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- Small Farms = Big Rewards
- Innovative growers prove
bigger not always better
- By Karen Gentry
Managing Editor
- When is the last time you heard a grower say, “it doesn’t get any better than this year.” These are the words of Jack Gurley, a grower in Sparks, Md. who could just quite possibly be the poster-image of a successful small farm operator.
Gurley and his wife Beckie make a powerful team of marketing and growing and support themselves and their two children on just under five acres of rented land in Maryland. They treat their organic vegetable and cut flower operation as a business and cater to a high-end, niche clientele.
On May 30, they had just returned from a farmers’ market in Hunt Valley, 20 miles north of Baltimore where they had 25 items for sale. They were selling three different kinds of beets, nine kinds of lettuce, squash, chard, broccoli, four kinds of radishes and scallions. The Gurleys are helped by their close proximity to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. They sell a lot of their produce through a broker who sells to D.C. restaurants.
They have a waiting list for their 30-family CSA (community supported agriculture) and sell to an organic cooperative. They grow what the market wants and get a lot of requests. As an example, he said they make more money selling squash blossoms than with squash.
“This is what we do. We pay all of our bills. We make a reasonable salary,” said Gurley, 35, who had no farm background when he started out eight years ago. He said they keep 55 cents of every dollar and clear over $30,000 a year after paying all of their expenses including health insurance.
“This year will be a slam bam year,” Gurley said. He said they were blessed with timeliness of rain and avoided all the frost. “The quality is the best I ever had,” he said.
The Gurleys enjoy a quality of life that enables both of them to be home with their two children, ages four and five. They also are able to travel during winter months and enjoyed an extended visit to the south of France the last couple of years.
The Gurleys are an example of when bigger may not always be better when it comes to farming. As commodity prices growers receive have remained stagnant, with input and labor costs rising, growers are looking at less acreage and more diversified farming.
There’s a trend where growers are selling directly to consumers, selling to restaurants, starting CSA’s and selling at more than one farmers’ market, according to John Ikerd, an ag economist from the University of Missouri.
“There’s a wide range of enterprises that will work,” said Ikerd. He said less land means less capital need and less money for labor. To be successful, small operations of less than 40 acres requires “significant employment of the family,” and a fairly intensive operation, said Ikerd. Family members must continually make management decisions, develop a customer base and provide a wide variety of products, he said.
“I call it a thinking kind of agriculture,” said Ikerd. More people are becoming interested in small scale, sustainable farming. Quality of life is often mentioned as a reason for farming, although often income is still needed from other sources. This quality of life also contributes economically to the family.
In an article written by Ikerd, “Small Farms: Perceptions Versus Realities,” he noted that a small farm can support a family.
“Successful small farmers pursue a fundamentally different approach to farming than do big farmers. They reduce their reliance on purchased inputs by substituting labor and management for capital and purchased inputs,” he wrote. He noted that a farm with $50,000 gross sales may well contribute $25,000 or more to support the family; a farm with gross sales of $100,000 can be a full-time family farm.
He wrote that of all those whose primary occupation is farming, more than half are farmers with gross sales under $100,000. Ikerd said a lot of family operations make their own products such as jams and jellies.
Although quality of life is nice, diversity and income are where it’s at for Rich Bonanno, owner of Pleasant Valley Gardens in Methuen, Mass., 30 miles north of Boston. Bonanno’s 45 acres of field vegetables and greenhouses support two families and have been for many years.
His advice to small farmers is to diversify. “The more diversified the better. More diversification means less risk,” said Bonanno. He grows lettuce, peppers, squash and greens as well as bedding plants and vegetable transplants in greenhouses.
“The vegetables in the field are strictly wholesale,” he said. He sells the vegetables to chain stores and farms with roadside markets. His greenhouse business, including forced bulbs at Easter, shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day and vegetable transplants, is split 50/50 with retail and wholesale.
Bonanno said his greenhouses are definitely more profitable per acre. He has 2 1/2 acres of ground dedicated to six greenhouses and 40 acres of vegetables. Fifty percent of his profits come from the greenhouse and 50% from his veggies. Because he is diversified even in his worst year his losses were only 3%. That year he suffered through 25 inches of rain in June and had to plant lettuce five times because of weather.
“When you’re diversified like that you can recover,” said Bonanno. “If one crop is lost completely it’s a small percentage of total.”
Bonanno has workers with him from the middle of March until the end of October and there’s always something going on. “If we only did one thing it would be impossible,” said Bonanno.
“My biggest supermarket is less than 25 percent of my total sales,” said Bonanno. In 1989 when he returned to the farm he saw the one chain store accounted for 50% of business. “I looked at that as a bad thing,” said Bonanno.
Bonanno said that many vegetable growers who sell retail will sell their surplus on the wholesale market. He said the problem with this practice is when one grower has a surplus many other growers also do and that means lower prices. He noted that as a wholesale supplier his customers know he will be consistent throughout the season and he is paid a uniform price.
Bonanno was a tenured professor at North Carolina State University and gave that up to return to the farm. Bonanno likes the cyclic nature of farming where at times he’s so busy he “can’t think straight” and other times of year he can slow down, make repairs and travel.
As for quality of life Bonanno said he’s really happy doing what he’s doing. As long as each January he’s itching to get started again he continue farming, in spite of those 95°F days in July when he’s sweaty and scratched up. He does have other options as he regularly fields calls from developers who would gladly grow houses in his fields to add to the 65 houses that already abut his property.
Molly and Ted Bartlett of Silver Creek Farm in Hiram, Ohio are an example of the imagination and diversity used to be a successful small farm. They grow 15-20 acres of fresh market vegetables, greenhouse transplants including herbs and heirloom vegetables, blueberries, a flock of 100 sheep, and 1,000 chickens and 50-75 turkeys annually.
Molly sold her produce successfully to wholesale markets and upscale restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio for years before deciding to start a CSA. The Bartletts are part of a series of farmers featured by the USDA in a publication titled, “The New American Farmer.”
They worked at other jobs after they bought Silver Creek Farm and eased into full-time farming. They now grow 20 varieties of greens, squash, heirloom tomatoes, oriental vegetables, blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, carrots and potatoes. Much of what they grow goes to their 100 CSA members although they still maintain a handful of wholesale and restaurant accounts.
“One of the most important issues to me is helping to educate people about food sources,” said Molly Bartlett. She said she feels of life of hard work in the open air making and preparing food has offered “the best” to their five children.
To read about more growers in “The New American Farmer,” visit the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program Web site and click on publications at www.sare.org.
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