What is a killing frost to those of who live largely indoor lives? It's probably not much to us other than turning up the heat or putting an extra blanket on the bed. Maybe if we're gardeners, we worry about our spring plants. As food consumers, we may see higher prices in the grocery store for food. But it's so much more to those who cultivate the earth for a living. As I've noted in other blog entries, the weather has stayed with me as a constant concern after growing up on an apple orchard in eastern Washington State. A killing frost can mean the difference between money in the bank and foreclosure. Recently, there was a spectacularly bad killing frost in Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky and other states that wiped out the pecan, peach, and apple crops among others. This on the heels of a horrible killing frost in CA for the citrus crop--see my January blog entry on that and on crop insurance. Perhaps some of you heard the NPR interview with Robert Chapman from Zebulon, GA who lost his whole peach crop. I've included a link below the audio file of the NPR interview plus an overview CNN interview. You won't forget it soon if you listen to Chapman talk about the fate of his crops, the role of the weather in farming, and his fatalistic attitude.
Peach crop is a 90% disaster
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/04/12/frozen.crops.ap/index.html
Go to NPR and listen to peach farmer Robert Chapman from Zebulon, GA
http://216.35.221.77/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9554303
"
"A 25-degree freeze on Easter Sunday blackened the insides of Chapman's peach crop, which provides most of his income.
While Chapman's bushes and trees will still bear fruit next year, he says he may have to find another job in the meantime. Farmers throughout the region report heavy crop losses and are bracing for another expected cold snap next week."
Here's a typical April and May night on the Schell and Schell apple and pear orchard when it was in business:
In the morning, the radio broadcast the fruit farm report and in the spring the fruit frost forecast, which we listened to intently because all depended on its predictions about wind and air temperature and the likelihood of a killing frost. When the temperature dropped near freezing, often at 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning, my parents took measures to save the crop. To keep the apple and pear buds from freezing, my father, mother, and the hired men set out smudge pots, large blackened pots full of heating oil that resembled a cross between a genie’s bottle and a stove pipe. The pots sat squarely in the rows and when the temperature dropped, they lit the pots with a punk, a wick on a butane canister, resembling a giant-sized cigarette lighter. The fuel caught fire and produced a blue flame and smoke, which was piped through the pot’s chimney and burner holes. The heat emitted by the pots warmed the air and protected the precious buds. We called it "firing season."
For my mother and father and any of us on frost patrol, the nights were filled with watching the pots, a lonely exercise of walking the darkened rows of apple and pear trees illumined by the pots’ eerie orange glow. If the temperature continued to drop, the burner holes were opened to full capacity and the fire sucked in the oxygen and omitted more heat. Out in the orchards, one’s mind could wander and noises were magnified; a crash a few rows away could be a coyote or a neighbor’s dog or perhaps a cougar prowling its territory. A satellite blinking overhead could become a UF0. At first the chill and the uncertainty brought on by sudden noises kept one awake. As the night waned into the early light of morning, it was easy to become languid, the orchard rows warming and causing one to feel a pleasant, distant sensation while walking. Periodic checks of the thermometer stations positioned at key points in the orchard indicated whether the temperature was rising sufficiently or if there would be damage to the crops. A few hours of frost meant the buds were diminished and the fruit would be light or even non-existent.
Later came the electricity powered wind machines, the $15,000 towers with airplane-like propellers that circulate the air at night. The thwock-thwock-thwock of the machines could be heard across the valley all night, circulating the cooler air with the warm air. Even then, losses were still possible.
I remember one night in 1999 (late April/early May) when I was visiting Cashmere and on research leave, my mom was out of town, so I took her place as part of a two-person "firing" team that included my brother Mike and me. Earlier that night, Mike asked me to keep the phone by the bed and when he called, to check the temperature and turn on the wind machine on our Flowery Divide property, Later he asked me to come over to the Hansen place at around 3 a.m., one of our other orchards where he had pots set up to warm the buds. We kept adjusting the burners on the pots and trying to warm the air, but we couldn't get the temperature up over 30 in some places. The temperature just kept dropping. At one point, I started praying. At another point, I was swearing. Eventually, I was just numb and resigned, walking up and down the rows to check the pots. As the day dawned, we lost quite a bit of the crop on that place. I remember that we drove back to the farmhouse deflated and had breakfast. We did all we could to warm the air, and we still lost out against the elements that night. This was just one of many nights that Mike faced during his 20 plus years in farming.
Just a few memories. Even thinking about it gets the adrenaline going....
T.S. Eliot was right that April is the cruelest month.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
The Myth of the Noble Farmer
Brad Andrews took Tom Kerr's Public Essay class at Ithaca College and produced this really interesting critique of the myth of the noble farmer. Brad is the son of a former dairy farmer. As Brad points out, there is a tendency to rhapsodize about farm life and romanticize it, especially from the outside perspective. Brad debunks the myths, points out the hard, unremitting labor of dairy farming and, ultimately, notes that he was banned from farming by his father even as the Andrews family farm was auctioned.
Yet farming is clearly in his blood--he remembers it all even while decrying it. Thanks for writing this, Brad, and thanks for your honesty. Many of us want to see small farmers stay on their land and stay in farming, but you've indicated the strenuous work, hardships and struggle involved in the daily life.
Keeping telling the story, Brad.
The Myth of the Noble Farmer
Brad Andrews
The noble farmer. Each day he rises with the sun to begin his daily routine. He feeds his animals, milks his cows, and cleans his barn. . .all before breakfast. Later in the day, he'll go into his vast fields and harvest his crops. As the sun sets, he'll be back in the barn, milking and feeding once more. Then it's off to bed, only to rise again in the morning and repeat the same process.
It's easy to wax poetic about farming. It's a "simple" life, and in a world in which technology is growing exponentially and life seems to be moving at a faster pace, there's something appealing about a life working in nature's splendor, far away from the hustle and bustle of urban city life.
Not only is farming a simple life, the work almost seems to be a divine calling. There's a sense that farming is what people were "meant" to do. Humans have been farming for several millennia, and the general process hasn't changed that much. Farmers reach into the fertile soil and pull out the fruits of God's bounty.
Having grown up on a dairy farm in New York state, I can tell you: the "simple" life isn't nearly as simple as it sounds. The myth of the "noble farmer" tends to leave out one important fact: being a farmer is hard. It's back-breaking, dangerous, low-paying work with brutally long hours.
Let's look at a typical day for a "real" farmer:
6 a.m. - Awake and out to the barn to start work (milking cows/feeding animals)
Here's the thing about waking up at 6 a.m. every morning: it sucks. If you're the type that needs eight hours of sleep every night, you're hitting the hay at 10 p.m. each and every day.
But not only are you awake at 6 a.m., you're working at 6 a.m. Morning chores aren't especially brutal: they mainly consist of milking the cows and feeding all the animals. But the farmer is still on his feet for most of the morning, and on top of that, the farmer is required to squat down to put on and remove the milking machine from the cow. You may be thinking, "Squatting down? Big deal." Consider this though: if a farmer is milking 100 cows, that's at least 200 deep knee bends every morning. That's probably not good for your knees.
8:30 a.m. - Home for a quick breakfast.
If the farmer is lucky, she will not only have time to eat, but to grab a quick nap. The farmer's still got a tough day ahead, so any sleep is golden.
9:30 a.m. - Back to the barn to feed the animals again and take care of various other tasks (ridding the barn of manure, etc.)
One thing about animals that it's hard to grasp until you raise a herd of them is the fact that they tend to defecate. A lot. And if the animals are in a barn, that manure piles up (quickly). One of the more unpleasant tasks for the farmer is removing this manure from the barn.
Most farms will have a "barn cleaner" in at least the largest barn on the farm. Basically, the barn cleaner is a conveyor belt of sorts that manure can be shoveled/scraped/pushed into. The cleaner will then (slowly) take the manure outside into a waiting manure spreader.
For smaller barns or barns with no cleaner, however, the manure-removal task is far more strenuous. As much fun as shoveling manure into a spreader is, I’d be very happy to never have to do it again. Let's just say that I don't enjoy cow manure splashing on my face. (An admittedly infrequent but still all-too-common occurrence while shoveling.)
Noon - Home for a quick lunch.
Same as breakfast: eat and then sleep if you can.
1 p.m. - Out to the fields for harvesting or related work.
The myth of the noble farmer makes it seems like growing crops is easy as pie, like the soil was just made for growing plants. Not true. Besides all the possible weather nightmares, the soil itself is less conducive to plant growth than one might think. This is because most soil is loaded with large rocks, which damage plows and other machines and hinder plant growth. These rocks must be removed from the field before plowing. Let me tell you something: you haven't experienced boredom until you've spent an afternoon picking rocks out of an empty field.
Once the crops are ready, it's time for harvesting. This is not enjoyable. Corn harvesting involves driving a tractor and a combine around in circles. Believe me, if you sit on a tractor (especially an older model) for an afternoon and drive around you will be at best bored and at worst insane. The tractor is noisy and it vibrates, which can cause great pain and headaches for the tractor operator after a few hours. (Yes, some larger farmers are lucky enough to have SuperTractors with air conditioning and radios and all kinds of cool stuff. I’ll assume that makes their lives a little easier.)
The hay harvest is even less enjoyable. First, there’s the drive-in-circles step, as with corn, but then there’s the fun of “unloading” the hay. After the hay bales are brought back to the farm in a wagon, they must be loaded into the barn or hayloft. Usually a few workers carry the bales off the wagon and place them on a conveyor belt of sorts (“elevator” in farm lingo) that takes the bales to the hayloft. The hayloft is where the real party’s at, as a few unfortunate workers stack the bales into neat piles while dealing with the triple-digit temperatures and general lack of oxygen in the loft.
4:30 p.m. - Home again for a very brief break.
Basically just a chance to catch one's breath before another milking session.
5 p.m. - Repeat the 6 a.m. routine.
The day ends with more milking and lots more deep knee bends to remove milking machines. It’s a rough experience after having worked the whole day already.
7:30 p.m. - Done for the day. Hopefully.
Let's do some math. What we see here is a 13 1/2 hour workday. Granted, there are breaks spread out through the day, but even removing those breaks it's still an 11-hour day. Yes, farmers are hardly the only occupation that works long days, but keep this in mind: farmers never get a day off. Ever. Animals need to be fed and milked and cared for each and every day. Even if a farmer decides to take a "day off," these tasks still need to be completed. Therefore, an "off day" for a farmer still consists of at least a 5 or 6 hour workday.
All this means that a farmer is pulling at least a 60-80 hour workweek. Every week. It's no wonder so many farmers require their children to come out to the barn and help out with chores; they'd barely see their own kids otherwise.
And even a working week as "short" as 60 hours requires that nothing goes wrong. Unfortunately, one of the many challenges with farming is that something is always going wrong. When I'm at school, I try to limit my phone calls home because they are always depressing. Every conversation with my dad starts with, "Let me tell you about the day I had today." He then proceeds to tell me how a tractor broke, or that a cow died for no reason, or that the cows broke a fence and wandered downtown, or that the water pipes exploded and flooded the barn or that it hasn’t rained in a month or....
The list goes on and on. So many things can go wrong on a farm; therefore a farmer has to be more than just a farmer. He must be a mechanic, a veterinarian, a carpenter, a meteorologist, a plumber, or anything else that the farm needs. And, really any disaster is possible.
The weather is a constant source of concern. Admittedly, a job in which one can work with nature is a special gift. When the sun is shining and the birds are singing, it's hard not to be grateful for the opportunity to work outdoors in the sun. Nature can be a very beautiful thing.
Nature can also be a bitch. One of the hardest parts of farming is the fact that the well-being of the farm is completely and absolutely at the mercy of nature. Too much rain and the farmer is screwed. Too little rain and the farmer is screwed. Too many cloudy days and the crops will die. Too many sunny days and the crops will fry.
To illustrate just much weather can make a difference, here's a story from Summer 2005. My family's farm is located about three miles from another local farm. The two farms planted their corn at roughly the same time and used the same brands of seed and fertilizer. For some reason, our farm got 2.5 moreinches of rain this summer. We got a 25% higher yield from the corn. Thanks to 2.5 inches of additional rain. That's nothing, but it shows just how vulnerable the crops are to any weather changes.
As bad as my phone calls with my dad can be when he’s complaining about the weather, I'm always glad to just be talking to my dad on a given night; it means that he survived the day. Farming is among the world's most dangerous occupations. Hundreds of farmers die each year in the United States.730 farm workers perished in 2002 alone. Farmers are seven times more likely to die on the job than the average American worker. In addition to the high death rate, a staggering 150,000 farmers suffer a disabling injury each year.
Danger lurks in every part of a farmer's day. Cows may seem slow-witted and generally benevolent, but they are large, powerful animals with the ability to seriously injure a person. Farmers are very often victims of a damaging kick (my own father has been kicked in the face more times than he'd care to remember). A stampede can also result in devastating consequences.
Machinery is also very dangerous. One of a farmer’s worst nightmares is getting an arm or a leg caught in a running machine. (A very real possibility, unfortunately.)
There are a million other ways to get hurt on a farm. One of my uncles had to have shrapnel removed from his face when a piece of equipment exploded, shooting hot metal into his head. My other uncle was nearly crushed by a full wagon that broke off from the tractor that was towing it and rolled back down a hill. Both were back at work the same day. To them, it’s all part of the job.
As bad as farming can be, maybe milking cows for a living wouldn't be so bad if it were, you know, profitable. Another thing about farmers that's not mentioned in the myth of the "noble farmer" is that farmers don't get paid squat. As of this moment, the companies buy milk for is $15.33 per 100 pounds of milk, which works out to just $1.22 a gallon. Not included in that price is the fact that farmers have to pay milk companies to come get their milk.
$1.22 a gallon. Less than half of what a gallon of milk goes for at the average store. Not to mention that milk companies can also use some excess butterfat from each gallon for other dairy products. The price milk companies are offering farmers remained more or less constant for nearly three decades until rising from the $12-$13/per 100 range up to its current $15-$16 range in only the past few years. Hardly keeping up with inflation (or what milk has been sold for in stores).
With these prices, an average dairy farmer will maybe bring home $20,000-$30,000 a year. There are lower salaries out in there in the American workforce, but not many workers are pulling 80-hour workweeks to get those low salaries.
So let's see: low pay, long hours, and a high risk of injury? It's no wonder so many small farms are closing down in this country. Who would want this job? My own father forbade me from even considering farming as a potential occupation. (Not that he really needed to worry about that.) And I know he's not the only farmer who has given that mandate to his children.
Even if my father hadn’t barred me from farming, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take over the family farm anyway. In April 2006, Andrews Dairy Farm will hold an auction to sell its cows and milking equipment. Facing mounting debt, my father and my uncles decided it was best to sell out now while they still were young enough to find new careers.
The auction will be a sad and frightening day for our family. Farming is all we’ve ever really known, and the future is full of uncertainty and doubt for the Andrews clan.
But while I’m scared to death, I’m glad my father’s future won’t involve farming. If he hadn’t died on the job, he’d probably have worked himself to death eventually. Such is the life of the noble farmer.
Yet farming is clearly in his blood--he remembers it all even while decrying it. Thanks for writing this, Brad, and thanks for your honesty. Many of us want to see small farmers stay on their land and stay in farming, but you've indicated the strenuous work, hardships and struggle involved in the daily life.
Keeping telling the story, Brad.
The Myth of the Noble Farmer
Brad Andrews
The noble farmer. Each day he rises with the sun to begin his daily routine. He feeds his animals, milks his cows, and cleans his barn. . .all before breakfast. Later in the day, he'll go into his vast fields and harvest his crops. As the sun sets, he'll be back in the barn, milking and feeding once more. Then it's off to bed, only to rise again in the morning and repeat the same process.
It's easy to wax poetic about farming. It's a "simple" life, and in a world in which technology is growing exponentially and life seems to be moving at a faster pace, there's something appealing about a life working in nature's splendor, far away from the hustle and bustle of urban city life.
Not only is farming a simple life, the work almost seems to be a divine calling. There's a sense that farming is what people were "meant" to do. Humans have been farming for several millennia, and the general process hasn't changed that much. Farmers reach into the fertile soil and pull out the fruits of God's bounty.
Having grown up on a dairy farm in New York state, I can tell you: the "simple" life isn't nearly as simple as it sounds. The myth of the "noble farmer" tends to leave out one important fact: being a farmer is hard. It's back-breaking, dangerous, low-paying work with brutally long hours.
Let's look at a typical day for a "real" farmer:
6 a.m. - Awake and out to the barn to start work (milking cows/feeding animals)
Here's the thing about waking up at 6 a.m. every morning: it sucks. If you're the type that needs eight hours of sleep every night, you're hitting the hay at 10 p.m. each and every day.
But not only are you awake at 6 a.m., you're working at 6 a.m. Morning chores aren't especially brutal: they mainly consist of milking the cows and feeding all the animals. But the farmer is still on his feet for most of the morning, and on top of that, the farmer is required to squat down to put on and remove the milking machine from the cow. You may be thinking, "Squatting down? Big deal." Consider this though: if a farmer is milking 100 cows, that's at least 200 deep knee bends every morning. That's probably not good for your knees.
8:30 a.m. - Home for a quick breakfast.
If the farmer is lucky, she will not only have time to eat, but to grab a quick nap. The farmer's still got a tough day ahead, so any sleep is golden.
9:30 a.m. - Back to the barn to feed the animals again and take care of various other tasks (ridding the barn of manure, etc.)
One thing about animals that it's hard to grasp until you raise a herd of them is the fact that they tend to defecate. A lot. And if the animals are in a barn, that manure piles up (quickly). One of the more unpleasant tasks for the farmer is removing this manure from the barn.
Most farms will have a "barn cleaner" in at least the largest barn on the farm. Basically, the barn cleaner is a conveyor belt of sorts that manure can be shoveled/scraped/pushed into. The cleaner will then (slowly) take the manure outside into a waiting manure spreader.
For smaller barns or barns with no cleaner, however, the manure-removal task is far more strenuous. As much fun as shoveling manure into a spreader is, I’d be very happy to never have to do it again. Let's just say that I don't enjoy cow manure splashing on my face. (An admittedly infrequent but still all-too-common occurrence while shoveling.)
Noon - Home for a quick lunch.
Same as breakfast: eat and then sleep if you can.
1 p.m. - Out to the fields for harvesting or related work.
The myth of the noble farmer makes it seems like growing crops is easy as pie, like the soil was just made for growing plants. Not true. Besides all the possible weather nightmares, the soil itself is less conducive to plant growth than one might think. This is because most soil is loaded with large rocks, which damage plows and other machines and hinder plant growth. These rocks must be removed from the field before plowing. Let me tell you something: you haven't experienced boredom until you've spent an afternoon picking rocks out of an empty field.
Once the crops are ready, it's time for harvesting. This is not enjoyable. Corn harvesting involves driving a tractor and a combine around in circles. Believe me, if you sit on a tractor (especially an older model) for an afternoon and drive around you will be at best bored and at worst insane. The tractor is noisy and it vibrates, which can cause great pain and headaches for the tractor operator after a few hours. (Yes, some larger farmers are lucky enough to have SuperTractors with air conditioning and radios and all kinds of cool stuff. I’ll assume that makes their lives a little easier.)
The hay harvest is even less enjoyable. First, there’s the drive-in-circles step, as with corn, but then there’s the fun of “unloading” the hay. After the hay bales are brought back to the farm in a wagon, they must be loaded into the barn or hayloft. Usually a few workers carry the bales off the wagon and place them on a conveyor belt of sorts (“elevator” in farm lingo) that takes the bales to the hayloft. The hayloft is where the real party’s at, as a few unfortunate workers stack the bales into neat piles while dealing with the triple-digit temperatures and general lack of oxygen in the loft.
4:30 p.m. - Home again for a very brief break.
Basically just a chance to catch one's breath before another milking session.
5 p.m. - Repeat the 6 a.m. routine.
The day ends with more milking and lots more deep knee bends to remove milking machines. It’s a rough experience after having worked the whole day already.
7:30 p.m. - Done for the day. Hopefully.
Let's do some math. What we see here is a 13 1/2 hour workday. Granted, there are breaks spread out through the day, but even removing those breaks it's still an 11-hour day. Yes, farmers are hardly the only occupation that works long days, but keep this in mind: farmers never get a day off. Ever. Animals need to be fed and milked and cared for each and every day. Even if a farmer decides to take a "day off," these tasks still need to be completed. Therefore, an "off day" for a farmer still consists of at least a 5 or 6 hour workday.
All this means that a farmer is pulling at least a 60-80 hour workweek. Every week. It's no wonder so many farmers require their children to come out to the barn and help out with chores; they'd barely see their own kids otherwise.
And even a working week as "short" as 60 hours requires that nothing goes wrong. Unfortunately, one of the many challenges with farming is that something is always going wrong. When I'm at school, I try to limit my phone calls home because they are always depressing. Every conversation with my dad starts with, "Let me tell you about the day I had today." He then proceeds to tell me how a tractor broke, or that a cow died for no reason, or that the cows broke a fence and wandered downtown, or that the water pipes exploded and flooded the barn or that it hasn’t rained in a month or....
The list goes on and on. So many things can go wrong on a farm; therefore a farmer has to be more than just a farmer. He must be a mechanic, a veterinarian, a carpenter, a meteorologist, a plumber, or anything else that the farm needs. And, really any disaster is possible.
The weather is a constant source of concern. Admittedly, a job in which one can work with nature is a special gift. When the sun is shining and the birds are singing, it's hard not to be grateful for the opportunity to work outdoors in the sun. Nature can be a very beautiful thing.
Nature can also be a bitch. One of the hardest parts of farming is the fact that the well-being of the farm is completely and absolutely at the mercy of nature. Too much rain and the farmer is screwed. Too little rain and the farmer is screwed. Too many cloudy days and the crops will die. Too many sunny days and the crops will fry.
To illustrate just much weather can make a difference, here's a story from Summer 2005. My family's farm is located about three miles from another local farm. The two farms planted their corn at roughly the same time and used the same brands of seed and fertilizer. For some reason, our farm got 2.5 moreinches of rain this summer. We got a 25% higher yield from the corn. Thanks to 2.5 inches of additional rain. That's nothing, but it shows just how vulnerable the crops are to any weather changes.
As bad as my phone calls with my dad can be when he’s complaining about the weather, I'm always glad to just be talking to my dad on a given night; it means that he survived the day. Farming is among the world's most dangerous occupations. Hundreds of farmers die each year in the United States.730 farm workers perished in 2002 alone. Farmers are seven times more likely to die on the job than the average American worker. In addition to the high death rate, a staggering 150,000 farmers suffer a disabling injury each year.
Danger lurks in every part of a farmer's day. Cows may seem slow-witted and generally benevolent, but they are large, powerful animals with the ability to seriously injure a person. Farmers are very often victims of a damaging kick (my own father has been kicked in the face more times than he'd care to remember). A stampede can also result in devastating consequences.
Machinery is also very dangerous. One of a farmer’s worst nightmares is getting an arm or a leg caught in a running machine. (A very real possibility, unfortunately.)
There are a million other ways to get hurt on a farm. One of my uncles had to have shrapnel removed from his face when a piece of equipment exploded, shooting hot metal into his head. My other uncle was nearly crushed by a full wagon that broke off from the tractor that was towing it and rolled back down a hill. Both were back at work the same day. To them, it’s all part of the job.
As bad as farming can be, maybe milking cows for a living wouldn't be so bad if it were, you know, profitable. Another thing about farmers that's not mentioned in the myth of the "noble farmer" is that farmers don't get paid squat. As of this moment, the companies buy milk for is $15.33 per 100 pounds of milk, which works out to just $1.22 a gallon. Not included in that price is the fact that farmers have to pay milk companies to come get their milk.
$1.22 a gallon. Less than half of what a gallon of milk goes for at the average store. Not to mention that milk companies can also use some excess butterfat from each gallon for other dairy products. The price milk companies are offering farmers remained more or less constant for nearly three decades until rising from the $12-$13/per 100 range up to its current $15-$16 range in only the past few years. Hardly keeping up with inflation (or what milk has been sold for in stores).
With these prices, an average dairy farmer will maybe bring home $20,000-$30,000 a year. There are lower salaries out in there in the American workforce, but not many workers are pulling 80-hour workweeks to get those low salaries.
So let's see: low pay, long hours, and a high risk of injury? It's no wonder so many small farms are closing down in this country. Who would want this job? My own father forbade me from even considering farming as a potential occupation. (Not that he really needed to worry about that.) And I know he's not the only farmer who has given that mandate to his children.
Even if my father hadn’t barred me from farming, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take over the family farm anyway. In April 2006, Andrews Dairy Farm will hold an auction to sell its cows and milking equipment. Facing mounting debt, my father and my uncles decided it was best to sell out now while they still were young enough to find new careers.
The auction will be a sad and frightening day for our family. Farming is all we’ve ever really known, and the future is full of uncertainty and doubt for the Andrews clan.
But while I’m scared to death, I’m glad my father’s future won’t involve farming. If he hadn’t died on the job, he’d probably have worked himself to death eventually. Such is the life of the noble farmer.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Oil in your Oatmeal: How much Fossil Fuel does it take to produce your food?
Here's a great perspective on how food is interlaced with fossil fuel use. I recommend this essay as a quick and readable way to engage people in a discussion about the value of locally grown food.
The oil in your oatmeal
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast
Chad Heeter
Sunday, March 26, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.
On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)
My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.
Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.
Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)
Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.
The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.
Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.
Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.
Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps suggests birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.
If you've been adding up percentages along the way, perhaps you've noticed that a few tablespoons of crude oil in my bowl have not been accounted for. That final 40 percent of the fossil fuel in my breakfast is used up by the simple acts of keeping food fresh and then preparing it. In home kitchens and restaurants, chilling in refrigerators and cooking on stoves using electricity or natural gas gobbles up more energy than you might imagine.
For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.
What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)
But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food?
First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires. Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging.
You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way.
There is some energy savings in growing organically, but it's probably slight. According to a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University, 30 percent of fossil-fuel expenditure on farms growing conventional (nonorganic) crops is found in chemical fertilizer.
This 30 percent is not consumed on organic farms, but only if the manure used as fertilizer is produced very close to the farm. Manure is a heavy, bulky product.
If farms have to truck bulk manure more than a few miles, the savings is eaten up in diesel-fuel consumption, according to Pimentel.
One source of manure for organic farmers in California is chicken producer Foster Farms. Organic farmers in Monterey County, for example, will truck tons of Foster's manure from their main plant in Livingston (Merced County) to fields more than 100 miles away.
So the next time we're at the grocer, do we now have to ask not only where and how a product was grown, but how far its manure was shipped?
Well, if you're in New York City picking out a California-grown tomato that was fertilized with organic compost made from kelp shipped from Nova Scotia, maybe it's not such a bad question.
But should we give up on organic? If you're buying organic raspberries from Chile each week, then yes. The fuel cost is too great, as is the resulting production of the greenhouse gases.
But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.
On a scale from one to five -- with one being nonprocessed, locally grown products and five being processed, packaged imports -- we could quickly average the numbers in our shopping cart to get a sense of the ecological footprint of our diet.
What appeared to be my simple, healthy meal of oatmeal, berries and coffee looks different now. I thought I was essentially driving a Toyota Prius hybrid by having a very fuel-efficient breakfast, but by the end of the week, I've eaten the equivalent of more than two quarts of Valvoline.
From the perspective of fossil-fuel consumption, I now look at my breakfast as a waste of precious resources. What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, and into the future, when these nonrenewable resources will probably be in scant supply.
Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I'm not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles to reach my plate.
Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.
What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast and topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They'll dip more and more into the planet's communal oil well. And someday soon, we'll all suck it dry.
A crude menu
A lot of fossil-fuel energy goes into the production of food:
-- Bowl of oatmeal porridge: 4 ounces of crude oil.
-- Serving of red raspberries: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- Butter, milk and salt: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- That cup of java: 2 ounces of crude oil.
-- Energy required to produce 1 pound of coffee: a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
-- Energy required to produce one week's worth of breakfast for one person: More than 2 quarts of crude oil.
Chad Heeter grew up eating fossil fuels in Lee's Summit, Mo. He's a freelance writer, a documentary filmmaker and a former high school science teacher. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
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The oil in your oatmeal
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast
Chad Heeter
Sunday, March 26, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle
Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.
On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)
My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.
Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.
Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)
Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.
The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.
Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.
Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.
Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps suggests birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.
If you've been adding up percentages along the way, perhaps you've noticed that a few tablespoons of crude oil in my bowl have not been accounted for. That final 40 percent of the fossil fuel in my breakfast is used up by the simple acts of keeping food fresh and then preparing it. In home kitchens and restaurants, chilling in refrigerators and cooking on stoves using electricity or natural gas gobbles up more energy than you might imagine.
For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.
What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)
But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food?
First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires. Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging.
You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way.
There is some energy savings in growing organically, but it's probably slight. According to a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University, 30 percent of fossil-fuel expenditure on farms growing conventional (nonorganic) crops is found in chemical fertilizer.
This 30 percent is not consumed on organic farms, but only if the manure used as fertilizer is produced very close to the farm. Manure is a heavy, bulky product.
If farms have to truck bulk manure more than a few miles, the savings is eaten up in diesel-fuel consumption, according to Pimentel.
One source of manure for organic farmers in California is chicken producer Foster Farms. Organic farmers in Monterey County, for example, will truck tons of Foster's manure from their main plant in Livingston (Merced County) to fields more than 100 miles away.
So the next time we're at the grocer, do we now have to ask not only where and how a product was grown, but how far its manure was shipped?
Well, if you're in New York City picking out a California-grown tomato that was fertilized with organic compost made from kelp shipped from Nova Scotia, maybe it's not such a bad question.
But should we give up on organic? If you're buying organic raspberries from Chile each week, then yes. The fuel cost is too great, as is the resulting production of the greenhouse gases.
But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.
On a scale from one to five -- with one being nonprocessed, locally grown products and five being processed, packaged imports -- we could quickly average the numbers in our shopping cart to get a sense of the ecological footprint of our diet.
What appeared to be my simple, healthy meal of oatmeal, berries and coffee looks different now. I thought I was essentially driving a Toyota Prius hybrid by having a very fuel-efficient breakfast, but by the end of the week, I've eaten the equivalent of more than two quarts of Valvoline.
From the perspective of fossil-fuel consumption, I now look at my breakfast as a waste of precious resources. What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, and into the future, when these nonrenewable resources will probably be in scant supply.
Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I'm not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles to reach my plate.
Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.
What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast and topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They'll dip more and more into the planet's communal oil well. And someday soon, we'll all suck it dry.
A crude menu
A lot of fossil-fuel energy goes into the production of food:
-- Bowl of oatmeal porridge: 4 ounces of crude oil.
-- Serving of red raspberries: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- Butter, milk and salt: 1 ounce of crude oil.
-- That cup of java: 2 ounces of crude oil.
-- Energy required to produce 1 pound of coffee: a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
-- Energy required to produce one week's worth of breakfast for one person: More than 2 quarts of crude oil.
Chad Heeter grew up eating fossil fuels in Lee's Summit, Mo. He's a freelance writer, a documentary filmmaker and a former high school science teacher. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
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b
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