An Appetite for Sustainably Produced Foods Creates New Opportunities for Farmers

An Appetite for Sustainably Produced Foods Creates New Opportunities for Farmers

The percentage of Americans who smoke has been dropping for decades as a result of greater public awareness about the health risks of tobacco use.{footnote{Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (September 2010), “Trends in Current Cigarette Smoking Among High School Students and Adults, United States, 1965-2009,” National Health Interview Survey.{/footnote} Until recently, however, U.S. farm policies included support for tobacco farmers. In the 1990s, government support began to wane as the tobacco industry came under attack for marketing its products to children. Children were, in fact, the only subgroup of the U.S. population whose tobacco use had not decreased. In 2004, the government decided to get out of the business of supporting tobacco farming altogether.

Today, a growing share of the public opposition to farm subsidies stems from concerns about diet-related health conditions, including childhood obesity. As in the case of tobacco, aggressive marketing of junk foods to children has outraged parents and some policymakers. In the lead-up to the 2008 farm bill, the American Medical Association weighed in by calling for efforts “to ensure that federal subsidies encourage the consumption of products low in fat and cholesterol.”¹ Congress did not heed the doctors’ advice.

It is premature to project the fate of federal support for tobacco onto corn—the crop most associated with junk foods because of high fructose corn syrup—but concerns about increasing childhood obesity and healthcare costs are not going away. If farm subsidies—for corn or any other crop—were to be eliminated, farmers who had been dependent on them might learn something about how to adapt from a group of ex-tobacco farmers in southern Virginia and eastern Tennessee.

Per Capita Annual Availability of Fruit and Vegetables

When Robin Robbins was a little girl, she used to help her grandfather farm tobacco in southwest Virginia and thought she wanted to be a farmer some day, too. Today, she farms a portion of her grandfather’s land with her husband and daughters, but instead of tobacco, they raise fruits, vegetables, and horticultural products. Robbins also has a full-time job as the marketing and sales manager for Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD), a nonprofit organization formed in 1995 for the express purpose of helping former tobacco farmers to diversify their crops.

This area of central Appalachia was once home to thousands of tobacco farmers, many of whom were living in poverty or near-poverty. The tobacco program was a quota and price support system. Government told farmers how much to grow, and the farmers knew exactly how much they would be paid each year.

ASD partners with 50 ex-tobacco farmers to supply local and regional markets with sustainably grown fruits and vegetables. Anthony Flaccavento, the founder of ASD and a farmer himself, trained his fellow farmers in how to produce these crops so that they meet food safety regulations. “With tobacco there was a tried and true recipe,” says Flaccavento, “one that was supported by USDA extension. But when the farmers began to switch to fruits and vegetables, the extension agents around here had no experience with these crops.” That has changed, according to Flaccavento, who credits the USDA extension offices with getting themselves up to speed quickly.

Robbins describes ASD’s role as an aggregator. “It doesn’t make sense for one farmer to try to sell five boxes of peppers to a grocery store a hundred miles away. But I combine that farmer’s five boxes with another farmer’s 10 boxes and another farmer’s 20 and another’s 20, and with that kind of volume we can reach markets they’d never be able to get to on their own.”

ASD has an infrastructure to fulfill its orders that is matched by few of the other U.S. regions with burgeoning markets for local and regional foods. ASD has built a $750,000 processing facility where produce is washed, graded, and packed for distribution. Produce leaves the processing facility in one of ASD’s two trucks. On a white board in her office at the processing center, Robbins has drawn flow charts of the routes the trucks take to reach customers. She knows exactly how long it takes for them to reach their destinations in every one of the markets they serve. ASD and its farmers supply major grocery chains like Whole Foods, Kroger’s, and Food City.

The market for local and regional foods is small but growing rapidly.² One reflection of that growth is that Wal-Mart, the largest food retailer in the world, announced in 2010 that it plans to double its purchases of sustainable, locally grown produce in the United States by 2015.³ Wal-Mart and other food retailers are responding to consumer demand for what marketers are calling “sustainability brand” products⁴—a demand that stems from a backlash against mainstream agribusiness and what is seen as the relentless production of highly processed, unhealthy foods.

Many in the local and regional food movement—a “movement” is a fair characterization at this point⁵—are seeking a more direct link to the farmers who produce the food they eat. Not only Wal-Mart but USDA has picked up on this desire. In 2009, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack launched the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative, which could be the agency’s most deliberate effort in decades to reestablish a linkage between agriculture and rural development. “Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities,” said Vilsack. “American people [who] are more engaged with their food supply will create new income opportunities for American agriculture.”⁶