Nurture and Nature

By Michael Rosen-Molina, AlterNet. Posted July 26, 2004.

Emily Oakley grew up in a sprawling suburban neighborhood in Tulsa, The second biggest city in Oklahoma. Her mother was a high school English teacher and her father was a computer programmer. As a kid, she talked about becoming a doctor.

Mike Appel grew up on Long Island, New York. His parents wanted him to be a teacher.

Today, Oakley, 26, and Appel, 27, own their own two-acre organic fruit and vegetable farm just outside Tulsa city limits.

"Organic farming is something that brings environment and social issues together because everyone needs to eat," says Oakley, on the phone from Three Springs farm in Oklahoma. It's the middle of their first-ever growing season, so she and Appel are working in the fields every day. "I don't think my parents really understand why I do this, but they can understand living a lifestyle and having a business you believe in."

Traditionally, there are two ways to get into agriculture: You can inherit a farm or you can marry a farmer. But today, many fledgling farmers like Oakley and Appel aren't coming in through the family. In fact, many are relative city slickers, growing up in urban areas with little or no exposure to farm life, driven by a desire to grow clean organic produce and get back to the land.

Many city-dwellers dream of escaping the crowds and noise and pollution of the city to start anew in the country, but it takes a special commitment to make that dream a reality. Running a farm isn't just an idyllic walk in the country. Oakley and Appel wake up before dawn each day. Then usually hit the fields immediately, harvesting for a few hours. On Tuesdays and Fridays, they harvest all day, picking fresh tomatoes, peppers, and melons for Tulsa's weekly farmers' markets.

Some crops need to be picked everyday: Zucchini grows gigantic if left on the vine and cherry tomatoes get overripe. After harvesting, they do field work – weeding, tilling, planting, and irrigating. They usually return home by 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. to do an hour or two of office work, recording temperatures and pest sightings and planning future plantings.

After harvesting their crops, Appel and Oakley still need to get them to their final destinations. They sell wholesale groceries to restaurants and food co-ops, and run a small 10-member CSA. (In a CSA, or community supported agriculture, members pay an up-front fee to have a weekly basket of fresh produce delivered to their doors.) But they make most of their sales at farmers' markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Even before they started planting, they had to learn the mechanics of the business; they scoured the library for information on marketing strategy and attended business-planning workshops held by the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. Even before they'd set foot back in Tulsa, though, the path to starting a farm was a long and winding one.

"It's definitely not for the faint of heart," said Oakley.

The Crisis of Family Farming

Across the country, the average age of farmers is on the rise. In California, the number farmers under the age of 35 fell 51% between 1987 and 1997, according to California FarmLink.

"Farmers are getting older and older," said Marian Beethe, manager of the Nebraska Beginning Farmer Program. "Part is due to the economic situation, since fewer younger people are getting into farming. Part of it is that older farmers can keep farming longer with better technology." Meanwhile, corporate agribusiness can undersell the small family farmer, making the small farm economically unviable.

At the same time that older farmers can keep farming longer, there are more barriers than ever for young farmers to surmount – land and equipment are expensive, and returns are uncertain. Appel and Oakley were lucky; another farmer lent them the equipment they needed to get started.

"Without their help, we wouldn't have been able to do this," said Appel. "Farming is a very capital-intensive business."

As a result, some farmers' children don't see the appeal in taking over the family plot.

"Some people who grew up on farms are being discouraged by parents or economics," said Steve Schwartz of California Farmlink. "It's difficult work without any guarantee of large compensation."

Michael Rosen-Molina is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »