+ Everbody Eats! - Part 2 - Best Practices

Continuing the discussion on local, organic and sustainable food, the following is our interview with local food grower Bob Klouman of K&R Garden Fresh Produce.

TGG: Please give us some background on yourself and K&R Fresh Produce.

Bob: K&R Fresh Produce is a 47 acre former tobacco farm that was not very well managed. The previous owners used regular, conventional tillage. They did not plant cover crops. The soil was depleted.

My background is a college educated agronomist – studying crops and soil. I try to base my actions on the best knowledge available. I’ve gotten back to doing the fundamental things I learned as a boy in my gardens. I went to no-till for most crops, the eggplants and peppers. No-till improves production. I will rototill for lettuces and greens, but space those rows out, let the space between “go natural”. I broadcast seeds and thin things out as they grow and that helps keep down the weeds.

Some organic products, even though they are natural products, are chemicals and have pesticides. In a way they are being miss-used because the “organic” label implies that there are no chemicals or pesticides.

You have to base your trust that the person growing the foods is being truthful.
Once a grower gets certified organic the grower can do anything and still claim the crops are “organic”.
I have had certified organic farmers buy my crops and sell them as organic as part of their share boxes for their CSA – Community Supported Agriculture programs. That is not how that is supposed to work.
I have not sprayed anything at all this year, but I cannot claim that my crops are organic.
For example, I will use Round Up if needed to save a crop but I will not use a tractor. Tractor tilling damages the earthworm population.

A healthy earthworm population will move more soil in a year that a tractor does tilling the same field.

TGG: How do you tell the value story?

Bob: Local quality is superior, freshness is unsurpassed. Sometimes my crops are less than 5 hours out of the field, which you cannot get any other way.
The food is more nutritious. The nutrition might not be tasted but it is there.
The customers are getting the freshest food possible

We are trying to replace what people get for 9-10 months of the year in the grocery store and it’s hard to capture that business in 2 months. We cannot expect them to drop all of their shopping habits.

The way foods are labeled can be confusing. Take tomatoes for example. The tomatoes are picked green with the slightest bit of pink star on the bottom are considered vine ripened. The sugars in those tomatoes have not even begun to develop. The tomatoes are gassed to bring out the color, but they have very little flavor. People are used to the way those tomatoes taste. It is hard for me as a grower to tell people that my tomatoes are worth more because they taste better, when they look the same as what is in the store.

TGG: What are some of the challenges facing local, organic and sustainable food to become more mainstream for consumers?

Bob: A lot of things in the "New Organic" revolution are fine and dandy but we are probably going to try and do things that are not sustainable.

If everyone did what I am doing, traveling 85 -90 miles to the farmers market, in my mind, is not sustainable. Ideally, a local economy should really be a 25 mile radius.

Cheap energy, specifically oil, has accelerated population and growth. When that finite energy source is gone, we will be forced back into a local economy.
Cheap oil and below cost energy has a high hidden cost. The true cost is not only the financial, monetary cost, but the cost to the environment, the cost to our health.

Cheap energy has led to everything being out of balance.
Every time you flip on a light switch there are consequences to that act.
Every act, even eating, is an ecological act.

What you choose to eat has consequences.

TGG: Speaking of energy, what is driving your efforts?

Bob: I question the motivation of businesses that do not look ahead long term. We need to look beyond 5 years to solve the big problems.

I try and do what I can to minimize my footprint on this planet, and leave this farm better than it was when I started.

I’m motivated by doing what is right, to make best practices.

Some books that Bob suggested for reference on sustainability:

Wendell Berry “Unsettling of America”

Lester Brown “Outgrowing the Earth”

LesterBrown “Plan B” Feeding People, Restoring Earth

Richard Heinberg “The Party’s Over: Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”

Richard Heinberg “Power Down - Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World”

James Kunstler “The Long Emergency”

also on the web:

http://www.worldwatch.org/