly that the contribution of chemicals
in the environment, including pesticides, to the cancer burden of disease is significant and has been,
for years, underestimated. They called for more
focus on avoiding such exposures as one of many
necessary steps in the long-overdue shift toward
cancer prevention as opposed to cancer treatment.
In an October 22, 2010 commentary in Science, the
nations most respected scientific journal, two experts in the etiology of disease write:
Although the risks of developing chronic diseases are attributed to both genetic and environmental factors, 70 to 90% of disease risks are
probably due to differences in environments.
The scientists making this case cite several new
studies involving use of advanced tools that can
screen human DNA for genetic twists indicative of
exposure to certain chemicals, some from the environment, others manufactured inside the body.They
see evidence in the new data leading them to concluded that 70% to 90% of chronic diseases, including cancer and diabetes, are triggered by environmental factors via complex interactions between a
persons genes, health, lifestyle, and early life and
ongoing exposures to chemicals and pathogens.
source: http://www.organic-center.org/news_archive/October2010Newsletter.htm
High Quality Managed Pastures Reduce GHG
Emissions per Gallon of Milk Produced
A team of scientists in Ireland studied the impact
of pasture quality on milk production, dry matter
intake from forages, and methane emissions from
Holstein cows. High quality pastures with younger
growth and less herbage volume per acre/hectare
provided grazing animals forage that is more readily
digestible. As a result, high quality forages reduced
methane emissions by 42 grams per day, or by about
10% based on typical enteric methane emission
rates, when compared to the same cows grazed on
nearby pastures with about twice the per acre/hectare volume of herbage. Methane emissions from
cows consuming high quality forages were reduced
by 3.5 grams per kilogram of milk, representing
about a 25% reduction from typical baseline levels
of enteric methane emissions per kilogram of milk

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AO12

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

produced.
These findings are relevant to dairy farmers
worldwide, and drive home the importance of pasture and grazing management in terms of the overall
environmental footprint of dairy farm management
systems.
source: http://www.organic-center.org/news_archive/October2010Newsletter.htm
Organic Systems Show Great Promise in Reducing GHG Emissions in California
Organic management of vegetable and row crops
in Californias Central Valley has the potential to
reduce net GHG emissions from soil by 3,496 kilograms (kg) of CO2-equivalents per hectare per
year, compared to conventional management systems with standard tillage. The standard tillage
system in the Long-term Research on Agricultural
Systems (LTRAS) study resulted in net soil GHG
emissions of 1,081 kg CO2-equivalents per hectare/
year.Accordingly, the organic system brought about
an approximately 4,500 kg reduction in CO2-equivalents per hectare per year.
In the quest to reduce agricultures contribution to
global warming, the most prominent and powerful
coalition of agribusiness companies are promoting
the combination of conservation tillage, GE seeds,
and precision farming-guided fertilizer applications as the best way to reduce net GHG emissions.
This study, along with others, shows why this combination of practices will bring about little or no
change.Conservation tillage, and even no-tillage
does not result in appreciable, sustained soil carbon
sequestration. The increase in soil organic matter
in the top few inches of soil in no-till fields is accompanied by no increase or declines deeper in the
soil profile.GE seeds impact how farmers manage
weeds and certain insects, but have marginal, if any
impact on net GHG emissions.Precision farming
can bring about marginal gains in nitrogen use efficiency, and hence some reductions in nitrous oxide
losses, but will do little to build soil organic matter
and sequester substantial levels of carbon.
The big gains from nutrient management come
from incorporating cover crops plus animal manures
in the soil profile.Cover crops plus additions of
compost and/or animal manures are core practices
on organic farms in California, and indeed around
the world. This California study shows that this
combination of practices has the potential to turn
significant GHG emissions into substantial reductions.
source: http://www.organic-center.org/news_archive/October2010Newsletter.htm
Innovators Producing Non-Petroleum and NonGMO Packaging
Increasing consumer demand is providing a market
for three new producers of packaging. BioBag produces a number of bags from a bioplastic composed
of Non-GMO corn starch and a copolymer. The
bags decompose in a composting environment in 10
to 45 days and provide an alternative to the ubiquitous polyethylene/polypropylene plastic bag. VerTerra makes dinnerware from palm leaves that are
steamed and pressed. Anyone who has visited India
will realize that this idea is simply a more sanitized
version of street food there. Many vendors in the
subcontinent routinely serve food on palm leaves.
Similarly, Be Green Packaging has developed a line
of containers made from Chinese bulrushes. Whole
Foods Market has adopted them for many of its deli
bar items.
source: The Organic and Non-GMO Report, July/
August 2010
OTA Moves to Vermont
The Organic Trade Association, the (since 1990)
Greenfield, Massachusetts group that represents the
interests of the organic industry, is moving to Brattleboro, Vermont. The Vermont Economic Progress
council approved $86,300 in incentives to encourage OTA to make the move.
source: Acres, U.S.A. , November 2010

The Natural Farmer

Court Oks Hormone-Free Label on Dairy Products in Ohio, Challenges USDAs No Significant
Difference Finding
A federal court has struck down an Ohio ban on
dairy products whose labels say theyre made from
milk thats free of hormones that increase cows
milk production. That means companies that want to
say their products are rbGH free and rbST free
and artificial hormone free are now free to do so.
But the bigger deal might be that the ruling challenges the FDAs 17-year-old finding that theres
no significant difference between the milk of cows
given growth hormone and those that arent. Just
that sort of distinction, or lack of it actually, is part
of the ongoing debate about how to label genetically
engineered salmon.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said
there is a compositional difference between milk
from cows given growth hormones and those without. The court gave three reasons theyre different:
- Increased levels of the hormone IGF-1;
- A period of milk with lower nutritional quality during each lactation; and
- Increased somatic cell counts (i.e. more pus in the
milk).
The FDA says its OK with voluntary labels on
hormone-free milk that say the milk is derived from
cows not treated with rbGH and that say the agency
has found no difference in the milk. But states are
the deciders.
The battle may go beyond milk, however. While
genetically-engineered salmon is still awaiting approval, FDA documents released at the time of the
meeting indicate it will conclude the same about
salmon - it says the flesh of the GE salmon is not
significantly different from ordinary farm raised
Atlantic salmon, therefore, it would not need a label.
Such a label would be false and misleading, says
AquaBounty, the company who makes the genetically-engineered salmon. But if FDA approves the
salmon, consumer groups say the ruling may help
companies who want to label their salmon as nongenetically engineered.
A spokeswoman for the biotechnology trade association BIO says, however, that the milk issue and
the salmon issue are completely different. Theres
no growth hormone added to the fish, she says. The
fish are given DNA from an eel pout that allows the
fish to produce their own hormone, and grow yearround, instead of just in the summer.
source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/10/01/
130270131/court-give-hormone-free-label-on-dairyproducts-an-ok-in-ohio
Stonyfield Cups Going Green
New Hampshire based yogurt maker Stonyfield
Farm has upped the going-green ante, recently announcing its switching its yogurt multi-packs to
a corn-based, compostable bioplastic. The firm
also announced that they will fund enough nonGMO corn crops to accommodate the amount of
corn needed to make the new packaging. The new
bioplastic will replace traditional petroleum-based
plastic which is made from a material derived from
corn called polylactic acid (PLA). To keep the cornplastic coming, Stonyfield Farm is working with the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policys Working
Landscapes program to pay a premium to farmers
growing GMO-free corn to be used for bioplastic.
source: Eco-Farms Genetic Engineering News List,
October 25, 2010
Bayer Settles Texas Suits Alleging Its GM Seed
Contaminated Rice Fields
After 3 days of trial a Bayer AG unit on October
15 settled a lawsuit brought by three Texas growers over claims its genetically engineered seed
contaminated U.S. long-grain rice fields, causing
a plunge in exports to Europe. The settlement only
covers claims by the growers in trial and doesnt affect more than 6,000 other claims. Its an historic
event, the attorney for the farmers, Don Downing,
said. Its the first time there has been a settlement
in a farmers case against Bayer involving contaminated rice.
Farmers in five states claim Bayer negligently
contaminated the U.S. long-grain rice crop with
its genetically modified LibertyLink seed, leading
to export restrictions, bans on two kinds of highyield seeds and a plunge in prices. Bayer, based in
Leverkusen, Germany, denies negligence and disputes the damages claims, contending that rice sales
rebounded after an initial drop. The Texas trial was
the seventh against Bayer in the genetically modi-

fied rice litigation. Bayer lost the first six, for a total
of about $54 million. The company is challenging
the verdicts in appeals and post-trial motions. The
three Texas growers were seeking $430,000 in damages, plus unspecified punitive damages, Downing
said. They settled for $290,000. These are relatively small farmers with relatively small acreage.
source: Bloomberg News, October 19, 2010
High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) Sales Down
Sales of HFCS are down 9% from 2007 levels. Food
companies such as Hunts, Snapple, Gatorade and
Starbucks have dropped the controversial sweetener
because of growing concern about its health effects.
Movies such as 2007s King Corn not only raised
health issues involving the product, but also highlighted the amount of tax-payer subsidies that support growing corn.
source: The Organic and Non-GMO Report, July/
August 2010
Forest Fire Substances Speed Plant Growth
The smoke-derived chemicals, karrikins (from the
aboriginal word for smoke) have been identified by
Australian scientists as the substances responsible
for promoting germination of seeds after forest fires.
Studies show karrikins speed growth of corn, tomatoes, lettuce and other food crops, as well as help
them tolerated a wider range of temperatures. They
are being used to restore vegetation on land stripped
bare during mining of aluminum ore.
source: Acres, U.S.A. , September 2010
Onions Contain Natural Preservatives
Antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of onions
are useful in preventing the development of Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes, among
other food-borne pathogens, say researchers at the
Universities of Catalonia and Barcelona. The properties are produced by phenolic compounds (flavonoids) in the bulbs.
source: Acres, U.S.A. , September 2010
Farmers Market Numbers Growing
In one more indication of the popularity of the local food movement, the USDA has reported that
the number of farmers markets has grown 16% in
the last year, from 5274 to 6132. The top ten states
for the markets are California (580), New York
(461), Illinois (286), Michigan (271), Iowa (229),
Massachusetts (227), Ohio (213), Wisconsin (204),
Pennsylvania (203), and North Carolina (182). A
total of 882 markets operate in the off-season from
November through March. The USDA Farmkers
Market Directory can be found at http://farmersmarkets.usda.gov
source: Acres, U.S.A. , October 2010
USDA Funding Buys 2300 Hoop Houses So Far
The USDAs 3-year pilot cost-share program initiated by Kathleen Merrigan to encourage construction
of hoop houses for off-season growing has, in only
its first year, awarded contracts worth $12.5 million
resulting in construction of over 2300 hoop houses.
That comes to a little over $5000 per house. The
program would not fund purchases of used hoop
houses, only new ones.
source: OEFFA News, Fall, 2010

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

NOFA Vermonts 29th Annual

Winter Conference
January 2123, 2011
Saratoga Hilton & City Center
Saratoga Springs, NY
29th Annual Organic Farming & Gardening Conference

Room at the table

working together for our food future

february 12 14, 2011

University of Vermont, Burlington

Featuring keynote speakers Shannon Hayes

and Bill McKibben, more than 65 workshops, a Saturday night social, and more!

www . nofavt . org

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Miguel Altieri UC Berkeley

Malik Yakini Detroit Black Com. Food Sec. Network
Kevin Engelbert NOFA-NY Farmer of the Year
For a full schedule of events, online registration,
and information, please visit
www.nofanyconference.org
or call (585) 271-1979 ext. 509

Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter, Inc.

24th Annual
Winter Conference

Saturday, January 15, 2011

9am-5pm
Worcester Tech. High school

Two day-long seminars

Organic Orcharding, presented by Michael Phillips

Spend the day with this New England apple-growing master.

Topics covered will include orchard health, holistic disease
management and a walk-through of the orchard season.

Herbs for Family Health, presented by Nancy Phillips

Learn the basics of herbal medicine. Topics covered will include

10 herbs for family health; growing, harvesting and drying
medicinal herbs; and preparing herbal home remedies.

Keynote speaker Michael Phillips

The father of the community orchard movement will share how

organics, certain biodynamic principles, local economy and heart-felt
appreciation for the earth guide his life as an orchardist.

Register now!

www.nofamass.org/conferences/

Plus:

Questions?

60 workshops on organic farming, gardening,

landscaping and sustainable living
Dozens of exhibits
Childrens program
NOFA/Mass Annual Meeting
Delicious potluck
Teacup raffle

Many thanks to our sponsors!

Contact Michal Lumsden, workshop

coordinator, at 413-528-8016 or
michal@nofamass.org, or Cathleen
OKeefe, conference coordinator, at
413-584-6786 or wc@nofamass.org

CT NOFA
Winter Conference

March 5, 2011
Manchester Community
College
Manchester, CT

ctnofa.org for details

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

Special Supplement on

Organic Farming and Co-ops

A Short History of Agricultural Cooperatives

Cooperative efforts have occurred throughout history. Since early man cooperated with others to help
kill large animals for survival, people have been
cooperating to achieve objectives that they could
not reach if they acted individually. Cooperation
has occurred throughout the world. Ancient records
show that Babylonians practiced cooperative farming and that the Chinese developed savings and loan
associations similar to those in use today. In North
America, clearing land in preparation for the planting of crops, threshing bees, and barn raisings all
required cooperative efforts. In the United States,
the first formal cooperative business is assumed to
have been established in 1752, almost a quartercentury before the Declaration of Independence
was signed. This cooperative, a mutual insurance
company called the Philadelphia Contributionship
for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, was
organized by Benjamin Franklin and others, and it is
still in operation today.

The cooperative as a modern business structure

originated in 19th century Britain. The Industrial
Revolution had a profound effect on the way business was organized and on the working conditions and economic situations of many people. In
response to the depressed economic conditions
brought forth by industrialization, some people
began to form cooperative businesses to meet their
needs. Among them was a group of 28 workers
who were dissatisfied with the merchants in their
community. They formed a consumer cooperative
known as the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844. They began by opening a cooperative
store that sold items such as flour and sugar to members, and the Society quickly grew to include other
enterprises. The founders also established a unique
combination of written policies that governed the
affairs of the cooperative. Among these rules were:
democratic control of members, payment of limited
interest on capital, and net margins distributed to
members according to level of patronage. Based on
its success, the Rochdale set of policies soon became a model for other cooperative endeavors, and
became known as the general principles that make a
cooperative unique from other business structures.
Agricultural Cooperatives
Agricultural cooperatives are typically classified according to the three major functions they perform:
marketing, supply, and service. Many cooperatives
combine all three types of functions in their operations.
Marketing cooperatives
Marketing cooperatives help to sell their members
farm products and maximize the return that they receive for these goods. Their operations can be quite
diversified and complex. Some marketing cooperatives perform a limited number of functions, while
others vertically integrate their operations so that
they perform more functions that add value to their
members products as they move from the farm to
the consumer. Some cooperatives even sell products in grocery stores under their own brand name;
Land O Lakes and Ocean Spray are two prominent
examples. Marketing cooperatives can serve their

members in many ways, including bargaining for

better prices, storing and selling members grain,
and processing farm products into more consumerready goods. In the United States, agricultural cooperatives handle about 30 percent of farmers total
farm marketing volume.
Supply cooperatives
Supply cooperatives (sometimes referred to as purchasing cooperatives) sell farm supplies to their
members. Products include production supplies such
as seed, fertilizer, petroleum, chemicals, and farm
equipment. American farmers purchase about 28
percent of their supply needs through cooperatives.
Service cooperatives
Service cooperatives provide various services to
their members. For instance, cooperatives may offer
services such as pesticide applications, seed clean-

10

ing, and artificial insemination. Service cooperatives

also include organizations such as the Farm Credit
System, a network of borrower-owned lending
institutions that provide credit and other financial
services to farmers, and rural electric cooperatives,
which provide electricity to rural areas.
The first formal farmer cooperative to form in the
United States occurred in 1810. However, agricultural cooperatives were not really perceived as a viable business organizational structure until after the
Civil War. Several farm organizations helped to promote cooperative development. The Grange, a farmer organization established to improve the economic
and social position of the nations farm population
(National Grange), began to engage in cooperative marketing and purchasing. In 1875 it adopted
the Rochdale system in carrying out its cooperative activities. Other farm organizations, including
the Farmers Alliance and the Farmers Educational
and Cooperative Union of America (known as the
National Farmers Union), also began to promote cooperative development. Farmers not affiliated with
any farm organization also began to establish cooperatives. By 1900, at least 1,223 cooperatives were
active in the United States.

The Natural Farmer

By the early 1900s the United States government

began to pass laws that provided a favorable environment for cooperative development. A commission established in 1908 by President Roosevelt
noted that the country lacked adequate credit for the
agriculture sector, and their findings helped lead to
the passing of the Federal Farm Loan Act in 1916,
legislation that led to the creation of the Farm Credit
System. The Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 was crucial for agricultural marketing cooperatives, as it
provided limited antitrust immunity for farmers and
ranchers who join together in cooperative marketing
associations.
Government encouragement for agricultural cooperatives was highest during the 1920s and 1930s.
Most state legislatures established agricultural cooperative acts during this time. Americas agricultural sector went through a difficult period as prices
collapsed after World War I ended. As part of the
response to the adverse economic conditions, Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover all strongly
endorsed the use of agricultural cooperatives. The
Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, which included
the establishment of a fund for cooperative loans,
also helped to strengthen the cooperative movement.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the largest number of agricultural
cooperatives occurred during 1929-30. At that time,
the USDA recorded 12,000 farmer cooperatives.
Although the number of agricultural cooperatives
has been decreasing since then, total business volume has been rising. In its 1997 survey, the USDA
reported that 3,791 farmer cooperatives generated
a net business volume of $106 billion, equal to the
record high set in the previous year. The net income
was near the record high of $2.36 billion reported
in 1995. The number of farmer cooperatives has
decreased through various activities including dissolution, mergers or consolidations, and acquisitions
as cooperatives, like other businesses, adjust to a
changing economic environment.

This is extracted from a larger document called New

Generation Cooperatives on the Northern Plains on
the University of Manitoba website

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Park Slope Cooperative:

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

11

Voting for Local and Organic with Dollars

Brooklyns Park Slope Food Co-op

by Jack Kittredge
Park Slope is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, the
most populous borough in New York City. The
name comes from being on the western slope of
Brooklyns Prospect Park. Fifty years ago Park
Slope was a booming working class neighborhood
Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican and Black all together
in one area. But its many natural advantages have
attracted upscale residents over time, however, and
it has now become one of the most desirable places
to live in the metropolitan area. It was recently
ranked #1 in New York by New York Magazine,
citing its quality public schools, dining, nightlife,
shopping, access to public transit, green space,
quality housing, safety, and creative capital, among
other aspects.
One of the features that many would mention is that
it is also the home of the Park Slope Food Co-op,
the largest wholly member-owned food co-op in the
country. The co-op is located at 782 Union Street,
a bustling area just a block or two off of Flatbush
Avenue, Brooklyns main thoroughfare. That is the
same building in which it was founded 37 years ago.
There were about ten of us who founded the coop, recalls Joe Holtz, who is still employed there.
We really wanted to get good, affordable food. We
could get good food here, in Brooklyn, but it wasnt
necessarily affordable. We wanted to eat a diet that
was higher in fresh fruits and vegetables than the
normal American diet. We were young people and
we had trouble affording the way we wanted to eat.
We decided to take matters into our own hands. It
was also an exercise in building community!
I was living with three other people, he continues,
and one of my roommates came home from the
subway and said: I just met someone I know and
there is a meeting next week to start talking about
a food co-op in the neighborhood. Do you want to
go to the meeting? I said: Yeah! So we went. We
started working on it in late 1972 and it opened in
February, 1973.
Food co-ops were very prevalent back then. In
the late sixties and early seventies young people
and others interested in a more healthy diet started
food co-ops across the country. Many started in
California, where it was easier to find fresh and
healthy produce because of its long season and
proximity to many organic farms. Joe had been in a
California organic food co-op the year before. There
they hooked up with local farmers and sourced all
the fruits and vegetables organically. But that was
not so easy to do in the east.
But the first task once people were willing to start
a co-op in Brooklyn was to find a space. As Joe
tells it: In 1973 there was a community center
renting the top floor of this building. They had film
showings and discussions at night, but werent
using the building during the day. We asked them
if we could rent the front room, put a lock on it,

photo by Jack Kittredge

Allen Zimmerman and Julie Gabriel, two of Park Slopes primary produce buyers,
at the squash and pumpkin display.

and during the day, when they werent here, receive

deliveries. Then on Saturdays we would have the
co-op, sell things, and finish by late afternoon for
their Saturday night activities.
The co-op started out not wanting to ask people to
preorder produce, but they found they had to. The
space was small and without refrigeration there
was no way to properly store perishables that were
unsold.
The co-op operated entirely on volunteer labor for
more than two years, but finally grew to the point

where they could hire Joe in June of 1975. He took

control of fruit and vegetable buying and started
buying local produce.
We had been getting California romaine lettuce,
he explains, but when I went to Hunts Point
I saw that we could be buying local romaine. A
few houses in the market had only local produce.
But come December, of course, theyre not there!
Theyve rented out their warehouse to their neighbor
for grapefruits from Florida! But come late March
or April, theyre back again. So we rented a truck
for over $100 for one day and went to the Hunts

We were surprised by the results.

We maintain our tank SCC down at 80-100,000
by spraying every fresh udder for 4 to 5 days.
Alan Mesman

MESMAN FARM, Mt. Vernon, Washington

Alan and Vickie Mesman and son Ben and daughter Samantha
Grazing-based Certified Organic Dairy
Milking 140 cows with RHA 19,000 lbs (2x)
SCC: Before 140-170,000 After 80-100,000
The Mesman family (l-r) Alan, Ben, Vickie and Samantha.

We were surprised by our results with Udder

Comfort. We used the new yellow spray,
which has a natural coloring. Our SCC had been
running 140-170,000, we could not believe
how squirting this spray on the outside of the
udder would cut our somatic cell count down
by 70,000. But it worked. It softens the udder,
which relaxes the cow. This helps withedema
and irritation when they come fresh,says Alan
Mesman. He and his wife Vickie and son Ben and
daughter Sammy milk 140 cows at their Certified
Organic dairy near Mt. Vernon, Washington.
At first we sprayed Udder Comfort on the whole
udder of 39 identified cows (out of 140 milking).
As a result, the tank SCC dropped down to
80,000. This boosted our quality premium
another 29 cents.

We do not dry-treat any animals here. We are

able to maintain our bulk tank SCC down at
80-100,000 by spraying every fresh udder after
both milkings for 4 to 5 days after they calve.

Quality Udders Make Quality Milk

Keep the milk in

the system
1.888.773.7153 1.613.543.3263
uddercomfort.com
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For external application to the udder only after milking, as an essential component
of udder management. Always wash and dry teats thoroughly before milking.

12

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

be open more days. So they added Thursday and

Saturday, and then, starting in 1978 or 1979 they
opened up on Friday as well.

When the bottom floor became available the coop was in a position to sign a lease for the whole
building, including an option to buy at a set price
to be exercised within 2 years. They renovated the
downstairs space in 1979, moved into the whole
building, and by the fall of 1980 they decided to buy
the building!
We started asking members for a $10 investment
for the first time, Joe remembers. We got about
$10,000, which is what we needed for a down
payment on a $50,000 building. So we bought it.
But this building is only 22 feet wide. So I said
to our neighbor: If you ever think of selling your
building, were your neighbors and we might be
interested. Sure enough, in 1988 we bought the
second building and added another 22 feet. Then I
went straight over to our other neighbor, who ran a
rug cleaning business, and said: Dont forget, were
your neighbors. If you ever think about selling your
building, keep us in mind. Eventually, in 1999, after
a six or seven year struggle during which we voted
down buying the building and then reconsidered,
we bought the third building and added another 40
feet of frontage. In 1978 we had about a thousand
members. Now we have 15,000.

Park Slope Cooperative (yellow dot in center) considers anything coming from
a radius of 500 miles to be local. Here is where their local suppliers are located.
Produce suppliers are green, red is for meat and poultry suppliers.
Point market. The truck wasnt refrigerated, but we
The owner helped them get it out with his chain saw
went in the middle of the night so it was okay.
and they stored in in Joes parents garage over the
winter until they could installed it in the spring of
Then in the fall of 1975 Joe was getting off a bus
1976.
and noticed a butcher store going out of business.
They wanted to sell all their equipment including
Because of the cooler they could store produce and
a walk-in cooler! It was a beautiful 10 by 10 tongue- not ask people to preorder exactly what they needed.
in-groove structure, lined with cork for insulation.
This brought in more people and the co-op could

Park Slope was originally a low cost place to live (it

was even red-lined at one point and banks wouldnt
lend there, so some buildings were abandoned.) But
it is very close to Prospect Park, close to the main
branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, very close
to the Botanical Gardens, close to the Brooklyn
Museum, and close to 4 subway lines! So as the coop grew, young people who didnt grow up in Park
Slope started moving in and renting apartments.
Now any building there is worth over a million
dollars.
The co-op draws customers from a large area, not
just Park Slope. Joe reports that some of them pass
many supermarkets on the way to the co-op. That is
unusual behavior for a city dweller and speaks to the
high quality, diversity of product, good prices, and
values that members receive.

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Unlike some organizations that call themselves coops, Park Slope takes the principles of cooperative
organization seriously.

13

The Natural Farmer

Allen Zimmerman, the primary produce buyer,

explains: For starters, you have to be a member to
buy anything here. Also, members have to work 2
and hours every 4 weeks. Since members usually
will work the same jobs each time they work, they
get experienced at doing that task. Collectively, this
is a tremendous help. It amounts to about 75% of
the work necessary to run the Co-op. Thus prices
can be less. Studies show they are more than 20%
less than at comparable stores.
Some co-ops criticize us for our labor
requirement, he continues. But theyre open to
only those who can afford them. Were open to
anyone who is willing to save on their food by
helping with the work.
The member investment, which is the basis for the
co-ops capital, is $100. If you leave the co-op you
get it back. There is also a one-time joining fee of
$25 you dont get back. But if you get income-based
assistance through some program the co-op reduces
the joining fee to $5 and the investment to $10.
They also let anybody pay as slowly as $5 a month
to build up the investment. They calculate that
members are saving a lot more than $5 every week
by buying there.
Membership meetings occur once a month, at which
well over 200 members attend. The co-op offers
work credits to come to meetings up to twice a year.
There is also a newsletter in which members are
encouraged to write letters. Generally, Allen says,
when people have an issue with how things are run,
the staff hears about it: Remember, our members
are members, not customers. They vote, and work
hard for what they want. If we dont have our
fingers on the pulse, they have their fingers around
our throats!
Only about 2 or 3 percent of the co-ops gross
income comes in as food stamps, indicating not a
lot of members are low income. Although it takes
cash, food stamps, or debit cards, Park Slope will
not accept credit cards. The cost of credit for the
business accepting the cards is too high. The co-op
is active in the community and hosts many class
trips of elementary school kids visiting to see all the
strange vegetables. Saturdays are the busiest, with
long lines snaking throughout the store waiting to
check out.
An important break for the co-op came when, in
1980 they I got a call from Finger Lakes Organic
Growers Cooperative asking if Park Slope would
like to get deliveries from them each Monday
morning. Joe said: Of course. Thats fantastic.
Thank you for figuring this out!
Sitting here in the city, he explains, we dont do
vehicles. Were not vehicle people. If you can find a
place to park you probably have to pay hundreds of
dollars a month to keep it there. A commercial truck
on the streets of New York is illegal overnight. You
get tickets! So we had been renting vehicles to pick
up produce and it was a huge hassle.
One other benefit that dealing with Finger Lakes
Organics brought to Park Slope was that FLO really
enforced standards among their farmers. There
were some who were lagging behind, Joe recalls,
and the FLO managers would say: No, I wont
take that. Ive told you not to have any yellow
leaves in the chard, and no random bunches. Its
pound minimum, not one bunch being a pound
and a quarter and the next a half pound. This is the
standard. Take it back to your farm and do the right
thing!
Quality always depends on the farmer, agrees
Allen. When I started out as substitute produce
buyer in 1988, organic had a lot to learn about
quality. But as farmers got more experience the
quality went up. When we got stuff from Robin
Ostfeld and Lou Johns at Blue Heron Farm there
was no reason to look inside the box except to
admire it! But there were also local farmers who
were more primitive. We just had to learn farm by
farm who was better at it. The organic and local
stuff is now more uniform and fits better in a store.

photo by Jack Kittredge

Members cut, wrap, price and label cheese in the co-op basement as one of
many possible member jobs. The man in the Tshirt wearing a headband has been
cutting cheese here as his member job for 7 years.

Its one thing to throw stuff on a stand in a farmers

market, but a store has to have more uniformity.
Most farms are conforming to some kind of
presentation that makes it easy for a store to handle
its produce.

One of the biggest farmers markets in New York

is a few blocks from the co-op. Allen loves to go
there to checkup on what is new and interesting
both farmers and produce. One of their larger
distributors, the Lancaster Family Farm Co-op,
actually found Park Slope by driving past on the
way to the farmers market. They barely had enough
business to come to the market, but with orders from
the co-op they could pool produce from 20 farms
and find an economy of scale.
Julie Gabriel has handled much of the produce
buying with Allen for the last five years. She feels
that there is a lot more local stuff, more variety,
than there used to be. The quality is much better.

But because there are more farmers and groups

of farmers asking us to buy from them, we have to
sometimes disappoint people. The more farmers
there are the more we have to turn down and not
buy all they would like us to. We have to juggle
quality, price, relationships and loyalty.
Joe and Allen had an early and close relationship
with Amy Hepworth, she continues, which is
why we buy so much from her. Her vegetables
and berries are all organic. Finger Lakes Organic
is probably our second largest supplier of local
produce, although we are getting a lot now from the
Lancaster Farm Cooperative. They are Amish and
certified organic even some of their apples. We
get some produce from Canada. That usually comes
through Alberts Organics.
Park Slope puts a very high priority on carrying
local foods, as long as they can generate the volume
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14

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

15

The Natural Farmer

We define local as within 500 miles, says Allen.

Half of that circle is the Atlantic Ocean. So now
were talking about a semicircle with a radius of
500 miles. We think any farm in that radius can pick
produce on one morning and have it to us the next
morning. If you are living in the heart of the urban
monster, you have to go a ways to get to the farms.
Probably in Minnesota local is something you can
hit with a rock! But here we have to have a bigger
circle. So we think a days drive is a reasonable
distance.
At one point in the 1970s, says Joe, illustrating
the point, someone went on vacation in the
Adirondacks and came back and said: I met this
honey farmer. Here is his card. He really wants to
sell to us. If we buy $2000 of honey hell deliver to
us. He has good prices and good honey. We called
him up and he started delivering. We would store
honey by stacking it up to the ceiling! But we would
run out and order again.
Then in the 1970s there was a federation of 15 coops called The Peoples Warehouse. It didnt last
long, but through it Joe got access to local apple
cider for the first time.
But the choices are not easy. Local is almost always
more expensive. One of his current dilemmas is
having to decide between $28 kiwi berries from
Oregon or $38 ones from Pennsylvania.
The reason we created a movement to support local
food, says Allen, is that it is a challenge. You do
need to say: Okay, California lettuce is $20 a case
and local lettuce is $28. But well buy local.
Increasingly some local farms, especially big ones,
can pump out both quality and price, he agrees, and
cites Pedersen Farm in the Finger Lakes area as
an example. When Pederson grows something he
grows so much that no local or California farm can
compete with him!
Joe, checking their inventory at the time of my
visit in mid October, finds that the co-op has
approximately 225 items of produce on the shelves.

Bill Malloy, head of the co-ops meat department, holds a brisket

from Hardwick Beef in Massachusetts.

Of those, 153 are local. That is actually a record for

them. Of course that ratio shifts throughout the year
and this is just an autumn snapshot.
Organic food is also a high priority for Park Slope,
of course. Of the 153 local items on the shelf at the
time of my visit, Joe reports that 148 are organic.
Of course we have a diverse membership in terms
of economics. Not everyone can afford organic,
so we buy some organic and some not of some
produce. Well double market lemons, for example,
or baby carrots.

photo by Jack Kittredge

I think somewhere between 75% and 80% of the

overall fruit and vegetable volume is organic, adds
Allen. Of course that is the members speaking
with their dollars. When we got to the point that we
were buying in 20 cases of organic kale and 1 of
conventional, we dropped the conventional because
we couldnt keep it fresh.
Normal food diversity is certainly evident at Park
Slope Cooperative. High quality vegetarian and
vegan options are important to many members.
There is not yet a lot of interest in Nourishing
Traditions dietary items like animal fat and organ

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16

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

a company called the Pampered Cow that brings

in a lot of the Hudson Valley cheeses. I also buy
direct from a lot of smaller places. There is a lot of
demand for cheese and it is hard to keep up with it.
We sell upwards of 500 pounds of cheddar a week,
upwards of 3 to 4 wheels of Parmesan-Reggiano
cheese. There are people who request organic
cheeses, but I talk to them about grass-fed European
cheeses and theyre pretty happy with them. I make
sure they are rGBH-free if I can. But some people
arent willing to divulge information on where their
milk comes from. There are a lot of Franch, British,
and Croatian cheeses here, too.
Cutting and wrapping cheese is one of the member
jobs. Park Slope may be one of the last general
grocery stores that actually cuts and wraps their
cheese on site. They have the member labor and
besides, there is no space for a cheese counter
anyway!

photo by Jack Kittredge

Children on a class trip swarm the bins of winter squash and pumpkins
to enjoy their many colors and shapes.

meats, says Bill Malloy, meat case manager: But

I have heard from vegetarians who are switching

to eating meat, and want to eat sustainable meat.
They dont want to eat meat from a factory farm
that is detrimental to the environment and crating
greenhouse gases. We have a lot of slow food
people. Our meat comes from New England, New
York and Pennsylvania. Its all pretty much local.
The beef and lamb is grass-fed and finished.
Much like the produce aisle, he continues, we
will sell a non-organic alternative which is more
reasonably priced than organic meat. We buy two
cows a week and have it cut and processed and
packaged for us. Then we price it here. We also buy
cuts from other farms like Hardwick Beef. We had
a lot of brisket in for the Jewish holidays earlier. We
lost a slaughter facility in the Finger Lakes region,
so now these are from a plant in Pennsylvania. Our
chickens we get from 7 different farms now.
Cheese buyer Uri Weber says that there are many
local cheeses becoming available now. I work with

Some interesting factoids about Park Slope:

They are open every day of every year.
About 22% or 23% of their business is produce,
pretty much year round.
The co-ops annual volume is $39 million in sales.
Park Slope has more sales per square foot than
Whole Foods, Trader Joes, or WalMart.
The co-ops won an Energy Star award for saving
so much energy. The biggest innovations are:
- Off the grid air conditioning, run by natural
gas. It is both more efficient and more communityminded as they dont use power when everyone else
is demanding it.
- Changing all the lights so they are more efficient
and use less energy.
- Recovering heat from the refrigerators and using
it to heat all their hot water.
- Recovering cold air that spills out of the refrigerator cases and channeling it back to reuse the cold.
The co-op is bursting with business, but cant really
expand. There is a Catholic church on one end,
says Allen, and a fire department on the other.
That is why it is so tight here! Besides, our own
street cant support much more than were doing
now. Union Street cant afford more trucks. So
our strategy now is to help other people start food
co-ops. Were actively involved in helping 6 other
communities in Brooklyn start them. Weve also
worked with people in England, Paris, and around
the world. A lot of people visit us to learn more
about how to do it.

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The University of Vermont (UVM) Extension Division invites applications for a 12-month, 0.80 FTE
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demonstrate how their outreach and scholarship will contribute to the Food Systems spire. For additional
information on UVM's Food Systems spire go to http://www.uvm.edu/~ovpr/FoodSYS.pdf.
Apply on-line at www.uvmjobs.com. Search for the position under Extension or by Job Requisition
#033425 to see complete job description. Attach a letter of intent that also outlines how you would
contribute to the diversity goals of UVM, current CV and three references by January 1, 2011; however,
applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Review of applications begins January 2, 2011.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Farm Supply and

Marketing
Cooperatives:
Their Economic
Impact

17

The Natural Farmer

University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives

Overview
Cooperative firms account for a significant portion
of economic activity in U.S. agricultural and food
markets, both as providers of key inputs and as
marketing and processing agents for farm output.
According to USDA statistics, marketing and input
supply cooperatives account for about a third of

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both total farm sector revenue and input purchases.

Cooperatives play a key role in agricultural markets not only because they account for a significant
fraction of economic activity in this sector, but also
because they are believed to generate a pro-competitive effect in imperfectly competitive markets.
Cooperatives play other socially beneficial roles in
the agricultural sector. They provide an opportunity
for farmers to share risk and to control managerial
decision-making for their direct benefit. Additionally, they offer a credence attributefarmer ownershipwhich can be attached to farm commodities,
thus providing additional value to some consumers.
Cooperatives perform a wide variety of functions in
agricultural and food markets. Often these functions
are grouped into the two broad categories, marketing and supply. Some marketing cooperatives are
household names: Sunkist, Ocean Spray, Sun-maid,
and Sunsweet, for example, have created national
recognition with their branded products. These firms
provide processing and marketing services to farmers, and also the necessary logistical support to aggregate farm supply. Other marketing cooperatives

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

are much leaner organizations, providing only marketing services to assist farmers, get their product to
market, to pool risk, or to negotiate sales as a group
to a single buyer or a small number of buyers. Supply cooperatives provide service and inputs to farmers to help them produce their goods. Many farmers
purchase basic inputs such as seed, fertilizer, and
farm chemicals from a cooperative. In other words,
farmers collectively establish a firm to negotiate better terms of purchase for basic agricultural production inputs. Less common, but still widely observed,
are cooperatives that provide information services
(e.g., record keeping and performance evaluation) to
farmers.
History
Formalization of group efforts among farmers into
well defined and legally sanctioned cooperative
business organizations occurred gradually during the
mid- to late nineteenth century, in the U.S. Authors
of early cooperative incorporation statutes modified
standard stock corporation statutes to reflect Rochdale operating principles. Passage of the Sherman
Antitrust Act in 1890 forced cooperative leaders to

further formalize and distinguish the cooperative

business model. The Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to prevent groups of corporations from combining by granting their stock to a trust. With control
of all the corporations vested in the trust board, the
trust would then work to eliminate competition, create a monopoly, and thus raise prices. As independent farm businesses working together to enhance
prices, farmer marketing cooperatives were subject
to prosecution under the anti-trust laws that were
established as a result of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
In a quest to establish a unique form of organization
that would be exempt from anti-trust regulations,
numerous states created new non-stock cooperative statutes.
In addition, the Clayton Act of 1914 exempted from
the Sherman Act those organizations (agricultural
or horticultural organizations instituted for the purpose of mutual help and not having capital stock
or conducted for profit). The Clayton Act created
some confusion, however, because at the time many
farmer cooperatives were still incorporated under
older stock-based cooperative statutes. The Capper-

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19

The Natural Farmer

Economic Impacts for Agricultural Sales and Marketing Cooperatives

Volstead Act was passed in 1922 to resolve this confusion and applied broadly to associations of agricultural producers, both capital stock and non-stock
associations. In addition to anti-trust exemptions,
farmer cooperatives have benefited from educational
and research support from the USDA and from the
establishment of the Farm Credit System.
Industry Niche
Cooperatives in the agricultural sector provide basic
marketing and supply services, and are more prevalent among farmers who cultivate crops than among
those who raise animals (dairy being a notable exception where cooperative firms hold a dominant
market share). Marketing and processing services
are typically organized around a single commodity. Supply services are restricted to basic variable
inputsagricultural chemicals, fuel and fertilizer,
seed, and crop consulting servicesand operate
much like a buying group, except in the production of feed for animals. That is, farmers tend not
to own the physical assets that are used to produce
these inputs, but rather negotiate their purchase collectively. Less common, but still widely observed,
are cooperatives that provide services (e.g., information services for record keeping, and processing
services such as cotton ginning and walnut shelling). Cooperatives rarely produce farm machinery
and generally are not involved in basic research to
develop new production technologies.

Organizational Structure
Farmer cooperative are typically organized under
state incorporation statutes, but sometimes they are
also organized as limited liability companies when
a need arises for significant investment participation by individuals who do not use the firms services. More recently, some states have established

hybrid LLC/cooperative statutes that sanction

cooperative organizations with greater outside participation than permitted in existing cooperative
statutes (but that still maintain patron control). The
National Conference of Commissioners for Uniform
State Law (NCCUSL) recently issued the Limited
Cooperative Association Act, which is intended to
provide a uniform version of hybrid statutes for po-

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20

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

Economic Impacts
tential adoption across states that do not currently
have one.
Farmer cooperatives typically require all members
to be active farmers. Many cooperatives provide services to non-member farmers, though incorporation
statutes typically place restrictions on the amount
of non-member business. Some farmer cooperatives are open in the sense that anyone who does
business with the firm may also choose to become a
member. Other farmer cooperatives are closed in
that membership is rationed according to the availability of processing or marketing capacity. Some
farmer cooperatives elect boards of directors and
make major decisions such as mergers and acquisitions or dissolution on a one-member/one-vote
basis, while others make voting rights proportional
to the level of service use for each member. Many
farmer cooperatives proportionally allocate all or
most earnings to patrons, but then retain up to 80%
of these allocations for working capital and re-investment. Firms that operate on such a basis pay patrons for the use of their funds in future periods with
a formal equity redemption program. Most farmer
cooperatives claim Subchapter T status for Federal
tax purposes, which allows pass-through taxation.
Only the patrons pay tax on earnings allocations,
even if they are retained for use by the firm.

contacts who make note of existing, new, and dissolved cooperatives. The most recent year for which
data are available is 2006. We rely entirely on this
USDA data to conduct our analysis of economic
impact. All governance data (no random sample)
comes from survey work undertaken by the UWCC.
The survey response rate for agricultural marketing
and supply cooperatives was 35%.

We obtained data from 2,535 farmer cooperatives.

Collectively, these firms account for over $40B
in assets, nearly $120 B in sales revenue, and pay
over $6B in wages. There are approximately 2.5M
farmer memberships and 150,000 employees. From
Table 4-2.1, by extrapolating to the entire population (2,547 firms) and adding indirect and induced
impacts to this activity, agricultural cooperatives
account for nearly $130B in revenue, more than
200,000 jobs, $8.9B in wages paid, and over $10B
in valued-added income.

Population Discovery and Data Sources

The USDAs Business and Cooperative Programs
Unit within the Bureau of Rural Development conducts a periodic survey of cooperative business in
the agricultural sector. Contact information is compiled through a network of industry and government

griculture. . . is our wisest pursuit,

because it will in the end contribute most to
real wealth, good morals and happiness.

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

My Experience with Organic Grain Coops

by Julie Rawson

I am not sure when I first got interested in cooperative buying, as I dont remember my parents ever
doing it growing up. But it always seemed like such
a no-brainer, the social aspect of it, the counter-cultural aspect of it and of course the savings that are
gained from practicing cooperative buying.
I started my foray into coops when I was in college
at the University of Illinois. There I lived in a cooperative house and we cooked cooperative meals,
shared all the housework, etc. In 1977 I joined my
first food coop, the Mission Hill Food Coop in
Boston. Now, 33 years later, I still am a food coop
member, at Tip Top Country Store in Brookfield,
MA. That is where I got my chops on how coops
really work. When we moved out to Barre in 1982 I
was all set to go. I organized NOFA/Mass first seed
ordering coop through Fedco Seeds in 1985 and
then moved onto the bulk order around 1986. That
still happens. I work with friends to put together
bulk purchases of things like beef or fish straight
from the Ocean, and when not involved with others
tend to buy things in bulk to get the discounts.
When we started raising animals in 1982, Jack and
I realized very quickly that accessing organic grain
for them was not going to be easy. In those early
years we bought grain from Bob Crowe of Inverness
Farm in NY state and I worked with my brother who
is a veterinarian to access mineral packages that we
could add to the grain recipes to make them nutritionally complete recipes. I think we must have put
the grain coop together around that in the mid 80s.
We bought minerals from a company called Xtra
Factors in Ephrata, PA http://www.manta.com/c/
mm5nbh0/xtra-factors-inc. In those early years we
made the minerals available through the NOFA TriState Bulk Order. The grain that we got from Bob
was certified organic by NOFA-NY.

How do the yolks look on eggs, and how is their

flavor? Of course a certified organic animal must
have access to pasture also, and all the extras that
your livestock receive on pasture and homestead or
farm raised extras will complement the grain that
you choose.

the certifiably or certified organic resources. They

are proliferating and the farmers who use these practices in their grain growing need to be supported
with our dollars.

I alluded to this earlier, but the best grain coop is

one with clear rules and understandings about what
is expected of coopers and what isnt. Our grain
coop has been around for many years and often
folks come to me wanting me to be a store. That,
of course, is an option for one who has that interest. How ours has evolved, and stayed sustainable
for me the manager, is for people to order on time,
to bring their questions regarding feed rations to
Walter at Horse and Buggy or to check the Kreamer
website, and to show up with check in hand and be
ready to help unload at the designated time. This is
cooping at its best. We all get to touch base with one
another, we all save money, delivery is relatively
convenient for all, and we have access to a high
quality product for our animals health.
One final word on the affordability of certified
organic grain. Many people who will eat organic
produce and run the rest of their operation in a certifiably organic fashion will say that organic grain
is too expensive and they cant afford it. It has
been my experience here in Central Massachusetts
that people will pay the difference that one needs to
charge in order to have organic meat. Back before
the early 90s when you fed conventional grain it
might have had pesticide and herbicide residue in
it. This, of course, is no light matter, but now when
you buy conventional grains you are feeding GMOs
to your animals and to yourself and your customers.
The best way we can end the use of GMOs in farming is to be strict in our refusal to buy them into our
farms and homesteads. And in the end, this is for
our health as people and our planetary health. Use

Slowly organic grain became more available and

one of the early companies to manufacture it was
Vermont Organic Grain Company. Our coop bought
from them, but when their business fell on hard
times the quality plummeted and we switched to
Kreamer Feeds (Natures Best Products) in Kreamer, PA.
I dont remember when we started working
with Walter Anair of Horse and Buggy Feeds in
Winchendon, MA, but it must have been around
the time we went with Kreamer. This relationship
has been one almost made in heaven. Walter and I
confer on what is out there, share industry gossip,
and he brings grain to our farm for our coop every
4-6 weeks during the heavy times. He gives us a 3%
discount on the grain. I ask folks to order 2 weeks
in advance of a delivery day and charge a 1% overhead fee for managing the coop. These days we set
the delivery dates a year in advance, and always on
a Thursday at 9 am. Walter arrives in the driveway
with dog biscuits in hand for Jimbo, Franny and
Zooey and all of our coop members come with their
vehicles and checks in hand to unload and reload for
each other. We share a hour of conviviality and
then all go about our ways.

21

CONTINUING THE TRADITION OF

FAMILY FARMING IN VERMONT
Robert & Linda Dimmick
Makers of Award-Winning
Organic Farmstead Cheeses
Organic Raw Milk Cheddar:
Winner at The Big "E", 2008
Organic Monterey Jack:

Last winter, in response to customer demand for

soy free feeds, Walter and I worked closely with
Lakeview Organic Grain in Penn Yan, NY http://
www.lakevieworganicgrain.com/ to put together a
number of rations that were soy free. Along with the
Kreamer Feeds, Walter offered Lakeview grains for
layers, meat birds, hogs and turkeys. It seems that
this industry is still on a learning curve with some
successes and some failures, particularly for turkeys,
in ration balancing.

American Cheese Society Winner, 2005, 2006

Unlike in the mid 80s, for the would be purchaser

of organic grains, whether they be premixed and
ready to feed or component parts for the farmer/
homesteader to mix on their own, there are a lot of
choices out there now. It is important to product test
and shop around until you find the ration that most
serves your animals needs. Paying attention to your
animals sense of well-being will give you clues
long before slaughter when slaughter weight and
texture and flavor of meat will tell more of the story.

Look for our cheeses in your local

Natural Foods Store!

Organic Jalapeno Jack:

American Cheese Society Winner, 2008
Organic Colby:
American Cheese Society Winner, 2007
Organic Green Onion Cheddar:

American Cheese Society Winner, 2005, 2006

Organic Garlic Cheddar

Organic Cow Milk Feta

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A younger Jack fills home-made pig feeder

with bags of organic grain from Bob Crowe
of New Yorks Inverness Farm. After the
right proportions of corn and soy are mixed
together, he shovels a mineral mix into the
feeder and swirls it around. Studying the operation are Dan, Chuk, Ellen and Paul, also
younger.

22

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Working Together Works in the

Northeast Food and Agricultural System
The Natural Farmer

by Brian M. Henehan

There are a large variety of cooperative business

approaches occurring in the food and agriculture
system in the Northeast. There are very successful,
existing cooperatives that operate up and down the
food value chain. Various types of cooperatives have
been formed by virtually all of the key players in the
food value chain and at every level of the food and
agriculture system. Cooperatives have been organized by: farmers, brokers, distributors, processors,
wholesalers, food service franchisees, retailers and
consumers. One might ask why we dont hear about
all of these cooperatives? Given that cooperatives
primarily exist to serve members, non-members
arent always aware of their existence. Cooperatives
are typically closely held by the members and are
not publicly traded, which is another reason the public doesnt always know much about them.
For example, a purchasing cooperative of Subway
sandwich shop franchisees was formed less than
fifteen years ago and has grown into a multi-billion
dollar purchasing arm serving most Subway locations across the U.S. and Canada. The cooperative
is now responsible for procuring all of the Subway
food, packaging, equipment and services for the
US and Canada through negotiating price, supply,
and distribution terms. In addition to negotiating
the items themselves, the cooperative enters into
contracts at all levels of the supply chain to bring
cost efficiencies to Subway franchisees. Rather than
several companies purchasing smaller quantities, the
cooperative sets up one large master contract which
results in a lower cost end product. After studying
the potential opportunity, the cooperative https://
www.ipcoop.com/en-us/2/Page.aspx?p=31 board
of directors, which is comprised of franchise owners, decides if the investment is worth the return to
franchise members. For more information see their
website at http://www.ipcoop.com.

A large number of farmers in New York and New

England market a significant share of their farm
products through cooperatives. These farmer-members produce: juice grapes, cranberries, processed
fruit and vegetables, fresh apples, dairy, field crops,
and livestock for cooperatives with familiar names
like Ocean Spray, Cabot, and Welchs.

A majority of farmers in the region receive their

loans from credit cooperatives as part of the Farm
Credit System. Farmers and rural residents purchase
their electricity through a number of successful rural electric cooperatives in the Northeast. And so,
the cooperative form of business plays a key role in
moving the regions farm products to consumers.
Many of these cooperatives were organized during
the depression. Tough economic times can force
farmers and consumers to create alternative businesses to create economic value for members and
for the rendering of mutual service. Now there is
also increased interest in economic alternatives during these times of financial distress and political uncertainty. More new cooperatives are being formed
to improve the economic and social well-being of
members. Today, there are many resources available
to those considering the formation of new cooperatives as well as education about the cooperative
model in general.

The New England Cooperative Loan Fund - http://

cooperativefund.org/
A new educational resource through extension on
Cooperatives http://www.extension.org/pages/Cooperatives_Community_of_Practice_Description
The Northeast Cooperative Council (NECC), a nonprofit aimed at serving the educational and informational needs of cooperative members- http://cooperatives.aem.cornell.edu/partners.htm#one
Brian M. Henehan is senior extension associate and
program leader for the Cornell Cooperative Enterprise Program and welcomes comments at bmh5@
cornell.edu

CARE FAR
RTH
M
EA
WORKING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

Compost

Rhode Islands Oldest Operating Farm Composter

Quality Made Compost is the Healthiest Way to Nourish Plants
www.earthcarefarm.com
401.364.9930
Mike Merner & Jayne Merner Senecal
Certified Organic Farm

Resources and related websites:

The Cornell Cooperative Enterprise Program http://
cooperatives.aem.cornell.edu/
A network of cooperative development centers
across the U.S. - Cooperation Works www.cooperationworks.coop
The development center for NY and New EnglandCooperative Development. Institute http://www.cdi.
coop/

Send $15 for US, $20 for foreign address to:

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

Finger Lakes Organic Growers Cooperative:

23

Going With the FLO

by Jack Kittredge
Finger Lakes Organic Growers Cooperative (FLO)
was established as a not-for-profit marketing coop for small family farms in 1986 with the help
of a grant from New York States Department of
Agriculture and Markets. The co-op was organized
to supply certified organic produce to natural food
stores, co-op markets, processors, and restaurants in
New York State.
FLO markets only certified organic produce, and
all member farms agree not to sell their produce on
their own to FLO customers. There is a one-time
membership fee of $100 to join the co-op. Members are required to attend the annual meeting, have
the right to vote, and to be elected to serve on the
11-member board. Board meetings are open to all
members of the co-op.
In 1987 FLO hired a sales manager, bought a truck,
and member farmers took turns driving it to deliver
to accounts, mostly in the Ithaca, NY area. In 1988
they started sales and deliveries to New York City.
In 1989 the co-op rented space at a local distributor, Regional Access (RA), and hired them to make
the deliveries. They were already going down to the
city to pick up product -- pastries and ice cream and
products like that -- and part of RAs attraction to
FLO was to not go down empty. In 1990 FLO began
marketing in other parts of upstate New York. For
22 years FLO continued to arrange its own sales,
but in 2009 it began a joint venture with Regional
Access. Under this arrangement, called FLORA, the
company does both the sales and the deliveries of
FLO produce. In 2008, the last year it employed its
own sales manager, FLO grossed about $200,000 in
sales.

photo by Jack Kittredge

FLO operates out of the Pedersen farm in Seneca Castle, NY.

Behind the brick farmhouse is the large red refrigerated warehouse that stores
the Co-ops produce until it is picked up by a distributor, Regional Access.

put it in the cooler. When RA moved to a new warehouse in Ithaca, FLO continued building up pallets
there for a while, but finally RA offered to take over
sales and build the pallets themselves. It was more
efficient that way and they would have more control
over the whole operation.

We did a per box fee to RA for delivery back then,

Janet relates, and FLO got a percentage to pay the
manager and freight and bills. Then at the end of the
year our Treasurer would see what profit we had left
over and decide whether we could give some back
to the farmers as a patronage refund in proportion
to their sales. That happened in February, after we
had closed out the year.
All FLO growers have to be certified organic. Most
are NOFA certified, but at least one Amish farm uses
Pro-Cert Organic Systems, Ltd., which does a lot of
Canadian farms. Member farms vary in size from 4
acres up to Rick and Laura Pedersens 150 acres of
certified organic produce. Some sell all their crops
through the co-op, some have other markets as
well. There is regular interest in joining FLO from
new farmers. They are invited to come to a meeting
where they discuss what they can grow. If it fits in
with the co-ops needs, they are invited to join.

Janet Cawley, who works at Rose Valley Farm and

is still the manager of FLO, served as the sales manager for 10 years. She recalls the early history. Bob
and Carol Stull, whose farm is right outside Ithaca,
were very involved. Carol was the manager for a
while, doing the sales. David Stern was involved in
writing vegetable crop standards for the co-op. A
lot of our customers are the same now as then. FLO
managers found a lot of them.
Back then FLO shipped to New York City once a
week, on Sunday night. The midweek runs were
upstate North Country, Syracuse, Rochester, and
Buffalo. Regional Access had their own customers
there for their other products, and FLO would sell
to them as well. It was mostly co-ops Potsdam
Co-op, Syracuse Real Food, Lexington in Buffalo
and Abundance Co-op in Rochester. Greenstar Coop and Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca were key
customers from the start and got deliveries twice a
week.
The farmers would take their product to the RA
warehouse in Trumansburg. There they would build
up the pallets by customer, grabbing a few of these
from this farmer and a few of those from that one.
Once a pallet was full of that customers order, they
would wrap it and write the buyers name on it and

photo by Jack Kittredge

David Schoonmaker, FLO member, stands

with his semi-weekly delivery of
radishes, beets and other root crops.

So far it seems to be working, Janet says. We

have a little over 20 farmers now. When people join
they are in for several years at least. Sometimes really small farmers join, but then they decide they are
better suited for farmers markets. Regional Access
doesnt want someone who has two cases of this and
one of that. They want people with ten cases of a
product. But even the small farmers gain while they
are with us -- with learning about the standards and
talking to bigger farmers. Mostly the FLO growers
are young people in their thirties. We need more
fruit growers -- organic fruit is very popular!
David Schoonmaker, who has been in FLO since
2003, tills 90 acres in Seneca County. Ive been
farming since 1977, he says. Our farm is the oldest organic farm that I know of. My father started
farming organically in 1954. He was considered a
weirdo! I think FVO was first with the certification.
Anne Mendenhall and John Myers would come out
and look us over. It was pretty informal. Then it got
more involved. It was FVO first, which the buyers paid for, then I was with NOFA, then I started
selling beets to Japan but the broker didnt accept
NOFA. So I was with OCIA for awhile, but that was
a big mess so I went back to NOFA.
David provides FLO with produce from six or seven
acres, mostly beets, turnips (he loves Hakurei, a salad turnip sold by Johnnys), radishes, garlic, squash
and beans, He grows a cash crop of wheat, soy and
clover seeds on the rest of his land. He worked a
full time job while farming until 2002. When he was
ready to go full time on the farm, in 2003, he joined
FLO.
He says marketing through FLO works very well
for the farmers. Twice a week, on Wednesdays
and Sundays, we drop off our produce here. For
Wednesday deliveries we call in on Sunday with
what we have and then they call us back or Email
us on Tuesday mornings with what is ordered. For
Sunday deliveries we call in on Wednesday. We
used to have to take the produce to the Regional Access warehouse near Ithaca. Now we bring it here to
Ricks. We used to have to build our own pallets for
each account there. Now we dont. We just put our
stuff on pallets loosely and then it goes to Regional
Access and they break it down for the stores. It used
to be that we made the sales and they would ship
for us. We would pay them a per box fee. Now they
buy it and keep 20% on the item. FLO gets 3.75%
to cover our expenses. We still have Janet as a manager.
There are growing pains, of course, he continues,
but I like it. Things are going pretty good. We can
ask the price we want. If they cant sell it, of course,

24

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

work on. We spray just like a conventional farmer.

We have a spray rig for that, but everything else is
hand labor thinning, trimming. We have about a
thousand trees. This was going to be our big year.
We have projection meetings every year and plan
on what were going to grow (laughs). This year I
figured Id have close to 3000 bushels of apples. I
ended up with about 200. It got warm early, things
started pushing, the buds started moving out, and
then all of a sudden it got down to 24 three nights
in a row. That took care of pretty much everything
apples and peaches. They were so damaged from
the cold they would start to grow and then fall off
the tree. We thought we were going to have the crop
of the year. They were hanging like grapes. Then
all of a sudden, after a couple of weeks, they started
dropping. The frost did that.
Ken and his wife Karen prune their thousand trees
all winter long. She does the bottoms and he does
the tops. He likes trees on G7 rootstock. That is the
next size up from M26 -- the last rootstock with
which you have to use support. G7 gives a 9 or 10foot tree.

Ken Leuze shows his beautiful carrots and cabbage.

He also grows tree fruit apples, pears, peaches and plums.

we keep it. We can sell elsewhere, but need to meet

our commitments. If I say Ill have 100 boxes of
squash for FLO I try real hard to have them. I like to
keep a good relationship. Regional Access tells us
what they can get for price. If there is an abundance,
like on squash, the price can crash. Rick has a lot of
tomatoes this year he cant move. We have an annual meeting to try to balance out who is growing
what so there is not too much of something and not
enough of something else.

Ken Leuzes farm is Willow Grove, in Wayne

County, about 6 miles from Lake Ontario, We have
muck, he announces, proudly. We farm about 15
acres of muck. Its great for carrots. They come right
up! I bet I could put 500 bags a week through FLO.

photo by Jack Kittredge

Most of Kens carrots go to Park Slope Coop and

Angelica Kitchen in Manhattan. There have to be
30 stops Regional Access makes in the city now, he
says. But that is where the money is. You have to
sell it there. Price is no problem they can charge
whatever they need to in the city!
Leuze also raises cabbage, kale, and other cole
crops for FLO, as well as tree fruit apples, pears,
peaches and plums, all organic.
We do most everything by hand, he says. Its just
me and momma and one other fellow working our
farm. We use Surround for the curculio and neem
for codling moth and insects that Surround doesnt

Leuze believes that any tree that is dwarfed to the

point that you have to stake it to get it to stand
up is a pain in the butt. If you get 10 years out of
such trees, youre doing well. Then you have to go
through and pull them.
Now some people, he says, are down to planting trees 18 inches apart! All on wire! Thousands of
dollars worth of wire! I dont mind pruning from a
ladder. If we are going to have a good crop well get
pickers in. They dont mind ladders if the trees are
properly pruned.
Willow Groves apples sell for $56 for a 35 pound
case. Of course the shipping and FLOs percent
comes off our $56, Ken advises. Still, that is not
bad per pound. It makes it worth it when you get a
halfway decent price. Like I said, everything is hand
labor. You have to polish these to get the Surround
off. If you dont get it all off it leaves a haze. Sometimes youll have to be out there in the middle of the
night, polishing apples.

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Another cost to the farmer is produce boxes. New,

colorful produce boxes can cost as much as $3.65
each. So many growers who are delivering hundreds
of cases a year will recycle old boxes and slap on a
FLO label.

25

The Natural Farmer

David Stern and Janet market all their 10 to 12

acres of produce from Rose Valley Farm through
FLO. They do a lot with brassicas David planted
a whole field to Red Russian kale. They also have
chestnuts, blueberries and table grapes Concord
and Steuben.
Rick and Laura Pedersen, who have been farming in
Seneca Castle for 30 years, have by far the largest
farm in FLO. They farm 1500 acres in all, with 600
of them organic. About half of their land is in grain
and soy, and half in vegetables. One hundred and
fifty of those acres are in organic produce.
Rick was a newcomer when he started in FLO. So
he ended up being given the crops to grow that nobody else was doing. Everybody does hard winter
squash, so his mostly goes to processors. For FLO
he raises cauliflower, asparagus, zucchini, tomatoes,
and broccoli raab, among other vegetables. But only
a portion of his organic produce goes through FLO.
He sells 250 tons of squash, for instance, to Hains
for baby food.
Some of our vegetables go to Wegmans, Rick
says, or Whole Foods. I used to sell to Beechnut in
Canajoharie. They used to take produce from all the
local guys. But then a Swiss company bought them
out Hero. They got state money to put up a brand
new plant and as soon as they got the plant put up
they said: We dont need you local growers any
more and started getting it aseptic from God knows
where. Mexico or wherever.
Im different from most of the members, Rick
continues. Most dont have much or any hired labor. Im at a larger scale. I have ten full time workers, year-round, not counting me or my wife. Then
theres a whole pile of seasonal people. The other
farms can only do what they can do with one person. Thats fine. But I can do a different thing. Im
more for wholesale and processing and that sort of

photo by Jack Kittredge

FLO operates at the Pedersen Farm in Seneca Castle, NY. Rick and Laura Pedersen own the
largest farm in FLO by far, and it is equipped with a 32 by 56 refrigerated warehouse and
forklift equipment -- which makes loading so much easier. Here some of Ricks cauliflower is
unloaded from the pickup bringing it from the field.

thing. It has been my salvation to be diverse. Every

year something fails, and they take turns. Hopefully
they dont all take the same turn! My pumpkins
are not very good this year. Last year they were
perfect! Last year the cauliflower wasnt very good
but so far this year it is okay. Tomatoes I got totally
wiped out last year, this year I had a crop a nice
crop but the market is flooded so you cant sell
them! I left half my crop in the field because I just
cant sell them. The heirloom price should be $25 or
$30 retail for a case of 25 pounds, and it should get
down to $18 to $20 to me. But at one point I had to
go down to $9. At that point I said: The hell with

this. Im not doing it anymore. And Im not going to

grow them next year!

Rick would raise more soy and grain, for which

the market is a little more stable, but is stymied by
weeds. His acreage in corn and soy is already so
large that he has trouble cultivating it all in the narrow two week window available for his equipment
to do the job. If it is wet during that time, the weeding doesnt get done and then the crop suffers. He
figures you can at least afford to weed vegetables by
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26

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Pedersen mixes his own fertilizers (all of it is organic now, including hog manure from his pig operation) so it can be tailored to each crop, and has overhead irrigation everywhere he raises vegetables. He
gets water out of 7 irrigation ponds. The couple had
a big barn behind their house, but it burned and in
1993, to get some storage space for their vegetables,
they built a 32 by 56 foot cooler in its place. This
turned out to be an ideal facility for FLO to use to
assemble their loads for RA.
The issue of produce standards is a controversial
one. Although FLO has been instrumental in establishing high standards for the uniformity and beauty
of local produce being distributed from NY farms,
those standards continue to evolve. This is especially true for tomatoes.

photo by Jack Kittredge

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The tomato standard, Rick explains, is set by

the greenhouse tomato. They are absolutely blemish-free. Obviously you cant be as perfect as that if
youre growing in the field. You have to deal with
the environment rain, wind, mud, disease pressure, insects. You can even put in artificial light in
a greenhouse. Its tough to get field tomatoes past
the rejection masters at the warehouse. They have
to have everything perfectly blemish-free. I gave up
on Wegmans a couple of years ago. They can kick a
$10,000 delivery back for a couple of bad items.
He is also concerned that the farmer gets so little
of the final produce dollar. A lot of the value in
produce when it gets to the customer, he says,
is trucking, packaging, labeling, and the markup,
which is 100%. When you take all that stuff out and
get back to the farmer, the farmer might not have
had to be so cheap as it originally sounded. The
grocery stores like to have at least 100% markup,
or twice what they pay the farmer. Sometimes it is
more, as much as 5 times what the farmer gets!
It was just 7 or 8 years ago that the Pedersens began their switch to organic growing. Part of Ricks
motivation was that he was sick and tired of major
corporations like Monsanto and the plant breeders
constantly getting in his pocket. He only grew 30
soybeans, for instance. But it got so he couldnt buy
bush beans anymore. The breeders all went for thin
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The Natural Farmer

27
are restaurants that would like stuff, but they only
want a box of this and a box of that. By the time you
calculate your fuel and your labor -- just in the delivery time -- youve lost all your profit, he says.
Wegmans is the only customer Pedersen delivers to,
and then only with high value stuff like asparagus.
There are no Whole Foods stores anywhere nearby.
Theyre in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. Organic is low volume when you get to the end user,
he figures, and the little farmer just cant go running
around to all these little stores. So its better that a
whole group of people consolidate all their different
items so that each stop is a more profitable stop.
RA still gives FLO a small percentage for phone and
Internet expenses. At the end of the year their bookkeeper gives Janet a list of the total sales by farm,
so they can still do a patronage refund if they have
money left over. The members still make cooperative decisions about what they grow and who grows
it. They still have a board that meets and discusses
issues. They still do projections about what they are
going to grow. FLO has its own label and a good
reputation, as well as standards for picking and
packing.

photo by Jack Kittredge

Janet Cawley, FLO manager until FLOs joint venture with Regional Access.

growers buy more seed because they had to have a

higher population to fill the field.

Then they started adding all the GMOs to it,

he adds. It got to where you couldnt even buy a
non-GMO bean anymore. I just didnt want to be
controlled that way. Thats part of why I wanted to
be organic. Certainly the economics were part of it.
Back then it was highly profitable. The profit has
decreased in organic over what it was three or four
years ago. And its better for the environment. If you
do things like you are supposed to, with nutrition
and rotations, your insects and disease just naturally
go down. I would never have thought that 10 years
ago. A lot of people who grow conventionally still
dont believe that! Its a wide swing. Youre either
all the way to the GMOs and beat the crap out of
your ground, or 180 degrees away and doing it natu-

rally. Its a whole different way of thinking.

Pedersen, who feels that FLO farmers produce very
high quality vegetables and fruit, would like to see
more sales through the co-op. He realizes that there
are a lot of bottlenecks in selling to New York City.
Getting in there is one, he admits. I call it the
produce mafia down there. You dont just go down
there and sell. Each of these guys has his own little
fiefdom. The Hunts Point guys have everything all
set up and theyve been dealing with Florida, Texas
and California and have their deals. Here comes
New York with their 3-month season and they dont
even want to talk to you.
But the Co-op can take produce farther than Rick
would want to deliver, and in smaller quantities than
any of the members can economically ship. There

When the co-op has a new grower they like to have

them team up with an experienced grower to help
them along. Recently some Amish members have
joined from down in Steuben County, around Prattsburgh and Avoca. They came up and talked with
David Stern, who went down to their farms. They
are using FLO standards and are doing quite well.
We have tried to figure out why we havent become
really big, Janet offers. Like Tuscarora in Pennsylvania, or Deep Root in New England. I dont
know how big they are, but Alberts Organics buys
from Deep Root. FLO was a small time operation
when I joined it and that is what Im comfortable
with. Maybe what they would have to do to get a
lot bigger is hire a manager with a business background. But there is a lot of competition out there
now. Cooperative markets usually buy from farmers
right beside them. There are clusters right around
towns with coop markets. So we would only be
able to supply the odd thing like daikon, if no one is
growing that, or the burdock root.
I think Regional offers us a lot, she continues.
They have a larger customer base than we have.
People ask for things, particularly fruit, and if they
can add that on to an order it is nice. They like to
know what we have and if they can offer it to customers. Having us in-house gives them more control. But were a small percent of their entire business. It is wonderful that Regional Access is able to
pick up our stuff. I cant say how great that is after
ten years of building pallets! That gets old. Im just
overjoyed they want to do it.

28

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Neighboring Food Co-op Association:

Collaboration for a Thriving Regional Economy
by Erbin Crowell

foods, supporting organic agriculture, and helping

to build the Fair Trade movement. In addition to
creating economic relationships that reflect their
values and serve member needs, co-ops have also
influenced the mainstream food system. As they
demonstrated demand for natural, organic and fairly
traded products, these goods soon began to appear
on the shelves of conventional grocery stores and
even multinational, investor-owned supermarkets.

On December 21, 1844, the Rochdale Society of

Equitable Pioneers opened a humble grocery store
in the north of England. The offerings of the store
were not impressive, being comprised of butter,
flour, oatmeal and some candles. The vision of the
Pioneers, on the other hand, was audacious at a time
of dramatic economic upheaval. Often cited as the
founders of the modern co-operative movement, the
members of the co-op envisioned a new way of doing business that was rooted in community and put
the control of enterprise in the hands of the people
who used its services. Key to the growth of the
co-operative model was the establishment by the
Pioneers of a set of principles that have guided the
movement ever since.
At a time when access to nutritious food was limited
and adulterated products were common, the most
urgent need was for pure, wholesome and affordable
food. But the vision of the Rochdale Pioneers encompassed more that just retailing. Their goal was a
transformation of the economy, and early co-operators also set about the development of agricultural
and manufacturing co-ops to supply their stores and
support employment, and housing co-ops to provide
shelter. The co-op at Rochdale operated continuously until 1991 and is now merged with the Cooperative Group, a national co-op comprised of 5.5
million members across the UK and, reflecting the
broad economic vision of the Pioneers, operating a
family of businesses from food retailing to farming,
travel agencies to financial services, gas stations to
automobile dealerships, and healthcare to funeral
care.
Early co-ops enabled people to better meet their
needs through member-owned enterprises that were
firmly rooted in their local communities. But the

photo courtesy of Erbin Crowell

One of the more than 20 co-ops involved in

NCFA, the Upper Valley Food Co-op serves
Vermonts White River Junction area.

growth of the movement also had another important

result. As these stores grew, other merchants began
to alter their own practices in response, creating ripples of change that reached across the economy. As
co-ops have spread around the world, the movement
has found many different expressions and has been
a catalyst for the transformation of the economies
around them.
True to this legacy, food co-ops in our region have
been pioneers and innovators, promoting natural

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The commonalities between co-operative principles

and values and those of the Fair Trade movement
have supported collaboration with movements for
trade justice. In the last few years, food co-ops
and organizations such as the Northeast Organic
Farming Association (NOFA) have been active participants in dialogs around the shared challenges of
family farmers and farm workers in our own country and those in the developing world. The National
Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) and coops in our own region, including Berkshire Co-op
Market, Franklin Community Co-op and Honest
Weight Food Co-op, were founding members of the
Domestic Fair Trade Association, which seeks to
bring the principles of the international Fair Trade
movement to bear on agriculture here at home (for
more information, visit www.thedfta.org).
Food co-ops have also been leaders in strengthening local economies, supporting local producers
and rooting wealth and infrastructure in our communities. And as buying local becomes more
mainstream, co-ops are collaborating with other
stakeholders in the food system to ensure that relocalization contributes to change that is also just,
participatory and fair.
Stronger Together
At the same time, food co-ops have not always been
proactive in telling their story, in working together

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

29
ranging in size from large, multiple storefront retailers with thousands of members to smaller markets
with just a few hundred. Most of these co-ops have
been in operation for more than 20 years though
some, such as the Putney Food Co-op and the Co-op
Food Stores (Hanover Consumer Co-op), have been
active since the 1930s and 40s.

to measure and promote their impact, and in leveraging their shared strength. With this in mind, Brattleboro Food Co-op first convened a group of co-op
managers and board members in 2004 to explore
closer collaboration. In 2007, participants at a subsequent gathering in Vermont approved the Middlebury Manifesto, a document establishing what was
then called the Connecticut Valley Neighboring Coops and expressing the desire to further the ideals

of democracy, cooperation, autonomy and education

as enshrined in the International Cooperative Principles. The document goes on to state the intent of
participating co-ops to reorient the economy from
one dedicated to maximizing individual wealth to
one calculated to advance the common good, to
promote regional autonomy in food production
and other goods essential to human existence. An
overarching goal was to provide occasions for collective action to build a cooperative economy in our
geographic region.

Most of the food co-ops in our region emerged during the 1970s and 80s, as people worked together to
access healthy, organic, and bulk foods, and began
to advance new ideas such as Fair Trade. Food coops also supported the early development of farmer
co-ops such as Deep Root Organic Co-op, a regional
supplier of organic produce, and worker co-ops such
as the Fair Trade pioneer Equal Exchange. Area
food co-ops have also been early examples of economic relocalization. The Buffalo Mountain Food
Co-op in Hardwick, VT, for example, was founded

Building on this momentum, a representative steering committee was established with organizational
support provided by the National Cooperative
Grocers Association (NCGA) and the Cooperative
Fund of New England (CFNE). The group then embarked on a process of scenario planning in which it
explored potential outcomes of recent trends in the
economy, culture and politics of the region. What
might our regions economy look like in 2020?
How could food co-ops work together with likeminded organizations and networks to create more
resilient communities as we look toward a post-petroleum economy? How could we avoid duplication
of effort in order to support other initiatives, focus
on our core strengths and advance a shared vision
for the future?
A central focus for the group was the development
of the co-operative economy in our region. But parallel to this process of deciding where we wanted to
be in the future, we needed to understand where we
were now.
photo courtesy Erebin Crowell

The Putnam Food Co-op features photos of

local growers over their produce case.

Measuring Our Impact

The members of the NFCA are member-owned,
democratically governed community grocery stores

photo courtesy Erebin Crowell

Hardwick Vermonts
Buffalo Mountain Co-op
helped stimulate the towns food activism.

30

The Natural Farmer

photo courtesy Erebin Crowell

The Co-op movement has grown stronger through the willingness of members
to hear each other out and try to find solutions that work for everyone.
in 1973 and has been quietly laying the groundwork
for more recent activism that has put this town on
the national map of local foods activism.
In 2008, the NFCA took a major step in gaining a
better understanding of the economic impact of coops in the region. With support from the Brattleboro
and Hanover Food Co-ops, independent economic
analyst Doug Hoffer was hired to undertake a study
of member co-ops in Vermont, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire and Connecticut to collect and analyze
data about their impact on the regional economy.
The study revealed compelling data, including that
the 17 co-ops of the NFCA had a combined membership of 64,000 people and aggregate annual sales
exceeding $161 million. Further, these co-ops also
had a dramatic impact in the regional economy, including:
Support of Local Economies
Median revenue for member co-ops was $3 million and the average was $9.5 million. The median
growth rate of co-ops in the network over the previous three years was 14%.
Member co-ops purchased more than $33 million
in local products in 2007, including $10 million in
fresh farm products, $18 million in locally-processed
foods and $5 million in other products. (For the
purposes of this study, local was defined as being
sourced within the state or within 100 miles.)
Stable Employment and Services
$28.6 million in employee wages, with the average
wage being 18% higher than the average for food
and beverage stores in the same states.
Co-ops had lower staff turnover (36%) when
compared to supermarkets (59%) and more staff
employed fulltime (62% compared to 43% in supermarkets).
Taken together, member food co-ops in Vermont
would be among the top 25 employers in the state.

member co-ops. Total compensation for these 2,263

jobs is estimated to be $75 million. According to
this model, the direct, indirect, and induced fiscal
benefits of the co-ops equal $13.7 million in tax revenue for host states. (For a copy of this study, please
e-mail the author at erbin@nfca.coop.)
Since this study was completed, the NFCA has
continued to grow. Together, the now more than 20
member food co-ops operate 26 storefronts, have
a combined membership of over 82,000 individuals, employ 1,425 people and have annual revenue
of $185 million. While this growth is partly due to
additional co-ops joining the organization, further
analysis shows that individual co-ops have been
growing even during this challenging economy. For
example, if we remove the data from new members,
we find that between 2007 and the end of 2009 the
17 co-ops included in the original study grew about
8% in revenue, 4% in employees, and 17% in members.
Some examples of these trends include Brattleboro
Food Co-op, which is in the process of an ambitious
expansion aimed at better serving the community
and includes affordable housing in its plans, and the
Co-op Food Stores of New Hampshire, which has
recently opened a new location in nearby Vermont.
Meanwhile, new stores such as River Valley Market
in Northampton, MA, have opened their doors in
just the past few years. And new food co-ops are
in various stages of start-up across the region, from
Fiddleheads Food Co-op in New London, CT, to the
Old Creamery Co-op in Cummington, MA.

Further analysis, using data from the U.S. Commerce Department and input-output software (IMPLAN), enabled an estimate of multiplier effects,
including indirect impacts such as the circulation of
money in the local and regional economies. Co-ops
buy from farmers, wholesalers, and service providers who spend some of the money locally for their
business inputs, including payroll, equipment, supplies, utilities, and taxes. Some of the wages paid
to co-op employees and to workers down the supply
chains are spent locally as well. These are called
induced effects.

Envisioning the Future

Analysis of our economic activity has helped our
individual co-ops to better understand and communicate their impact in the region, and to reach out to
organizations with similar goals. More importantly,
perhaps, it has encouraged our association to articulate a vision for the future and to begin to use its
shared strength to advance that vision. In beginning
this process, we soon realized that our impact in the
region while impressive only represented a
beginning when considering the potential of a cooperative economy. A study by the University of
Wisconsin, for example, found that there are more
than 29,000 co-ops in the U.S., operating across
industries and services, with more than 500 in the
NFCAs membership area of western New England
(http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/impact.html). Recent
reports have also shown that co-ops have been more
stable during the recent upheavals of the global
economy, offering tools for communities seeking
more stable employment, services and infrastructure. (See, for example, Birchall & Ketilson, Resilience of the Cooperative Business Model in Times
of Crisis, International Labour Organization, 2009.
A pdf may be downloaded at www.ilo.org.)

For example, the $161 million in sales by member

co-ops in 2007 generated an additional $118 million from indirect and induced economic activity,
resulting in a total of $279 million in direct and
indirect impact. In terms of employment, including
full-time, part-time, and self-employed, money circulating in the regional economy resulted in 1,049
jobs in addition to the 1,240 direct jobs provided by

Recognizing our shared impact, the NFCA has

identified further analysis across co-op sectors and
throughout regional co-op supply chains as a future
priority. The Northeast is home to many successful
farmer co-ops and credit unions, as well as worker
co-ops that have begun to work together through
networks such as the Valley Alliance of Worker
Co-ops. Additionally, we have recognized that we

Support of Local Government and Infrastructure

including $7.3 million in sales, excise, and other
taxes, $434,000 by employees, and $500,000 in property taxes.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

might also draw lessons from places around the

world where co-operatives play a vital role in regional economies.

One source of inspiration is Emilia Romagna in

northeast Italy. Italy is known as the home of the
Slow Food movement, and this region is home to
vibrant artisanal food traditions such as Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, balsamic vinegar, local
pasta dishes and cured pork products. Agriculture
is central to the regional economy and is dominated
by family farmers and their co-operatives, and small
producers. Italy also has more co-ops per capita
than any other country in the world, and the contribution of co-ops as locally rooted, multigenerational
economic assets is enshrined in the Italian Constitution, which acknowledges the social function of
co-operation as a form of mutual aid devoid of all
private speculative intent. Coop Italia, a federation
of regional food co-ops, is the leading retailer in the
country, bucking a global trend in which this sector
is dominated by multinationals such as Wal-Mart.
Emilia Romagna has a particularly vibrant cooperative sector and in this region of 4.3 million
people, there are about 7,500 co-ops active across
the economy, including retailing, agriculture, manufacturing, social services, and credit. Ten percent of
the workforce is employed by co-ops, unemployment rates are extremely low, and the standard of
living is among the highest in Europe. Central to the
impact of the Italian co-operative movement is the
intentional and strategic manner in which economic
development is coordinated both within and across
sectors. For example, every co-op in Italy contributes 3 percent of its annual surplus to funds for cooperative development.
Energized by the power of such examples and reflecting on our own histories, we turned toward
the future. As our network expanded beyond the
bounds of the Connecticut River Valley, our name
evolved to the Neighboring Food Co-op Association, reflecting Wendell Berrys assertion that a
viable community is made up of neighbors who
cherish and protect what they have in common.
With the guidance of its steering committee and the
support of a project manager, our association engaged in a dialog around desired outcomes for our
work together.
The result of this process is a shared vision of a
thriving regional economy, rooted in a healthy, just
and sustainable food system. Recognizing the contribution of co-ops to strong, resilient regional econ-

NFCA Member Food Co-op Locations

Vermont
Brattleboro Food Co-op, Brattleboro
Buffalo Mountain Food Co-op, Hardwick
City Market (Onion River Co-op), Burlington
Co-op Food Stores, White River Junction
Dotties Discount, Brattleboro
Hunger Mountain Food Co-op, Montpelier
Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, Middlebury
Plainfield Food Co-op, Plainfield
Putney Food Co-op, Putney
Rutland Food Co-op, Rutland
South Royalton Food Co-op, South Royalton
Springfield Food Co-op, Springfield
Upper Valley Food Co-op, White River Junction
Massachusetts
Berkshire Co-op Market, Great Barrington
Green Fields Co-op Market, Greenfield
Leverett Village Co-op, Leverett
McCuskers Co-op Market, Shelburne Falls
Old Creamery Co-op, Cummington, MA
River Valley Market, Northampton
Wild Oats Market, Williamstown
New Hampshire
Concord Co-op Market, Concord
Co-op Food Stores, Hanover & Lebanon
Kearsarge Co-op Grocer, New London
Littleton Food Co-op, Littleton
Connecticut
Fiddleheads Food Co-op, New London
Willimantic Food Co-op, Willimantic

For a map of member co-ops, please visit www.nfca.

coop.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

omies, we envision collaboration among a variety of

co-operative enterprises. Our approach to achieving
this vision is to actively reach out to likeminded
organizations including food system activists, economic development agencies and farmers organizations. For example, the NFCA has opened dialogs
with NOFA-VT and other state chapters, organizations such as Community Involved in Sustaining
Agriculture (CISA) and Vermonts Farmer to Plate
initiative, as well as farmer co-ops in the region.
The NFCA has also become a charter affiliate member of the New England Farmers Union (NEFU),
recognizing the need for farmers and consumers to
collaborate in supporting sustainable farming and
rural communities, and in making our voice heard
before policy-makers.
Regional Sourcing
Food co-ops in our region have served as laboratories for new ways of thinking about food, from
organic and fairly traded goods to systems for the
distribution and retailing of bulk products. More
recently, co-ops in the region have also served as
important incubators for new local products. Were
the kind of place local entrepreneurs bring their new
products for test marketing, Annie Gaillard of Buffalo Mountain Food Co-op says in a recent article
for Cooperative Grocer. Many member co-ops work
closely with producers in their area to share information and plan production for the growing season.
As part of our effort to contribute to a healthy, just
and sustainable food system, the NFCA has been
working to identify products that are feasible to
grow and process in our region but are currently
unavailable or difficult to source on the local or
regional levels. Local is defined by the NFCA
as being sourced from within the state or 100 miles
from the point of sale. Some member co-ops choose
to use a more restrictive definition. Regional is
defined as the New England states plus New York
and adjacent areas of Canada. The NFCAs area
of membership currently includes Vermont, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Our
goal is to begin to work together with farmers, producers and likeminded organizations to begin to
fill these gaps, developing sources for products in a
manner that advances our vision.
In January of 2010, NFCA member City Market
(Onion River Co-op) in Burlington, VT, undertook a store-wide analysis of local product gaps
determining products that are feasible to grow
in Vermont but where a local source is currently
unavailable. Using this list as a starting point, the
NFCA sourcing committee compared notes among
member co-ops in the region to select the most common, high volume gaps. This reduced list of items
was then sent out to the broader co-op membership.

$15 for a US address, or

$20 for a foreign address

The Natural Farmer

NFCA members were asked to identify the sourcing

priority of these items from high to low. The items
selected as highest priority for sourcing work included dry grains (e.g. oats and popcorn), dry beans,
single-serving yogurt, frozen fruits and vegetables,
and chicken (chicken was eventually removed from
the list due to variations in tracking).
Member co-ops were then asked to run sales movement reports for the 2009 calendar year on those
products. We also surveyed member co-ops to find
out what price premium theyd be willing to pay for
products sourced on a regional level. The NFCA
is now sharing this preliminary data with agricultural agencies and food system advocates, farmers
and their organizations, and community economic
development groups across the region. Our goal is
to begin a dialog on how we might work together
in the future and we will be collecting feedback
and contacts in hopes of building understanding of
shared goals and identifying areas where we might
work together with likeminded organizations.
A key question is how can we collaborate with
farmers and food system advocates to support production, processing, marketing and distribution
infrastructure that will be rooted in our region and
accountable to our communities over the long term.
Looking Forward
The modern co-operative movement was launched
in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. In response to economic upheaval, dislocation of local
economies, concentration of wealth and control,
and globalization, people began to work together to
create a viable economic alternative that would be
based on member ownership, democratic control,
and meeting community needs.
In the wake of more recent economic challenges, interest in the co-op business model has increased dramatically. Once largely ignored by the mainstream
press, food co-ops have gained attention in the news
media and among community development activists
and organizations.
Across the region there are efforts to establish new
food co-ops oriented toward economic democracy
and relocalization. There is also a growing recognition that co-operative enterprises including food
co-ops, farmer co-ops, credit unions and worker
co-ops have been remarkably stable in the current
economy. In addition to their advantages as member-owned, democratically-controlled enterprises
that are guided by member priorities above the
accumulation of private profit, co-ops bring some
distinct strengths to the movement for relocalization
and the regional economies. For example, food coops:
tend to develop local skills & assets rather than
importing them into the region, creating leadership
and professional development opportunities.
are able to assemble limited financial resources to
create vital community enterprises (most food coops in the region are based on member shares of less
than $200).
have a low business failure rate and tend to be
long-lived, resulting in lasting economic and social
infrastructure.
are member-owned community economic institutions that are difficult to move or buy-out.
create regional efficiencies through the pooling of
purchasing power and other economic activities.
support vibrant, participatory and engaged communities.
As a result of these factors, food co-ops and coops in general contribute to a more stable food
system, infrastructure, employment & services, and
economy.
Looking forward, the NFCA is working to demonstrate the role of co-operative enterprise in building
more vibrant and resilient communities, supporting
the growth and development of our member co-ops
and the launch of new efforts, and reaching out to
farmers and their organizations and likeminded
groups such as NOFA to advance our shared goals
of a healthy, just and sustainable food system. In
doing so, we hope to build on the extraordinary vision of generations of co-operators, linking their
ideals with the imagination of our members to address new challenges and opportunities as we build
a thriving regional economy.

For more information on the NFCA, please visit

www.nfca.coop.

31

Erbin Crowell is executive director of the Neighboring Food Co-op Association and serves on the
board of the Domestic Fair Trade Association and
the National Cooperative Business Association. He
wishes to acknowledge the contribution of the many
food co-op staff and board members, and past project manager Eric DeLuca, to development of the
NFCA community and vision. He may be contacted
at erbin@nfca.coop.

Statement on the Co-operative Identity

Definition: A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their
common economic, social, and cultural needs and
aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.
Values: Co-operatives are based on the values of
self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality,
equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and
caring for others.
Principles: The co-operative principles are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into
practice.
1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership.
Co-operatives are voluntary organizations, open to
all persons able to use their services and willing to
accept the responsibilities of membership, without
gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.
2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control. Cooperatives are democratic organizations controlled
by their members, who actively participate in setting
their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives
members have equal voting rights (one member, one
vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organized in a democratic manner.
3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation.
Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At
least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive
limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed
as a condition of membership. Members allocate
surpluses for any or all of the following purposes:
developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up
reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible;
benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other
activities approved by the membership.
4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence.
Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organizations controlled by their members. If they enter
to agreements with other organizations, including
governments, or raise capital from external sources,
they do so on terms that ensure democratic control
by their members and maintain their co-operative
autonomy.
5th Principle: Education, Training and Information. Co-operatives provide education and training
for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives.
They inform the general public - particularly young
people and opinion leaders - about the nature and
benefits of co-operation.
6th Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives. Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement
by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.
7th Principle: Concern for Community. Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of
their communities through policies approved by
their members.
For more information, visit: www.ica.coop

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The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Organic Valley: Americas Largest Organic

Farmer Co-op Has Faced Tough Decisions

ganic Valley label, and a full range of organic meats

sold under the Organic Prairie label.
The co-op was organized in 1988 by a handful of
farmers in Southwestern Wisconsins Coulee Region. (A coulee is a geological term referring to a

Organic Valley and CROPP CEO George Siemon

by Jack Kittredge

Representing 1624 farm families in 34 states and 4

provinces of Canada, and projecting 19% growth to
gross $630 million in sales this year, Organic Valley is a historic success story in the long tradition of
farmer co-ops. Having built themselves a brand new
state-of-the-art headquarters in La Farge, Wisconsin

photo courtesy Organic Valley

only six years ago, they now find that they have to
add another three-quarters of an acre of space to
the tune of $6.1 million just to keep up with their
growth. For 22 years now the organization has been
adding farmers and farm products to its mix. The
co-op sells only organic products, among which
now are milk, yogurt, soy, cheeses, butter, spreads,
creams, eggs, produce and juice, sold under the Or-

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

33

The Natural Farmer

drainage zone. The word is used in Wisconsin for

the metropolitan area around La Crosse, which was
a part of the driftless area or Paleozoic plateau
where Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois
meet. The area is driftless in the sense that it
avoided glaciation in the last Ice Age, thus having
no glacial drift or the rock debris that litters much
of the Northeast.)
George Siemon (current CEO of Organic Valley)
met with 6 other area farmers in January of 1988
and organized the Coulee Region Organic Produce
Pool, or CROPP, a marketing co-op devoted to collectively marketing organic vegetables. Soon dairy
products were added under the Organic Valley label and the co-op became the number one source of
organic milk in the nation!
As a cooperative, CROPPs participating farmers
are members who democratically vote to control the
organization. There are elected regional committees,
as well as a national board of directors, who make
overall co-op decisions. Organic Valley has also
managed to avoid the Achilles heel of farmer coops: undercapitalization. It requires members to invest a total of five and a half percent of their annual
gross income from Organic Valley back into the coop. Dairy farmers can do this by paying the equity
requirement up front,deducting$.50 or $1.00 per
hundredweightfrom their payroll checkbeginning
when they join the co-op,or delaying payment for a
year and then beginning a $1.00 per hundredweight
deduction to meet their equity requirement. The cooperative pays 8% annually on the investment, and a
farmer leaving the co-op gets this equity back.
The mission of the Cooperative is to offer sustainable markets to family sized organic farms through
organic production. They admit that defining a
family farm is difficult because family farms are
different depending on what products they produce
or in what region the farm is located. Todays family farm is generally much larger than the farm of
20 years ago due to changes in machinery, lifestyles
and the loss of other family farms. But the co-op
has settled on a basic definition: a family farm is
one where the family members provide the primary
workforce and the farm is their livelihood.
Dairy Products and Regional Labels

Organic Valley currently has1331 dairy farmer

members with an average dairy herd size of 76.
Each farm is visited by co-op staff on a regular basis. The organization has a network of producers and
processing plants across the United States. Presently
they have different regional milk cartons that use
organic milk from that region. A distinct icon of the
region (a covered bridge was on the New England
label, for example until that label was merged into
Northeast Pastures) under the Organic Valley logo
identifies the regions uniqueness. These regions
include Northeast Pastures, Heartland Pastures,
Texas Pastures, Rocky Mountain Pastures, Pacific
Northwest Pastures and California Pastures. The
co-op has a strict policy to only use milk from the
region where it is produced, which is as close to
the processing plant as possible. On rare occasions,
however, they will bring in milk from the surrounding region, or outside the region if need be, to have
a continuous supply of organic milk.
Eggs
Organic Valley currently has 76 egg farmer-owners,
some with two different egg barns to offset production cycles. Flocks range from as few as 700 hens to
approximately 16,000, with an average flock of approximately 5,000 birds. Co-op staff regularly visit
farms to check on air quality, access to the outdoors
and other Organic Valley requirements that exceed
the National Organic Standards. Co-op farmers are
generally required to provide 1.75 square feet per
bird indoors and five square feet per bird outdoors.
Policy on 100% Production from Cooperative
Members
As a farmer cooperative, Organic Valleys goal is to
have members supply 100% of co-op production.
Under special conditions, however, the organization will use a small amount of non-member, USDA
certified organic production. This non-member pro-

180 people attend an eary CROPP organizational meeting

in February of 1988 in the courthouse at Viroqua, Wisconsin.

duction must also comply with identified additional

production standards. These exceptions to the member-only supply goal average approximately 1% or
less of the groups overall supply.
Additional Farm Standards

Each cooperative pool of production, like egg

farmers or dairy farmers, may develop standards
and policies that go above and beyond the USDA
National Organic Standards or other legal requirements. These CROPP-specific standards and policies clarify requirements for materials allowed on
member farms, help assure high product quality
standards are being met and assure animal husbandry goals are being met. All members who
join the cooperative sign a membership agreement
and pledge to abide by these additional standards.
Trained staff members conduct farm audits on specific standards to assure compliance.

Pasture Policy
Pasture is a foundation principle in organic livestock
production.The co-op requires a pasture plan to be
part of the farmer-members overall Farm Plan, and
on file with our cooperative.
Access to Outdoors
The National Organic Program (NOP) requires access to outdoors for all livestock, with temporary
exceptions due to weather, environmental or health
concerns. Cooperative standards have specific requirements for each species. In the egg pool, members are required to provide a minimum of 5 square
feet per bird outdoors and to maximize pasture for
the birds.
Farm Materials
A material allowed by USDA in organic production but not allowed in the CROPP cooperative
program is Oxytocin. This is a hormone-stimulating
synthetic that is used widely in milk production to
aid in calving and therapeutic uses. Organic Valley
has elected to not allow this hormone mimicker
in organic milk so they can truthfully tell consumers their products are produced without synthetic
hormones.
Antibiotics
While antibiotics are not allowed in organic production, their use is encouraged for treating sick animals rather than allow the animal to suffer. If used,
the animal cannot return to organic production. The
cooperative maintains the ability to review members certification and if it determines that antibiotics are improperly used, or an animal is allowed to
suffer, that member may be terminated. There are
two minor exceptions where trace amounts of antibiotics are used as a preservative. Those exceptions
are vaccines for young animals and artificial insemination, both of which the co-op feels are invaluable
tools that aid in animal well being.

photo courtesy Organic Valley

Replacement Animals
After entering organic dairying, Organic Valley
requires farmer-members to raise all of their future
milk cows on their organic farms, organically from
the day they are born. If the animals raised on a
farm are not adequate for the organic farm plan,
then the farm can purchase only other organically
raised replacements, or dairy animals transitioned in
the new herd process.
Food Safety
The co-op has a unique premium and deduct program in place which significantly rewards or penalizes based upon level of quality. A co-op committee
peer reviews quality and has the ability to suspend
farm product pick-up, if necessary, until quality improvements are made.
Ingredients in Organic Valley Products
The co-op produces products as naturally as possible with a minimum of additional ingredients. When
they do add ingredients, it is because of consumer
demand or government regulation. An example
would be calcium added to orange juice.
Prices and Profit Sharing
Over the last 20 years, Organic Valleypay price premiums ranged from 25% higherwhen the co-op was
founded to, in recent years, 50-100% higher than
conventional pay prices.In addition, when the coop meets its profit goals, they share the wealth: 45%
of profits go to farmer-members, 45% to employees,
and 10% to co-op community support programs.
The community giving funds are divided equally
between two committeesone of farmers and one
of employeeswith each group dedicating their
funds to new projects or initiatives undertaken by
volunteer or non-profit organizations.
Farmers Advocating for Organic (FAFO)

Dedicated to protecting and safeguarding the organic marketplace by investing in organic research,
education and advocacy, the money for FAFO grants
consists of voluntary contributions from CROPP
farmer/ members. FAFO funds are distributed by a
committee of nine CROPP farmers from all over the
country. In 2008, 77% of CROPP farmers contributed to the fund, and the committee was able to provide $568,529 in grants to 30 different projects.
Methane
In recent years the dairy industry has come under
scrutiny regarding the effects of methane on climate
change, because methane is 21 times more potent
than carbon dioxide. Organic Valley is partnering
with local extension and university personnel to
determine the viability of small scale manure digesters and anticipate feasibility studies on some co-op
farms. Additionally, they are working with Stonyfield Farm on a project to reduce methane from
cows.

34

On-farm Energy
In the past few years the co-op has began to look
deeper into what really qualifies as sustainable
fuel. They wanted to identify non-food, non-GMO,
organic oil seed crops to use as candidate bio-fuels
and have established a system for farmers to grow,
harvest, press, convert and run a variety of contenders without ever leaving the farm.
The co-op has so far invested two seasons growing
and researching camelina (a small false flax) and
sunflowers. Both of these crops have shown strong
promise in test fields. For example, farmers are seeing not only a high yield of oil (80110 gallons per
acre) but also 12001500 pounds of feed meal per
acre as well. Feed and fuel are produced in one process from the same field. Even in these early stages,
this approach is helping farmers cut both their fuel
and feed costs.
Organic Valley completed a mobile biodiesel system in 2008 and successfully created biodiesel from
crops of sunflowers and camelina to power some
vehicles and equipment which are now used for
demonstrations on farms and at events.
Recycled Content
CROPP has consolidated corrugated carton needs
with one company, realizing cost savings because of
the increased volume in business and is also able to
create cardboard cartons to ship packaged products
that contain a minimum of 81% recycled content
--72% of which is post-consumer waste.
Controversial Issues

Despite its values, innovations and cooperative

structure, three decisions made by Organic Valley
over the years have proven controversial among a
number of consumers and raised questions about
the inherent differences between cooperatives and
private companies. All three decisions appear to be
based on the operating requirements of a dairy business functioning at a national scale and would have
been the same whether the business were a co-op or
a private corporation. These three decisions were:
1) to ultra-pasteurize some of their milk,

The Natural Farmer

2) to amend the Organic Foods Production Act in

order to overturn the Harvey decision, and
3) to prevent member dairies from actively selling
raw milk.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Ultra-pasteurization
Pasteurization is the process of heating a food, usually liquid, to a specific temperature for a definite
length of time, and then cooling it immediately.
This process slows microbial growth in food. The
process was named after its creator, French chemist
and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. The process was
originally conceived as a way of preventing wine
and beer from souring.
There are two main types of pasteurization used
today: High Temperature/Short Time (HTST) and
Ultra-High Temperature (UHT or ultra-heat treated).
In the HTST process, milk is forced between metal
plates or through pipes heated on the outside by
hot water, and is heated to 71.7 C (161 F) for
1520 seconds. UHT processing holds the milk at
a temperature of 135 C (275 F) for a fraction of a
second. Milk simply labeled pasteurised is usually
treated with the HTST method, whereas milk labeled ultra-pasteurised or simply UHT has been
treated with the UHT method.
Pasteurization is the main reason for milks extended shelf life. High Temperature Short Time (HTST)
pasteurised milk typically has a refrigerated shelf
life of two to three weeks, whereas ultra-pasteurised
milk can last much longer, sometimes two to three
months. When ultra heat treatment (UHT) is combined with sterile handling and container technology
(such as aseptic packaging), it can even be stored
unrefrigerated for 69 months.
Ultra-pasteurization means that enormous quantities of milk can be processed much more quickly
than any other pasteurization (or safety regulation)
process. The milk is also shelf-stable for several
months. On the other hand, many consumers feel
the treatment changes the taste and texture of the
milk. They feel the high heat inactivates many of
the flavor components in raw milk and adds its own

cooked flavor. The process also affects whey proteins that contribute to the thick creaminess of dairy.
Organic Valley uses HTST pasteurization for all
its regionally branded gallons and half-gallons of
organic milk. The cooperative was built on the concept of regional milk production. But they began
to offer ultra pasteurized milk and cream in 1998
in response, they say, to strong consumer demand.
Many people, both consumers and retailers, prefer
the longer shelf life offered by the UHT process,
and they have also received some consumer feedback stating a preference for the taste of the ultra
pasteurized milk.
The longer transit time for milk in the national pool,
and the fact that organic milk is less in demand than
conventional so often sits on a shelf longer before
being sold, also make the business advantages of
milk treated with UHT clear: less spoilage and
waste.
Ultra pasteurized Organic Valley milk is offered
in non-regionally branded half gallons, as well as
quarts and aseptic (shelf stable) liters and 8 oz.
single-serves. Note that both varieties are available in half gallons. The process used to pasteurize
the milk is printed onboth the gable top and on the

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

When the Harvey decision came down many small
organic farmers and consumers were jubilant, feeling that the loose standards promulgated by the
NOP were finally being addressed. But this third
court finding delivered a blow to Organic Valleys
supply situation. Although the law clearly said
100% of feed must be organic, the USDA had allowed transitioning farmers the 80% exemption because of the high cost of organic feed, and many had
taken advantage of it. When it was yanked out from
under them, many dairy farmers felt they could not
continue in the organic program.

front of the package. The ultra pasteurized milk is

clearly defined as Ultra Pasteurized. Traditionally
pasteurized (HTST) regional milk is defined simply
as Pasteurized and includes a moniker for your
region below the logo; e.g. Heartland Pastures,
Northwest Pastures, etc.
Organic Valley says that, in terms of nutritional
value, the primary changes that occur in pasteurization include a negligible loss of vitamins A, C and
B, and Folic Acid.
Amending the Organic Foods Production Act

In 2005, the US First Circuit Court ruled in favor of

Maine blueberry farmer Arthur Harvey. He had sued
the National Organic Program alleging that multiple
provisions of the National Organic Program Final
Rule were inconsistent with the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. In brief, the court found that:
nonorganic ingredients not commercially available in organic form but used in the production
of items labeled organic must have individual
reviews in order to be placed on the National
List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances;
synthetic substances are barred in the processing
or handling of products labeled organic; and
dairy herds converting to organic production
are not allowed to be fed feed that is only 80%
organic for the first nine months of a one-year
conversion.

All of a sudden they were facing 4 times the cost,

explains George. Most were producing their own
forage, and buying in grain. Under the 80/20 rule,
the grain was the 20% of the ration that was conventional. After Harvey all that grain had to be organic.
For some that meant paying four times as much for
feed.
As a result Organic Valley found itself supporting
the OTA in its controversial effort to amend the
OFPA in the fall of 2005. While not asking for a
return of the 80/20 rule, the dairy part of the amendment allowed transitioning farmers to feed their own
transitioning feed during the third year as organic,
avoiding a four-year transition. The amendment was
passed without serious debate or public notice and
both the substance and the manner of handling this
amendment bitterly divided the organic industry.
Siemon was not happy to be involved in this, and
wanted to prevent such an event from happening
again. In order to avoid it he felt two things needed
to be done.
First, we need to educate the consumer, he said
at the time. We need to talk about the quality of
the food but also about the kinds of farms it comes
from. We need consumers who care about keeping
family farms alive, who want to buy locally and
support farmers markets and CSAs. Ive served on
the NOSB, we talk about these issues on our product packaging panels, we regularly put money into
consumer education.

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Second, he continued, farmers need a face in

Washington DC. We may not think its necessary,
but if you are not at the table, someone else will
be. Farmers need their own voice. We have tried to
help farmers get organized, supporting groups like
NODPA. Weve put aside money to deal with this.
Its hard, but things in this country are controlled
from Washington DC. Without their own organization, farmers will be left out.

Since this division among the organic forces of

2005, Organic Valley has been following up on both
of these directions.
Preventing Members From Actively Selling Raw
Milk
On May 26, 2010 Organic Valley/CROPP explained
the boards raw milk decision:
In March of this year, Organic Valley/CROPP
Cooperatives Farmer Board of Directors endorsed
a statement supporting the legalization of raw milk
in the state of Wisconsin that was sent to Governor
Doyle. This was in keeping with the cooperatives
long standing support of consumer choice. So why
in May did the CROPP Board vote to not allow its
farmer-owners to sell raw milk? Is this a reversal of
the position?
The raw milk issue at CROPP is one of the most
deeply debated topics tackled by the cooperative in
its 22 year history. The debate has been active on
the membership, board, committee and management
team levels for well over a year now, with the hope
for a win-win solution. During this year volumes of
informationresearch studies, illness cases, legal
precedents, nutritional information and so on were
brought forth. Each side was convinced that the
information they brought to the table would sway
the other side. It is correct to say that we are deeply
familiar with both sides of the issue and we are
still divided. So why did the Board finally vote to not
allow its members to be in the raw milk business?
The synopsis belowmay help explain the decision:
Most CROPP farmer-owners drink raw milk and
many believe in its benefits. The decision is not
because we are against raw milk.

36

The Natural Farmer

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

37

The Natural Farmer

An unknown minority of our 1600+ dairy farmers

sell raw milk as a side business. Some simply sell
small quantities to neighbors, while others market
it more actively.
Raw milk is growing in popularity and is truly a
local product. We believe consumers should have
the choice to purchase it directly from the farm
and consume it expediently.
CROPPs mission is to serve its farmers. We do
this by being in the business of selling pasteurized organic milk under our brand, Organic Valley. This is a complex endeavor. Our model is to
have regional milk going to regional markets. Our
board wants its farmer-owners to stay focused on
our model.
Since our founding in 1988, when a farmer-owner
signs up to become a member, they agree to deliver all of their milk to the cooperative, with the
exception of milk used for calves and their own
families. This policy simply requires that members
uphold that agreement.
We have encountered challenges in managing our
milk supply. When the cooperative counts on and
plans for a farmers entire supply, but then the
amount of milk delivered is unexpectedly less due
to raw milk sales, this creates difficulties in supply
management and planning, which affects all of the
cooperatives farmer-owners.
We are taking a cautious approach in order to
keep our cooperative and brands strong for future
generations of organic family farmers.
At the request of the membership at the co-ops
most recent annual meeting, the farmer board
wanted to end this drawn out raw milk debate, and
they took the more conservative route to prohibit
the farmer-owners from being in the raw milk
business. This decision will require all our farmerowners who sell raw milk to choose one business
or the other. This may end up being a boon for the
raw milk movement in the states where it is legal.
The Cooperative cannot condone the sale of raw
milk in the states where it is illegal.

CROPP Cooperative is not against raw milk. We

have let our farmers sell raw milk on the side for
two decades. We have gone through a well vetted,
inclusive process. It is now time for us to stand by
our board's decision.
We are currently working on policy implementation plan and timeline for our farmer-owners.

So what do these decisions suggest about cooperatives? To me it is that they are ultimately in business
and succeed or fail according to the same rules as
other businesses: Do you serve the demand? Do you
do it efficiently with your resources? Do you end
up making money for your owners? Whether your
company is owned by a sole proprietor, a group of
peers with equal votes, or stockholders based on
their investments, it seems that it ultimately has to
act in certain ways if it wants to survive.

Subscribe to:
Send $15 for U.S. address,
$20 for foreign address to:

411 Sheldon Rd.

Barre, MA 01005

beautiful note cards

raising money for Vermont
schools to serve the best
possible local, fresh and
whole foods!

thank you very

much for your
support!

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to receive a sample or to order note cards
(single packs, large quantities, wholesale or fund raiser)
contact Pat Matton,
Burlington School Food Project,
802.864.8416

38

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

The Natural Farmer

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Deep Root Organic Co-op:

Growing Co-operation

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

by Erbin Crowell

Founded in 1986, Deep Root Organic Co-op was

growing and marketing organic vegetables on a regional level before it became a national trend. Now,
with demand for fresh, healthy, regionally-grown
produce on the rise, the co-operative is connecting
more consumers with their farmer members. As
sustainable food system advocates explore systems
for the distribution of produce, Deep Roots nearly
25 years of experience has demonstrated the potential of the co-op model to support the viability of
family farms. Based in Johnson, VT, Deep Root is
made up of nineteen members, including farmers
across Vermont and the eastern townships of Qubec. The co-op serves wholesale customer across
the Northeast, including food co-ops and mainstream grocery stores.
Chris Poshpeck, who joined the co-op as general
manager in 1998, links members with distributors
and retailers across the Northeast and beyond. On
a weekly basis, farmer members send him a list of
what theyre harvesting everything from tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, peas and fennel to several
varieties of lettuce, kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli,
and collards and Chris in turn contacts buyers to
negotiate orders and arrange delivery.
Deep Root members offer a broad range of products
year-round. But thanks to the northern climate, the
co-op may be best known for root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beets, rutabagas, burdock, and black
radish, and a large variety of winter squashes. More
recently, the co-op has also begun offering a line of
fermented and packaged spiced carrots, grated beets,
onions with miso, and sauerkraut.
Deep Roots sales have grown from around $50,000

The Natural Farmer

39

in its early days to more than $3 million dollars in

2009. The co-ops products can be found in the
produce sections of food co-ops across the region,
including Brattleboro Food Co-op (VT), Willimantic
Food Co-op (CT), City Market Co-op (Burlington,
VT), River Valley Market Co-op (Northampton,
MA), Putney Food Co-op (VT), and Springfield
Food Co-op (VT), as well as a growing number of
mainstream grocery stores such as Whole Foods
Market. Sales continue to grow, but the co-op is
clear in its purpose as a member-owned and controlled enterprise. Were not here to accumulate
money, says Chris. Were here to help our members be more successful.
Recent efforts to build more sustainable regional
economies have focused on systems for the efficient and effective aggregation and distribution of
produce from family farmers. Being organized as a
co-op enables Deep Root members to focus on their
individual farms, while negotiating with buyers and
marketing their products as a group. By pooling
their production, members can also provide a more
reliable source of high quality, diverse produce to
their customers, while benefiting farmers. And because the co-op is farmer-owned, it is rooted in the
region and accountable to its members, rather than
to the priorities of external owners or investors.
Deep Root is always looking for new ways to
strengthen their members, such as improved valueadded and distribution systems. As co-op member
Tony Lehouillier, of Foote Brook Farm in Johnson,
VT, points out, We can do a lot better with a little
more control over our destiny.

produce business. And with an additional loan from

CFNE, the co-op recently completed the construction of a warehouse facility in Johnson, VT. This
building will allow the co-op to have more control
over the storage and distribution of its products. It
also provides much needed office and meeting space
for the growing co-op and its employees.
You can help support the co-op by asking for their
products where you shop. For more information on
Deep Root Organic Co-op, member farms and their
products, please visit their website at www.deeprootorganic.com.

A line of credit from the Cooperative Fund of New

England (CFNE), a regional loan fund for co-ops,
has helped Deep Root manage the seasonality of the

An earlier version of this article was published by

the Cooperative Fund of New England. For more
information, please visit www.coopfund.coop.

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40

Full Circle Farm:

Organic Produce
Delivery Service A
Threat or Boon
to LocalA.Farms?
by Stephen Sherman

The Natural Farmer

Resting just across from the farms greenhouses is

an early model Allis-Chalmers cultivating tractor.
Rows of greens and late season crops extend beyond
the red barn to the hills of the Snoqualmie Valley.

Full Circle is one of a new breed of farm-based

businesses generating admiration and controversy
in the western United States. In a radical departure
from traditional Community Supported Agriculture,
farms like Full Circle and Capay Organic in California supplement their own certified-organic produce
with that of other producers to fill boxes year-round
for thousands of subscribers. At Full Circle, subscribers can be found as far away as Arctic Alaska.
The model offers the popular CSA-style box scheme
to those who do not wish to eat exclusively what
is in season locally. People want peaches and
nectarines in months when theyre not available in
Washington, said Frank Paganelli, Chief Operating
Officer at Full Circle.
From CSA to Farm-to-Table
Full Circle Farm began in 1996 as a small CSA in
North Bend, Washington. After splitting from their
partner in 2000, farm founders Andrew Stout and
Mary Munroe moved Full Circle to Carnation and
expanded the business rapidly.
In order to provide a year-round CSA program, Full
Circle started supplementing their own winter and
storage crops with items grown on organic farms
further south. The farm began letting customers
specify some of the items in their boxes. Long-haul
trucking and air transport allowed the farm to expand its delivery area throughout Alaska and the
Puget Sound region.
What Andrew Stout has pioneered, said Paganelli,
is extending [the CSA] model into a more customized approach.
Today, Full Circle employs about 140 people and
earns over $11 million in annual sales. In addition
to its subscription program, the company sells at
farmers markets and to retail outlets in and around
the Seattle metropolitan area. Approximately 7,000
of its subscribers live in Washington State, and
about 5,000 live in Alaska. Full Circle subscribers
can now add other grocery items like organic meats,
artisan cheeses, and specialty chocolates to their
produce boxes at additional cost. Paganelli states
Full Circle has outgrown the CSA label, and the
farm now refers to its service as a Farm-to-Table
program.

Send $15 for US, $20 for foreign address to:

Moore believes Full Circles model allows access

to second tier customers who would be otherwise
uninterested in a traditional CSA. Several local
entrepreneurs, like Dan Hulse of Terra Organics and
Andrew Stout of Full Circle, have taken the CSA
model to a new level of growth and profitability. By
sourcing wholesale and integrating vertically they
have been able to both increase margins and crack
open a whole new tier of consumers those who
value the convenience of home delivery, he wrote
in an email correspondence.
Alaskan Criticism
The process of expanding the traditional CSA model
into an international system of organic produce
delivery has been controversial in Alaska. Susan
Willsrud is co-founder and farm director at Calypso
Farm and Ecology Center outside of Fairbanks. She
has seen her non-profit suffer from competition with
Full Circles service. This year, she had trouble for
the first time filling her CSA of 70. Four former
shareholders explicitly stated they were switching to
Full Circle.

Bright sunshine, an October treat in the Pacific

Northwest, has lured cyclists from bustling Seattle to the unhurried country roads of Carnation,
Washington. A small, hand painted sign on Route
203 points down Northeast 8th Street to Full Circle
Farm.

The quiet property belies the 12,000-member produce delivery service at the heart of Full Circle
Farms operations.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

photo courtesy Steve Sherman

In addition to its 12,000 member subscription program, Full Circle sells to retail outlets like Whole Foods Market.

A Complex Operation
After a bracing plunge in the frigid Arctic Ocean,
a family of four in Barrow, Alaska could enjoy a
warming plate of roast organic vegetables from their
Full Circle Farm box. It is a complex operation that
brings these vegetables from the soil to this northernmost town in the United States.
The origins of the items in a box vary seasonally,
but on average 65% of produce sold is purchased
by Full Circle from other farms. Source farms vary
in size from dozens to hundreds of acres. We try
to source as locally as possible, explained COO
Frank Paganelli. For crops unavailable in Washington State, Full Circle may purchase from dozens
of certified-organic farms in California, the Pacific
Northwest, Mexico, or tropical areas like Hawaii
and Ecuador. Farms are listed and routinely featured
in the weekly Full Circle newsletter.
We try to tell their story. We think a fundamental
part of our mission is to support local farmers, said
Paganelli.
Once produce has been harvested, it is processed
and moved to a distribution center south of Seattle
where it is custom-packed into boxes. Each customer is offered a basic set of items based on availability. Using an online e-commerce platform or by
phone, subscribers can then customize their basic
box and/or specify additional items they would like
included. Boxes destined for Alaska may be shipped
to a facility in Anchorage and supplemented with
any Alaskan product the subscriber has requested.
Completed boxes are loaded onto pallets and processed for transport. Local deliveries are made using Full Circles own fleet of delivery trucks, while
long-haul transport is outsourced to trucking and
airfreight companies.
Full Circle offers home delivery to Anchorage and
Western Washington from Everett to Olympia. Other subscribers must collect produce at one of hundreds of designated pick-up sites. In Alaskas rural
communities like Barrow, one host subscriber may
pick up a dozen boxes on the unpaved runway of the
local airport and distribute them from home.
Eating in Season
Within Seattles local food movement, Full Circle
has inspired debate about what it means to eat locally.
Some Seattle residents believe passionately about
eating locally and are not deterred by the winter
months, reported Alex Moore, program manager
at the Seattle-based non-profit Cascade Harvest
Coalition, Other consumers, myself among them,
begin to round out our local diet with products from
California as root vegetables begin to dominate the
year-round CSA menu.

In the greater Fairbanks area, Calypso Farm promotes concepts like Alaskan food security, food
miles, and eating seasonally. Willsrud says that Full
Circles presence undermines the educational work
of her organization. Though it operates in a similar
manner to her own CSA, Willsrud sees Full Circles
service as an industrial organic choice because of
the transport distance of its produce and the size of
its source farms.
Eating local is not an easy choice, she asserts, and
often means an altered diet in exchange for benefits
to community and environment. The important part
of CSA is that the community is invested in a local
farm and that the CSA builds local food security,
she said. It hurts the local food economy here,
because regardless of what [Andrew Stout] is intending, the choice is between a local CSA and Full
Circle.
Full Circle Farm is aware of the criticisms of Alaskan growers like Willsrud, but COO Frank Paganelli
disagrees. We offer different products, he maintains, She offers a locally-grown CSA product. In
Alaska, we try to source from local farms, but we
primarily have to bring produce from out of state.
Theyre probably one of the worst things thats
happened to the local farmers market said Arthur
Keyes, owner and operator of Glacier Valley Farm
in Palmer, Alaska. Keyes saw sales at his market
stand decline in 2007 and 2008. Customers he knew
by name told him they were buying less produce because of their Full Circle boxes.
Keyes currently operates Glacier Valley CSA, a
produce delivery service in Alaska of 100-200 members. He sources only from his own and other farms
in Alaska as long as the season allows and then
switches to out-of-state organic farms.
A Future in the Northeast?
Keyes assessment of Full Circles role is grim.
If the Northeast ever gets an operation like this,
local farmers at the farmers market will get hurt,
he said.
Though no farm-based model similar to Full Circle
exists in our region, Boston Organics provide organic produce and groceries to subscribers in the
Boston metropolitan area. Customers lose some of
the benefits of a traditional CSA in exchange for
convenience, selection, and often lower cost. As the
local and organic markets continue to expand in the
Northeast and across the country, the question will
be if consumer demand can support both types of
produce delivery.
Frank Paganelli provided an example as to where he
sees Full Circle within the larger organic movement.
A consumer can get a stalk of organic celery from
Amazon.coms grocery delivery service, from a Full
Circle Farm box, or from a traditional small-scale
CSA.
We might have some overlap, he said, but by and
large we have a different value proposition.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1
Madison Meeting of NOSB
continued from page 1

The Natural Farmer

that place pretty images of birds outdoors on the

consumer packaging. They should put pictures of
their operations on the label, he said. Any lies
hurt us all, he added.

The board, impressed and sympathetic, and

especially respectful, of the farmers who traveled
to testify, committed to refine their proposal by
their next meeting for strict stocking densities and
other benchmarks that will assure organic livestock
production meets the letter of the law and consumer
expectations.

On organic hops, the NOSB voted unanimously

to require organic beer to include 100% organic
hops beginning January 1, 2013. Organic
hops producers and brewers turned out a strong
contingent arguing in favor of the resolution during
two days of public hearings on various organic
issues.

The NOSB also decided not to proceed with efforts

to raise the profile of the made with organic label
that is part of the USDA organic system. Retailer
and consumer groups strongly encouraged keeping
the current organic labeling regime, and testified
that more prominence for the made with organic
label could lower consumer demand for products
made with 95-100% organic ingredients.

We were concerned that a more prominent front

label message concerning made with organic
ingredients, including the proposal for language that
would say the products were certified to USDA
standards would have created a cheaper organic
light, actually jeopardizing the continued growth of
truly organic products, said Will Fantle, Codirector
for The Cornucopia Institute.

Perhaps the most divisive issue was Corn Steep

Liquor and determining whether or not the fertilizer
component (for nitrogen) was a synthetic or
non-synthetic material. Members of the NOSB
representing various food industry and commercial
concerns were anxious to remove any clouds over
its future use and ensure that Corn Steep Liquor

Protecting
What You
Value Most

would remain a part of organic production. But

the NOSB, after considerable debate, ultimately
decided to seek additional technical information
to make a more informed decision, possibly at its
next meeting.The fertilizer debate pretty much
split clearly across a divide of agribusiness interests
on the board and other members who work for
nonprofit organic groups.

The NOSB also removed roadblocks to the use of

organic yeast, an issue that had been debated for
a number of years. Yeasts unique characteristics
had led it to be considered a nonagricultural nonsynthetic substance. It is now been categorized as
an agricultural product.

The board elected Tracey Miedema (of Earthbound

Farms) as its next chair, over Jay Feldman (of
Beyond Pesticides), and Joe Dixon (of Whole Foods
Markets) as vice-chair. The spring 2011 meeting of
the NOSB will take place in Seattle, Washington on
April 26-29.

Agribusiness
Insurance
Solutions

Summer Conference
continued from page 1

the weekend of the conference to do all manner of

tasks required for the smooth operation of the event
everything from raising and lowering the flaps on
the exhibit tent, to staffing the t-shirt sales table, to
orienting conference goers as they arrive at UMass.
Chuk Kittredge, who has served as entertainment
coordinator on the Summer Conference Committee,
is now also serving as volunteer coordinator, and
he is planning to organize volunteers this year
into teams responsible for specific tasks. The idea
is to give our volunteers the chance to take fuller
ownership of the work they do at the conference and
be able to not only do their tasks but also manage
them more independently. If youre interested in
work exchange, be sure to sign up early. You can
contact Chuk at chukkittredge@hotmail.com.
Plans are also in the works to make a variety
of subtle changes to the conference based on
evaluations. We learned that we can improve the
placement of camp sites to avoid possible noise
complaints, and we learned that the placement of
the entertainment, which took place outside for the

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42

first time in 2010, may need to be shifted in order to

moderate noise levels and make a welcoming space
for everyone to hang out.
We also continue to improve the layout of the
program book, and our management of the new
Summer Conference Auction. And we continue to
seek out new talent and pioneering creativity for our
workshop presenters. (See below).
We also have two new members of the committee.
One is Mel Shaw, a long-time conference
attendee and a farmer in Dover, MA. She has the
responsibility of soliciting food donations, planning
the menu, sourcing ingredients for the local meal,

The Natural Farmer

and being the primary liaison with UMass staff
on all issues food related. If you have a good lead
on a source of food donations, contact her at mel.
q.shaw@gmail.com.
Another new person on the Committee staff this
year is Siedeh Rezaei-Kamalabad, a work exchange
volunteer for the past two conferences. She will
serve as Registration Co-Coordinator, working
closely with Kathleen Geary to process your
registrations and tell you what you need to know
about each detail pertaining to your registration.
PS For those who attended the workshop series
led by our 2010 keynoter, Sally Fallon, we posted

Garden Notes

by Larry Siegel

Full disclosure here: among my responsibilities in

my former life was to push numbers around. And,
while nothing else from that former life persists, I
continue to push around numbers, especially if they
relate to matters agricultural. Say what you will
about numbers (they are rather drab) they do serve
one unequivocal purpose: they quantify. When I
ask a fellow grower or farmer how potatoes fared,
he or she invariably responds with it was a good
year (or a so-so year or a lousy year). Nothing is
simpler than the determination of quantified potato
performance. It is pounds harvested as a ratio of
pounds planted (9:1 for me this lackluster year, almost twice that last year).

in addition to my long-serving role as trialer for

FEDCO Seeds and Moose Tubers. This years trial
involved garlic and a determination of yields as a
reflection of spacing. A four-foot wide, twenty-four
foot long bed was divided into four quadrants, the
difference being the number of rows within the four
feet (from five to eight). In all cases, the cloves were
set six inches apart in the row and averaged one half
ounce in size, not atypical of the garlic I plant.
The results were not striking but interesting nonetheless and are summarized in the chart below. The
eight-across quadrant provided the lowest return per
amount planted and the smallest bulbs but the highest
total yield and the largest monetary return.

I have planted all my garlic eight-across this fall but

That being said I generally embark on one mini-trial have divided the bed into quadrants representing
or another over the course of the growing season
cloves of different sizes. Stay tuned.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

to our website a group of recipes she gave us titled

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. You can find them
here:
http://www.nofasummerconference.org/pdfs/
BLDRecipes.pdf
Call for Workshops
Every year the NOFA Summer Conference recruits
creative and enthusiastic presenters for workshops
for adults, teens, and children. In November 2010,
the call for workshop proposals for the 2011
Conference complete with a Workshop Proposal
Form will be sent out to previous workshop
presenters and the ever growing list of presenter
prospects that I am building. It will also be posted
on the website: www.nofasummerconference.org.

The conference features workshops for adults on

a full range of topics: Alternative Energy and the
Environment; Animal Husbandry; Crop Specific
workshops; Farm Economics and Management;
Farming and the Community; Farm Tours; Food
and Family; Food Preservation and Cooking; Fruits,
Nuts, and Trees; Garden and Greenhouse; Herbs
and Flowers; International Agriculture; Land Care;
Marketing; Nutrition and Health; Of the Spirit;
Politics and Policy; Practical Skills; Soil Fertility;
Social Justice; and Urban Agriculture. If you would
like to submit a workshop proposal contact: Ben
Grosscup at ben.grosscup@nofamass.org or call at
413-549-1568.
There will also be a Childrens Conference (ages
2-12) and a Teen Conference (ages 13-17), which
explores many themes in common with the adult
workshops in a manner that is appropriate for
each age. If you want to submit a proposal for the
Childrens Conference, contact Valerie Walton
aallspice@aol.com or (978) 689-0716. If you want
to submit a proposal for the Teen Conference,
contact Jenn Caron at jennc69@gmail.com or (978)
544-5646.
The sooner you submit your proposal, the better.
We need your workshop proposal submitted by
December 31, 2010. The vast majority of decisions
on accepting workshops will be made by the end of
January 2011.
All workshop presenters receive free conference
registration and a $50 honorarium for presenting a
90 minute workshop.

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Interested in Sponsoring?
If you want to sponsor or advertise your business
and gain excellent exposure for your products
and services, including a logo and website link
placement on the NOFA Summer Conference
website, see this link to last summers sponsors:
http://www.nofasummerconference.org/sponsors.
php.
Larger level sponsors also receive exhibit space
and registration. Businesses and farms are also
welcomed to simply exhibit and advertise in the
Program Book. For more information, contact Bob
Minnocci at bob@nofamass.org or 617-236-4893.

NOFA-NY Awarded One-Year

Beginning Farmer & Rancher Grant

NOFA-NY has announced that the National Institute

for Food and Agriculture recently granted funding
through the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher
Development Program for an initial phase of a oneyear pilot project has three goals.

NOFA-NY will offer a beginning farmer workshop

track at their annual conference (held in Saratoga
Springs from January 21-23, 2011) and will be
providing scholarships to qualified beginning farmer
applicants.
NOFA-NY will provide opportunities for experienced farmers to provide relevant and valuable
learning experiences to beginning farmers.
NOFA-NY will support on-farm practical educational opportunities and social events for beginning
farmers to learn new skills, to forge supportive
friendships and to create lasting working relationships with other beginning farmers.
Stay tuned at www.nofany.org or by contacting Rachel Schell-Lambert at (585) 279-1979 x 511.

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

Book Reviews

There are snippets of practical information, since some

of the essays relate directly to production on the farm
(garlic, potatoes, mesclun, tomatoes), but most of the
essays do not. Some pay homage to the critters, both
domestic and wild (chickens, barn swallows, porcupines, rabbits, cattle, beaver, and, especially, dogs for
whom Stewart has a close attachment). A fair number
are concerned with peddling the product. Since Stewart does his peddling at Manhattans Union Square
Greenmarket, it can get decidedly more complicated
than setting up a card table at the end of the driveway.
Still others address matters of economics, a subject
often avoided by the organic community (How many
years did it take The Natural Farmer to devote an
issue to farm economics?). These essays were well
thought out, and, in their own way, as practical of
advice as how to plant garlic. And Stewart is not so
occupied at thinning the carrots that he does not have
time to mull over some of the larger issues of the day,
be they political or social or environmental.

Its a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic

Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not-so)
Simple Life
by Keith Stewart with illustrations by Flavia Bacarella,
published by Marlowe and Company, New York City,
$18.95, 323 pages.
reviewed by Larry Siegel
I have a soft spot for those highly-educated, urban
folks who have experienced an epiphany and dramatically changed their style of living (perhaps because
Im a highly-educated, urban folk who experienced an
epiphany and dramatically changed my style of living).
Keith Stewart fits the bill precisely, climbing down
from the corporate ladder and re-inventing himself
as an organic farmer. (A successful organic farmer, I
might add, at least in respect to the bottom line and, apparently, job satisfaction.) He seems to have succeeded
as a writer as well, as these collections of essays illustrate. Disparate though they be, they all revolve around
life on the small farm, with the joys and the hardships
receiving equal billing.

The book is illustrated throughout by Flavia Bacarellas

wood-cuts, though I have the impression that the reproductions do not do justice to the originals. A nice
touch, I thought, was the inclusion in the acknowl-

free

Regardless of the subject matter, all of these essays

have the stamp of personal experience and deeply-held
convictions, the reflections of one person who took the
time to reflect. It is reason enough for me to recommend this book to others.
Gemmotherapy: The Science of Healing with Plant
Stem Cells
by Roger Halfon, MD
published by Healing Arts Press, Rochester, VT
copyright 2005 by Traditions Trajectoire
translated 2010 by Inner Traditions International
120 pages; $8.47 on Amazon: ISBN: 1594773416
reviewed by Julie Rawson
Gemmotherapy, according to the author, is the medicinal use of plant buds and young shoots. It harnesses
the healing power of trees and shrubs at the peak of
energetic activity in their annual cycle, capturing powerful nutrients, vitamins, plant hormones, and enzymes.
Gemmotherapy is primarily aimed at draining the body
of toxins and acts by gently stimulating and promoting elimination. The potency of these plant stem
cells also enables gemmotherapy remedies to treat far
more ailments than just those for which these plants
are prescribed in traditional herbalism. This therapy
can be used to treat many common conditions, such as
asthma, osteoporosis, kidney stones, and anxiety, and is
especially effective at alleviating allergies. An adjunct
to both traditional herbalism and homeopathy, gemmotherapy offers an all-natural path to detoxification and
healing with no side effects.
This book is an easy read. It is well-organized. Though
I thought the explanation of gemmotherapy and its history was a little light, it did the job of laying it out there
for a person who wants to do more research and thoroughly understand the principles behind it. What I did
like about the book is that it is really a very accessible
reference book that offers the neophyte student of gemmotherapy a guide for how to proceed and which plants
to choose to work with.

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edgments of the names of all the farm workers over

the course of the twenty-one year history of the farm.
None of this takes place without them.

I know a fair bit about herbs, fruits, and vegetables and

their healing properties, but nothing about trees and
woody bushes and how they can be used for enhancing
human health.

Psychological Services
Psychotherapy
Hypnosis
Stress Management

43

The Natural Farmer

Its about all of you.

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This book explains how gemmotherapy harnesses the

vital energy of plant buds for detoxification and rejuvenation. It catalogues the uses and healing properties of
34 tree and plant buds. It also catalogues more than 30
common ailments with in depth protocols for their remedies. It provides resources for obtaining the remedies
and preparation guidelines.
I am a dyed-in-the-wool anti-drug person be they
over or under the counter or on the grocery shelf. I
enjoyed reading about a very old approach to healing
that I can add to the therapies I turn to when one of my
family members is in need of a rebalancing. And for
the price, one can hardly go wrong to get a copy of this
book. It is heartening to know that natural therapies are
taking on more and more credence. As with the move
toward organic by the general populace, a reinvestment
in these old and simple and cheap therapies is going to
do nothing but good, in my opinion, for the health of
us all.
Saving the Seasons; How to Can, Freeze or Dry Almost Anything
by Mary Clemens Meyer and Susanna Meyer
published by Herald Press, Scottsdale, PA; 2010
208 pages; $24.99, ISBN: 9780836195125
reviewed by Julie Rawson

Current issues ($5@) :

86 Organic Farms and Money
85 Farms & Govt Regulations
84 Alternative Animal Feed
83 Crop Nutrient Density
Collectors Copies ($8@) :
82 Localization & Org. Farms
81 Microbes and Human Health
80 Building Organic Soil
79 Organic Mulches
77 Online Marketing of Organics
76 Manure & Organic Farming
75 Labor on Organic Farms
74 Climate Change & Org. Ag.
73 Organic Minor Fruit
72 Water and Agriculture
71 Globalization & Agriculture
70 Organic Potatoes
69 Is Organic Better?
68 Who Owns Organic?
67 Organic Fine Dining

The Natural Farmer

The book includes 4 main sections.

Guide to the Harvest includes a cataloguing of each
fruit and vegetable with a description, when it is in
season and recommended preserving methods. It
also gives the page numbers of all the recipes for
that item.
The Canning Section is broken down into a how to,
tomatoes, fruits, vegetables, meats, soups, herbed
vinegars, pickles and relishes.
Freezing is broken into general info, vegetables and
herbs, fruits, meat, poultry and fish, and baby food.
Drying breaks out into basics, fruit, vegetables,
herbs, and meats.
Additionally there are indices on Troubleshooting and
Helpful and Inspirational resources
I am a food preservationist from birth. My mother
and grandmother used to write letters to each other in
the summer time with each boasting about how many
packages of frozen peas they did, or strawberry jam
jars. My sister to this day reports to me on how many
canned tomatoes or jars of sauerkraut she has put up.
I still have vivid memories from when I was a small
child of a kitchen full of corn and the table loaded with
green beans all for us to tip and French. My worst
food preservation memory was of me as a teenager
standing at the sink using a bobby pin to pit sour cher-

Back Issues!

A limited number of back issues of

are available for sale.
The current issue and the last four issues cost $5.00 each, postpaid. Earlier
issues (collectors copies) cost $8.00 each, and are subject to availability.

Yes, I would like a back issue of
. Please send me the
issue(s) circled to the left. I have included the total as a check made out to
The Natural Farmer. (Add $2 per issue if foreign address).

Name ____________________________________________
Address __________________________________________
Town______________________ State_____ Zip__________
Phone (_____)_________________ Total enclosed $_______

Send to: The Natural Farmer, 411 Sheldon Rd., Barre, MA 01005

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

ries so they would be in perfect shape for moms frozen

cherries.
The aspect of this book that most grabs my attention
is the beautiful photographs. My food preservation
bible Stocking Up is mostly text, so this aspect is
quite enjoyable.
This book is reasonably thorough. It can be used as a
reference guide, which I feel is essential in a book of
this type. For example, the freezing chart on page 141
completely and concisely lists vegetables and their
blanching time. I learned something here. Blanching in
steam takes 50% more time than blanching by immersion in boiling water. And I learned that steam blanching is ideal for broccoli, greens and other delicate
vegetables. Each section canning, freezing, drying
shows one example with step by step instructions and
pictures. It is ideal to learn how to preserve food in the
presence of one who does it, but this is the next best
option for those who dont have the live person as a
resource.
There are some great tomato product recipes. As we
move toward more processed farm products we will
find these useful. I also enjoyed the short write up on
herbed vinegars.
Disappointments for me with the book included the tremendous use of sugar in all of the jam, jelly and spread
recipes. Also I was hoping for some use of alternatives
like agar powder for jams. Lacto-fermentation was
not listed or explained at all. As we move into an age
of wanting more live food and less sugary food in our
diets, I think the author missed the boat. Overall, I felt
the book was a bit too conventional in approach. For
my preserved food I want it to be as unadulterated as
possible with the goal of highest nutritive value in the
finished product. I left this book not trusting that the
author was keeping that as her highest priority
Pastures of Plenty; The Future of Food, Agriculture
and Environmental Conservation in New England
by John E. Carroll
New Hampshire Agriculture Experiment Station Publication #2340 (2009)
$15 soft cover
Illustrations and book design by Karen Busch Holman
reviewed by Larry Lack
John Carrolls lively, optimistic, wide ranging and
comprehensive look at the future of agriculture in

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W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

45

The Natural Farmer

northern New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont) makes of the entire four state region, indicate by green shading which soils have High Poa convincing case that this region, now largely dependent on food shipped in from far tential for Grassland Agriculture.
away, can--and soon will--produce much more of the food that is consumed here.
Nearly a quarter of New Hampshires area is shaded green, indicating soils that have
This colorful and attractive publication differs significantly in format from that of
this potential, as is roughly half of Maine and, surprisingly, roughly half of Massamost USDA research reports. Clearly a labor of love, Pastures of Plenty draws its
chusetts as well. Vermont, where pastures and dairying still anchor a viable statewide
inspiration from a host of alternative food, agriculture and conservation writers and
family farm based economy, leads the region for soils that are suitable for pasture
visionaries, perhaps most of all from Aldo Leopold, whose understanding of the
grass production: green shading covers fully 90 per cent of that states area.
importance of land and exposition of a land ethic helped launch what eventually
These impressive maps are supplemented by Sidney Pilgrims notes on the identity
evolved into the modern conservation and environmental movements.
and characteristics of the various grazing-appropriate soils found in various parts of
Carrolls homage to Leopold, though, is just the starting point for this eclectic com- the four northern New England states, after which Carroll points out that Pastures
pendium.
of Plenty presents what is likely the first effort, at least in modern times, to map the
(soils) of central and northern New England for the purpose of identifyingthe best
The central focus of Pastures of Plenty is on the potential for a revival of grazing
and highest potential grazing soils in the region.
(specifically, intensive, rotational grazing on pasture) as the cornerstone of a new,
more efficient, sustainable and productive agriculture for our region. But Carrolls
Carroll shares some relevant information about himself, mentioning his New York
book makes its case by presenting the ideas and actions of alternative food and agri- City upbringing as the son of an accountant for the International Harvester Company.
culture advocates and reinterpreting them in the context of present day northern New It is truly ironic, he says, that my own career and work is critical of the large scale
England.
industrial model of agriculturethat system that the Farmall tractor (and the other
products of his fathers employer) made possible.
Included among those whose writings and programs Carroll cites and discusses are
Joel Salatin, Fred Kirschenmann, Masanobo Fukuoka, Andre Voisin, Sir Albert How- In his prologue Carroll mentions how a prescient 1979 New Hampshire study of
ard, Wes Jackson, Borealis Breads Jim Amaral, New Hampshires Trauger Groh
food security, Who Will Feed New Hampshires Residents Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
(one of the founders of Community Supported Agriculture), Vermonts Bill Murphy From Now? gathered dust on university shelves through nearly thirty years of
(Its a lot better to just let the livestock go to the feed and spread their manure them- American consumer and academic apathy, a result, he says, of cheap food, fueled by
selves) and a score of other food and ag luminaries whose thoughts are skillfully
cheap energy (and) full supermarket shelves at the lowest food prices in the world.
blended in support of Carrolls thesis that northern New England is ideally situated,
ripe and ready for the emergence of a new agriculture that is diverse, ethical, environ- There are some weaknesses, I think, in Dr. Carrolls thesis about the imminent rementally sound, local, mainly organic and marketed directly to a savvy new genera- naissance of a pasture-based eco-agriculture. His approach in Pastures of Plenty is
tion of eaters who increasingly care about how their food affects both them and their so inclusive and enthusiastic that sometimes he seems intent on including almost too
many streams of evidence and support. A bit of editorial tweaking and a solid index
communities.
of his varied sources might be able to corral his wide-ranging vision without reducing
Pastures of Plenty includes useful background on the history of New England agrithe impact of this books important message.
culture--how mixed farms and livestock grazing were replaced by industrial monocropping and confinement production of livestockand includes chapters on grazing Professor Carrolls optimism about the future of food and agriculture in our region is
and grasses, the soils of northern New England, the key role Carroll sees for dairying infectious and well justified in this unique report, and he cant be blamed if his most
likely readers are likely to be those who already agree, or are predisposed to agree,
in this part of the world, breeds of cattle and other animals suited to northern New
England, direct marketing and relationship agriculture, and the role land grant uni- with what he has to say. He may, however, want to consider a few questions. For
versities hopefully will play in encouraging the reorganization of agriculture and the one, it may be useful to ask whether his predictions about a future for farms and food
thats focused on grazing and dairying may be challenged by current diet trends and
revival of family farming in our region.
a younger generation who are eating less meat and dairy and turning in substantial
Strikingly illustrated with Karen Busch Holmans evocative and lively watercolors
numbers to vegetarian and vegan fare.
of farm scenes and animals, Carrolls text has the feeling of a heartfelt celebration
And, perhaps more important, if, as Carroll believes, more young people will be
of farming that, while obviously drawing much from conservation biology and the
agri-sciences, is also fed by insights gleaned from literary and even musical sources drawn to more holistic, ethical and sustainable ways of farming, how will they get
including Wordsworth, Wendell Berry, Garrison Keillor, Beethoven (specifically his access to the land theyll need? As Carroll is no doubt aware, secure access to productive land can be a serious barrier to farm entry for young people who arent lucky
Pastorale Symphony) and Alan Jay Lerners lyrics for a song by Kurt Weill.
enough to inherit farmland from their folks.
In addition to the threads of alternative agriculture and food philosophy that CarPerhaps this question needs more answers before the prediction from urban planning
roll weaves together from his wildly inclusive kaleidoscope of sources, Pastures of
critic James Howard Kunstler that appears at the close of Pastures of Plenty (and is
Plenty assembles and presents important new information about our regions soils.
repeated in large letters on its back cover) can come to full fruition. Agriculture,
It includes five pages of detailed maps based on the soil studies of New Hampshire
soil scientist Sidney Pilgrim and his colleagues in the Natural Resource Conservation Kunstler tells us, is going to come back to the center of American life in a way that
Service. These maps, one of each of the four states of northern New England and one we couldnt imagine.

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foundations of our regions fertile soils and the productive farms and pastures these
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46

NOFA Contact People

Connecticut

CT NOFA Office: P O Box 164, Stevenson, CT

06491, phone (203) 888-5146, FAX (203) 888-9280,
Email: ctnofa@ctnofa.org, website: www.ctnofa.org
Executive Director: Bill Duesing, Box 164,
Stevenson, CT 06491, 203-888-5146, 203 888-9280
(fax), bill@ctnofa.org
Office Manager/Webmaster: Deb Legge, PO Box
164, Stevenson, CT 06491, deb@ctnofa.org, 203888-5146
NOFA Project Coordinator, Organic Land Care
Program, Clara Buitrago, PO Box 164, Stevenson,
CT 06491, clara@organiclandcare.net, 203-8885146
CT NOFA Program Coordinator, Teresa Mucci, PO
Box 164, Stevenson, CT 06491, teresa@ctnofa.org,
203-888-5146
President: James Roby, P.O Box 191, 1667 Orchard
Road, Berlin, CT 06037, 860-828-5548, 860-8818031 (C), robysorganic@yahoo.com
Vice President: Elizabeth Fleming, 54 Four Mile
Road, West Hartford, CT 06107-2709, 860-5614907, elstrfleming@yahoo.com
Treasurer: Michelle Hartel, 41 Angeli Court, Berlin,
CT 06037-4083, 860-829-0749, michjelleahartel@
comcast.net
Secretary: Chris Killheffer, 112 Bishop Street, New
Haven, CT 06511-7307, 203-787-0072, Christopher.
killheffer@yale.edu
Farmers Pledge Program: Contact the office.
Organic Land Care Program Manager: Ashley
Kremser, PO Box 164, Stevenson, CT 06491,
akremser@ctnofa.org, 203-888-5146
Organic Land Care Accreditation Manager: Clara
Buitrago, PO Box 164, Stevenson, CT 06491,
clara@organiclandcare.net, 203-888-5146
Bookkeeper: Marion Griswold, PO Box 164,
Stevenson, CT 06491, marion@ctnofa.org, 203888-5146

Massachusetts

President: Lynda Simkins, Natick Community

Organic Farm, 117 Eliot Street, South Natick,
MA 01760, (508) 655-2204, lsimkins.ncorganic@
verizon.net
Vice President, Leslie Cox, Hampshire College
Farm, Amherst, MA 01002 (413) 530-2029, lcox@
hampshire.edu
Secretary: Elizabeth Coe, 13 Hickory Hill Road,
Great Barrington, MA 01230, (413) 528-6567,
treecoe@gis.net
Treasurer: Danielle Andrews, 85 Day St., Jamaica
Plain, MA 02130, 617-524-1320, dandrewds@
thefoodproject.org
Executive Director: Julie Rawson, 411 Sheldon
Road, Barre, MA 01005 (978) 355-2853, fax: (978)
355-4046, julie@nofamass.org
Administrative Director: Kathleen Geary, 411
Sheldon Road, Barre, MA 01005, (978) 355-2853
(Mondays & Thursdays, 8:00 am - 5:00 pm), email
anytime to: info@nofamass.org
Webmaster: David Pontius, 26 School Street,
Northfield, MA 01360, (413) 498-2721,
webmaster@nofamass.org
Winter Conference Coordinators: Cathleen OKeefe,
122 State Street, 1st floor, Northampton, MA 01060
(413) 584-6786, bulkorder@nofamass.org, and
Michal Lumsden, PO Box 157, Monterrey, MA
01245, (413) 528-8016, michal@nofamass.org
Newsletter Editor/Public Relations Coordinator:
Mindy Harris, 110 Kodiak Way #2825, Waltham,
MA 02145, (310) 663-0054, mindy@nofamass.org
NOFA Summer Conference Coordinator: Ben
Grosscup, 67 North Whitney Street, Amherst, MA
01002 (413) 549-1568, ben.grosscup@nofamass.org
Website: www.nofamass.org
Baystate Organic Certifiers Administrator: Don
Franczyk, 1220 Cedarwood Circle, Dighton, MA
02764, (774) 872-5544, baystateorganic@earthlink.
net, website: www.baystateorganic.org

New Hampshire

NOFA-NH Office: 4 Park St., Ste. 208, Concord,

NH 03301, (603) 224-5022, info@nofanh.org
Website: www.nofanh.org
Co-President: Lauren Chase-Rowell, 156 Stevens
Hill Road, Nottingham, NH 03290, (603) 463-7538,
laurenchaserowell@gmail.com
Co-President: Essie Hull, 115 Baptist Road,
Canterbury, NH 03224, (603) 783-4782,
seedhead@essenceofthings.com

The Natural Farmer

Co-President: Jack Mastrianni, 277 Holden Hill

Road, Langdon, NH 03602, (603) 835-6488,
jamastrianni@yahoo.com
Vice President: Joan OConnor, PO Box 387,
Henniker, NH 03242, (603) 428-3530, joconnornh@
yahoo.com
Treasurer: Paul Mercier, Jr., 39 Cambridge
Drive, Canterbury, NH 03224, (603) 783-0036,
pmercier01@comcast.net
Herbal Network/Newsletter Editor: Maria Noel
Groves, 4 Park St., Ste. 208, Concord, NH 03301,
(603) 268-0548, nhhn@nofanh.org or editor@
nofanh.org
Office Manager: Eleanor Moyer, 4 Park St.,
Ste. 208, Concord, NH 03301, (603) 224-5022,
eleanor@nofanh.org.
Business Manager Barbara Sullivan, 72 Gilford Ave,
Laconia, NH 03246, (603) 524-1285, barbara@
nofanh.org
Bulk Order Coordinator: Jennifer Quinlivan, P.O.
Box 92, Strafford, NH 03884, (603) 269-0063,
(603) 731-1182, jenq@worldpath.net
Winter Conference Coordinator: Tameson OBrien,
4 Park St., Ste. 208, Concord, NH 03301, (603) 3006920 winterconference@nofanh.org
Organic Certification: Vickie Smith, NH Department
of Agriculture, Markets & Food, Division of
Regulatory Services, Caller Box 2042, Concord,
NH 03301 (603) 271-3685, vsmith@agr.state.nh.us,
www.agriculture.nh.gov

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

(631) 267-8942, schaskey@peconiclandtrust.org

Vice President: Gunther Fishgold, Tierra Farm, 2424
State Rte 203, Valatie, NY 12184, (888) 674-6887,
gfishgold@tierrafarm.com
Treasurer: Karen Livingston, 2569 Rolling Hills
Rd, Camillus, NY 13031, (315) 672-5244, delv11@
yahoo.com
Secretary: Jamie Edelstein, 3745 Allen Rd, Cato,
NY 13214, (315) 427-8266, wylliefox@earthlink.
net

Rhode Island

President: Erik Eacker, Ledge Ends Produce, 830

South Road, East Greenwich, RI 02818 (401) 8845118, ledgeends@cox.net
Vice-President:Nicole Vitello, Manic Organic, PO
Box 425, Portsmouth, RI 02871 (401) 480-1403,
nvitello@equalexchange.coop
Secretary: Dave Binkley 53 Hilltop Drive West
Kingston, RI 02892 (401) 667-0585, binkled@
amgen.com
Treasurer/Membership: Dan Lawton, 247 Evans
Road Chepachet, RI 02814, (401) 523-2653
dlawton33@hotmail.com
NOFA/RI, 247 Evans Road Chepachet, RI 02814,
(401) 523-2653, nofari@nofari.org
website: www.nofari.org

Vermont

NOFA-VT Office, PO Box 697, 39 Bridge St.,

Richmond, VT 05477 (802) 434-4122 NOFA, (802)
Executive Directors: Michelle (Shelly) Glenn, 334
434-3821 VOF, Fax: (802) 434-4154, website:
River Road, Hillsborough, NJ 08844, 908-371-1111 www.nofavt.org, info@nofavt.org
x 2, m.glenn@nofanj.org
Executive Director: Enid Wonnacott, enid@nofavt.
and David Glenn, 334 River Road, Hillsborough, NJ org
08844, 908-371-1111 x 3, david.glenn@nofanj.org
Financial Manager: Kirsten Novak Bower, kirsten@
President: Donna Drewes, Municipal Land Use
nofavt.org
Center, TCNJ, PO Box 7718 McCauley House,
NOFA VT Education Coordinator & VT FEED
Ewing, NJ 08628, (609) 771-2833, drewes@tcnj.
Director: Abbie Nelson, abbie@nofavt.org
edu
Dairy & Livestock Administrator: Sam Fuller,
Vice President: Stephanie Harris, 163 Hopewellsam@nofavt.org
Wertsville Rd., Hopewell, NJ 08525, (609) 466Dairy & Livestock Advisor & Policy Advisor:
0194, r.harris58@verizon.net
David Rogers, dave@nofavt.org
Treasurer: David Earling, Gravity Hill Farm, 22
Dairy & Livestock Advisor: Willie Gibson, willie@
River Road Titusville, NJ 08560 (609) 737 8860
nofavt.org
dee@solecap.com
Community Food Security & Direct Marketing
Secretary: Marcia Blackwell, Blackwells Organic
Coordinator: Jean Hamilton, jean@nofavt.org
Gelato, 323 Liberty St., Long Branch, NJ 07740,
Office Assistant and Share the Harvest Fundraiser
(732) 229-8899, marciablackwell@comcast.net
Coordinator: Becca Weiss, becca@nofavt.org
Supervisor, Organic Certification Program: Erich V. Office Manager: Barbara Richardson, info@nofavt.
Bremer, NJ Dept. of Agriculture, 369 S. Warren St., org
Trenton, NJ 08625-0330, (609) 984-2225, fax: (609) Outreach Coordinator: Caitlin Gildrien, Caitlin@
341-3212 erich.bremer@ag.state.nj.us
nofavt.org
Administrative Coordinator: Connie Deetz, 334
Vegetable & Fruit TA Coordinator: Wendy Sue
River Road, Hillsborough, NJ 08844, (908) 371Harper, wendysue@nofavt.org
1111 x4, cdeetz@nofanj.org
Winter Conference Coordinator: Olga Boshart
Education and Outreach Coordinator: Joanna Dillon, Moriarty, olgamoriarty@gmail.com
334 River Road, Hillsborough, NJ 08844, (908)
VT FEED Administrative Manager: Elizabeth
371-1111 x5, jdillon@nofanj.org
McDonald, libby@nofavt.org
Website: www.nofanj.org
VOF Administrator: Nicole Dehne, nicole@nofavt.
Phone: (908) 371-1111
org
Fax: (908) 371-1441
VOF Certification Specialist: Cheryl Bruce,
cheryl@nofavt.org
VOF Certification Specialist: Gregg Stevens,
New York
NOFA New York Offices: NY Office: 249 Highland gregg@nofavt.org
VOF Assistant: Laura Nunziata, laura@nofavt.org
Ave, Rochester, NY 14620, Phone: 585-271-1979,
Fax: 585-271-7166; Certified Organic, LLC Office:
840 Front St, Binghamton, NY 13905, (607) 7249851, fax: (607) 724-9853, Website: www.nofany.
* indicates voting representative
org
* Bill Duesing, President, Staff, Box 135,
Executive Director: Kate Mendenhall, (585) 271Stevenson, CT, 06491, (203) 888-5146, fax, (203)
1979, fax: (585) 271-7166, Kate@nofany.org
888- 9280, bduesing@cs.com
Organic Certification Director: Carol King, (607)
Kimberly A. Stoner, 498 Oak Ave. #27, Cheshire,
724-9851, fax: (607) 724-9853, certifiedorganic@
CT 06410-3021, (203) 271-1732 (home), Email:
nofany.org
kastoner@juno.com
Assistant Director: Lea Kone, (585) 271-1979, fax:
* Leslie Cox, Hampshire College Farm, Amherst,
(585) 271-7166, Lea@nofany.org
Education & Outreach Coordinator: Matt Robinson, MA 01002, 413-530-2029, kcix@hampshire.edu
(585) 271-1979, fax: (585) 271-7166, Matt@nofany. Elizabeth Obelenus, 22 Keyser Road, Meredith. NH
03253, (603) 279-6146, elizabeth@nofanh.org
org
* Jack Mastrianni, Treasurer, 277 Holden Hill
Business Manager: Michelle Prohov, (585) 271Road, Langdon, NH 03602, (603) 835-6488,
1979, fax: (585) 271-7166 Michelle@nofany.org
jamastrianni@yahoo.com
Farmer Educator: Robert Perry, (585) 271-1979,
* Steve Gilman, Ruckytucks Farm, 130 Ruckytucks
fax: (585) 271-7166 Robert@nofany.org
Road, Stillwater, NY 12170 (518) 583-4613,
Food Justice Coordinator: Kristina Keefe-Perry,
sgilman@netheaven.com
(585) 271-1979, fax: (585) 271-7166, Kristina@
* Elizabeth Henderson, 63 Benton St.,
nofany.org
Rochester, NY 14620, cell: (585) 764-8471
Beginning Farmer Coordinator: Rachel Schellelizabethhenderson13@gmail.com
Lambert, (585) 271-1979, fax:(585) 271-7166,
* Dan Lawton, 247 Evans Road Chepachet, RI
Rachel@nofany.org
02814 (401) 949-1596 dlawton33@hotmail.com
Newsletter Editor: newsletter@nofany.org
David Glenn, 334 River Road, Hillsborough, NJ
President: Scott Chaskey, Quail Hill Community
08844 908 371 1111 david.glenn@nofanj.org
Farm, PO Box 1268, Amagansett, NY 11930-1268,

New Jersey

NOFA Interstate Council

W i n t e r, 2 0 1 0 - 1 1

* Nicole Vitello, Manic Organic, PO Box 425,

Portsmouth, RI 02871 (401) 480-1403, Nicole@
manicorganic.biz
* Enid Wonnacott, 478 Salvas Rd., Huntington, VT
05462 (802) 434-4435, enid@nofavt.org
Kirsten Novak Bower, 65 Wortheim Ln., Richmond,
VT 05477 (802) 434-5420, kirsten@nofavt.org
David Pontius, Webmaster, 26 School Street,
Northfield, MA 01360, (413) 498-2721, Email:
webmaster@nofamass.org
Jack Kittredge and * Julie Rawson, The Natural
Farmer, 411 Sheldon Rd., Barre, MA 01005 (978)
355-2853, Jack, tnf@nofa.org, Julie@nofamass.org
Marion Griswold, Bookkeeper, 30 Hollow Rd.,
Woodbury, CT 06798, (203) 263-2221, marion@
ctnofa.org

NOFA

Videos

Now in DVD!

Interstate Certification Contacts

Nicole Dehne, nicole@nofavt.org, PO Box 697,

Richmond, VT 05477, 802-434-3821, 802-434-4154
(fax)
Carol King, 840 Front Street, Binghamton, NY
13905, (607) 724-9851, fax: (607)724-9853,
certifiedorganic@nofany.org
Erich V. Bremer, c/o NJ Dept. of Agriculture, PO
Box 330, Trenton, NJ 08625, (609) 984-2225 erich.
bremer@ag.state.nj.us

NOFA Membership
You may join NOFA by joining one of the seven
state chapters. Contact the person listed below for
your state. Dues, which help pay for the important
work of the organization, vary from chapter to chapter. Unless noted, membership includes a subscription to The Natural Farmer.
Give a NOFA Membership! Send dues for a friend
or relative to his or her state chapter and give a
membership in one of the most active grassroots organizations in the state.
Connecticut: Individual $35, Family $50, Business/
Institution $100, Supporting $150, Student/Senior
$25, Working $20
Contact: CT NOFA, Box 164, Stevenson, CT 06491,
(203)-888-5146, or email: ctnofa@ctnofa.org or join
on the web at www.ctnofa.org
Massachusetts: Low-Income $25, Individual $35,
Family/Farm/Organization $45, Business $75,
Supporting $150
Contact: NOFA/Mass, 411 Sheldon Road, Barre,
MA 01005, (978) 355-2853, or Rebecca@nofamass.
org or join on the web at www.nofamass.org
New Hampshire: Individual: $35, Family/Farm:
$75, Business/Organization: $150, Supporting:
$250, Sustaining: $1,000, NH Basic $25*
Contact: Barbara Sullivan, 4 Park St., Suite 208,
Concord, NH 03301, (603) 224-5022, barbara@
nofanh.org
New Jersey: Student/Intern $20*, Individual $40*,
Family/Farm $70*, Business/Organization $150*,
$10 additional per year for subscription to The
Natural Farmer
Contact: 334 River Road, Hillsborough, NJ 08844,
(908) 371-1111 or join at www.nofanj.org
New York: Limited Membership $20*, Gardener/
Consumer $40, Family/Farm/Nonprofit Organization $50, Business $115, Lifetime $1,000
Contact: NOFA-NY, 249 Highland Ave., Rochester,
NY 14620, Voice (585) 271-1979, Fax: (585) 2717166, email: info@nofany.org, www.nofany.org
Rhode Island: Student/Senior: $20, Individual: $25,
Family $35, Business $50
Contact: Membership, NOFA RI, c/o Dan Lawton,
247 Evans Road, Chepachet, RI 02814, (401) 5232653, nofari@nofari.org
Vermont: Individual $30, Farm/Family $40, Business $50, Sponsor $100, Sustainer $250, Basic $1525*
Contact: NOFA-VT, PO Box 697, Richmond, VT
05477, (802) 434-4122, info@nofavt.org
*does not include a subscription to The Natural
Farmer

Calendar

The Natural Farmer

$20 each
New from the 2010 NOFA Summer Conference:

1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010

Whole Farm Organism Dairying 1 Jack Lazor

Whole Farm Organism Dairying 2 Jack Lazor
Keynote
Sally Fallon Morell
Hardy, Delectable, Pest-free Fruit Lee Reich
Farmers Rights
Pete Kennedy
Red Fire Farm Tour
Ryan Voiland
Keynote
Catherine Murphy
Biodynamics: Whats it All About? Mac Mead
Backyard Winter Vegetables
Danielle Andrews
Small Grains
Cliff Hatch

Send me the circled videos in VHS DVD format.

Im sending $20/each by check to NOFA Video Project

NOFA Video Project,

411 Sheldon Rd., Barre, MA 01005

for a full list of the over 150 videos available, visit

www.nofa.org/conference/video/index.php

Subscribe to:
Send $15 for U.S. address,
$20 for foreign address to:

411 Sheldon Rd.

Barre, MA 01005

47

Thursday, Dec. 9: New Entry Sustainable Farming

Projects Farmer-to-Farmer Conference, Sturbridge,
MA, for more info: www.farmer2farmer.org
Thursday, Dec. 9: NRCS workshops on EQIP and
CIG programs, Duke Farms, Hillsborough, NJ, for
more info: www.nofanj.org.
Saturday, Dec, 11 & Sunday, Dec. 12: Meat
Processing Workshop The Whole Hog, Brown
Boar Farm, East Wells, VT, for more info www.
nofavt.org/upcoming-events-calendar/
Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011: Direct Marketing
Conference, Vermont Technical College, Randolph,
VT, for more info www.nofavt.org/upcoming-eventscalendar/
Wednesday, Jan. 12 Friday, Jan 14 and
Tuesday, Jan. 18, and Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011:
10th annual NOFA/Mass 5-day Accreditation
Course in Organic Land Care, Parker River National
Wildlife Refuge, Newburyport, MA. for more info:
Kathy Litchfield, kathy@nofamass.org, (413) 7733830 or online at www.organiclandcare.net
Saturday, Jan. 15: NOFA/Mass Winter
Conference, Worcester, MA, for more info: wc@
nofamass.org or www.nofamass.org
Tuesday, Jan. 18, Wednesday, Feb. 2 &
Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011: Organic Crop
Protection: Insect, Disease & Weed Management
workshops, Central Vermont Chamber of
Commerce, Berlin, VT, for more info www.nofavt.
org/upcoming-events-calendar/
Friday, Jan. 21 Sunday, Jan. 23: NOFA-NY
Winter Conference, Saratoga
Springs, NY, for more info: (585) 271-1979 ext. 509
or visit our website at www.nofany.org.
Saturday, Jan. 29 & Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011:
NOFA-NJ Winter Conference - Regenerative &
Resilient Food Systems: Sowing New Seeds,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, for more info:
www.nofanj.org.
Saturday, Feb. 12 Monday, Feb. 14, 2011:
NOFA Vermonts 29th annual Winter Conference,
University of Vermont in Burlington, for more info:
Olga Moriarty at olgamoriarty@gmail.com or:
http://nofavt.org/annual-events/winter-conference

Northeast Organic Farming Association Credit Card

www.CardLabConnect.com/nofa

Thanks for joining and helping support organic agriculture! Choose Your Chapter & Membership Level:
Name______________________________________________

I would like to become a member of the

___________________________________________________

__________________________ state chapter

Address____________________________________________

Sign me up as this kind of member:

City__________________________ State____ Zip_________

______________________________________

Phone_____________________ Country_________________

My annual membership dues are: $________

Email______________________________________________
o farmer o gardener o homesteader o thoughtful eater
Please send this completed form to the sppropriate state chapter

(enclose check made payable to the state chapter)

o Do NOT share my address with other

organizations. Thank you!

Non-Profit Organization
U. S. Postage Paid
Barre, MA 01005
Permit No. 28

NOFA Education Fund

411 Sheldon Rd.
Barre, MA 01005

Organic Farming and Co-ops

photo by Jack Kittredge

$5.00

The view outside of the Park Slope Cooperative in Brooklyn, NY. Park Slope is one of the largest buyers
of local organic farm products in the Northeast. Note members on the bench wearing vests waiting to
help exiting members carry their bags.
This issue contains news, features, and articles about organic growing in the Northeast,
plus a special supplement on

Winter 2010-2011