Editor's Note: This blog began in 2008 as a chronicle of the
sustainable farming efforts, led by Terry Sheldon (Tapahpunja Dasa), at the Small Farm
Training Center at the New Vrindaban Spiritual Community in West
Virginia.
We return to that original spirit with a report from the Small Farm Training Center on its 2012 projections, proposals, and challenges
"The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) is a land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm. Our purpose is to create community—a web of supportive relationships—by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology."
Click here to learn more.
We return to that original spirit with a report from the Small Farm Training Center on its 2012 projections, proposals, and challenges
"The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) is a land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm. Our purpose is to create community—a web of supportive relationships—by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology."
Click here to learn more.
King Kamsa's Bhoga-Mart:
Why Are We Still Nourishing the Infrastructure of Dependency?
Dispatches from The Front Lines of Rural KC Development
By Tapahpunja Dasa (Terry Sheldon)
The Small Farm Training Center’s
(SFTC) is a land based educational center and a hands-on working
organic farm within the boundaries of New Vrindaban Community.
Pursuant to Srila Prabhupada’s specific instructions for New
Vrindaban, its mission is to create a green economic model that makes
organically grown food affordable and available. The Training Center
has expanded it’s activities to include an urban gardening outreach
project, called the Green Wheeling Initiative, which was recently
awarded $70,000 in grant monies for it’s work in addressing the
looming issue of food security.By Tapahpunja Dasa (Terry Sheldon)
The following report was
submitted to New Vrindaban’s management team in advance of the 2012
agricultural cycle. It outlines the challenges faced by agrarian
devotees attempting to create a genuine rural Krishna conscious
lifestyle. For information about the Small Farm Training Center’s
projects and apprentice training programs, check out their website at
www.farmeducation.org.
or email Tapahpunja dasa at info@farmeducation.org.
Small
Farm Training Center
2012 Production
Projections, Proposals and Challenges
Contents
1), Assessing The Need By Asking The
Right Questions
2). Three Steps Towards
Local Food Production
a). Recognizing Climatic Limitations
b). Differentiating Between Small Scale vs Mass Production
c). Mixed Spiritual Messages: Separating Rhetoric from Reality.
3). Plan of Action and Projections for
2012
a). Targeted Vegetable Production for 2012
b). Key Factors Affecting Vegetable Production Goals
c). Missing Links in The Food Supply Chain
d). Prioritizing Basic Infrastructure Development
4). Summary Statement
1). Assessing the Need
By Asking The Right Questions
New Vrindaban Community management
recently submitted a twelve month vegetable “wish list,” divided
into two, six month consumption periods, namely a peak consumption
period—April through October—and the off-season consumption
period—November through March. The vegetable wish list reflects
what the temple and snack bar kitchens are accustomed to purchasing
from a local wholesale outlet, Jebia’s Market in Wheeling.
Can local agriculture—the Small Farm
Training Center and a combination of area growers—satisfy two large
kitchens dependent on a twelve month supply of certain vegetable
varieties? The short answer is “No!,” not easily. We can
grow some specialized vegetables in limited amounts (Deity
quantities). We can also grow large quantities of greens like chard,
root crops like potato and certain “in season” specialties like
tomatoes. To consistently supply the most favored varieties—eggplant,
cauliflower, and broccoli for example—is beyond the reach of our
current production capacity. Why is it beyond our production
capacity? What are those challenges? How do we boost production,
cater to diversity, address our weaknesses and stimulate dialogue
about the role of agriculture in shaping New Vrindaban’s future?
Please read on.
2). Three Steps Towards
Local Food Production
a). Recognizing Climatic
Limitations: The most obvious reason we cannot match Jebia’s
year round availability is weather. Imported vegetables from Mexico
or California are grown in mild climates. Our growing season of 145
days is interrupted by weather extremes. Incessantly long, wet
Springs, followed by blistering hot early summers have become the
norm. In the late summer of 2011, for example, record setting amounts
of rainfall soaked New Vrindaban’s growing fields for eleven
consecutive weeks from August 21st until November 15th.
That eighty day wet spell seriously impacted the fall harvest,
spoiled the opportunity to plant annual cover crops and called into
question the hope for a successful 2012 growing cycle.
b). Differentiating Between Small
Scale and Mass Production When vegetables are grown under
favorable conditions, farm workers are repeatedly reseeding and
re-transplanting the next generation of crops in large plots of
acreage. Even before a mature crop of broccoli is harvested and
packed for shipment, a new crop of broccoli transplants is readied to
replace them. The new production field is spray saturated with
chemical fungicide, followed by a blast of herbicides for
pre-emergent weed suppression. Finally, a planting crew poke the baby
broccoli transplants through a layer of black plastic mulch that
stretches as far as the eye can see. This is not family farming. This
is mass production agribusiness, pumping out chemical broccoli for
Jebia’s customers—ISKCON New Vrindaban included—365 days per
year.
Industrial agriculture—Big Ag.—is a
nexus of complex relationships and enterprises. To insure market
share, Big Ag. requires contractual agreements, full time office
personnel, law firms to guard against liability suits, flat farmland
in the thousands of acres, greenhouses pumping out a continuous
supply of new transplants, a flotilla of gigantic farm equipment,
dump trucks worth of toxic chemicals and a small army of wage slave
migrant laborers. When all these ducks are lined-up—a complexity of
relationships antithetical to New Vrindaban’s plain living high
thinking mission—you’ll find broccoli on Jebia’s shelves all
year long. Broccoli is there consistently and predictably because Big
Ag. has declared war—chemical warfare—on mother nature.
New Vrindaban’s topography, climate
and culture are not conducive to agri-business. Instead of
wasting time hoping to imitate a mega-scale production model not
suited to our small scale mountainous bio-region, we should zero-in
on foods we can grow, store and depend on without defying the laws of
nature. If—and only if—there is surplus, should the excess
production be sold in the marketplace. That, in a nutshell, is how
Srila Prabhupada described the tone and tenure of Krishna conscious
rural life.
c). Mixed Spiritual Messages:
Separating Rhetoric from Reality
The third step—and biggest hurdle—in
attaining a local food supply is ideological. We’re not really
convinced that we want food independence…or put more succinctly, we
don’t really want to pay the price. Compared to just picking up the
phone and calling in an order to Jebia’s Market, the challenge of
mapping out the route towards an authentic agrarian Krishna conscious
lifestyle is a great inconvenience.
It’s a challenge that requires
an oceanic shift in priorities and a serious commitment to take
responsibility for our ecological foot print, especially our waste
stream. To insist on eating out-of-season is to invite the
consequences of that habit. Getting our ideology on the same page
with our purchasing and consumption patterns—and then realigning
those habits around our farming practices—is hard work.
Failing to do so, however, is a lapse
of consciousness and a sobering confession that we’re not seriously
committed to enacting Srila Prabhupada’s mandate for plain living.
We long for “seeing Krishna everywhere” and “in all things”
but not if it disrupts our international food supply. From a farmer’s
point of view, “seeing Krishna everywhere” means recognizing
boundaries. It implies not challenging the natural order because that
natural order is ….”working under My (Lord Krishna’s)
direction…..” (BG 9:10).
The rhetoric: Purchasing produce
from anywhere is acceptable because everyone along the supply chain
is purified when the bhoga is offered to Lord Krishna.
The reality: At what point does
“needing certain vegetables” sour into complicity with chemical
warfare against nature? At what point does “Everything can be used
in Krishna’s service,” replace local self reliance? Some outside
purchasing of vegetables is unavoidable at this point in time.
A review of New Vrindaban’s purchasing pattern over the past 15
years, however, reveals the flight of close to one million dollars
($1,000,000,000) to outside vendors. When the money you’re spending
on food from the outside, exceeds the money spent on developing your
own food growing capacity by hundreds of thousands of dollars,
something is dramatically wrong.
Jebia’s produce is chemical
produce—vegetables that cannot be grown without dependency on the
heavy use of nitrogen fertilizer and toxic pesticides, herbicides and
fungicides. Those toxic residues cannot be washed off. They are
systemically permeating every cell of the plant. By choosing to farm
organically, we’ve chosen the path of integrity, a spiritual
commitment to honor our seven mothers, most notably Mother Earth and
mother cow. Poisoning the soil is Bhumi aparadha. When we offer
vegetables to our Deities that are grown in glycophosphate
contamination soils, are we committing seva aparadha? To depend on
Lord Krishna for what grows easily, organically and locally means to
humbly accept those yields and vegetable varieties with gratitude and
appreciation.
The rhetoric: Organic is too
expensive to buy and too expensive to produce, Jebia’s
retail and wholesale vegetable are affordable.
The reality: Jebia’s wholesale
and retail prices are artificially low because they are subsidized by
tax payer money. Whether you buy a bundle of broccoli or a box of
broccoli, the price you pay does not reflect the actual
production costs. The consumer is actually paying twice: once at the
cash register and again through hidden taxation This may sound
inconsequential to a New Vrindaban housewife who feeds her family on
food stamps or to a temple manager looking for food bargains, but
it’s a death blow to developing a real rural economy or the ability
to grow what we eat, eat what we grow, and transmit those values and
location specific skills from one generation of devotees to another.
In truth, we are insensitive or unaware—Krishna unconscious,
if you will—about where and how our current food supply comes to
us.
The rhetoric: We trace our
ideological origins and understanding of environmental wholesomeness
to the ancient Vedic culture, the remnants of which are still
partially visible in modern day India.
The reality: We’re quick to
eulogize India’s Vedic culture but slow to admit that Vedic culture
operated within an agrarian social and an agrarian economic
context. The backdrop of everyday civic life was the presence of
flourishing food production and cow care. That is, in essence,
Srila Prabhupada’s image of what he wanted for New Vindaban.
If we fail to understand this point,
we’re not really living in New Vrindaban, the Western replica of
Krishna’s original Vrindaban. Instead, we’re living in the
city limits of Kamsa’s Mathura, where every food purchase serves to
fatten King Kamsa’s treasury.
Commodity based agriculture—the
system that produces King Kamsa bhoga—and community based
agriculture are irreconcilably opposed world views. Small scale
independent farming—the core activity that engenders Srila
Prabhupada’s New Vrindaban--cannot compete with a system that hides
the real cost of food while destroying the productive capacity of the
soil.
As Vaisnavas, we have a moral
obligation to reject a food system that represents violence to the
land, the cows and land based culture. That may mean taming our
tongues by eating a simpler, local diet. It may mean not
offering eggplant sabji to our Deities when we know that the
production schedule of a California grown eggplant involves spraying
the plant with pesticides seventeen times before it’s picked and
shipped to Jebia’s.
3). Plan of Action and
Projections for 2012
a). Targeted Vegetable Production
for 2012: The Small Farm Training Center plans to grow the
following vegetables in large quantities in the 2012 growing cycle.
The bracketed numbers represent the number of transplants we hope to
put out. The numbers in bu (bushels) and boxes is the anticipated
harvest of those varieties.
1). Tomato
(400))
2). Peppers
(1000)
3). Okra
(500)
4). Cucumber (200)
5). Lettuce (30 boxes)
6). Broccoli
(600)
7). Summer squash (30 bu)
8). Cabbage (600)
9). Spinach (15 boxes)
10). Radish (15 boxes plus greens)
11). Chard (60 boxes)
12). String beans ( 25 bu).
13). Lettuce (30 boxes)
14) Winter squash (50 bu)
*note: For the past 4 years, 2007-2011,
West Virginia State University (WVSU) has donated the seed, the
greenhouse bench space, the labor, the starting medium, the
containers and even the delivery (450 miles round trip) of
approximately 130 flats
of vegetable transplants per year. The
retail value of WVSU’s donation was over $2,500/yr. Due to
budgetary constraints, WVSU is no longer able to render that service.
b). Key Factors Affecting Vegetable
Production Goals:
New Vrindaban Community currently has
no available greenhouse for starting either early season or late
season vegetable transplants. For this reason, the Small Farm
Training Center has hired Nichole Shipman, the vocational agriculture
teacher at John Marshall High School, to start 75 vegetable flats of
early season transplants including pepper plants, kale, broccoli,
brussel sprouts and cabbages.
The remaining late season vegetable
transplants will be grown in the now damaged high tunnel greenhouse
adjacent the Garden of Seven Gates. Repairs on the greenhouse will
begin in mid February. Money in needed for paying outside help to
grow our early transplants. Funds are also needed for starting
our own on-the-farm transplants,. This includes funds for
seeds, potting soil and repair materials for the damaged
greenhouse.
In addition to capitalization—money
for the right things at the right times—the 2012 production
plan cannot be executed without a reliable labor force—the right
people doing the right things at the right time. As vegetables emerge
and grow, they require protection from insects, weeds and ground hog
attacks. Daily vigilance coupled with a rapid response to potential
problems is imperative. The absence of any one link in this chain of
stewardship—namely, capitalization, labor and vigilant
maintenance—spells failed crop production.
c). Missing Links in The Food Supply
Chain: Foods not mentioned in the 2012 projected production list
are basic staples like dry beans, grains and fruits. Berries
and other perennials such as asparagus are also absent. The reason
for this omission is that there is no acreage (besides the ½ acre
Teaching Garden and 6.5 acre Garden of Seven Gates) developed to
support expanded production. Newly developed growing zones will
require nutrient management, a crop rotation scheme and fortification
from the ever present deer pressure.
d). Prioritizing Basic
Infrastructure Development: No crop plan, however ambitious or
modest, can prevail without a well financed infrastructure to support
it. “Land, capital, management and labor,” Srila Prabhupada
noted, must precede any successful endeavor. New Vrindaban
currently has:
-no root cellar facility.
-no grain silo storage.
-no bean silo storage.
-no canning facility.
-no heated greenhouse for starting
vegetable transplants.
-no high tunnels for season extension.
-no composting facility to transform
raw cow manure into field ready compost.
-no recycling facility.
-no seed storing facility for cover
crop seed.
-no designated area (free from deer
invasion) for grain and legume production.
-no dependable labor force, except for
volunteer apprentices, to supply manpower.
In 2012, we hope to enhance production
by retrofitting the 6.5 acre Garden of Seven Gates with field
drainage, irrigation, and the erection of two pole barns for
maintaining and sheltering farm implements. We are also working on a
program of nutrient management and soil structure improvement.
4). Summary Statement: My
purpose in documenting the status of the Small Farm Training Center’s
food growing capacity, is two fold: First, I wanted to provide a
measuring stick to future growers and managers to evaluate
performance. Secondly, I wanted to paint a human face on the
act of food production—an occupation that Srila Prabhpada called
“the most noble profession.”
Farming, if it is real farming, is not
about yields and dollars and cents. It is an art form revealing a
portal into Lord Krishna’s creation. The Brajabhumi farmers and
cowherders in the original Vrindaban are not shilling and pence men,
their motivation is growing foods to offer to Krishna with love and
devotion.
In the act of thinking deeply about how
to make this report meaningful, I learned a valuable lesson, a lesson
I needed to be reminded about. Most New Vrindaban residents know very
little about where their food comes from, and even less about the
challenging conditions under which it is grown.
May the information harvested here
serve as fertile ground for growing a community of devotees
native to the Holy Dhama.
Tapahpunja Dasa
Small Farm Training Center
New Vrindaban Community
February 6th, 2012
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