Thanksgiving, the Harvest, & Our Food

The biggest question to ask about your food is: Where did this come from? And that begins the telling of the story – Michael Pollan

Looking back over this past holiday, Ben and I have so much to be grateful for… Our spirited families, our loving friends, the amazing abundance of food at the table we share, the land we get to live and play on, the launch of our new endeavor of Firefly Fields, and so, so much more! Thanksgiving day was a little different this year on the Jennings Family Farm. Instead of everyone jumping on the chance to exhale and doze off while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (that is everyone except Grandma Mattie who buzzes around everywhere like a worker bee!), a certain amount of restlessness remained present… THE HARVEST WASN’T DONE. With an extraordinarily wet season early on that delayed planting making us wonder if the crops would ever get in the ground. And again rains, extended warmth, and overall wet conditions in the field near harvest time – everything was pushed back later into the year, which meant harvesting later than usual and questions of whether everything could get off of the field before the big snows. We’re all thankful and relieved to say that all of our crops made it off of the field this year. Another year it seems of ‘just in time.’

I open with this story not only because our goal for this BLOG is to share a little about what life on the farm looks like, but also given the holiday and the cornucopia of food so many of us (the lucky ones) get to enjoy at our tables – it gives us a chance to reflect a bit on how food is grown and how it impacts both people and the environment and vice versa. Producing food, however, is just one part of what we call the ‘food system’ that describes the path of how food is grown (the biological, environmental, and farming components) to how it arrives on the ‘eaters’ plate (the economical, political, social, and health system aspects). How food is grown, processed, transported, and eaten impact nearly everything. We are learning as a people that the choices we put on our plate not only impact us individually, but also on a community and even global level – reflecting our voices and our values for how we want our society and environment to benefit.

We know the industrial food chain provides some efficiencies, abundance, and cheap food. We also know that the miles of monocrops, chemical fertilizers, processing plants, redundant and long-distance transportation, come at a cost to the environment, people’s health, and the farmer.

At every cog in the food machine…something is lost beit the nutritional value, environmental and human health quality, and the number of family farms that are able to keep their doors open. Much of this cheap food lacks the nutritional density that a small organic farmer dedicated to the land can cultivate and replenish (see Building a New Foundation). The goal for industry is more often focused on the quantity produced and less so on how it is produced. Additionally, industrial produced food uses a lot of energy and resources, emits a variety of pollutants, and pays the farmer just a few cents of every food dollar spent. And to top that off, consolidation in the food system is also concentrating management decisions into fewer hands.

For example:

• Four firms control 85% of the beef packing market; 82% of soybean processing is controlled by 4 firms.  (1,2)
• The top four food retailers sold 45% of America’s food in 2016, compared to only 17% in 1993.  (3)

 

With Firefly Fields, we are on a mission to contribute to a growing awareness and movement to support the environment, the people, and sustainable family farms by creating a more direct link to the consumer.

With 450 diversified acres, the Jennings Family Farm is able to produce a LOT of organic food. Over the years through many rotations on the farm, you may have seen organic spelt, hard red spring wheat and soft red winter wheat, soybeans, buckwheat, black beans, yellow corn, white corn, Hopi blue corn, black Aztec corn, red corn, alfalfa, clover, hay, honey, beef, and we continue to tinker and adjust. On top of having mixed crop rotations, we use integrated management systems that include cultural, mechanical, and organic methods to manage pests, and manage the soil with cover crops and composts to avoid synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Most importantly, we value and incorporate the direct, face-to-face feedback (or email-to-email feedback in the case of the website, and post-to-post with social media) we get from people who actually eat the food we grow.

About 10 years ago, we started making trips to the local farmer’s market to diversify our retail side of the business. As the next phase in our continual farm evolution, less than three weeks ago (and nearly 40 years after the farm began), we launched our next step with going online to further connect with customers who may not be able to meet us on farmers market day and would like to connect with us from greater distances.

 

The Internet and our central location within the US, make it possible for us to grow, market, sell, and distribute raw honey, organic grains, organic beans, and organic beef, to consumers directly all across the country.

In this scenario, the person buying the food not only knows where the food comes from, but can also contribute and voice perspective with their fork and feedback. Further, the majority of every food dollar spent goes to the farm family that reinvests it in the local community. Just 14.8¢ of every dollar spent on food in 2016 went back to the farm; in 1975, it was 40¢.  (4,5)  As each one of us becomes more aware about the food system that grows, produces, packages, markets, transports, and delivers our food, — we can be better equipped to make conscious choices about what and who we support. Our motto is ‘A Taste of Place.’ When you buy Firefly Fields farm fresh food, we hope you not only get quality, fresh, and delicious food, but you have a sense of the people, place, and land you supported in the process. Bon Appetit!

 

For more information about the US food system, here’s a good place to start: http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-food-system-factsheet

1. USDA, ERS (2013) “Processing & Marketing: Manufacturing.”
2. U.S. Census Bureau (2007) “Share of Value of Shipments Accounted for by the 4, 8, 20, and 50 Largest Companies for Industries.” 2007 Economic Census.
3. USDA, ERS (2018) “Retail Trends.”
4. USDA, ERS (2018) “Food Dollar Series.”
5. Elitzak, H. (1999) Food Cost Review, 1950-97. USDA, Agricultural Economic Report 780.