Our Harvest
Posted on October 30th, 2009
Despite the popularity of the local food movement, eaters and producers still face many challenges
Published October 8, 2009 in SEE by Angela Brunschot in News & Views
James Vriend pulls a long metal harvester resembling a conveyor belt though the dirt with a tractor while Jennifer Berkenbosch, Ruth Vriend, and I kneel into the dark, clumpy soil of the three-acre Vriend farm to pick out Yukon Gold potatoes. Several of the potatoes are larger than my outstretched hand, and I pull back a couple times, startled at the sight of a bee or a spider. As we work, Jennifer and I talk about her and James’s search for land to expand Sundog Organic Farm, and the joy the visual artist has found in her new work with her family. On her hip is a baby monitor, scratched and dirty from outdoor use, from which her youngest son Eli, inside the nearby house, gurgles and babbles to his stuffed bear. In a little over an hour, we harvest the last of their potatoes, about 500 pounds’ worth, including seed potatoes for next year.
As I look up at the overcast sky, a strong, cold wind blows my scarf around my head. The market garden has already seen a little frost this year, and with temperatures expected to hit -3 degrees this week, Jennifer and James are nearing the end of their harvest season. This weekend is their last at the Downtown Farmers’ Market.
As a city girl, the thought that some food options disappear after the fall is completely foreign to me. I’ve recently become a sporadic local food shopper, and it’s jarring to think about my options decreasing as winter sinks in. I have to wonder what would happen if I didn’t have the option of switching to more imported food in the winter. Could the market gardens and farms in and around Edmonton supply urban eaters year round?
The answer, of course, depends on who you ask. Food has become a complex issue, and the question of which method of producing food is the most environmentally friendly or socially responsible is still hotly debated. But even looking simply at the idea of whether we could feed ourselves in the event of world food shortages or sky-high fuel costs is a pretty prickly question.
Although the local food movement has grown over the past few years, and Edmonton’s farmers’ markets will no doubt be packed with shoppers buying their Thanksgiving feast this weekend, it’s not completely mainstream yet. Provincewide, according to Agriculture Alberta, about $5 to $7 million worth of produce was sold directly by farmers at markets in 2008. Overall, local vegetables represented $8 to $12 million worth of produce sold last year, but Alberta imported over $240 million in vegetables.
Becky Lipton is a researcher, consultant, and member of the Greater Edmonton Alliance, a social justice group with a focus on preserving local farmland. She flatly admits the farms and market gardens around Edmonton couldn’t feed the entire city all year round. At least not yet.
She describes the problem as cyclical: there aren’t enough farmers to feed all of Edmonton because so far, there hasn’t been enough of a market for local food. She’s currently working on a provincial apprenticeship program that connects young urban people interested in farming with local operations, in the hopes of increasing the amount of food grown locally.
Getting help from experienced farmers is vital, says Jennifer. When we first arrive at the Vriend farm, Ruth hands James a list of vegetables ready for harvest that day. James’s parents Ruth and Dennis Vriend are teaching the new farming couple the ropes. The older couple lives on the organic farm in semi-retirement, while the younger couple works the land and lives in town with their two boys.
Ruth jokes that she’s just interfering, and that James already knows how to farm. At 65, Ruth says she views herself more as a resource for questions and creative problem-solving. Of course, that didn’t stop her from working full-time in the field this summer.
“We have a real advantage because we have family support,” says Jennifer. She’s learned a lot from Ruth — not only about how to farm but also how to preserve and prepare the berries and vegetables into jams and sauces that will last her and her family through the coming winter.
The question of whether Edmonton should be capable of feeding itself seems obvious to urban farmer Ron Berezan, and that’s partly because from his perspective, everyone can contribute to their own food supply.
“Our grandparents lived on their gardens year-round,” he says optimistically. “It was only a couple generations ago.”
On this fall evening, there’s a slight drizzle and the smell of wood chips wafting toward his red and green duplex not far from Little Italy on 93rd Street. Berezan has turned his entire backyard into a garden, and this Thanksgiving, that backyard will provide him with potatoes and carrots, squash for soup, and kale for a salad. The rosemary, thyme, oregano, and parsley he cooks with will also have been grown and harvested by his own hands. Even the berry sauce for his ice cream comes from his backyard.
Along the back of the yard, he grows apples along his fence in a line about 60 feet long. The technique is called espalier, and makes use of an unused alley that had been filled with weeds and garbage before Berezan got hold of it. He’s also turned his neighbour’s lawn in to a “food forest” with fruit trees, potatoes, and berries.
“It was great to see it go from a lawn which my neighbour just had to cut to something that’s edible,” he says as he leans down and rubs a Good King Henry plant between two tanned fingers, his nails caked in dirt.
By this time, he’s picked his cherries, as well as the wild raspberries, saskatoons, and currants. The cherries he’s turned into juice, and the berries are canned for the coming winter. The 25 different varieties of tomatoes he grew this year will keep him in sauces and salsa though the winter.
But it takes a lot of work, both in the garden and in the kitchen, to preserve the food. Even with 20 years of experience, Berezan grows about half his own food, and still shops at grocery stores.
For city kids like myself without backyards or years of gardening experience, buying food remains the only option.
Shopping at farmers’ markets takes a lot more effort than a weekly trip to the grocery store. Farmers’ markets are only open a couple days a week, and although the range of produce available always shocks me, the range of products on sale is smaller. On weeks when I do make it down to one of the markets, I always end up taking a second trip to a grocery store to pick up things like juice or toilet paper. And sometimes the local items I’m specifically looking for, such as eggs, are sold out by the time I make it down in the early afternoon. My grocery bill also generally doubles on weeks I make a trip to the farmers’ market.
Grocery stores do offer local produce. In season, from about August to November, about 80 per cent of the potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and other locally available produce in Alberta does indeed come from local farms, according to Agriculture Alberta.
“There is local food sold though wholesalers into the grocery chains,” says Heather Loeppky, the head of local market expansion with the province. “It’s not always easy to find, but if you ask, it’s there.”
But while a big grocery store might be the most convenient option for consumers like myself, it’s not for producers like James. Wholesalers take away much of the control farmers and market gardeners have over their produce, he says. The wholesaler decides when the vegetables are picked, how they are packaged, and how much the vegetables are worth. It’s not an attractive option for a small-scale organic farmer.
“The good thing about the farmers’ market is that you sell things when they are ready,” he says. “You also have a relationship with the customer.”
The “eat local” initiative has increased the number and variety of people who are coming to the farmers’ markets, says Lisa Prkusic, general manager of the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market.
She thinks there’s enough demand out there for more farmers to market directly to customers, and indeed, more markets would have to open if Edmonton wanted to increase the amount of local food sold and consumed in the city. But even though the Old Strathcona Market has a waiting list for vendors — 100 people currently waiting to be interviewed, and another group of approved vendors waiting for an open space — they have no plans to expand. Prkusic says the market has to make sure they’re serving the farmers they already have and not oversaturating the market — while still providing good local products to customers.
“The farmers’ market industry is going through so many changes,” she says. “We just have to remember that it is about preserving the land and the local food supply.”
On the supply side, one of the problems facing local farmers is the availability or accessibility of good farmland. The Greater Edmonton Alliance continually highlights the importance of Edmonton’s agricultural land, especially the lands in the northeast which enjoy a unique microclimate and a longer growing season. There is big potential for more local food production, Lipton says, and the availability of good agricultural land is a big part of that.
“If you look northeast of Edmonton on its own,” she says, “there’s so much land out there that is so productive. If we turned all that into vegetable production, we probably wouldn’t feed the whole city on it, but we’d probably get pretty close, at least in terms of vegetables.”
James and Jennifer know from personal experience how important good agricultural land is. The couple has been looking for a bigger piece of land on which to expand Sundog Organics beyond the relatively small two acres they’ve farmed for the past year, but they haven’t found anything yet. The land that James’s parents rented next to their three acres before their retirement is currently rented for recreation vehicle storage. Although the couple is considering renting the land, James doesn’t like the insecurity. Organic certification can take a number of years, plus they’d have to make a hefty investment in infrastructure, all for a piece of land that could be sold out from under them.
“Who knows what will happen with Edmonton’s food security?” James asks. “No one’s asking the question of what we should do with the land.”
The couple has looked in other areas around the city, but they’ve found themselves priced out of the market. The price of farmland has been steadily increasing in Alberta, according to Farm Credit Canada, which provides business and financial services to farmers across the country. Alberta has seen three consecutive increases in agricultural land prices over the past year and a half, a one per cent increase in the first half of 2009, and 2.2 per cent and 6.7 per cent increases in 2008. The trend isn’t unique to Alberta, as prices for agricultural land increased across the country during the same period. Competition for land around urban centres like Edmonton increases prices further.
“If you just followed what the market says, you would just forget it,” James says, “because the market says that we don’t deserve land.”
The couple could expand and buy more land if they took on investors to raise capital for a land purchase, but that would require a much bigger operation, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80 or 120 acres, James says, and that’s not a risk he wants to take either. With a small farm, there’s less chance of losing plants. Part of the reason they were able to maintain the crops they planted though the drought this year, Jennifer says, was that they have a small operation.
Once we’ve finished with the picking for the morning and head inside for lunch, Jennifer and James roughhouse with their sons Silas and Eli in their parents’ living room. It’s a very charming scene, and I’ve enjoyed my time at the farm. Still, after this weekend, James and Jennifer will spend their days in the city while Jennifer pursues art and Silas attends school. Their produce will be gone from the farmers’ market, and frankly, most weeks will find me back in line at the grocery store.
