It's Still Cool to be Grown In The USA: Buying Local Food

Much ado is made these days about buying "local" food.  I was confused at first, wondering why I wasn't buying local food. What was I missing?  Here I am a Texan and I buy my oranges from Florida farmers and my strawberries from California farmers!  After several back porch conversations on this subject with the Farmer I Kissed, I discovered that I do buy local.  It's just that my "local" runs from sea to shining sea.  I buy food from American Farmers.  I consider that about as local as you can get. 

We grow cotton...doesn't make for a really great bar-b-q menu!

What I wonder is when did we all stop being neighbors...when did it stop being cool to buy "Grown in the USA?"  I have traveled a lot and met American Farmers from many different states.  They are all just like the Farmer I Kiss: hard working family farmers.  So when I buy cranberries, blueberries and potatoes,  I buy "local"  from someone like the farmers I have met from Maine or Georgia or Idaho.  It doesn't matter to me if my cranberries, blueberries and potatoes come from their farms, from their friend's farms, or from their brother's farms.  I trust that my cranberries, blueberries and potatoes were raised by American Farmers who love the land, care about my food and adhere to strict, regulated  guidelines while raising that food.  Besides, we are cotton farmers living on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert!  We can't raise cranberries, blueberries or potatoes.  Someone tell me how the heck you have a 4th of July picnic without cranberry Jell-O surprise, blueberries decorating the cake and Mom's potato salad? 


Can't have a proper 4th of July picnic without this!!

There are lots of folks who want to personally know the farmer who grows their food so they can know how he raises that food.  I think that's cool.  I could get up at 6:00 AM on Saturday and stand in line to buy tomatoes from one of my friends who sells his garden produce at the Concho Valley Farmers Market.  Frankly, I would rather sleep.  I know farmers, I kiss one of them and I trust the kind of people who are out there raising my food and fiber all across this incredible nation.  I also trust that agriculture will continue to adapt and change to answer American's needs and concerns so that once again everyone can feel as good as I do about buying "Grown in the USA" anywhere and everywhere across America. As for right now,  I'm going shopping, to a grocery store, to buy "local" pineapples from the farmer I actually met while I was in Hawaii (or who knows, maybe it will be from one of his friend's pineapple farms.)  I'm going to use it in my frozen drink this afternoon as I help the Farmer I Kissed get our back porch cleaned up for that 4th of July Picnic.


Happy Birthday America!

It will be a circus without the safety net: Crop Insurance under attack

Family Farmer: The Next Generation

The Farmer I Kissed is one of my clients.  You see, I am not only a farmer kisser, I am a crop insurance agent.  I have been in this business for 20 years.  In all those years, 2011 was the most hectic time I have ever experienced.  100% of my clients had losses, and most of those were total losses.  The majority of my clients are dryland cotton farmers, just like Daniel and I.  The seed that they planted in June finally sprouted in September. Until then, they were lying in dry, dry dirt, in the same condition as when they came out of the bag.  With that said, let's visit the Fortune Teller at the circus and imagine yourself in this situation:  Through no fault of your own, you will receive no income for 12 months.  None. 

That's what it was like to be a farmer in Texas last year.  The tight rope broke, and there was no cotton to harvest, no cotton to take to the gin, no cotton to sell to the merchant.  Enter, the safety net:  Crop Insurance.  Crop insurance is not like you homeowners insurance, where you have a small deductible, say $2500, and if your house burns down, insurance pays for the rest to build you a new house.  The deductibles on a crop insurance policy can be up to 50% of your crop.  That means, in 2011, you would collect 50% of an average crop through an insurance indemnity.  So the tight rope broke, you landed in the safety net, instead of zero you have 50% of your income and at least you are not selling the farm. But you have half your income to meet 100% of your obligations AND somewhere in there you have to prepare for next year's crop.  Land leases don't stop just because there was no crop produced.  Equipment payments don't stop.  The land still has to be cared for, to keep it from eroding, blowing or growing up in weeds.  Thank goodness for that safety net!  It's the only reason the majority of Texas farmers are getting to plant cotton this year!

Family Farmer: The Next Generation

What would happen, if that safety net were taken away?  The land will still be there, food and fiber must still be produced (or we will be hungry and naked pretty fast!) Who could start producing our food and fiber on that land without a safety net?  It wouldn't other family farmers, like the one I kiss.  They would be out of business too.  It would be huge management firms, overseas investors, financial institutions.  We don't want to be in the stands watching that three ring circus.  We MUST keep our family farmers on the land.  Everyone needs to understand, there are many different kinds and sizes of family farmers.  But the key is that they ARE "family farmers" and care deeply about the land and about what they produce for the kitchen tables across this country.

Family Farmer: The Next Generation

Crop insurance is a public-private cooperation.  Private companies deliver a product overseen and regulated by the USDA's Risk Management Agency.  It is a highly successful program that has been duplicated in other countries around the world.  Keeping our food and fiber supply stable and affordable is a matter of national security, so the government aspect is essential.  But right now, an assault is being carried out against the safety net by some of those in Congress that don't realize what would happen if family farmers gave way to the circus.  An assault on the farm safety net is a direct assault on the family farmer.  If amendments being presented are passed, the cuts and limits to crop insurance would cut the wires, leaving the family farmer walking the tight rope without a safety net.  When that happens and we see another 2011 disaster, send in the clowns folks, the circus just hit town.

Serendipity: TOPGUARD Fungicide approved for Cotton Root Rot

I just love the word Serendipity.  Basically it means that something good happens that was unexpected.  Who wouldn't love to be in the middle of a serendipitous situation?  That's just where the Texas cotton farmer that I kissed has found himself this planting season with the arrival of TOPGUARD.  This is a fungicide that has been used on soybeans and apples for years.  A while back, there was a certain soybean fungus about to hit the U.S.  In preparation, a lot of TOPGUARD was produced.  The soybean fungus never made it across the Gulf of Mexico, so the TOPGUARD folks started looking for something to do with their product. 

Cotton Root Rot in a field near us

Enter the cotton farmers and their 100 year fight with Cotton root rot.  Since the first cotton was planted in the southern United States, a strange phenomenon happens...sometimes...in different places...under different circumstances...in different fields...to different varieties...(you get the picture) and areas of a field would die.  From a single stalk to acres and acres, cotton plants would just die. 

Notice how some plants are not affected among all the dead plants

But this is not a problem that occurs on a scale large enough to attract any serious research.  It is isolated to just a few areas and within those areas, isolated to groups of farms.   Being a small problem in the scope of the agriculture world, those who fight Cotton Root Rot were left on their own, trying to figure out how to combat the unseen enemy killing their cotton.  Dozens of ideas have been used:  planting later in the season, using a certain mix of fertilizer, rotating the fields with other crops, leaving the field out for a year with no crop at all, and even some slick snake oil-cure all products.  Some things worked some of the time, other things worked other times.  But like the fungus itself, nothing worked everywhere, all the time.  And since Cotton Root Rot seldom occurs at exactly the same place in the field from year to year and with no soil test available for the fungus, it has been almost impossible to study.

Doesn't take a biology degree to see the damage here!

So what the heck is Cotton Root Rot? According to an article in the Southwest Farm Press, Cotton Root Rot is caused by the pathogen, Phymatotrichopsis omnivora. Mary Olsen, a plant pathology specialist, wrote, "Cotton (Texas) Root Rot often causes a rapid wilt and death of the host in the late spring, summer and early fall when temperatures are warm. Dead and dying leaves remain attached to the plant. However, infected plants also may decline more slowly, especially at cooler temperatures and when plants are well cared for. The roots of dying or declining plants are rotted." 

Root "Rott-ed" cotton

Now the serendipity.  An enterprising person at the company who makes TOPGUARD happened to see an article about the plight of the Texas cotton farmers fighting Cotton Root Rot.  Light bulb!  Let's see if all this product sitting here might find a home, so tests started just a few miles from our farms.  Eureka!!  The darned stuff seems to be working! 

Close up of the fungus

Five years, hundreds of tests, and pages of research later, TOPGUARD has found a home.  What this could mean in terms of production is tremendous if you are one of the cotton farmers, like the one I kissed, who has been standing on the turn row looking at fields of dead cotton for decades.  But it is not without it's hurdles.  Cotton planting in our area had been simplified, down to filling the boxes with seed and GO!  Long gone were the huge, bulky water tanks mounted on tractors and the maze of tubes and nozzles forming spray rigs on planters when pre-emergent herbicides were the standard in weed control.  But now, those dusty old tanks are being dug out of the old chicken house and being remounted on brackets that have welders blazing in shops until all hours of the night.  They will hold the water and TOPGUARD solution that will be pumped through the maze of tubes and nozzles which are also back, ready to apply the long awaited fungal cure.  

Daniel building the brackets for the water tanks that will hold the TOPGUARD solution.

Last but certainly not least, the cost is the biggest hurdle of all.  Full rate applications are running up to $50 per acre.  Unheard of for anything on dryland cotton fields.  

Our first cotton planted with TOPGUARD

So with all this hassle, cost and no large scale proof, why try it?  Because Cotton Root Rot has been such a problem for the farmers who have fought this pathogen for a hundred years, that no hurdle seems to high to jump for a field of LIVE cotton plants!

Serendipity has found it's way out here, next to the Chihuahuan Desert, in the form of little white jugs, to the Texas cotton farmer that I kissed, by way of a missing soybean fungus.  I just love that word.

See out other posts about TOPGUARD: If Only and No Fungus Among Us

Be Careful What You Wish For

There is a saying I have heard farmers repeat all my life:  It's always too wet and it's always too dry.  Well, low and behold, after the driest year on record out here, we are now at twice our normal rainfall.  This morning's front page story says that instead of the 6.2 inches we normally have received by this time of year, we are at 12.6 inches. 

Before the rain came last week, Daniel and I were in one of our back porch discussions about how early to start planting.  Being a scientist at heart, I have a theory for everything and when to plant is no exception.  My "Volunteer Cotton Theory" contends that the first day we see the volunteer cotton sprouting out of the ground, get in the field and roll!  Volunteer cotton is seed that will sprout from locks of cotton that were left in the field from the last harvest.  It always seems that those rogue plants load up with way more bolls than the cotton we plant in the rows.  So I say do what the rouge plants do!  Daniel calmly starts to shoot holes in my theory as he points out that those plants are out in the middle of the rows, or along the side of the field, where they can spread out their roots all they want.  The poor little guys we plant in the rows have to compete all year with their next door neighbors for food, water and sunshine.

Since there was not a harvest last year, there will most likely be no volunteer cotton for me to point at and say "See, those guys know it's time to sprout!" and Daniel will get his way.  He likes to plant later, so that the cotton is not trying to load bolls during the very hottest time of the year.  The drought and the rain BOTH helped his cause this spring.  First he could tell me he couldn't plant yet because it was too dry.  Now, he can tell me he can't plant yet because it's too wet.  Looks like he will plant at just the right time, like he always does, in spite of my brilliant "Volunteer Cotton Theory."  

Now that Daniel's choice of planting time is fast approaching, instead of looking up and hoping for clouds coming over the horizon, we are looking up hoping for a few days of sunshine.  Those old farmers are right, it's always too wet and it's always too dry! 

Picture from the Standard-Times May 16, 2012 taken just east of San Angelo at Nine Mile Creek

The Farmer I Kissed

Kissing was not an approved activity as I grew up in the office of my Dad's cotton gin.  I was especially NOT supposed to kiss a farmer!  But what girl ever listens to her Dad?  So, I Kissed A Farmer, and I liked it.  That lead me here, to San Angelo, Texas and the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, with the farmer I kissed.  We grow dryland cotton.  I never realized that most of the world doesn't know what "dryland" really means.  We use no irrigation.  The only water our cotton gets is from the sky.  And being out in West Central Texas, just miles from the largest desert in North America, you can only guess that we get very little water from the sky.

Daniel, the farmer I kissed.

So "Why do it?" is the question I keep hearing. Why fight the desert to try and grow cotton out here where it can go for months with out raining and months over 100 degrees?  When the real answer appears, you will be the first to know.  In the meantime, just know that I have learned by starting this Social Media Journey that what we do out here is extraordinary.  We actually grow the fibers for the fabric of your lives out here on 10 to 12 inches of rain during a normal growing season, about 24 inches for the average year.  That's not much.

The shirt I stole my name from...Kissed A Farmer

 
In this first ever post of Kissed A Farmer, I just want to invite everyone along as you and I watch the farmer I kissed during a year of this extraordinary thing he does called dryland cotton farming.  Mother Nature will have to be along for the ride, or it could turn out like 2011, when there was no dryland cotton grown.  That happens when our water source takes the year off due to La Nina.  That could be interesting too, but right now, the prospects look good, La Nina seems to be put back to bed and we have just had 3 inches of water from the sky.  Planting will start within a couple of weeks!  You can also join the adventure on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/KissedAFarmer