Reinventing the family farm

Pam Benike grew up on a dairy farm near Elgin, Minn., where her dad's crops fed a herd of 70 cows and the milk went to the cheese plant. Now, on that same farm, she milks just 15 cows and makes cheese herself, selling it at the Mill City Farmers Market to people who like being able to put a name to a feta.

That's how she's saving her family farm.

We hear a lot these days about eating locally grown food, about choosing organic, about supporting sustainable agriculture. "Locavore" was dubbed "word of the year" by the New Oxford American Dictionary. Wal-Mart made waves two years ago by carrying organic foods and now highlights "locally grown" produce, while all Chipotle restaurants now must buy a percentage of produce from local farms.

Minnesota is on the front lines, home to national organizations, to high-profile chefs touting homegrown foods and to more food co-ops per capita than any state. We also have a lot of family farms facing a generational moment. In Benike's case, she'd farmed on her own for 24 years, since she was 17, but moved back to her father's farm three years ago.

"I never dreamed I would come back, but there'd been some changes in my life and the fact is that my father wants to stay on the farm," she said. She's in the midst of a transition to organic, aiming to join the 500 Minnesota farms that have gained that certification.

Numbers tell the story: From 2000 to 2005, organic farmland grew almost 60 percent to 129,000 acres, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Optimism abounds, but those numbers still pale against even larger totals: Those 129,000 acres are among the 27.4 million acres farmed in the state; those 500 farms among a total of 79,000 farms, large and small.

The 'new' old family farm

In many ways, what we now call "sustainable agriculture" simply used to be the family farm.

"Almost any farmer has to have some component of sustainability in their thinking, if only to pass the farm along to the next generation," said Mary Hanks, who supervises the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's (MDA) sustainable ag program. "It's more of an approach, or a process. What will it take for farmers to make a living, and protect their soil and water?"

There are no federal standards for sustainable agriculture as there are for organic production; a farmer can follow sustainable practices and not be classfied organic, which makes it a more rapidly attainable goal for small farms. "We may not be saving the old family farms as they used to be, but what we're seeing is that the market now is pulling," Hanks said. "We're not pushing."

In Benike's case, with her patches of asparagus and strawberries, and her grinding wheat into bread flour, the farm more resembles the diversity of her grandfather's era than the streamlined operations that signaled progress in her father's day.

That was in the heyday of the 1970s, when the U.S. government urged farmers to plant from fence to fence to sell food to a needy world. Banks freely lent money for farmers to expand. Bigger was better, production increased, surpluses grew. Then, inevitably, prices began to fall. Federal programs mostly propped up the largest farms, leaving many of the small, debt-laden others to fend for themselves, and the least efficient to fail.

In 1986, tractors rolled into Washington, D.C., to protest government policies and Willie Nelson began staging Farm Aid concerts. Images of auctions and sagging barns became the face of the family farm -- images that persisted throughout the 1990s.

Then things began to change. Organic farming gained a toehold. Environmental concerns grew. Consumers concerned about food safety and businesses fretting over transportation costs spurred an interest in providing food grown closer to local kitchens and restaurants.

From Benike's perspective, it was just a matter of time.

"What we're seeing is that, more important than having the label of sustainable or organic, people want to know where their food is coming from. They want to hear the story, to know that David and Laurie are out there raising vegetables, to know that there are no beets this week because the deer got into the field."

'Don't sell the farm'

Heidi Morlock grew up on a farm, but had pursued the city, buying a home in south Minneapolis and attending medical school. When she and her husband, Hans Peterson, had their first child, she took a break from school and realized that she didn't really want to be a doctor. What she really wanted was to return to the family farm where her mother grew up in Belle Plaine Township.

"I said, 'Mom, don't sell the farm,' and she said, 'Don't sell your house in Minneapolis,'" Morlock said, laughing. The generational concern was well-founded, for her mother had experienced the farm crisis of the 1980s. So at first she and Peterson, who's also a musician, rented their home.

That was eight years ago. Today, Seven Story Farm derives its income from the woody perennials such as red osier dogwood and curly willow that Morlock grows on two reconstructed wetlands and sells by the stem to the floral industry. They also tend nine acres of hazelnuts, raise asparagus, small fruits and produce for restaurants, and sell eggs, maple syrup and honey from their chickens, trees and bees.

They caught a huge break by not having to buy land. "I've certainly had my doubts along the way, but I love being outside, love physical labor," said Morlock, 36. "I have so much more respect for what I call 'real' farmers. It's a word I'm trying to live into.

"I feel hope for myself and my neighbors about eating locally, and that with people being concerned about that, there's a source of income for local farmers."

Cash flow still a challenge

Hanks, of the state Agricultural Department, said that similar shifts in farming are happening nationwide. "I've been here 18 years and it seems like it's starting to jell," she said. Still, most of the small producers need an off-farm income -- likely a spouse with a job in town. "The big challenge is health care," Hanks said. "And cash flow."

One big change was the influx of immigrants after the Vietnam War. "South of St. Paul, every little piece of ground has Hmong farmers producing for Twin Cities markets," Moynihan said. In other words, not only are family farms being saved, but created. And while traditional corn-and-soybeans commodity production farms "certainly are not going the way of the dodo, there are more options around the edges."

If there's a common value to these smaller, sustainable family farms, it's their pursuit of the most yield from a modest source, said Meg Moynihan, an organic and diversification specialist with the MDA. "It's about intensity and values, as opposed to scale," she said.

That decision is driven in part by land prices. Government reports place the average value for Minnesota farmland at $2,780 an acre; nationwide, it's $2,160. Sometimes, though, a farmer is seeking a different sort of work. "Maybe he or she wants to find a personal satisfaction, or some economic benefit to what they're raising," Moynihan said. "They're solving problems on the farm in a different way."

Farmers markets are booming, and more urban households are buying into a CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture and is sort of a weekly subscription for locally raised foods. The produce sections in grocery stores sprout little "Minnesota grown" logos, and high-profile chefs are making a point of using, and championing, home-grown sustenance.

Many of those chefs work with Benike, who is director of the Southeast Minnesota Food Network, which provides restaurants, co-ops, grocery stores and other institutions with food raised by more than 90 regional producers. The network is in its eighth season, and its biggest challenge is finding enough producers to meet the demand.

"That was not true when we started," Benike said. "Now, if I could get my hands on enough product, we could sell 10 times what we do."

Kim Ode • 612-673-7185