'Serious' gardening in tough times

People have tomatoes in mind this winter

Jim Snyder, a Michigan farmer, may have captured an emerging trend of our times in his recent Farmers for the Future blog post, where he wrote: "Seed catalogs have been pouring in and we are busy planning this year’s gardens. Gardening has taken on a more serious nature due to the economy."

Doug Jimerson, gardening editor for our big sister site, Better Homes and Gardens , tells me that this new seriousness about gardening is real.

"Actually we do predict a big uptick in gardening, in particular, food gardening," he says. "We've been also hearing from many seed suppliers that sales of veggie seeds are on a big upswing."

Our company research indicates not only that vegetable gardening is one of the big trends this year, Jimerson says, but also that the number one appliance being sold is freezers.

In early returns from an Agriculture Online poll on the topic, half of respondents say they will be growing a bigger garden this year.

"With this economy, you can bet on more and bigger gardens," one farmer wrote in response to the poll. "We finally tilled up a spot near the house and planted our first garden here last year. Wondered why we didn't do it sooner!"

If it's a little hard to imagine Americans actually relying on their gardens in tough economic times, well, the idea takes me back to the farms and small town of my childhood, where it seemed everyone grew a big backyard garden and many folks canned and froze food. Back then, people were still mindful of war-time shortages and their rural roots.

Another example I’ve seen of hard times sending people to the garden was in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In visiting a number of Russian farms where reliable input suppliers and markets had dried up, I saw cellars full of beautiful home-grown produce, enough to feed the farms through about three long Russian winters it seemed. Nobody was looking to Moscow for help.

This January, people must already be thinking spring. The top-clicked page in Edible Gardening on our big-sister site is Tips for Starting Tomatoes.

I think tomatoes are my favorite garden vegetable. I’m going to grow more of them this year.

Ten 'blink' predictions for '09

Ted and Melissa Miller of Pennsylvania are a good news story for agriculture.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Blink, says that our best thinking can arise in an instant--"the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye." I thought I'd give it a try for this exercise, while dialing in the optimistic side of my mind.

So, here goes, my blink predictions for 2009:

1. The economy will get better. And it will happen faster than people now believe. Why? People are tiring of gloom and doom. Our institutions are designed to work, not to shut down, just like farmers plant crops every year no matter what.

2. The weather will be better this spring than last. How could it be any worse?

3. The commodity markets will pull off some pleasant surprises. It's all part of this new era of volatility. But if anyone really knew when the rallies would occur, they'd be at a beach now.

4. USDA will be more farmer friendly. Don't be surprised to see the big bureau offer new initiatives for helping farmers start new enterprises, generate energy, and find new markets.

5. More opportunities for young and beginning farmers. This is the year when the big generational transfer will hit full stride. At winter farm shows, you'll see more people pushing baby strollers than holding canes and leaning on walkers. Check out the Farmers for the Future social network for a sense of this direction.

6. A new communications era will take shape. Mobile devices and online social networking will continue to redefine how we communicate with each other. Your friends' friends will become your friends.

7. Farmers will get greener. New crop production technologies, such as auto guidance and RTK networks, are entering the mainstream and are helping farmers conserve inputs, reduce field operations, and improve yields.

8. Bigger niche opportunities will grow in livestock. Demand for speciality production will expand, as consumers continue to shop for, and pay more for, meats grown under specific requirements--organic, grass-fed, free-range, breed specific, etc. The Miller family story is a good example here.

9. Global understanding will improve. U.S. farmers will learn more about their counterparts in South America, Europe, and Asia, as idea exchanges grow out of new communications technologies and international exhibitions, like the new AG CONNECT Expo in Orlando.

10. The future will stay in the future. For all the agonizing that's occured over the last months about the state of the global economy, we'll all continue to live in the eternal present, and generally avoid all the nasty predictions offered up by gloomy economists and pundits.

Ten top ideas of '08

Kent Hubbert shows filtration system for subsurface drip irrigation

In my job at Successful Farming and Agriculture Online I have the privilege of being exposed to a lot of ideas from farmers, companies and colleagues. From my travels and desktop hopping, here are ten ideas that struck me as important this year. Please feel free to add your own ideas.

1. Tech clothes for farmers
I started wearing "active moisture management technology" t-shirts for exercise last summer, and found I stayed a lot drier and cooler. This type of clothing is made from material that draws sweat away from the skin and spreads it out over your body to evaporate better and keep you cooler. Same technology exists for socks, jackets and other work clothes for farmers.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1210799599376.xml

2. Auto shutoff on planter
It’s just one example of the new auto-everything technology for the field, but I visited a several farms this summer where farmers made a bit of a point telling me how much they liked these systems for shutting off the planter at the end rows.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1203976615298.xml&bcpid=1430551123&bclid=1432781673&bctid=1849009648

3. Subsurface drip irrigation
Irrigation tape is buried in field on 60 widths, 14 to 16 inches deep in the soil. A Nebraska farmer told me that he was figuring a five-to-seven year payback on the techonology and was seeing 60 percent fuel and water savings with the system.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1430551123/bclid1432781673/bctid1589586911

4. Shift up and throttle back
This is probably old hat to most farmers, but it was good reinforcement to see this practice demonstrated at the Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory this summer, using the newest, biggest tractors and testing equipment. PTO and drawbar tests on tractors proved again that by shifting up and throttling back, you can maintain your power output and save fuel in the process, according to Dave Morgan, assistant director of the lab.

http://www.agriculture.com/AGOL-TV/?cid=507869917&lid=1387524744&tid=1589625225

5. Top Shops
Farmer ideas for designing and improving their farm shops are some of the most popular features on Agriculture Online. Results from a new Top Shops contest are being featured on the site currently. And, the Top Shops TV segment on the Machinery Show, hosted by Dave Mowitz, is the linchpin of the RFD cable network program.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1226510126138.xml

6. Ag Connect Expo
A new global farm machinery expo was announced this summer that could change the playing field in farm shows. The first show, slated for January 10-12 in Orlando, promises new, high-tech ways for farmers to connect with companies at the event. And, Ag Connect will appeal to the whole family. Sponsored by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, the expo has a target of 700 exhibitors, 20,000 visitors in 250,000 square feet of space.

http://insideag.blogspot.com/2008/08/stealing-show.html


7. Cover crops on the rise
Cover crops, such as annual ryegrass, are making a comeback in the Corn Belt, according to Dan Towery, Ag Conservation Solutions, Lafayette, Indiana. At a visit to an Indiana farm using cover crops this summer, Towery told me that annual ryegrass is being grown on more than 400,000 acres in the Midwest. No-tillers are reporting increased corn yields from 20 to 50 bushels per acre, even in dry years, he said. Other cover crops demonstrating good potential include hairy vetch, crimson clover and red clover, according to Penn State research.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1430551123/bclid1432781673/bctid1849009648

8. Harvesting corn cobs
The ethanol maker, POET, announced in November it was gearing up to generate 25 million gallons of ethanol from corn cobs, starting in 2011. The Sioux Falls-based company wants to start contracting with farmers to harvest cobs as early as 2009 and expects it to be able to pay farmers between $30 and $60 per ton for the by-product. At a recent Iowa event, about a dozen farm equipment companies demonstrated the latest technology for harvesting corn cobs.

http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/1226090131944.xml

9. Social networking
Social media sites like Facebook and MySpace are overhauling the Internet, as people continue to replace e-mail, TV, and portal Web sites with these networking experiences. The Farmers for the Future social network, launched only a couple months ago, already has more than 500 members who are doing a great job of sharing ideas, video, photos and friendship.

http://www.farmersforthefuture.com

10. Twitpic
People sometimes kind of snicker when I mention that I like to use the microblogging tool, Twitter. Twitpic is an application that enables you to post photos and text to Twitter. I used the app last summer to update my blog and Web site, needing only my cell phone’s camera and a phone call to Twitpic. Pretty cool to do that straight from a combine cab while talking to a farmer.

http://www.twitpic.com/f7it

Returning to the earth

Lane to the old Betke place

The wheel tracks captured in Linda Welsch’s painting once led to a busy farmstead in Buffalo County, Nebraska. What Linda painted this fall looks a lot more like the land before farmers plowed the plains, maybe a little like the wagon wheel tracks of the Oregon trail near here. (Click to see larger.)

At the height of its farm history, the Betke place featured a sturdy two-story farm house, a big red barn, a fleet of machinery, a large garden, and a thriving generation of German-stock farmers. The Betkes grew corn, milo, wheat and alfalfa. They kept a cow herd, pigs, poultry, and a small beef feedlot. The farmstead had a chicken house, a wash house, a duck house, a feed bin, a granary, a machine shop, a windmill, cattle pens, and a cow shed—all those fixtures of the mixed grain and livestock farm in the twentieth century.

A tornado about twenty years ago took most of buildings. The grinding of time changed the farm’s future. At one time, an Extension agent advised me to drill a well in the middle of this quarter section and irrigate it with a pivot. Another adviser, from the soil conservation agency, told me I should install better terraces.

Those two clumps of trees you see in the painting are about all that remains of my grandparents’ farm. The one on the left flanked the farmstead, the other is a windbreak they planted after the Dust Bowl.

Today, much of the quarter is enrolled in CRP, the rest is native pasture and dryland corn and beans. A young farmer from up the road keeps an eye on the place, plants the crops, and tends the cows.

As I look at how Linda saw the farm in this painting, it settles my heart. I miss the old folks and that bustling farm. But I also see more clearly what underlies our daily lives in agriculture: the land, the sky, and the path home.

About Linda Hotovy Welsch: Linda has been a friend to Successful Farming for years. We have long admired her paintings portraying the people and landscapes of the rural Midwest. She lives on a farm in central Nebraska with Roger Welsch, the acclaimed writer, folklorist, tractor collector and Native American expert. Linda issues an occasional e-mail newsletter, “field notes” to a few friends. I’ve assembled a few of her most recent works, along with some of her informal comments on the paintings, in a Flickr photo gallery, Linda's paintings. You can view a wider selection of her paintings on a Successful Farming Web page, Linda's Art Page.

The young lions of ag

Dustin Marolf

One of the things I noticed in several cross-country farm tours this year is that the generational transfer of the family farm is really starting to take hold. In a number of cases, you could see that the older farmer in the operation was stepping into the background and letting the younger member take the limelight. This was a little bit the case on the Marolf farm in eastern Iowa, for example. Jerry, the father, seemed plenty content to let Dustin give me a tour of their operation. Obviously, they were both plenty capable and articulate. But young Dustin did the talkin'.

I was at a Kansas farm in June to shoot video for our cable TV show of one of the winners of our All Around the Farm Idea of the Month. Cody Zabel, who had just graduated from high school (as valedictorian), was the winning inventor, and his mom and dad had just left the whole business for him to deal with. Earlier that day, he'd been putting up hay. When we arrived at the farm, he was tearing into a truck motor. Clearly, Cody was already stepping into some big shoes on this top-notch operation.

If you look at the new Farmers for the Future social network, you get a feel for the new faces that are emerging out on the land. They give off a kaleidoscope of impressions. The photography section shows scenes of farm work, favorite farm machinery, favored farm animals, young children, goofy scenes of guys doing guy things, and beautiful farmscapes. Check out the slideshow view, and I think you'll see what I mean. The sense I get is one of a strong, young people ready to take the reins of agriculture.

Who can't but welcome these young folks into the world's most important industry? And it's good to see the older folks letting them have at it.