Family owned farms have encountered a green plague

[Guest guest]

Family owned farms have encountered a green plague

By Bonnie Erbe

Scripps News Service

On a crisp fall Sunday a wonderful way to wile away part of the morning in

Washington, D.C. is at the DuPont Circle farmer's market. Like thousands of

others across the country, it's part carnival, part community gathering and

all about buying organic produce from the sadly dwindling numbers of family

farmers in the suburban and rural areas close to booming urban areas. More

than a dozen farmers from land, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania

descend on this particular market to sell their wares. What started out a

mere four years ago as a tiny gathering now is a neighborhood fanfare,

drawing more than 50,000 customers each season between April and September.

Each participating farm family practices " sustainable farming. " This means

the families work to assure the maintenance and replenishment of the soil.

They farm organically, which means they use no toxic chemical pesticides or

herbicides.

One married couple selling their produce there, Lori and Tony Brown, has

been farming in southern land for years. The market is their main

commercial outlet. Both come from urban backgrounds but concern for the

environment led them to farming. They told an interviewer recently they

would like to expand their small acreage, but an incredible run-up in land

prices means they cannot. They are hardly alone.

Family owned farms that produce organic food are at risk for survival.

Relatively large tracts of land near urban centers are worth millions as

development sites, but worth much less as farms. An Agriculture Department

report released last December caused eyeballs to roll across the country.

Americans doubled the development of farmland, forests and other open space

during the 1990s. Nearly 16 million acres of land were bulldozed and paved

over nationwide between 1992 and 1997, a rate of 3.2 million acres per year.

Between 1982 and 1992, the development rate was 1.4 million acres a year,

with the states of Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida leading the way.

And there's bitter irony here, too. At the same time, consumer demand for

organic food is growing. Consumers are learning about the increased

association between cancer and toxic chemicals, about medical concerns over

foods grown with pesticides and how toxic chemicals of all sorts are more

commonly associated with auto-immune, hormonal and reproductive problems.

That's one reason demand for pesticide-free food is rising by 20 percent per

year. But commercially grown food is rarely organic. And large commercial

operations, which are more economically effective, are less likely to go out

of business than small family farms.

Those farms in most jeopardy could be those in New Jersey, where a study

released last month by Rutgers University predicted the state will " run out "

of developable land in 32 years. Don't rub your eyes. You read that right.

Run out.

According to Hasse, a member of the Rutgers team, about 1.5 million of

the state's 4.98 million acres have been developed. As many as 1.59 million

are still developable. Meanwhile, he said, about 18,000 acres are turned

over by property owners for development each year. " At that rate, we'll run

out of land in 86.9 years, " Hasse told one newspaper. " Take out one million

acres the governor says she wants to preserve, and we reach build-out in New

Jersey in 32.2 years. " Flash back to land and farmer Art should be

thrilled by comparison. His family lives on the land, works on the land and

eats off the land. But it's a lifestyle that may soon become as much a

memory as the typewriter. The reason, again, is economics. In Texas, a

farmer barely succeeding, if he or she is lucky, may have inherited a family

farm near downtown Laredo where prime land brings $40,000 per acre. How long

can the developers' entreaties be put off?

Not all farmers have the fortitude of an Art who says, " This is one of

the craziest eras on the planet where we're degrading everything. We're

hurting small communities, family farms and we're a rare breed trying to do

this for philosophical reasons. Nobody's thinking of the land and the

environment as sacred. "

You're right, pal. There's only one green thing that's sacred. And it ain't

cabbage.

Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program " To the Contrary, " writes this column

for Scripps News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@....