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Organic Stories: Level Ground Coffee, WSANEC Territory

in 2023/Climate Change/Crop Production/Current Issue/Fall 2023/Grow Organic/Marketing/Organic Community/Organic Stories

The Coffee Company that Wants Us All to be on Level Ground

Darcy Smith

Can coffee be sustainable? If you have ever asked this question about your morning cuppa, you are not alone. It’s a question Stacey Toews, co-founder of Level Ground Coffee Roasters, gets all the time. People “feel helpless in the global machine,” says Stacey. But one of the great joys of his work is getting to show people that “you are largely in the driver’s seat when it comes to coffee.”

At least, he clarifies, if it’s organic. He’s done the math: “with what goes into the life of coffee, from an emissions standpoint you can’t redeem coffee grown using chemicals.”

After a year of living and volunteering in Asia, Level Ground was born out of Stacey’s desire to “have a life purpose that would be aimed at bringing possibility and abundance into circumstances that looked dire and difficult.” The day he returned to Canada, Stacey met his wife and Level Ground co-founder Laurie Klassen, who shared his drive to “level the playing field,” says Stacey.

“At the simplest level, often life isn’t fair,” says Stacey. “Global trade is tipped in favour of a certain group.” This led to the premise of Level Ground: “we asked ourselves, ‘How do we run a business that creates positive impact from inception?’ We wanted to have a positive social impact with farmers who could be our partners, and with consumers.” Coffee was an ideal product because people reach for it each morning: “People can say, my daily rhythms have a positive effect.”

Level Ground staff help load coffee headed from the co-op to export in Peru. Credit: Level Ground Coffee Roasters.

Now 27 years old, Level Ground has what Stacey describes as “a pretty unique mix” of a business model: global connections for sourcing, a local roasting facility and tasting room in Central Saanich BC, and distribution to everywhere from universities, high end restaurants and cafes, and grocery stores.

Level Ground’s approach from the onset has been to humanize trade. “There are real people producing the everyday consumables of life,” says Stacey. “Any way we can make it less about an economic choice, and more a human decision, the more we can flavour the idea that sustainable, mindful global consumption can be powerful and positive.”

“We jumped into the fair-trade approach from inception in the late ‘90s,” Stacey says, “with the primary driving aim of providing coffee growers with a stable income that recognizes the living wage needed for a small-scale farming family to make a go of it.” Level Ground buys a million pounds of coffee annually, sourced from 5,000 small-scale farming families, who are members of 12 co-operatives. Each farming co-op can have 200 to 2,000 farmers in a common geographic region, where the climate is similar. Most of the farmers are cultivating under 10 acres.

The farmers Level Ground works with belong to progressive co-ops, and are using organic and permaculture techniques to produce the precious coffee berry. Coffee is grown on steep slopes at a high elevation, requiring a cool climate in otherwise equatorial, hot countries. The coffee cherry is the primary crop, growing on trees spaced a couple metres apart and reaching heights of two metres. Like other fruit crops, it takes two to five years to start harvesting the coffee berries once seedlings are planted. The berry has to ripen slowly to develop the precious fats and oils that give coffee its distinctive flavour.

Stacey Toews visiting with a small-scale coffee grower in Peru. Credit: Level Ground Trading.

While coffee berries are harvested over a period of a few weeks, coffee trees have needs throughout the year-long production cycle: shade, mulch on ground, organic compost, pruning, ideally right after harvest has ended.

“There are a lot of challenges to small-scale coffee farmers being organic,” Stacey says. Some of these will sound familiar to farmers in BC: neighbouring practices, lack of resources, a difficult transition period where yields may be lower without the premium organic price to make up the difference.

“Fertilizer is big driver of productivity of plants,” says Stacey. “Farmers who move away from fertilizer will see their yields go down. When the message coming from consumers is ‘Be organic, you guys who grow our food,’ that can be interpreted as ‘You want us to make less money’.” Even with the premium price of organic coffee, organic may not pay as well if there are fewer pounds to sell.

The steeply-sloped terrain provides one challenge to organic production: “Imagine having a compost pile and during the rainy season all the nutrients just wash away,” Stacey says. To solve this problem, farmers dig pits for their compost. Another creative practice employed by organic growers: coffee trees require shade, so farmers will plant nitrogen-fixing leguminous trees spaced throughout their coffee trees. Not only do they provide the much-needed shade, they also offer mulch, a habitat for birds, and through their roots one healthy tree can put a tonne of nitrogen into the soil per year.

The co-ops have agricultural technicians who work with the farmers to develop methodology that will result in higher yields and a better-quality crop through organic practices. These technicians will often visit member farms at critical points in the growing cycle. Stacey says this allows them to become familiar with on-the-ground challenges: erosion, pests, disease, pruning and mulching techniques. “The collective wisdom from a handful of technicians visiting the 1,000 plus farmers in any given co-op hones their knowledge of what is, or isn’t working at different elevations, including the best varietals of coffee to plant.”

Brewing up fresh espresso at the Level Ground tasting room. Credit: Maylies Lang.

Once the berries are harvested, farmers are on a tight timeline. The ripe red coffee berries are brought to the co-op’s shared infrastructure, where they must be pulped the same day of harvest. Then, the coffee berry, with pulp removed, is fermented for 18 to 24 hours as naturally occurring bacteria in the air break down the exterior mucous coating of the berry. The fermented seeds are then dried in the sun, before being prepared for shipping.

Coffee usually starts to ship from a co-op three months after harvest ends, giving the co-op time to focus on processing the ripe berries. The next stage is all about sorting, sampling, and quality control in order to fulfill contracts arranged well before harvest.

Stacey describes the procedure for sampling: “when they have a prospective lot of coffee designed to fill a shipping container and go to Level Ground, they use a hollow metal tool and stab every sack so that a few beans come out.” The resulting 700-gram sample is representative of every sack. Half of the sample stays at co-op, and the other half is sent to Level Ground, so the roasters can look at the green product and check for any defects. They then do a very light roast and “cup” it to get a quality score. At the sample stage, “we use the lightest roast to not cover up the characteristics of the beans, both bad and good,” Stacey says. This gives them the most insight on the beans’ potential and cup score. If everything checks out, the co-op will prepare a full shipment.

The Level Ground roasting facility in Saanichton, BC. Credit: Maylies Lang.

“Every coffee cherry is hand-picked. There are two beans from each cherry, handled manually or mechanically to be processed, and cupped and scored by the co-ops lab and Level Ground,” before arriving by ship, Stacey says. “We open the doors of each shipment to several hundred families contributing to what’s in a container.”

The annual coffee harvest is the primary, if not only, crop for which these families are receiving cash. The world price for specialty coffee is traded per pound in US currency. “The price is noted hour to hour each business day,” says Stacey. “In our company’s history, I’ve seen it be as low as 40 cents and as high as three dollars for one pound of coffee. It’s generally a volatile market.”

Stacey emphasizes that travel doesn’t always make a product unsustainable. It’s a common misconception, he says. “There is far more carbon footprint adding milk to coffee than the coffee itself. You can drink five americanos or drip coffees for every latte.” Level Ground buys full containers to get the most efficient inbound shipping via container ship. The footprint of inbound coffee is one sixth that of outbound trucking of roasted coffee, says Stacey.

While the farmers are doing their part to grow organically, Level Ground works on sustainability in their own community. Their new facility and patented roasting technology, which recaptures heat used in destroying volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced as part of the roasting process, has allowed them to reduce their natural gas usage by 43 percent.

“I feel pretty confident to say, if you’re living in BC and buying coffee from Level Ground, all our steps and procedures result in it being the most sustainable coffee in the marketplace,” says Stacey.

The world has changed since Level Ground roasted its first bean back in the late ‘90s, and, while the core values have remained the same, Level Ground is changing with it. Like many others, Stacey describes the inevitable pivot during Covid-19: “Much of what had been a backbone of our business evaporated in a two week stretch, and many of them have never come back to being what they were before.” He continues, “What’s become normal to us is a crazy amount of adaptation that I would never have foreseen two to three years ago.”

Stacey has also witnessed a trend over the last decade to single-serve coffee. “After years of the quality of coffee improving, convenience became the key.” That means the drive to produce quality coffee decreases in favour of convenience. But Level Ground, as a “pro-farmer voice” in the coffee industry, “wants to find high-quality accessible coffee”—the best of both worlds. This tier of coffee is also the bulk of what farmers can produce, meaning it’s the best bet to get the farmers a living wage.

On the production side, there is “huge unpredictability on farms,” says Stacey. As is the case everywhere, “farmers are aging, and the climate is changing.” The elevation required for the coffee trees keeps getting higher. “Arabica coffee is running out of real estate,” says Stacey. “If grandpa and grandma had a great location, and the third generation is now farming, they may be below the optimal elevation.” Arabica is also susceptible to new pests and disease.

“So much has changed,” Stacey emphasizes. “Our model for purchasing coffee, of working with community, of managing teams—we didn’t have a grid for what we’re doing now on so many levels.”

And while the only constant in the future might be constant change, Stacey is optimistic: “Ultimately our goal is more farmers, more hope, more possibility. I have a friend who says, ‘The person with the most hope in the room controls the narrative.’ If our approach is about fairness, respect, honouring others, and sustainability, most people will say, ‘That’s the community I want to live in’.”

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Darcy Smith is the editor of the BC Organic Grower, and a huge fan of organic farmers. She also manages the BC Land Matching Program delivered by Young Agrarians.

Featured image: Coffee bean processing at Level Ground Coffee Roasters. Credit: Maylies Lang.

 

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Agriculture and Conservation at Alaksen National Wildlife Area

in 2023/Climate Change/Crop Production/Current Issue/Fall 2023/Land Stewardship/Living with Wildlife/Tools & Techniques

Jordy Kersey

The Alaksen National Wildlife Area (Alaksen) is a protected wildlife area in Delta, BC that utilizes agricultural production to provide habitat for migratory birds and other protected species. The area is unique in that the farmland is used to produce forage and habitat for the migratory waterfowl as well as cash crops (annual vegetables).

Maintaining economic and agronomic viability alongside wildlife and habitat conservation is increasingly challenging due to climate crisis pressures, high-water tables, and soil degradation. Due to recent mandates, Alaksen farmers are now required to eliminate farming practices that adversely impact the environment and breadth of species that inhabit the wildlife area. Alternatively, they are moving towards utilization of organic-regenerative methods that are less deleterious and impactful. There is a need to determine how organic-regenerative management methods can effectively be implemented on these farms to sustain production, but also reduce degradation of habitat into the future.

Over the last four farming seasons, agricultural scientists from the Sustainable Agricultural Landscapes Lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) have evaluated conditions and challenges impacting crop production at Alaksen, as well as the crop rotation scheme that is currently used. A range of plot-level studies have been conducted to assess the feasibility of an organic-regenerative farming method and to better understand the interactions between farm activities and wildlife habitat provision.

Cabbage plots at Alaksen. Credit: Jordy Kersey.

Following a baseline assessment, a suite of projects to bridge the gap between meeting production goals and maintaining conservation of wildlife habitat and waterfowl populations have been conducted using organic-regenerative approaches. These projects include (but are not limited to): evaluation of organic insect and weed pest management alternatives; development and evaluation of alternative tillage and organic amendment regimes; investigation of some alternative crops and their market potential; and an evaluation of alternative cover cropping approaches. This project is set to continue into the next five years, with research directed at specific organic-regenerative farming methods that have been observed to be promising in this environment and ultimately to investigate a whole farming system that employs organic-regenerative farming practices.

These organic-regenerative methods have potential to not only reduce the environmental harm of the farming system, but also promote soil health and support successful vegetable crop production. Organic-regenerative management may help to increase soil organic matter which can improve soil aggregate stability, and in turn improve soil water dynamics. Increased soil organic matter is also associated with building of soil health and is an indicator of soil fertility. Reducing the synthetic inputs to the system may help to reduce residual pesticides and herbicides within the soil profile and those lost to surrounding water ways. Migratory waterfowl depend on these fields as habitat and farmers depend on these fields for income, so replacing synthetic inputs with organic alternatives and cultivating a healthy soil to effectively support crop disease, weed suppression, and avoid soil degradation is imperative for both wildlife conservation goals and sustained production.

Trial plots at Alaksen. Credit: Jordy Kersey.

In contrast to many of the potential benefits of transitioning to certain organic-regenerative practices, there are also concerns that may constrain adoption in some areas, including providing adequate crop nitrogen through organic amendments, avoiding an excess or deficit of phosphorus, retaining comparable crop yields, and effective replacement of herbicides with increased tillage intensity.

Application of organic amendments compared to the typical synthetic NPK applied at Alaksen did not significantly reduce growing season plant-available nitrogen nor did it reduce onion and cabbage crop yield over the two years this experiment was conducted. We did, however, find differences in weed pressure with varying tillage intensity. Plots with application of conventional herbicide had significantly less weed pressure and required less labor than plots with no herbicide application. However, increasing tillage intensity also reduced weed pressure, indicating that greater tillage intensity (more passes) may be an effective replacement for weed suppression in these systems. This was particularly apparent in alternative crops such as butternut squash, with the plant structure shading out most weeds by the middle of the growing season. Further research must be conducted to determine how an increase in weed pressure with the elimination of herbicide would impact farm labour costs and how strongly the weed pressure impacts crop yields of other rotation phases.

Onion harvest. Credit: Jordy Kersey.

In addition to alternative farming practices, changes in crop and cultivar selections at Alaksen may reduce growing season constraints, leading to reduced reliance on conventional pesticides and improved cover crop establishment. Adequate cover crop establishment is required to provide sufficient forage for migratory waterfowl over-winter; however, climactic variability in shoulder-season rainfall can cause significant issues for germination and canopy coverage. Transitioning to vegetable crops with shorter periods of maturation could provide farmers with additional days or weeks to get cover crops planted and well-established before shoulder-season rainfall sets in. Crop diversification offers additional potential for improved farm profitability and risk mitigation. Historically, farmers on Westham Island integrated crops such as peas and beans into their cropping systems, but as bird pressures have increased these regimes have often been abandoned. Identifying crops or cultivars that perform well in organic production systems, are disease resistant, and suitable to the unique environment at Alaksen is very important moving forward and in transitioning to a more sustainable cropping regime.

Alternative crops were observed to grow successfully at Alaksen compared to typical rotation crops, such as cabbage, throughout this experiment. Butternut squash, onions, and radishes were three crops that did well throughout the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons. Butternut squash yield was high but the growing season long, as the crop was ready for harvest in early October. While in that year the shoulder-season was dry, in wetter years this may cause problems with harvesting and getting cover crops planted, if rains were to set in during September. On the other hand, radishes were mature and harvested in early July. This would provide ample time for sowing and establishing winter cover crops; however, also poses the issue of barren soil for a portion of the year, until sufficient water is available for cover crop germination. Further research into the marketability of these alternative crops is still needed. The success of alternative cover cropping mixtures to withstand migratory bird grazing pressure is currently being assessed from the data collected over the past two winter seasons.

Moving into the next phase of this experiment we hope to identify combinations of organic-regenerative farming methods that synergize well in this environment for the most beneficial outcomes both in terms of production and wildlife conservation. Farm management at a plot-scale is often very different than field-scale so it is important to
recognize the need for scaling before conclusions can be made. There is also a need to investigate alternative rotation regimes and the economics of organic verses conventional production to contextualize the outcomes of this research within the Alaksen farming system. We are hopeful this research has and will continue to be insightful and provide alternative farming system management to Alaksen farmers and other interested growers in the lower Fraser Valley region.

Jordy Kersey (MSc) is a current PhD candidate in soil science working with Dr. Sean Smukler at UBC in the Sustainable Agricultural Landscapes Lab. Jordy’s research is focused on the impact of regenerative agricultural practices on climate breakdown mitigation and adaptation in the lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia. Specifically, Jordy is investigating how agricultural management practices influence soil carbon and nitrogen cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil water regulation. Jordy is passionate about working towards a more sustainable future and finding meaningful ways to improve agricultural systems to combat climate crisis while continuing to feed our world. Beyond academics, Jordy is an avid cookie baker, traveler, and enjoy long hikes through the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Featured image: Research plots at Alaksen National Wildlife Area. Credit: Jordy Kersey.

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Growing Greener: Organic Farmers Lead the Way in Environmental Stewardship

in 2023/Current Issue/Fall 2023/Land Stewardship/Soil/Tools & Techniques/Water Management

Valerie Maida

Conservation and agriculture can sometimes seem to be at odds. Conservation can be seen as trying to prevent development and control activities on farms, while agricultural development of natural areas for new farms can destroy habitats, leading to frustrations on both sides. However, farmers are naturally caretakers of the land, managing the soils and water on their properties to ensure their fields will continue to be productive long into the future. There are many opportunities for conservation groups and farmers to work together that benefit both farms and the natural environment. That’s where the Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society (OSS) comes in.

OSS works with private landowners to partner in conservation and enhancement of wildlife habitats on their properties. Through their Wildlife Habitat Steward program, the organisation supports landowners with recognition, technical support in habitat enhancement projects, management plans, and assistance with implementation of best management practices for wildlife on their properties. Being a Wildlife Habitat Steward does not mean farmers can’t “use” their land. Wildlife Habitat Stewards still maintain their agricultural, tourism, and other land use practices on their properties while implementing best management practices for wildlife.

OSS has recently undertaken a large project in Summerland’s Garnet Valley working with a community of private landowners to control yellow flag iris at its most upstream extent in Eneas Creek. Yellow flag iris is an invasive plant from Eurasia and Northern Africa. It was originally used as an ornamental pond plant but with a complete lack of natural controls or predators, it escaped and spread across North America. At some point, the iris was planted near Eneas Creek and it has since proliferated down the creek.

Valerie Maida installing benthic barrier. Credit: Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society.

For property owners, the main concern with this invasive plant is that it forms dense mats across and into the water, causing the creek channel to narrow, and significantly increasing flood risk. Yellow flag iris also changes the environment both in the stream and along the banks, reducing the number of insects, which in turn reduces food for fish, birds, and other animals. It is almost unkillable—cutting, digging, and tilling do nothing to stop its growth, and any effective herbicides cannot be used near water. The only effective way to handle large infestations is to smother the plants under heavy impermeable tarps. An infestation like this one can seem impossible to manage because it is spread across so many properties.

To tackle the yellow flag iris infestation, OSS helped to create a community of stewards in the Garnet Valley to work together to do what no one landowner could manage on their own. Starting the project upstream and working downwards, OSS was able to work together with farmers both organic and conventional, as well as homesteaders, hobby farmers and others to eradicate the yellow flag from one kilometre downstream of where the original infestation started, with agreements and plans in place to continue the work for at least another 750 metres. The yellow flag iris isn’t dead yet, but it is covered and has stopped being a seed source for the rest of the creek.

Two of the wonderful landowners that we have had the pleasure of working with are Thomas and Celina Tumbach. They are owners and operators of LocalMotive Organic Delivery service and Garnett Hollow Farm, a ground crop farm tucked alongside Eneas Creek in Summerland’s Garnet Valley. They are strong believers in the organic movement and started LocalMotive nearly 20 years ago in an effort to help develop local food distribution networks and connect organic farmers with consumers in BC. For them, farming organically alongside nature instead of against it just comes naturally.

“The Tumbachs have left a significant portion of their riparian area [dense forested area around a creek or wetland] intact,” says Alyson Skinner, Executive Director with OSS. “Their participation in the program was a natural fit considering their commitment to organics and to working with nature instead of against it.”

The Tumbachs with their Wildlife Habitat Stewardship Sign. Credit: Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society.

Undeveloped natural areas are highly beneficial around farms. They can help prevent soil erosion, filter chemicals from water runoff, and also help protect against weather events like flooding and high winds. Intact habitats can even help improve overall production on the farm. The diversity of trees, shrubs, and flowers in high-quality habitats maintains higher numbers of native pollinators and other beneficial insects such as lacewings, butterflies, and ladybugs and the additional pollination and pest control comes with little to no outside effort. Awareness and appreciation of the intrinsic value of wild spaces on the farm are starting to gain momentum among farmers.

“Nearly half of the 130 landowners we have participating in our Wildlife Habitat Steward program are growers and producers,” notes Skinner. “Big or small, organic or conventional, they have all taken steps to improve their land stewardship, providing benefits to wildlife and production. Much of the time, like at Thomas and Celina’s, stewardship means they just allow the habitats to exist and contact us for advice or if a concern arises. Other times, we help folks improve habitat by installing nest boxes for owls and songbirds and basking platforms for turtles.”

OSS’s community of stewards in the Garnet Valley started with Steve Lornie and Christine Coletta of Okanagan Crush Pad Winery. Right from the beginning, they wanted to farm their 320-acre Garnet Valley property with as little impact on the land as possible. After going organic and getting the vineyards started they turned their attention to the far west corner that had a fallow hayfield with Eneas Creek running alongside it. Realizing it was too wet for grapes and that habitat restoration was the best use for the area, they contacted OSS for help and signed on to the Wildlife Habitat Steward program.

Over the following three years, over 2,000 native trees and shrubs were planted throughout the hayfield to help return it to the riparian forest it once was. The importance of the project quickly became apparent when, for two years in a row after the restoration started, the floodplain fulfilled its purpose by holding and slowing down millions of litres of water from rushing downstream when Eneas Creek burst its banks during freshet.

Following Okanagan Crush Pad and LocalMotive/ Garnett Hollow, a dozen properties along the Eneas Creek corridor now call themselves Wildlife Habitat Stewards. This collective effort means that over two kilometres of Eneas Creek is being cared for by growers, both organic and conventional, as well as homesteaders and others. In addition to the benefits this provides to the community, it has also created unique opportunities to undertake a shared concern in the watershed.

The stewardship community in the Garnet Valley is a good example of the growing trend among farmers and homesteaders to embrace stewardship of their land and natural habitats. These individuals recognize the importance of working with nature, not against it, in their agricultural practices. Through their participation in programs such as the Wildlife Habitat Stewards, these farmers and landowners have collectively made a significant impact on wildlife in the Garnet Valley while also reaping the benefits of maintaining natural areas around their farms.

Growers in the Okanagan and Similkameen region who are interested in OSS’s Wildlife Habitat Steward program can contact info@osstewardship.ca or 250-770-1467 to learn more about the program, or to arrange a zero-obligation site visit with a biologist to discuss what stewardship could look like for their property.

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Valerie Maida is the Stewardship Officer for Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship, a non-profit that works with landowners and managers to conserve and enhance wildlife habitat on their properties. The team at OSS collaborated on this article.

Featured image: Yellow flag iris in bloom. Credit: Okanagan Similkameen Stewardship Society.

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Environmental Farm Plan: Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative

in 2023/Climate Change/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Organic Community/Spring/Summer 2023/Water Management

By Brynn Hughes

The Glen Valley Organic Farm in Abbotsford, run by the Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative (GVOFC), sits on 50 acres of prime agriculture land. The Co-op purchased the organic farm in 1998, and today it hosts two organic vegetable businesses across twelve acres, twenty-two acres of peat bog pasture, and eight acres of forest.

GVOFC is deeply committed to environmental sustainability; their members are active with the BC Association of Regenerative Agriculture, the Community Farm Network, FarmFolk/CityFolk, and the BC Association of Farmers Markets. So, it is no wonder that they chose to also pursue an Environmental Farm Plan (EFP). “We first heard about the environmental farm plan five or six years ago. In March of 2022, we undertook a few assessments to get a better sense of what we should be doing on the farm,” said Chris Bodnar of GVOFC.

When GVOFC first completed an EFP in 2015 they didn’t pursue any projects. But when the farm received a notice their EFP needed to be renewed, Chris Bodnar, who, along with his wife Paige Dampier, owns and operates Close to Home Organics, one of the two organic vegetable businesses on the farm, they got in touch with the EFP program.

After connecting with their EFP Advisor, Darrell Zbeetnoff, Darrell visited Chris on the farm and worked through the EFP workbook with him, updating areas and suggesting projects they could take on to improve the farm’s environmental impact. Chris said, “We really benefited from just having someone with outside eyes come on to the farm, give some ideas, some feedback, some thoughts about how to prioritize some of the things that we might do and then guide us through the different funding options that are available to actually get that work done.”

Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative. Credit: Investment Agriculture Foundation.

GVOFC’s long term goal is to re-establish a wetland in low-lying, peat bog areas. Currently the areas are just grazed annually, but the co-operative has recognized restoring these areas to their previous state as floodplain bogs will have a large impact to their overall farming operation. GVOFC anticipates that re-establishing a wetland area will not only provide habitat for amphibians and reptiles on the property but will also provide the farm with a better outcome in terms of water management by avoiding flooding in other areas which they want to protect for growing. According to Chris, “We’re not going to eliminate the water; we’re not going to get rid of the water and change its direction; but we need to be able to work with the water and understand how it goes across our property and what benefits it has to other organisms that live on the farm.”

The first step in dealing with the larger issue of water management and working towards their goal of re-establishing a wetland was to bring in some experts. With the assistance of the BMP program GVOFC completed a Biodiversity Plan and a Riparian Management Plan. These two plans highlighted the work needed to be done, as well as the regulations they would need to follow while completing the work to protect the biodiversity they steward on the property. In late 2022 they completed an additional BMP, a Construction Environment Management Plan (CEMP) in anticipation of completing
work on their ditches to manage water flow, and to eventually support a wetland area.

“Stacy from McTavish Consulting was the person we worked with once we got into the nitty gritty of our Beneficial Management Practice and doing the riparian area assessment and the biodiversity assessment,” said Chris. “She was really focused on understanding the property, giving us practical advice as to how to proceed with the work and comprehensive plans. It was a relationship like that that had a huge impact on our ability both to understand what was necessary and to really get a sense that we could do the work.”

Although the project is large, and will take several years to complete, Chris feels confident with the support he has received through the Environmental Farm Plan. Glen Valley Organic Farm now has a clear path forward and can be confident they are taking the right steps to improve their farming practices. Chris affirms that “It’s one of the few opportunities you have as a farmer where someone can come onto your farm and review your practices with you. It’s confidential. There’s no obligation on you to do anything that comes out of it. So, you can choose what you have the energy and the capacity to do in any given year or beyond.”

To learn more about Glen Valley Organic Farm Co-operative, please visit their website: glenvalleyorganicfarm.org/gvwp

If you are interested in learning more about the Environmental Farm Plan and Beneficial Management Practices Programs, please visit: iafbc.ca/efp

To stay up to date on new programs or announcements, please subscribe to IAF’s Growing Today newsletter.

The Glen Valley Organic Farm resides on the traditional and unceded territory of the Stó:lo First Nation, whose spiritual and cultural traditions have never been extinguished.

This project was funded through the Environmental Farm Plan and Beneficial Management Practices programs, which were funded by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership Program, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. Additional funding has been provided by Clean BC.

Featured image: Chris Bodnar inspecting hedgerows. Credit: Investment Agriculture Foundation.

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How to Sneak Biodiversity Habitat into your Farm’s Forgotten Spaces

in 2023/Climate Change/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Winter 2023

By Carly McGregor

Research conducted by Carly McGregor, Matthew Tsuruda, Tyler Kelly, Martina Clausen, Claire Kremen, and Juli Carrillo, University of British Columbia

In collaboration with Drew Bondar, Connor Hawey, and Christine Schmalz, Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust

A research collaboration between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust (DF&WT) showed how marginal spaces on farms can promote biodiversity by helping beneficial insects flourish. It is already known that these marginal spaces—when managed appropriately—benefit soil health, but they can also be a tool for farmers to support a thriving insect community.

It’s no secret that insects and farmers have a complicated relationship. While pest insects can have a devastating impact on crops, a healthy population of diverse pollinators and pest predators can make the difference between an uninspired, meager crop and a lush harvest.

Conventional farming techniques can harm biodiversity in any number of ways: synthetic pesticides have toxic health effects on organisms beyond just targeted pests; herbicide sprays reduce plant diversity and thus access to nutritional resources for other wildlife; and the frequent disturbance of natural areas can destroy wildlife habitat. That said, growers are continually caught in cost-benefit calculations, often stuck on the pesticide treadmill to maintain yields and quality harvests.

Organic farming represents a pushback against some of these practices, but comes with the added stress of not being able to rely on synthetic chemicals.

Beyond natural pesticide alternatives, another key tool in the organic grower’s belt is the effective management of non-crop zones on farms, which falls under both the crop diversification and integrated pest management pillars of organic farming. Non-crop zones can include marginal areas that aren’t ideal for growing crops, alleyways between crop rows or along field edges, and set-aside fallow fields.

Predatory ground beetle found in a grassland set-aside. Credit: Tyler Kelly.

Left alone, non-crop zones can likely provide some benefits to biodiversity, but several research studies suggest that selectively planting certain plant species in these zones can enhance their potential, especially for beneficial biodiversity such as pollinators and natural predators of crop pests (insects and birds). Several organizations in BC run stewardship programs that promote the establishment of these ‘habitat enhancements’ on farms, one of which is the DF&WT, located in Delta, BC. The DF&WT’s Hedgerow Program assists growers with the selection and planting of hedgerow trees and shrubs in crop field margins, and their Grassland Set-Aside (GLSA) program offers cost-share benefit that supports growers in establishing and keeping GLSAs for up to four years. While previous research has shown that these habitat enhancements can improve soil health, the specific effects of these enhancements on pollinators, pest insects, and natural biological control was unknown.

Our research group collaborated with the DF&WT to evaluate the success of habitat enhancements to support beneficial insects, focusing on pollinators and natural enemy insects. For field margins, we assessed DF&WT-planted hedgerows and compared them to unmanaged trees and shrubs—what we call ‘remnant’ hedgerows—as well as unplanted grassy margins. We also investigated grass-dominant ‘traditional’ GLSAs planted through the DF&WT GLSA Program, and flower-supplemented ‘pollinator’ GLSAs, which a Delta grower began planting a few years ago in an effort to support pollinators by providing diverse flowers as a foraging resource.

We observed a clear preference for the flowers on planted hedgerows by honey bees and bumble bees. We weren’t surprised, as these bees are known to love members of the rose family, including the Nootka roses planted in DF&WT hedgerows, and the Himalayan blackberry that often invades and overtops shrub plantings. We also observed slightly more ground beetles (important natural enemies of spotted wing drosophila, a highly destructive berry crop pest rampant in the Lower Mainland) in the hedgerows compared to grassy field margins.

While hedgerows appear to support more honey bees and bumble bees than grassy margins, our results showed a similar liking to both margin types by the wild pollinator community as a whole. These results may be driven by smaller wild pollinators, such as sweat bees and flower flies. Collectively, they tend to prefer the smaller weedy flowers found both in grassy margins and hedgerows, as their mouthparts do not allow them to access nectar from larger or more tubular flowers. Grassy field margins thus likely support wild pollinators in a similar capacity as hedgerows, but perhaps offer resources that are preferred by smaller bees and flower flies. We also found that they support far more pollinators than within actively-managed crop fields. Grassy field margins can also support parasitoid wasps, which may provide some biological control for spotted wing drosophila populations, since several of the weedy plants common in field margins have extrafloral nectaries that feed parasitoids.

Moving to the much larger set-asides, we observed that these supported pollinators better than active crop fields did, both with and without added flowers. Honey bees were most abundant in the pollinator (i.e. flower-supplemented) GLSAs, while bumble bees were far more common in both the traditional (i.e. grass-dominant) and pollinator GLSAs compared to the active crop fields. When examining the whole wild pollinator community, pollinator GLSAs had the highest abundance and diversity, and active crop fields had the lowest, with traditional GLSAs coming in second place.

A non-crop zone (grassy margin) with pollinator sampling traps next to a plowed crop field. Credit: Carly McGregor.

We observed many beneficial insects directly foraging for nutrients on the abundant flowers in pollinator set-asides, which suggests that this type of set-aside was providing its intended resource. Comparatively, since traditional set-asides provided few floral resources (we either observed only clovers in these fields, or no flowers at all), the higher abundance and diversity of pollinators at traditional sites suggests they may supply nesting sites for ground-nesting bees. These bees include bumble bees, which opportunistically nest in abandoned rodent nests, and many species of sweat bees, which burrow their own nests in undisturbed open ground areas. Both types of potential nesting habitat are often found in traditional set-asides. In addition to supporting pollinators, we found a much higher abundance of predatory ground beetles in pollinator set-asides compared to crop fields.

Altogether, these findings provide evidence that grassland set-asides provide key resources for beneficial insects in an agricultural setting. This is another great reason to include set-asides in regular crop rotations – they can support soil health and beneficial insects!

Our research supports non-crop areas as holding great potential for supporting beneficial insects on farms. We found that each type of non-crop area—from unmanaged grassy margins, to planted hedgerows, remnant hedgerows, and both grass-dominant and flower-supplemented set-asides—best supports some portion of the beneficial insect community. If we were to leave organic growers with one takeaway from our research, it would be that the best land management practices likely involve the inclusion of a range of natural and enhanced habitats across farmland. Although integrated land management is no simple feat, careful and diversification-minded habitat management can help harness the often-untapped conservation potential that lies in those otherwise-forgotten marginal spaces on farms.

piee-lab.landfood.ubc.ca
worcslab.ubc.ca
deltafarmland.ca

Carly McGregor is the Lab Manager for the Plant-Insect Ecology & Evolution Research Lab and is a big fan of how fuzzy bumble bees are. 

Featured image: Bumble bees visiting goldenrod flowers. Credit: Carly McGregor.

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Improve Plant Immunity

in 2023/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Preparation/Soil/Tools & Techniques/Winter 2023

Microbially Friendly Farming

By Dr. Judith Fitzpatrick

[Originally published in Heart & Soil Magazine]

Imagine that you were intelligent enough to diagnose a disease, prescribe the correct antimicrobial, and manufacture it.

Plants with a healthy microbiome do this!

The plant and microbes work together to perform this miracle.

Organic farmers need 97% less of any kind of pesticide than those using mineral fertilizers. Mineral fertilizers are genocidal for the soil microbes that protect the plant from pathogens and adverse conditions, produce nutritionally-deficient food, and pollute the environment.

Plants Send Signals for Microbes

In regenerative organic farming, which we will refer to as Microbially Friendly Farming (MFF), the plant secretes approximately 30% of its photosynthate to generate the specific microbial population that it requires for nutritional needs and health.

The major stimulation for the plant to build this population is the plant’s hunger for the N, P, K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium), and other soil minerals that the microbes can deliver. When the plant is provided mineral N, it does not nourish this microbial population, and the plant loses the ability to protect itself from pathogens and stresses such as drought.

Microbially Friendly Farming

From here forward we will use the word plant to refer to a plant that has not been poisoned by a high mineral fertilizer regimen and has developed a healthy microbial population. We will use the term Microbially Friendly Farming (MFF) to refer to agricultural practices that maintain microbial populations above 250 µg (one-millionth of a gram), microbial biomass carbongram of soil and a F:B (fungi:bacteria) ratio above 0.5.

Microbes Support Each Other

The microbial population in the rhizosphere is controlled by the organic molecules that the plant exudes and the nutrients available in the soil. Microbes are the pickiest of eaters. They can only dine on very special diets and require the support of a population of other microbes that supply some of their dietary needs. This is why we can only grow about 1% of soil microbes in the lab – we know about the other 99% because we can detect their DNA, see them microscopically, and measure some of their metabolism.

Healthy Plant, Healthy Seed

Like us, plants receive their initial microbiome from the seed of the mother plant which are as important in establishing a healthy microbiome for the plant as they are for us – e.g. children born by caesarian birth have different microbiomes than those born vaginally and have immune deficits that are attributed to not being inoculated with their mother’s vaginal and fecal microbes.

Microbes Stimulate the Immune System

The microbial population in the rhizosphere descends from the seedling population and expands with plant/root growth and recruitment from the surrounding soil. The seedling feeds the microbes with root exudates and the microbes send chemical growth molecules to stimulate plant growth. Hence these microbes are called plant growth promoting bacteria. As with humans, the overall health of the plant is a critical component of disease resistance.

The interaction between the microbes and the plant is very similar to how the microbes in our guts stimulate our immune system, which also doesn’t develop in the absence of microbes.

Cells that Respond to Infection and Pathogens

Microbes enter the plant through root tips via a process called rhizophagy. The plant extracts 40% of the N it requires, as well as other nutrients, before it releases these microbes back into the soil via root hairs. Some of these microbes enter the plant’s circulation system and interact with receptors that appear on all plant cells, called Microbe Associated Molecular Patterns (MAMPS), which recognize and bind to common structures on the surfaces of microbes. This binding leads to an intracellular molecular chain reaction that stimulates the cell to produce more MAMPS and many protective antioxidants. Thus it produces a cell that is more alert to microbes and is more prepared to respond to infection.

In addition to MAMP receptors, the plant has Pathogen Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPS), that recognize and bind to structures that are unique to pathogens. Binding to a pathogen receptor stimulates the cell to make more PAMPS, making the plant both more sensitive to the pathogen and causing the plant to produce large amounts of antioxidants that are harmful to pathogens. This sometimes causes the cell to commit suicide (apotosis) to save the spread of the disease.

Making Specific Antibiotic

This exposure to pathogens also stimulates the plant root to increase the production and secretion of the foods that attract the microbes that make the antibiotic that combats the particular pathogen.

The microbes making this antibiotic then multiply in the root area making the antibiotic available to the plant. Thus with MFF, a plant in partnership with microbes develops a strong immune system by upping the number of MAMPS and PAMPS and is more resistant to disease and requires much less pesticide.

Thousands of Essential Nutrient Antioxidants

Perhaps the biggest wins for MFF are that the thousands of essential nutrient antioxidants produced by these plants provide protection against cancer, inflammation, and disease in our bodies, and they are what give fruits and vegetables good texture and flavor leading to better eating habits. These thousands of essential nutrient antioxidants are not plentiful in conventional farm produce and are not currently listed as nutrients by the USDA.

Microbes also stimulate the production of Damage Associated Molecular Patterns (DAMPS), which recognize and bind components of damaged cells, especially those of leaves, and promote healing. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the chemical odors produced by these damaged cells are specific to the insect causing the damage, and these plant-produced odors attract insects that antagonize the attacker.

Microbes make antimicrobials in large part to protect their territory from other microbes. So the microbes surrounding your plant are big defenders against pathogenic soil bacteria, e.g. good nematodes are the best protectors against pathogenic nematodes.

Defensive Fungal to Bacterial Ratio

Interestingly, it has also been observed that a proper fungal to bacterial ratio results in a bacterial population that is more prepared to defend itself from predators. The proper ratio varies depending on soil and crop. For agricultural crops, it is usually between 0.4 and 1. The proper ratio also tells you that you are not decreasing your soil fertility (organic carbon).

Mycorrhizal fungi that colonize approximately 90% of all plants are fungi that are totally dependent on the plant for nutrition. A plant root exudate awakens the fungal spore – which has only a day to grow to the plant where it enters a cell and is fed. When established, the fungi sends out hypha to collect P, N, K, S (sulfur), and water, which it brings back to the plant cell and trades for carbon and amino acids. The fungal hypha of a colonized plant can increase the root area as much as 1000%, making significantly more water and nutrients available.

Immunity Network

The hypha are also able to form a network connecting trees and are known to send immune signals from diseased trees to other trees in the network that increase their resistance to the disease. These fungi also very efficiently protect plants from drought by modifying the root structure, allowing it to absorb more water. Protecting a plant from the stress of drought makes a plant more disease-resistant, as well as increasing yield.

The soil microbial community and economy has thrived for 3 billion years. It has checks and balances and has adapted to soil and water conditions all over the globe.

Like our own society, it contains opportunists that take advantage when a defense system is poor, or society is weakened.

Healthy Microbial Biomass

The current best indicator of a healthy soil microbial community is a healthy microbial biomass and F:B ratio: it tells the nutrient level and nutrient balance of the soil and can indicate if it is improved. It provides information that chemical tests cannot, e.g. most soils have plenty of P, but it is in a form that only fungi are able to make available to the plant. It tells you N is low, but it doesn’t tell you that MFF can increase the number of microbes that can deliver N and fix N from the air.

Financial, Environmental, and Health Benefits of Healthy Soil

As you can imagine, creating and maintaining a healthy immune system requires plant energy which is probably why the yields of MFF practices are on average about 10% less than those of mineral fertilized farming. However, studies show that when microbially friendly farming is optimized, the financial loss is compensated for by tastier, more nutrient dense produce, lower fertilizer, water, and pesticide costs, and better resistance to drought.

Increase financial return by building soil structure which increases the water-holding capacity which decreases erosion and water costs, increases drought resistance, and increases soil carbon which has been shown to increase yields, and, over time, decrease fertilizer needs. With the maturation of the soil carbon markets, growers can contribute to farm income by selling carbon credits.

Understanding the plant health microbial synergy is even more critical now that the cost of mineral N is up as much as 400% and pesticides costs are also rapidly rising per the USDA- Economic Research Service.

Microbially Friendly Farming controls plant pathogens and increases plants’ ability to withstand stress. Plants are fully equipped to diagnose a disease, prescribe the correct antimicrobial, and manufacture it. They simply need a healthy microbiome to interact with microbes in healthy soil.

Dr. Judith Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., Prolific Earth Sciences Founder and Principal Scientist, is a microbiologist and a recognized leader in the development of on-site diagnostic tests. She was the founder and CEO of Serex from 1985 until its sale to a Canadian Pharmaceutical Company in 2002. At Serex, she developed more than 15 medical diagnostic tests with unique reagents and methods of testing.

Judy combined her expertise in diagnostic testing and manufacturing with her profound belief in the mission to help improve farming practices.

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The “Sweet Spot” for Farms to Enhance On-farm Biodiversity

in 2023/Climate Change/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Tools & Techniques/Winter 2023

By Kenzo Esquivel and Patrick Baur


[This article originally was originally published with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) and is shared here with gratitude.]

Looking out across his 20 acres in California’s Central Coast, a farmer reflected on his journey: “One of the things I’m probably the proudest of in our tenure here on this home farm is providing habitat and diversity,” he said. “It was a very barren place when we first got here.”

This farmer and others who prioritize on-farm biodiversity generally reap significant benefits and satisfaction from their investments. Eventually. Yet not every farmer is in a position to put the up-front time, energy, and money into diversifying their farms ecologically and economically. Despite valuing these ecological practices, many have little option but to continue down the path of specialized, input-intensive farming.

Diversified farming practices include common strategies like cover cropping, composting, and hedgerows. These and other ecological farming techniques can help a farm’s bottom line and its ability to weather disease, droughts, and floods. Cost-sharing programs, like California’s Healthy Soils Program and EQIP, exist at both state and federal levels to help farmers adopt diversified practices. Yet nationwide, adoption remains very low.

In our recently published study, we show how some diversified farms have found a “sweet spot” to expand their crop portfolio and adopt ecologically based practices like hedgerows or cover crops. Farms that sell to national or international wholesale markets tend to face steep market pressures that not only fail to reward diversity, but actively hinder it. Meanwhile smaller farms may have the interest and the incentive to diversify but lack the means to seize the opportunity. Thus, most of the highly diversified farms we identified in our study fell somewhere in between, with medium-sized acreage and farm businesses.

Map of research sites. Credit: Patrick Baur and Kenzo Esquivel

Why do mid-scale farms adopt diversification practices at higher rates?

Many growers we interviewed lacked the resources to float the up-front costs. “We’d like to have it all covered,” sighed one farmer with a 5-acre vegetable farm, “but we don’t have the money to cover [crop] everything.” These limited resource farmers face significant financial restraints due to short or uncertain land tenure and limited access to capital. These were also the smallest farms, ranging between one and 20 acres. While farmers in this group often expressed desire to adopt more diversification practices, they often lacked the time, money, and financial stability to cover the cost of biodiversity-enhancing practices that might take years to pay off. “If you’re leasing, you’re not going to plant perennials,” explained one technical assistance provider. While some limited resource farmers were aware of cost-sharing programs, they told us that the applications were overwhelming and took too much time.

Other growers, meanwhile, had the financial means but found themselves locked into market channels that could not accommodate a more diverse rotation of crops, or which actively discouraged certain forms of on-farm biodiversity due to food safety fears. “What used to be a windbreak is now a hazard,” said one large-scale grower when asked about hedgerows. “We’re pretty much forced to abide by the rules that are given to us [by our buyers],” explained another. Such wholesale growers, operating at the other end of the spectrum with farms of 500 acres or more, were limited by requirements imposed by their buyers, slim margins in the wholesale market, and high land values. From strict planting schedules to restrictions on compost and non-crop vegetation motivated by food safety concerns, these wholesale growers faced inflexible market constraints to increasing on-farm diversity. Consolidated supply chains in the region leave few other market options for growers who operate at this scale, and their management philosophy tends to emphasize control and “cleanliness” over diversity.

Thus, limited resource farmers and wholesale growers, while vastly different in size, both face significant hurdles to adopting diversified farming practices. While conditions at either end of the spectrum are discouraging, we discovered that mid-scale farmers, ranging between 20 and 350 acres, were often able to circumvent these constraints. However, higher levels of diversification practices did not automatically emerge through “right-sized” farm scales alone.  Mid-scale farmers also had the highest levels of secure land tenure and access to capital and resources. Critically, they had also built relationships with buyers (e.g., high-traffic farmers markets, high-end local retailers) who shared their values and were willing to pay a premium for the produce they grow. The combination of financial security and sympathetic buyers gave these mid-scale growers a degree of autonomy and control not available to either the limited-resource or wholesale farmers. The mid-scale farmers we interviewed told us they chose how to grow their crops and where to sell their crops because they had the economic security to weather the short-term risks and wait for long-term returns on their investment in cultivating highly biodiverse farms.

A view of varied lettuce crops. Credit Patrick Baur and Kenzo Esquivel

Policies should mitigate scale-specific barriers

Policies aiming to help farmers invest in on-farm biodiversity must consider that different types of farms face unique barriers and incentives to diversify. Small-scale farmers will benefit from targeted policies that alleviate limitations in time, money, and social capital. In particular, policies that secure long-term land tenure for new-entry and socially disadvantaged farmers and increase access to water, technical assistance, and diverse markets beyond direct-to-consumer should be prioritized. Existing incentive programs should streamline application processes, increase publicity, provide enrollment assistance, and create opportunities for farmer-to-farmer sharing of personal success stories with programs like EQIP.

Meanwhile, large-scale wholesale growers need help negotiating the restrictive demands of their supply chains. Our findings suggest new avenues for policies to create more robust alternative markets that value and encourage diversification. We also see an opportunity for regulations that push wholesale buyers to reward growers for their diversification practices. Food safety policies are another important area for intervention. Making headway on adoption of diversified farming practices among wholesale farmers may require supplementing the “pull” of incentives at the farm level with the “push” of new biodiversity-based procurement requirements at the buyer level and further down the supply chain.

While our study is limited to organic lettuce farms on California’s Central coast, we believe that researchers and policymakers in other regions may find the construction of a similar “farming model” typology a useful framework to identify the enabling factors and structural barriers that different types of farmers face. In particular, we see strong resonance between this “sweet spot” for biodiversity-based farms and the broader attention to an “agriculture of the middle” as a pathway to restore local and regional food economies damaged by consolidation and concentration in many farm sectors.

Helping farmers invest in and reap the benefits of diversification means identifying and dismantling scale-specific barriers and promoting the financial and market conditions that allow farmers to settle on business models and scales that are neither too big nor too small to diversify, but just right.

Full study: bit.ly/3HQGZMO

Companion Study: bit.ly/3HrXFsp

Kenzo Esquivel is a PhD candidate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. Patrick Baur is an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems in the Department of Fisheries, Animal, and Veterinary Sciences at the University of Rhode Island

Featured image: Lettuce farm in California. Credit: Patrick Baur and Kenzo Esquivel.

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Organic Stories: Grounded Acres, Skwxwú7mesh territory

in 2022/Climate Change/Crop Production/Fall 2022/Grow Organic/Marketing/Organic Community/Organic Stories

Digging into Community

Darcy Smith

Mel Sylvestre has been farming for almost 20 years, and she’s pretty sure she’ll never run out of lessons learned. From last year’s heat dome, to this year’s cold, wet weather, to figuring out just what type of kale customers want, every farming season brings new challenges—and new opportunities.

She farms with Hannah Lewis, her “partner in life, partner in business,” at Grounded Acres Organic Farm on what is today known as the Sunshine Coast. Of their five-acre property, “about two acres, give or take, is farmed in some way.”

Mel and Hannah grow mixed vegetables and have about 100 laying hens, and they get their food to their community through the Sechelt Farmers’ Market, their farm stand, local restaurants, and a collaborative community box program put together by a local organization.

The vision for Grounded Acres was to open up an acre of land and grow from there. They knew they could make enough revenue out of an acre to keep them going, and build from there wisely. They were also keen to learn what people wanted in their new community. “We did a lot of market research,” Mel says, “Our first year we did a blind shot in the dark—we grew as much and little as we could of everything and let things fly, so we could see what the enthusiasm was for. In one region everyone wants green curly kale, in another people want Lacinato kale, and you don’t know why.”

Grounded Acres apprentice crew working in the fields. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

As they get to know their community, Mel and Hannah are also learning the land, which was first opened up over a century ago. First a strawberry farm, then planted in potatoes, it had been 30 to 50 years without having tillage of any sort when they arrived. The land isn’t classified as agricultural soil: it’s class four, or with improvement class 3, loamy sand. Mel says “it’s extremely sandy, and in some parts extremely rocky. In other parts, folks a century ago did the work of removing rocks.”

The good news is Mel is familiar with improving soil. Before moving to the coast, both Mel and Hannah spent almost a decade working at UBC Farm, which has the same soil class. “We came with a shovel when we visited the property. I dug a hole and said, ‘Ah, same soil’.”

Mel originally trained as a musician and sound tech, but when the industry began turning to technology and opportunities dwindled for sound techs, she landed on an organic farm in the outskirts of Montreal teaching children. Despite being raised in the middle of cornfields and dairy cows, she hadn’t been interested in farming until, she says, “I was watching people in the field and thought, ‘Hey, that looks fun’.” One day, they needed help, so Mel “picked up a hoe, went out and helped, and fell in love.” From there, she got another farm job.

Sometimes, Mel says “I wish I had started with an apprenticeship, or working more intentionally on the farm. Things just kept happening, and life brought me from one farm to another.” She ended up in BC in 2005, and farmed with Saanich Organics on the island for six seasons.

Curious hens provide eggs to the Gibson’s community. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

Eight years into her farming journey, she had a window where she could return to university, and studied plant and soil science at UBC. That led her to UBC Farm, where she “discovered a new love, teaching and helping other folks getting into farming.” UBC farm is also where Mel had the opportunity to get into seed production.

UBC Farm is where she found a different kind of love. Hannah was already working in the Indigenous garden at UBC Farm when Mel arrived, but it took them a year—and realizing they were neighbours—before they started connecting. “We didn’t overlap much at the farm, our rhythms in the day were quite different, but we discovered we lived a block from each other, and every time I was taking the 99 bus from East Van she was on the bus. We call it a 99 romance—the 99 brought us together.”

Mel knew she didn’t want to stay in the city long-term, but Hannah was an educator by training. While she really liked gardening, Hannah wasn’t sure how she felt about farming—until she took UBC’s farm practicum and discovered she also loved working the land.

But, Mel says, “what Hannah loved even more was the Sunshine Coast. In my head I thought I was going to go back to the island where my community was, but she convinced me.” They started looking for property, and, Mel says, “I started developing my relationship with the land here.”

It took them three years to find the right piece of land, and by then Mel and Hannah had new twins along for the ride. “We have the lucky situation, the privilege, of having family that invested in our land,” which, Mel says, “was a life saver in the start-up of this business.” Hannah’s mother sold her condo in Vancouver and moved with the young family in order to help them buy the property. “Having the grandchildren in the picture helped.”

Mel is “thankful for the years I spent working on other farms. It’s a blessing and curse. I knew what I needed to be successful, but the curse was I knew how much money it would cost.” They started with zero savings, and Mel knew they would need $100 thousand in financing for the first year to even be able to make their loan payments. “That was the barebone minimum. It seems like a lot of money but it was just barely what I knew we needed to be resilient and get through those first few years, as well as be healthy for our family. We’re not 20 anymore,” Mel says. “We have twins and they’re two years old, and we had a lot of infrastructure to put in place: irrigation, greenhouses, washing station, cooler, workshop. There was a lot that needed to come together to make the farm possible.”

With a solid business plan, clear vision, and the confidence that comes from experience, they went in search of funding—and an angel investor from the community “came out of the woodwork, believed in us, and lent us the money that we needed,” Mel says.

Hannah and Chef Johnny Bridge satisfied with cauliflower. Credit: @joshneufeldphoto.

Mid-way through their second season on this piece of land, Mel reflects on how lucky they’ve been, despite a tough year. Crops are three weeks behind, and some have been lost due to weather and pests. “All the things from a cold wet spring,” Mel says. “That’s the name of the game. Every farm has pluses and minuses, and depending on the season, you’ll lose some and gain some.” They have sandy soil, so the heat dome—and accompanying water restrictions—was harder. The sandy soil helped them out this spring, while nearby farms are on clay soil, which never drains. “I feel for the beginners right now. The last two to three seasons were uniquely hard. It’s next-level hardship for farming.”

Mel has the “old equation” in her head, from when she was brought up to be a new farmer. Once upon a time, the first three years were supposed to be tough, and starting in years four to five, “it should be even keel, you should have your system down and understand the land enough to play around.” That magic three-to-five-year number is because “even if you know what you’re doing, there are still things to learn, on the land, in the area, what’s the pattern here, why aren’t the cover crops growing. There’s lots to troubleshoot.” But, Mel says, “that’s not the way it is any more. It could be year 10 before you start to feel like you’re coasting…”

At Grounded Acres, they’re “still really in the deep of it,” learning what their customers want, what ingredients chefs are looking for—there’s lots to figure out. But there’s good news: “one thing people have said even before we moved here, if you grow it, it will fly.” Even before the pandemic, young families were leaving the city and moving to the Sunshine Coast. Between the young families and established residents, there’s high demand for fresh produce. Marketing their product on the coast “has been a fairly easy ride compared to other regions I’ve worked in where there are a lot of other market gardeners per capita,” Mel says.

Mel out on the tractor on a long summer evening.
Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

As it turns out, on the Sunshine Coast everyone wants curly kale, but that hasn’t stopped Mel and Hannah from planting a variety. “We love the diversity. One will sell more, but there’s going to be a reason why we’re glad we planted the other,” says Mel. “Siberian kale is not my favourite in the summer—pests love it. But I always plant a bit because over the winter it’s going to rock it. We had the worst winter last year, it was so cold for so long, but we were still harvesting Siberian kale.” Mel remembers that the other varieties were skeletons, but the Siberian came roaring back and they were able to sell bags of braising greens. “Fresh kale on the stand in March—people will elbow each other out of the way to get it.”

Mel says they will always keep the diversity in their crop planning. “I think climate change is reinforcing what we’ve known as biodiverse small-scale farmers,” she says, and recommends that even within one crop, don’t plant just one variety, go for a few. “It surprises me every year, that one variety rocked it for four years but this year not so much. I’m always so glad I planted that other one. Climate change is running that message back home heavily about not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

Over the last hard winter five or six years back, Mel remembers people planting more and more overwintering brassicas like purple sprouting broccoli, or planting lots of greens in the spring. The risk there is picking up on that trend and over-committing. One person, at least, planted triple the amount and lost everything. “Mother nature is always like, ‘Oh you’re feeling confident, I’ll take your confidence away’.” Moments like that are there to “remind you not to bank too hard on that income, to have other avenues to make it through the season.”

“We live in a culture where we’re looking for that one book, that one person who’s going to teach us everything,” Mel says. “Farming is not that. I know folks that went to five, six, seven different farms to learn as much as they can. You will still learn until you die. There is no recipe in farming, there’s just a set of skills and knowledge you can keep accumulating.”

Mel highlights the importance of having a “troubleshooting mind” in the absence of a formula: someone can say, do it this way and this will be your result. “Maybe one year out of three that will be true. Other years, you get a cold spring and you have white fly now.” She is adamant that no one person on this planet can teach you—rather, it’s important to have diverse teachers. While there’s lots to be learned from books or online resources, that can be “a dangerous road. It doesn’t give you as much resilience in your toolbelt as just going through a season with one farmer locally in the region you want to farm.”

Grounded Acres Organic Farm Family: Hannah, Mel, Juniper, and River. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

Community has been more important to their early success than Mel would ever have dreamed. Between Hannah and Mel, they have an incredible—and complementary—set of skills that are different and complete each other. Mel loves people but describes herself as “a blunt Quebecer who tells it like it is, which doesn’t always fly on the coast,” while she says “Hannah has this incredible way to put things in words. She’s spent a lot of time building who we are for the community.”

They landed in a new place mid-winter with small children. “We only had so much time to go around mingling and meeting people,” Mel says. Hannah spent the winter building the farm’s website and social media, telling their story. Coming from a teaching farm where Hannah was running a volunteer program, they wanted to open up their new farm to folks wanting to connect with the land. Between the pandemic and working from home, people were “aching to get out into nature. Our story spread like wildfire and we got so many volunteers. Our investor came out of that, too.”

A handful of the folks who started coming in that first year are still coming—“they are really committed and became our community,” Mel says. “We call them friends, we know everything about each other from weeding.” Mel has lived in small communities before, and knows that when you’re new somewhere you have to prove yourself. “People have to ask themselves, ‘Am I going to invest energy in building a relationship with this person?’ I think we’re in the book now!”

Overall, they have found that the community has been very welcoming. “Despite the fact that it’s small here, it’s mighty,” Mel says. “The farmers we’ve met have been very supportive. We can borrow from each other when we run out of pint containers, for example.” This kind of collaboration is especially essential because the Sunshine Coast is not in an agricultural area, and there’s a ferry between them and any supplies.

Community extends beyond their neighbours on the Sunshine Coast. Grounded Acres is certified organic. “The community that raised me as a farmer in BC was the certified organic community,” Mel says. “At a really young farmer age, I got into the importance of organic, and the importance of that community in itself.” Mel went to her first BC Organic conference her first year farming in BC. “It’s always a highlight of my year, not necessarily what I’m learning but who I’m connecting with, who I’m getting to rant with, have a beer with. That precious moment that every farmer needs, to feel that you’re not alone.”

Mel and Hannah started out with laying hens right away to respond to the community’s needs. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

For Mel, being certified organic is about more than just what organic means. “At the end of the day we can make those practices happen without having certification, but certification is investing in keeping that community alive, that one thing that gives us a voice, makes us visible, makes us not just a trend.” The organic community in BC specifically has been together for many years, and Mel has “so much respect for the folks that put that system together, and the folks keeping it together.”

While there’s no one recipe to farming, Mel and Hannah have certainly pulled together many key ingredients, from their diverse skills to the people who support their farm in many different ways. “Diversity in the field, diversity in skills” is important, Mel says. “The jack-of-all-trades farmer thing is romanticized a lot, but it’s a harsh reality.” Bringing multiple skill sets and interests to the field is so important—even if someone is just looking for a business partner, don’t look for people who like doing the same things you do, Mel recommends.

“That’s one thing I appreciate about our farm every day. Hannah will put time into doing wholesale with chefs and going to market on the weekend. My favourite thing is to be alone on the farm, and she comes back so excited, it feeds her—and that in turn feeds me.” The foundation of Grounded Acres is the relationship between Mel and Hannah, “romantic partners who are good business partner matches as well, how lucky we are!”

groundedacresfarm.ca

Darcy Smith is the editor of the BC Organic Grower, and a huge fan of organic farmers. She also manages the BC Land Matching Program delivered by Young Agrarians.

Feature image: Queer community setting up tomato tunnels. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

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Biodynamic Farm Story?

in 2022/Climate Change/Crop Production/Fall 2022/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship

Anna Helmer

The title of this column is borderline pretentious and potentially misleading. We are not a certified biodynamic farm. I am certain we do not meet the requirements and have faint hope of doing so because we fall well short of the ideal farm Rudolph Steiner describes in his lectures: we have no cattle, we purchase cover crop seed and cow manure, and we don’t make our own preparations. We’re working on it though. It could be called Aspiring Biodynamic Farm Story, or In-Transition to Biodynamic Farm Story.

For the sole sake of accuracy, it should be called: Biodynamically-Challenged Farm Story. This is more on point because I do believe that most farms and gardens where the growers believe in the availability of fertility forces greater than what comes in a bag or bucket are on the biodynamic path. Probably, like us, they just aren’t doing enough.

That’s where we are at. We just aren’t doing enough, but being a sensible middle-aged lady, I have no trouble decreeing that this is good enough. In fact, rather than risk failure, I work to lower standards until I meet them. That should explain the pretentious nature of the title.

Removing the word biodynamic entirely from the title would entirely remove the challenge of writing this article. Every time I go through the process, I learn a little bit more about both our practice, and the practice of biodynamic farming in general.

Skirting pretentiousness then, and hoping to have prevented any misleading impressions, I’ll leave it at that and continue my mission to convince everyone to run a biodynamically-challenged operation.

I have an earnest belief in two practical and effective biodynamic practices: firstly, the application of the compost and field preparations, and secondly, striving to make the farm its own source of fertility. That my conviction is endlessly undermined by difficulties explaining the wilder flights of biodynamic fancy is the challenge to be borne. I really can’t blame people for questioning all that—I just wish I could do a better job of explaining the useful bits.

To that end, I’ve started reading the Rudolph Steiner lectures again. I wouldn’t say it’s a punishment, exactly, because that would give the wrong impression. Penance would also be a poor choice of words, because I am not atoning for a mistake. It’s remedial. I need remedial reading.

Unfortunately, what happened is that someone recently asked me the old chestnut: so, what is biodynamic farming exactly—planting by the moon? My response was jumbled and garbled, confusing and unclear.

I can do better—and to do so, I am sending myself back to the beginning. The goal this time is to confidently deliver a concise and accurate biodynamic pitch: one that would convince a curious farmer to delve a little deeper, one that would indicate to a consumer that there is more to organic farming than they might imagine.

In the meantime, I am basking in the glory of my successful biodynamic cull potato compost pile. It has been completely transformed into very useful dirt. I can barely believe it. The greenhouse and the tissue culture seed potatoes were the initial beneficiaries and there has been much plant revelry.

Not so glorious has been the use of the other preparations this year. Such a cold wet spring would surely have called for the liberal and frequent application of BD501 (horn silica) but we are very reluctant to give the plants any extra warmth and light. It seems risky when at any moment a heat dome, or at the very least a heat wave, could descend, rendering it unnecessary and perhaps even detrimental.

I also held back on the BD500 (horn manure) because it did not even occur to me to use it. A rather bold admission, and perhaps penance was a good word choice after all. We were fairly consumed with trying to coax cold Pemberton mud into something more likely to grow potatoes. It was extraordinary. I am not sure Steiner really could relate.

I am never going to forget the compost preparations. I have a lot of cull potatoes coming online, a pressing need for good compost, and I know just what to do.

If only I understood why.

P.S. The Biodynamic Agriculture Association of BC will be hosting a preparation workshop this fall, likely at Helmers Organic Farm in Pemberton. Please email info@bcbiodynamics.ca to get on the mailing list.

Anna Helmer farms in Pemberton and realizes she had middle age all wrong. helmersorganic.com

Feature image: Cleaning potatoes. Credit: Helmers Organic Farm.

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The More the Better? Multi-Species vs Single-Species Cover Crops for Carrots

in 2022/Crop Production/Fall 2022/Grow Organic/Seeds/Tools & Techniques

By Frank Larney, Haley Catton, Charles Geddes, Newton Lupway, Tom Forge, Reynald Lemke, and Bobbi Helgason

This article first appeared in Organic Science Canada magazine and is printed here with gratitude.

In recent years, diverse cover crop mixes or ‘cocktails’, which contain as many as 15 different cover crop species, have gained popularity. Are these multi-species cover crop mixes any better than their less sophisticated counterparts (e.g., fall rye or barley/pea)? It’s a complicated system to untangle. Our early data suggests that the multi-species mixes can foster more active soil life, but that they could also have impacts on the following crop: they caused more forked carrots, which decreases profit. We also looked closely at how weeds in the cover crops affected soil fertility. Spoiler alert, they may be helping…

Cover crops can provide many benefits including enhanced soil organic matter and soil health, nitrogen retention, weed suppression, soil moisture conservation and, as a result of these, higher subsequent crop yields. Cover crops can be grown in the main season (replacing a cash crop in rotation) or seeded in fall to protect the soil from wind and water erosion throughout winter and early spring. In our study funded by the Organic Science Cluster, we compared how different cover crops impacted the soil, pests, and the following crop.

The control cover crop treatment which was essentially a fallow predominated by lamb’s quarters, cleavers, and redroot pigweed, July 30, 2018. Maybe weeds are not all that bad? …as long as they don’t go to seed before soil incorporation. Credit: Frank Larney.

Our research team collaborated with Howard and Cornelius Leffers who run an irrigated organic farm near Coaldale, Alberta. They specialize in carrots and red beets for restaurants, farmers’ markets and organic grocery stores, and they also grow alfalfa, winter wheat and dry beans. We evaluated seven cover crop treatments ahead of carrots. We have completed two cycles of the two-year cover crop–carrot rotation (Cycle 1: 2018 & 2019, Cycle 2: 2019 & 2020), with a third cycle (2021 & 2022) currently underway. Cover crops were established in June during the first year of each cycle as follows:

Buckwheat;

  1. Faba bean;
  2. Brassica (white + brown mustard);
  3. Mix*;
  4. Mix* followed by barley which grew until the first killing frost;
  5. Mix* followed by winter wheat which survived the winter, regrew in early spring, then was terminated by tillage; and
  6. Control (no cover crop, weeds allowed to grow).
  7. *Mixture of five legumes, four grasses, two brassicas, flax, phacelia, safflower, and buckwheat (15 species in total)
Fagopyrum esculentum Moench, Polygonum fagopyrum L. Credit: Johann Georg Sturm.

In August, all treatments and the control were incorporated into the soil by disking. The control and treatments 1-4 were left unplanted over the winter; weeds were allowed to grow. Treatments 5 and 6 were seeded to other cover crops. In the second year of each cycle, carrots were planted in June and harvested in the fall. We took cover crop and weed biomass samples just before disking in August of the first year of each cycle. We measured the carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations of the cover crops, as well as the main weed species. In 2018, the multi-species, brassica, and buckwheat cover crops were more competitive with weeds. The faba bean cover crop was not competitive with weeds and had the same amount of weeds (by weight) as the control treatment.

Weeds can be a troublesome part of organic systems. In this case, we wanted to see if they were redeeming themselves as part of the cover crop, or in the case of the control treatment, by taking the place of a seeded cover crop. Weeds are no different from any other plant: they take up soil nutrients and when they break down, they put carbon (including organic matter), nitrogen, and other nutrients back into the soil. As long as annual weeds don’t go to seed, maybe they are making a useful contribution to soil health, similar to a seeded cover crop.

Since weeds were incorporated into the soil in August along with the seeded cover, the less-competitive faba bean treatment and the weedy control actually returned more total carbon to the soil (average, 2220 kg/ha C) due to greater weed biomass (weed “yield”) than buckwheat, brassica or the multi-species mixture (850–1330 kg/ha C). Moreover, being a nitrogen-fixing legume, the faba bean cover crop (including its weeds) returned the most nitrogen to the soil at 99 kg/ha N. After the carrot harvest, our team rated carrots into Grade A (visually appealing with no deformities: ideal for restaurants, farmers’ markets, and organic grocery stores) and Grade B (downgraded due to wireworm damage, forking, scarring or misshaping: suitable for juicing only). Grade B carrots are worth about one third of Grade A carrots.

Vicia faba. Credit: Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé, Flora von Deutschland.

Despite the differences we measured in the C and N contributions of the cover crops and the weeds, it wasn’t enough to affect the carrot yields. In 2019, Grade A carrot yield was statistically the same with all the cover crop options. For soil health, the multi-species mixture had more microbial activity than either brassica or buckwheat cover crops (this is based on microbial biomass C – an index of microbial mass – and permanganate oxidizable C – the active or easily-decomposable C). However, a possible downside of the multi-species mix showed up when we looked at the following carrot crop. In 2019, treatments 4, 5 and 6 resulted in a greater proportion of the Grade B category, including forked carrots. Forking and misshaping are caused by many reasons, including soil compaction, weed interference, and insect or nematode feeding on root growing tips.

We also looked at the value of fall-seeded cover crops (Treatments 5 and 6) and their impact on wireworm and nematodes. These pests might actually be helped by cover crops; they appear to have greater survival during the winter season when living roots are present. But having winter cover may lead to better carrot yields, too: in 2020, total carrot yields (Grades A and B) were 10% higher after the fall-seeded cover crops when compared to the spring – seeded brassica cover crop, which led to the lowest yielding carrots. So far, we haven’t seen any effect of the different cover crop treatments on root lesion nematode populations, but the fall-season cover crops led to a small increase in wireworm damage on the carrots (this only showed up in 2019). More soil analyses and the results from the 2021-22 season are still to come. The additional information will help us tease out the pros and cons of multi-species vs single-species cover crops for irrigated organic carrots.

To learn more about OSC3 Activity 8, please visit

dal.ca/oacc/osciii

The Organic Science Cluster 3 is led by the Organic Federation of Canada in collaboration with the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada at Dalhousie University, and is supported by the AgriScience Program under Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership (an investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments) and over 70 partners from the agricultural community.

Feature image:  Left to right: Charles Geddes (Weed Ecology & Cropping Systems, AAFC-Lethbridge); Howard Leffers (farmer-collaborator, Coaldale, AB); and James Hawkins (visiting Nuffield scholar, Neuarpurr, Victoria, Australia) in the 15-species cover crop, August 7, 2018. Credit: Frank Larney.

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