Connecting With Community to Grow Food in Tobacco Country
by Keith Richards
 (This article was reprinted from Farming More Sustainably in the South, Vol II: More Farmers' Stories, January 1996, published by the Southern SAWG.) 

BEDFORD, Kentucky--The tobacco plant, despite unhealthy side effects from most of its products, has been good to the people of Kentucky. In the farming regions of the state, the countryside is still interlaced with small farms, communities full of small businesses, and most importantly, people who keep the communities alive. The reason for this relative prosperity, when the rest of the rural South and Midwest have been decimated by loss of agricultural jobs, is tobacco. As one farmer recently remarked, "Even in bad years, I could always count on tobacco to pay the basics."

Lately though, tobacco farmers are getting the same squeeze as other commodity growers; higher costs and lower prices (or lower quotas) for their raw products are putting them in a vice grip. From 1982 to 1993, the index of prices received by farmers rose only 7.5 percent, while the index of prices paid by farmers--input costs--rose over 23 percent. With those kinds of market forces working against them, many Kentucky farmers are doing what their counterparts in the rest of the country have done--getting bigger or getting out. This means a loss of jobs, loss of people, and a spiraling decline in the health of Kentucky's rural communities.

Steve Smith came of age as a farmer in this difficult environment. While it agonizes him to see the decline of small tobacco farms, he isn't about to let his own Trimble County farm along the Little Kentucky River be one of the casualties. Tending 324 acres that he and his parents bought jointly from his grandparents, he has branched out from the traditional crops of tobacco and hay into organic vegetables.

"I started growing vegetables in 1985, mainly because of the uncertain future of tobacco, and because the idea of growing food crops was more appealing," says Steve. "The first year I had a roadside stand. I enjoyed that kind of marketing--meeting people. The next few years I trucked mostly tomatoes and cantaloupes to Louisville stores and wholesalers. I found this difficult; it was unpleasant and often degrading to try and get my price. In a good year, prices were too low. In a bad year, you didn't have what the market wanted. I lost money on vegetables four out of the first five years [using conventional methods], but was willing to write it off to the cost of education."

"Nineteen eighty-nine was a turning point," he explains. "An acre of ripe stake tomatoes was left to rot in the field because the bottom had dropped out of the tomato market. This helped to change my thinking on modern conventional farming. After doing some research on vegetable farming, I drew up a market garden plan using different criteria for the 1990 vegetable crops."

The new criteria were: 1) lowering purchased inputs, 2) basing a market strategy on cooperation rather than competition, 3) raising a diversity of crops and livestock in rotation, 4) providing a fair and adequate wage to the farmer and workers, and 5) evaluating success by the quality of life created for all humans and animals involved.  

Starting a Food Guild 

Steve sent out letters to area newspapers explaining what he was going to do. Calling it a "food guild," his plan was to provide 40 families with a half-bushel basket of assorted fresh vegetables each week. He says, "We also agreed that no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides would be used on them or on the land they were grown in, and that we would provide them May through November as best we could. In exchange, we asked the people to agree to pay us the cost of growing the food ($384 per family) in advance and to share with us the risks of farming."

Over 100 people responded to his letters, and he began a new way of life. Steve didn't find out until two years later that this concept was growing throughout the country, having been tagged with the name of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

In that first year, he grew around 30 different kinds of vegetables on about three acres of land. His soil fertility was low, and he was lacking the proper tools and information. "In spite of it all, it was a great success," Steve says. "I would attribute that to the tremendous support we received from the people for whom we were farming."

Those original 40 members grew by word of mouth into 60, 75, 80, then100. Steve's current price per share of $400 is based on estimated expenses for 3-1/2 acres of vegetables plus a $19,000 salary for the farmer.

Now, most of his CSA members live in Louisville, 40 miles away. Steve delivers their produce once a week on Thursday evenings to St. Matthew's Episcopal church parking lot. Everything is picked that morning, washed, cooled, counted and packed into apple crates. Signs are posted indicating each family's allotment (i.e., "12 bunches each"). Steve puts a dipper in the crates for items like sugar peas, and uses "handfuls" for greens and mesclun mix. Members bring and fill their own baskets. For most, the evening is a great social affair.

"Response from the members has been overwhelming," according to Steve. Many come to visit the farm during the year, and twice last season members came to help with the work. Steve says the original core group of people began supporting the farm as an environmental and social cause, but the experience has changed their relationship to food. "Over the years, these people have become cooks. I've become a cook!" he exclaims. 

Changing From the Industrial Model to a CSA 

Operating under the CSA concept created many other changes in the way Steve farmed. He decreased his tobacco acreage--up until 1989 he had been growing 40,000 lbs yearly in an attempt to pay for the farm. "Rent and cash lease were eliminated as were chemical costs, except for sucker control," Steve says. "Vegetable income canceled the need to borrow money and saved about $3000 in interest."

He began buying chicken manure to replace chemical fertilizers. "We have used hen manure from an egg laying operation to rebuild our depleted soil and it has worked well," says Steve. "A local farmer with a spreader truck spreads the manure on our fields for about $25/ton. We have used 3-5 tons/acre on vegetables and up to 7 tons/acre on tobacco. It grows good tobacco."

"I would like to stress, however, that I do not believe that off-farm inputs should be continued indefinitely or become a part of a farm's fertility program--other than perhaps once every four or five years to rebuild badly depleted soils." He continues, "I much prefer using compost and animal manure produced on the farm, but there is never enough. We have found rock powders such as green sand and colloidal phosphate to be very beneficial when applied at about 1 ton/acre each, every four to five years. They are excellent sources of P and K, and essential micronutrients."

"For our principle source of nitrogen, we undersow between the rows of standing vegetable crops with a legume mixture, such as red, white, and yellow clover, letting the clover continue to grow over winter until it is plowed down in the spring." Steve says, "It also provides a good ground cover, suppresses weeds, prevents splash on vegetables, and greatly improves soil structure. I have sown this mixture by hand and lightly tilled it in with good success."

"There is no question that great change has come to this farm. The soil looks and feels healthy and produces an abundance of healthy crops which are not affected by periods of wet or dry weather. The land has an improved ability to soak up moisture, and the soil is not prone to compaction, provided it is handled with reasonable care."

"When I first moved in the organic direction," says Steve, "life became more difficult and more complex. I had entered the abyss. Later there began to appear unexpected gifts: the absence of pests in crops, huge yields of beautiful healthy crops, financial security, the deed to the farm, more satisfied customers than we could provide for, the support of a group of people, and guardian angels. There is the key. I can't explain it, so I'll just call it magic. A lot of loving, caring feelings flow from our customers, through us, and onto the land. Somehow we are able to reach and connect with that community of all beings and it works." 

An Eight-year Crop Rotation 

"Crop rotation is our single most important practice, taking full advantage of the effects and benefits that each crop has on the one that follows," Steve says. Borrowing from Eliot Coleman's book, The New Organic Grower, he has implemented an eight-year rotation, dividing 32 vegetable crops into eight family classifications. The vegetable fields are also divided into eight sections and rotated each year as follows: corn > potatoes > squash family > root crops > beans > tomato family > peas > cabbage family > back to corn.

Insects and diseases are controlled because preceding and succeeding crops are not susceptible to the same pests, and the different cultivation practices required by each family help to control weeds.

"Although the rotation has worked well, we intend to modify it by using two 3-1/2 acre fields," says Steve. One field will start the eight-year rotation in vegetables, while the other is in a three-year rotation of hay crops and grazing. He hopes to grow two years of alfalfa and grass for hay, then graze the field for one year with heifers or steers for finishing, followed by horses, followed by chickens. Every three years the fields will be swapped, keeping the eight-year rotation of vegetables going as it moves back and forth through the two fields. 

Integrating Horse Power 

Although Steve owns a small 40 HP tractor and implements, he is using draft horses for more of his work. "Draft horses have become our main power source for cultivating--they far excel tractors for this job, as well as for drilling clover when crops are laid by," he says. "They are useful for preparing seed beds in small areas and can disc or plow our soil when the ground is too heavy to put a tractor on. Soil compaction, a major source of problems for most farmers, can be avoided by using horses. For us they are a source of pleasure and we're fortunate that this kind of farming affords that possibility. But they are practical as well--for spreading manure, raking hay, pulling wagons, or just joy riding. And horse drawn tools are cheap and abundant, easy to repair."

Besides the organic vegetables for his CSA members, Steve still raises 3-1/2 acres of tobacco using low inputs and about 50 acres of hay, alfalfa and grass, red clover and grass, and fescue. He also pastures about 12 beef cows, selling them through conventional channels. At some point he says he would like to figure out an innovative market for the beef.

Three generations are involved in the farm. Steve's father raises four acres of tobacco conventionally and cuts the hay with his son. In 1995, Steve's nephew, Jamie Overton, grew an acre of organic seed for Seeds of Change and another acre of organic vegetables to sell through the Kentucky Organic Growers marketing cooperative in Lexington.

Steve says his farm dream has always been "a good piece of bottom land, an acre of tobacco, an acre of corn, an acre of vegetables, an orchard, a flock of sheep, a few cows, a few hogs, a few chickens and a good team of horses." Under the industrial model of agriculture, that dream would have been ridiculous--an economic disaster. He says, "The way I see it, [the industrial farmers] have two choices every year. Either they give to agribusiness or to the government. I'm taking a third choice by investing in my land, in the farm, and in people rather than in technology."

By taking that third choice and creating a cooperative relationship with urban consumers, Steve Smith has beaten the odds against young farmers, and is getting closer to his dream farm every day.