As I am sitting here, I find myself pondering the health care reform bill before the House and Senate,and can do nothing but shake my head in disgust. We had an historical opportunity to re-think how we address health care in this nation,and the possible reforms that could have significantly and positively affected our citizens have been removed from the discussion. Lower priced drugs, true insurance premium reform, food safety, and allowing access to our health care system to all are completely off of the table. When this is over, most of us will all be still one major injury/illness away from destitution and the pill-popping, forget about the maintenance, and pay the piper later culture will have been trenched for the foreseeable future, and with it, the kingdoms of Pfizer, Blue Cross, and Monsanto become more unassailable. You may be asking yourself, what a simple farmer on a farming blog could possibly have to say about this debate that is relevant, and I would answer that farming has everything to do with health and health care.

Somehow in the past fifty years there has been a shift in our attitude towards personal responsibility and our responsibility towards each other. George Orwell famously described a world of Big Brother, but what he didn't foresee was our complacency in handing over each and every element of our lives to the Other. For example, many of us complain about the public school system and its inability to teach our children the basics. These accusations are extremely accurate, and in the world academic arena,we are falling behind in math and science—but of course we lead in football and basketball. While I hint at some priority issues, I do not want to muddy the water too much from my point. The public school system is failing at educating our children, but it is also failing at disciplining our children, feeding our children, policing our children, providing sex education for our children and yes,protecting our children. What's my point? My point is: what is my personal responsibility, if I expect all of that from public school system? When did we get a free pass from the personal responsibility of raising children or for that matter any personal responsibility?Most of those expectations placed on the public school system are in reality parenting obligations that we have shifted to the State.

I understand the economic issues at hand, and I am very sensitive and empathetic to the subtle and nuanced arguments that lie beneath the surface of the above example.I only want to point out that many, if not all of our problems with the education system are a result of resigning personal responsibilities, one at a time, to the State. Sadly, this is not where this ends. We look to the government to solve our every day problems. We approach the problem of our health and food safety as a matter best left for the government to resolve. While it's true that the government can be part of the solution, the solution really needs to come from the people.

Before I go any further, I now want to take a closer look at the problem of health and its relationship to food and food safety. I suspect that few people would be surprised that if in a few years of driving their new car without changing the oil, that they would begin to experience possible serious mechanical issues. Further, we would not be surprised if we were to abusively drive the car that we would find our car barely surviving past the manufacturer's warranty. We might wish for a fuel additive(after-the-fact) to magically restore our car to its former new state, but most would realize the delusional nature of such thoughts.Yet, as a society, we subscribe to this thought process for our health.

“I would like to work out, but I don't have the time.” ”I know that I should not eat fast food daily and that the convenience food that I am eating is causing me to be susceptible to type II diabetes.” “ I would quit smoking, but it's not my fault because nicotine is addictive. However, I won't worry because my health insurance will take care of me.” Does that sound familiar as a national attitude? The hard truth is that we are what we eat, period. We need exercise, period. We need to exercise our brains, period. There is no getting around these laws of nature. A large portion of this is personal responsibility. The government can not help those who should be helping themselves.

In fact the government may be working against us on this issue due to special interests. On May 19, 2009, the American Academy of Environmental Science (AAEM) called on all physicians to encourage and prescribe to their patients a diet of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) free diets. There are numerous tests that seem to indicate the health risks of these items in our diet. For brevity, I will briefly list a few studies and results:

• GM soy fed to rats resulted in most baby rats dying compared to 10% infant mortality rate in control groups¹

• GMO food provokes immune response in animal studies, including Monsanto's own studies²

• In studies, chickens fed Liberty Link corn had twice the mortality rate of their control counterparts³

• My personal favorite is the Bt gene, which produces a toxin that kills insects and which comes from bacteria, is a standard GMO solution to insect pests in crops like corn. GMO corn has been engineered to produce its own Bt. The problem is that this gene can jump to other bacteria like our stomach fauna and it can turn our own bodies into poison factories. A lone human study seems to support this very dangerous possibility⁴

It seems that our government in its infinite wisdom (read support from special interest groups) has decided that we do not need to test these foods, and any tests done elsewhere are to be censured by industry. That's right, if Monsanto says that it is safe to eat GMO food, than it must be. The current head of the FDA is Michael Taylor, the former VP of Public Policy for Monsanto from 1998 – 2001! The GMO foxes are indeed in charge of the hen house. Impartiality and subjectivity are out of the question. Current food safety laws have their cross hairs set on organic spinach rather than the 500 lb gorilla in the room. Remember the old saying, Q: “What does a 500 lb gorilla do?” A: “Anything it  wants to do.” It's clear that the answer will not come from our government. What can we do; wait for the  calvary?

The Preamble to the Constitution does not state, “We the Government”, and the founders did not wait for King George to pass a law to change things. They took personal responsibility for their collective future. I am not calling for a bloody revolution, but a revolution of sorts is in order. We need to recognize the power of “We the People”. Our collective buying habits can send a message to the transnational corporations that affect our daily lives and our health. Monsanto can successfully lobby congress to prevent companies from labeling their products as containing GMO ingredients, but we can educate ourselves, and demand only GMO free products. Simply stop buying GMO products. If only 10%of us did that, our food system would change overnight. How do you know which products to safely buy and which ones to avoid? Consult www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.We truly hold an immense collective power if we only could be compelled to exercise our immense economic influence, but, instead,we seem to be waiting for Big Brother to do our work for us. Maybe someone will throw our tea overboard into the harbor while we are busy driving our Hummers to Mc Donalds.

I can hear the price objection already.Quality food costs too much, right? “I just can't afford good food.” I think my response would be obvious at this point. It's a matter of priorities, and like it or not, we all pay one way or another. To be sure, highly subsidized GMO foods and processed foods are cheaper, but who do you think is paying for the subsidies?. You can either pay now or later.

Americans think nothing of spending money on pleasure items that we claim are necessities like: big screen televisions, cigarettes, fast food, and excessive-sized automobiles. Yet, we spend the smallest portion of our incomes on food in our history. We continue to rely on the government to heavily subsidize our cheap, high calorie and low nutrition food so that we can dispense with our personal responsibility of health and fitness. We cannot ethically avoid this responsibility any more than we can avoid the responsibility of raising our own children. By allowing special interests to perpetually keep us in a state of disease, we condemn ourselves to the rat wheel of paying for the consequences of our health decisions. We will experience cancer, heart disease and diabetes, which are indeed affecting record numbers of people in our country. We will pay for these one way or another just as the abusive car owner above will pay for repairs. To be sure, he or she saved short-term money and effort by not changing the oil, but at what long-term cost?

In the mean time, pharmaceutical, health insurance and biotechnology companies will prosper at our expense. If we buy our own insurance, health care costs will skyrocket. If we force the government to pay for it, we will pay for it in the form of taxes? To be sure, there are areas where government can provide the solution. There are people in our society who cannot make the choices described here due to an incredible and real economic disadvantage. This is where government can assist by encouraging the elimination of food deserts through zoning and startup loans and by supporting infrastructure that permits access to health care to everyone. However, none of these should exclude us from the personal responsibility of daily choices that directly affect our health and ultimately the future of our nation.

What does farming have to do with this?Farming is where our food comes from. It is the beginning of the cycle. If we demand healthy food, we will get it. Companies will demand that farmers produce environmentally sustainable and healthy food if consumers demand it. Healthy food is the foundation for a healthy body. Our bodies are literally comprised of what we put in it. Would you build your house out of termite-infested wood because it was cheaper? Why do we respect our bodies so much less?

While we stand on the cusp of change, our leaders may miss the opportunities offered them, but we need not miss those before us. We will vote with your wallets. We will send a message to the corporations that we will not tolerate the poisoning of our children. We will no longer accept the lies and half-truths about our food, and most importantly we will not shy away from our responsibility in this change. We are not against Monsanto and Dupont; we are demanding that you join us as we forge a healthy future. We only ask that you change, but if you do not, be fore warned, that you cannot survive the collective economic pressure of  We the People. You will either adapt or fade from significance.

Near the end of the year, we get torest a little, but now that the New Year has arrived, we arebeginning to ramp up our farm. While there is a lot of maintenanceand repairs to do before spring and grain to ship out, we are alreadybusy planting. We have planted some onions, and we are planting morethis weekend. Two of our three high tunnels are up, and soon we willbe planting crops in them. Next week, we will plant close to 2000brassicas under the grow lights. Who said that farmers have it easyin the winter?

We have been working fifteen-hour days, six days a week around here. We are finally catching up on the weeding, now that we are drying up. I cannot complain. The cool spring and summer so far have caused many summer crops to develop slowly. Everyone is having this problem. There are many vendors at the farmer's market in Beloit, but few have more than greens, peas, strawberries, radishes, and few other spring crops. Usually, one can find summer squashes and beans by now. There was one vendor with tomatoes and melons, but he was not even bothering to remove the stickers from his produce. I also saw someone  selling full heads of cabbage, a late summer vegetable for sure, but short of that, most local farmers are dealing with the same issues. We are all hoping that some of our crops mature soon.

Speaking of farmers dealing with issues, many of the organic farmers on the western portion of the state are in dire straits. Not only did some suffer major crop damage from the floods last fall, but many of those same farms suffered another crop failure from the floods this spring. I heard of at least one farm that has lost over $1.5 million in crops and assets. Now the obvious question is: “Do they have crop insurance?” After all, that would seem reasonable, right? That's the problem. There is nothing reasonable about organic farming. The government offers crop insurance for some organic crops, but the organic farmer has to pay more in insurance premiums than the conventional farmer. However, the catch is that the organic farmer is reimbursed less than the conventional farmer for the same crops on these policies.

Also, vegetable crops are not insurable because the government claims that the prices are too hard to figure out. CSAs make the majority of their income on vegetables as do other market farmers. However, they are not growing Monsanto products and selling them on the commodities market to be resold to ADM or ethanol plants. So if they go out of business, it is not the government's concern.

Also, to add insult to injury, these farmer's, if they survive this catastrophe they may lose their organic certification because of run-off from fields that are sprayed with herbicides or pesticides. Could there be some kind of insurance for this? Don't count on it any time soon. Like I said, there is little that is reasonable in this profession.

So while I may sound angry, let me say that I am not. However I do not want to stick my head in the sand either. Food security is going to be the number one priority for our nation in the next five years.  We need to protect our food supply and as consumers we need to demand healthy food. Here's a number to think about. The United States is 42^nd in the world for longevity behind some third world countries. Jordon has a longer life expectancy than us. Let's all chant,  “We are number 42.” Doesn't that make you feel proud to be number 42?  Why are we number 42? Well, I suspect that food has something do do with it. Nutrition and health cannot be separated. Many countries expect more from their food than we do.

We are what we eat, literally. When we eat nutrient- sparse foods and products designed to resemble real food and then ingest all of the poisons associated with standard food production, how do we expect  to be well? Why are diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer continuing to plague us while disorders like bipolar, ADD and hyper-activity run rampant through our children? When do we stand up and say, “Enough is enough?” Our bodies have a tremendous capacity to heal themselves, but they need the right building blocks. You would not buy a house that was made of low quality construction material because it was cheap, and one should not eat cheap, low quality food either. You and your family are worth it.

We need to take back our food.  We should all grow “victory gardens” like they did during WWII. We should buy our food from the grower, and we should hold those growers responsible for their product. We should get to know our growers and demand the best for ourselves and our children. We can learn to cook again, and take time to enjoy our meals. We can choose to eat food that is not made of corn (check the ingredients of the last thing you ate or drank today). If you ate a burger with ketchup, you ate corn. The cow that the burger was made of was probably fed heavily with corn. Candy bars, soda, nutri-grain bars, and many ,many others are corn products. We are not designed to digest that much corn. There are other foods out there, and we can choose to eat them. It's all about choices. In a future blog, we will explore the problem with corn, nutrition, and our health as well as the reason that we are fed so much corn, but for now, that is all there is from the farm today.  

It's been well over a month since I placed an entry here. The reason, of course, is that we have been working around the clock (literally on some days) to get everything planted this season. It is part of the job that Susan and I accept. However, we both enjoyed a day off this week, and the prospects for having at least one day off per week look pretty promising until late fall. I even had a chance to ride my bike last night for a couple of hours. For those that know me, biking is one my passions, and I was ecstatic last evening because I had the opportunity to ride. It's funny how one appreciates an experience more completely when one the experience becomes novel again.

Susan and I can hardly believe the turn our life has taken over the past couple of years. The organic CSA has grown substantially over the past couple of years, and with it, we have had to undergo some growing pains. For example, when we added several drop-off locations this year to make it easier for people to get their shares, we needed to find a way to organize the baskets that are destined for different drop-off sites. Things were shaky our first week, but we have our system down now.

To ensure that we have vegetables throughout the season, we need to manage our succession plantings very carefully. This means that we track our items from seed, transplant dates, and growing season length to name a few considerations. While we seem to possess the level of organization necessary to do this, we have experienced some interesting events that we have had to address. Fortunately, to date, we have managed most of the unforeseen events that have happened. For example, a mob of Asian beetles decided to feast upon our tomato plants while we were starting them under grow lights indoors in march. They literally decimated about 100 plants. Fortunately, we were able to replant them and get them to the high tunnels outdoors, and last week, we transplanted about 600 tomato plants.

Similarly, a ground squirrel found our squash and melon seeds in the pots outdoors in the high tunnels to be a tasty spring treat. For those that know me, you already know that I could not kill the animal, and because the squirrel may be a mother with babies, I could not even live-trap it because the babies may starve. That leaves us with few options. The squirrel ate about 150 -200 plants. It set us back a few weeks. We are still trying to catch some of the squash up.

Then, of course, there are the trials of equipment breakdowns. One night, I planted until 3:00 am, only to find the next day that the planter did not plant consistently for about two hours. I had to go back the next day and replant about one third of that field. I am happy to say that the aforementioned field is doing well. Of course this would not have happened if we would not have started farming human-consumption row crops. However, the events that have led us to organic farming on a larger scale have been serendipitous, and we feel that this is an important part of our mission.

Last year at this time, if you would have told me that I would be farming 40 acres, I would have fallen over laughing. I have a lot of experience gardening, even gardening large plots. Gardening or farming for a CSA or the farmer's markets is pretty much the same thing as gardening, only more of it. Our five or so acres dedicated to the CSA and market are very manageable. Farming larger acreage, requires different skills—skills that, in case I did not mention it, I do not inherently possess. That does not include the fact that I had no idea on what land we would grow these kinds of crops on.

As a rule, I don't let small obstacles like this stop me from doing something that I set my mind to. The problem was, I hadn't set my mind to this at all. It just happened. First, Dan Boutelle and Ann Bausum appeared in our lives and they were interested in having someone grow organic food on their land. At first, I thought that I would work with a local farmer, Robert (Bob) Damm, to see if he and I could grow organic food together on this land. My hope was to show other farmers that we could grow organic crops in Rock County. Dan and Ann were very supportive of this idea, and without them, we would not be engaged in this endeavor.

Unfortunately for us, Bob decided that he wanted to stay retired. He is a very knowledgeable and helpful person, and he offered to help me get started. He helped us find the appropriate equipment like planters, discs, rotary hoes, and a combine. While I did not have the knowledge, at least I had a mentor willing to show us what we needed to know to undertake this project.

While we were getting ready for spring, we had another serendipitous encounter with Dr. Kathryn Brown. Dr. Brown. approached us looking for someone to organically farm some of her land. She has been instrumental in pushing me over the edge into farming. Her land is within sight of our farm, and we just finished planting it this past Sunday. Interestingly, our paths had crossed about 15 years earlier. We are very thankful for this opportunity presented to us through our encounters with Dan, Ann, Bob, and Dr. Brown, but what are we doing with this opportunity?

The answer is grow food for people to eat that is safe and local. It's hard to deny that times are getting difficult. Diesel fuel is close to $5/gallon, and its direct impact on food prices will be felt this summer and fall. To further exacerbate the problem, rising demand for food from developing nations like China and India where their expanding middle class wants the same standard of living that middle and upper class US citizens have enjoyed since after WWII, are driving up the demand for food, and it doesn't take a market economist to see that prices are going to be going up. This year alone, input costs like fertilizers, both conventional and organic are triple what they were last year. Factor in the insanity of growing fuel instead of food, and we have the makings of “The Perfect Storm” for food prices soaring out of control in the next year. Clearly the global mass-production of food system is broken and we will all pay, starting with our lower class. Our only answer is to get back to basics and start eating more locally.

While weeding our potatoes today I started doing some math in my head (this could be scary, but what else can one do while weeding a half acre of potatoes). An acre can produce enough food to feed one person fairly well on a vegetarian diet for a year. Even if the average diet were less dependent upon meat, we could accomplish a large portion of a goal to eat locally, if enough people decided to farm on a small scale and if people were willing to pay for their food what it is worth (more on this in a minute). I believe that there is something in the neighborhood of 150,000 people in Rock County. Assuming that there were approximately 3750 farmers willing to farm 40 acres or 1875 farmers who would organically farm 80 acres, we could produce enough food locally to feed our people. Of course, this kind of farming does not have to be confined by geopolitical borders, I am just using Rock County as an example.

Rock County has over 720 square miles of land. Where could the food be grown? Take a look around you. Most of the fields that you see are producing either corn for ethanol, corn for high fructose corn syrup, or grain for feedlots. Forgetting all of the problems with feedlots, and simply looking at the math of production, it takes nearly 10 acres of land to produce the meat required to meet the caloric requirements of a human for a year! That is a ten fold difference from a vegetarian diet. Also, not all meats are created equally. Chicken has a better land use ratio than beef an pork. However, that is not even the worst of it. Most of the meat produced in this area is also shipped out to processing plants across the globe where some form of food/industrial product is created. How insane is that? Farmers will grow local food if consumers demand it. However, consumers need to be prepared to pay for the real price of food.

Mass-production food is heavily subsidized. Many large industrial operations are large simply due to the incentives offered to large production facilities. When you notice that the prices at your local farmer's market are slightly higher than your local grocery store, do not assume that it is because your local farmer is looking to cash in on the local eating craze. What you are seeing is the actual and honest prices of producing food. There are many factors at work here, too many to address today, but suffice it to say that we are paying for our food elsewhere—taxes, wars, and health care costs to name but a few.

Where else can we grow locally? Look around again. How many lawns to you see in your neighborhood where fertilizer and water are applied so that we can spend hours using gasoline mowers to cut it so that is does not get too long. I once knew a man from Laos who expressed his amazement at how many people simply killed the food in their yards. In fact, the concept of a lawn puzzled him most. He could not figure out why everyone did not have a garden. Most lawns are between 1/5 to 1 acre in size. During WWII, everyone was encouraged to grow “freedom gardens” because food was in short supply. One of the first steps that we can do is grow our own gardens. That is as local as your food can get.

Over the next few weeks, I will post suggestions for managing a garden at home, and how to minimize labor spent in the garden. We all can make a difference and be proactive with our food choices. I have attempted to offer some food for thought (pun intended). We can make a difference locally, if we choose as a community to do so. It will require some thought and a lot of organization, but those of us in southern Wisconsin can set an example, if we choose. We are always presented with choices. Susan and I have chosen to produce local food, and you have chosen to buy local food. That is an excellent start. There is still a lot we all can do if we are to address the issues before us surrounding food and food production. Consider the lyrics of the Rush song, Freewill: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” What do you choose to do about the impending food crisis? Susan and I must answer that question as well.

We are finally getting a reasonable break in the weather. The wet weather has left large portions of some of our fields waterlogged, and while we appreciate the life-giving nature of the water, a few dry days have helped us out tremendously. We should be able to get into the fields to do some preparation work. We are working up about 30 new acres this spring, and weed control early is very important. In subsequent years, the practice of winter cropping and undersowing a green manure will minimize weed encroachment in the these fields. We will be planting 10 acres of human consumption corn and about 17 acres of human consumption soy this year. We are also attempting to cultivate a variety of black bean this year for seed, which we will plant next year as a row crop.

The fifty or so flats of seedlings that we have started early are doing well. We had to move them from  under the grow lights to the greenhouses earlier than we had planned due to an insect problem. Apparently, the Asian beetles the over-wintered in our siding have found a way into the southern exposure room where we had our seedlings. They began to feast on the tender shoots, indiscriminately destroying our early seedlings. Once we identified the problem, we moved the seedlings to the greenhouse. The nighttime temperatures this past week, however, dipped too low, and we had to move the seedlings into the house each evening. Fortunately, they are recovering well. I just checked the recent forecast, and it looks like we will not have to bring them in again for at least a week.

We have also had an opportunity this week to catch up with planting vegetables. By tomorrow, we will have everything in the ground that should be by this point in the year. Spinach, several varieties of lettuce, radishes, arugula, and kale are some of the vegetables that we have planted this week. We expect to plant potatoes and onions as well by this weekend. In fact, we are caught up enough, that we actually came in early tonight. We will get to eat dinner tonight before 9:30! Now that is something to get excited about.