Fresh Direct
Serving Idaho’s small-acreage growers

Our nation’s small farms got a boost at the federal level in 1998 when then Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman established a 30-member National Commission on Small Farms to gather and analyze information about small U.S. farms and ranches and recommend a national strategy to ensure their continued viability.

Photo by Mark LaMoreaux. Garlic dries above owner Paul Smith.

Their report, A Time to Act, includes eight new policy goals and 146 recommendations based on written and oral testimony from nearly 7,000 people at seven hearings nationwide. Noting the USDA’s historic mission to ensure an abundant and safe national food supply had favored agribusiness, Glickman responded to a commission challenge to “revisit this mission” by establishing a USDA Council on Small Farms, a web site to help small farm owners, and a request to all land-grant university ag programs to increase support to small-acreage owners.

The UI College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) helps—from researching niche crops to helping towns like Payette and St.Maries launch farmers markets.

Efforts of CALS educators have been especially effective in partnerships with farmer based groups such as Rural Roots, Idaho Organic Alliance, and others. Rural Roots was cofounded with help from UI Extension in 1997. Now the non-profit has a membership of 120 Inland Northwest small-acreage farmers, educators, and consumers who support sustainable food systems through education and collaboration. UI, Washington State University (WSU), and Rural Roots together raised over $1 million in grants to research the greatest information gaps and to create, and teach courses to fill them.

This year they will offer credit toward a certificate for small-acreage producers. Throughout Idaho, classes for the small-acreage audience are growing. At press time spaces were still available for an August 12 to 18 Sustainable Food Systems field course. Students will visit and learn from 25 Inland Northwest growers and processors.

These pages explore ways CALS is helping small-acreage producers and people who add value to food for sale to gourmet markets.

Small-acreage Idaho—a snapshot
Nationally 91 percent of all farms are small, says a 2002 USDA report. They account for 68 percent of the land and 33 percent of the value of total U.S. agricultural production.

But what exactly is a small farm? Since 1850 the “farm” definition has changed nine times. For statistical purposes, the USDA and Bureau of Census in 1975 defined a farm as “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products (crops and livestock) are sold.” The 1998 USDA Commission on Small Farms moves the bar, defining small farms as having gross receipts of less than $250,000 a year.

By that definition more than 85 percent of Idaho’s 25,000 farms are small. Nearly half of Idaho’s farms are physically small, too—49 acres or less.

“Idaho and the U.S. will and should always have big agriculture, but it is healthy to have agriculture on the other end of the continuum, too,” says J.D.Wulfhorst, CALS rural sociologist and Rural Roots board member. Such a continuum “helps ensure a healthy diversity and supports the desires of people who want to see the face of a grower when they buy their food.”

Nurseries provide one Idaho small-acreage success story.

Nursery business—from $0 to $60 million
Ornamental nursery production is a “tremendous success in Idaho,” says Dan Barney, superintendent of UI’s Sandpoint research center. Typical size is 5 to several hundred acres. Starting with nothing in the 1970s, ornamental nursery crops now contribute about $60 million to Idaho’s wholesale farm sales each year. Gross returns of $5,000 to $10,000 an acre are not unusual. But, Barney cautions, such crops are demanding and require “a great deal of care.”

Barney sees the key to success as collaboration among growers, processors, marketers, government agencies, and communities. For that reason, he says the UI’s focus in small-acreage farming has shifted from crop production toward “more holistic specialty agricultural enterprises” that cover a range of activities, yet still meet industry and government standards.

Organics—Idaho’s $6.5 million a year business
“Small-acreage farms producing high value, often organic, crops are increasingly important in Idaho,” says James B. (Ding) Johnson, interim head for CALS Department of Plant, Soil and Entomological Sciences. “They fit the ‘ranchette’ life style, the growing interest in culinary diversity, and the interest in sustainable and organic production.”

Of Idaho’s 11.8 million farm acres, only 68,800 were certified organic in 2002, below one percent. However, double that acreage is more accurate. That same year a state rule exempted from inspections growers with sales of less than $5,000 a year, so many withdrew from Idaho’s certified program. They must still register with the state and can label their produce “organic,” but they are not subject to annual inspections. “Certified organic” growers are subject to National Organic Program regulations administered by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA).

Gross organic sales may best reflect Idaho’s growth in this sector: they climbed to $6.5 million in 2003, up from $1 million a decade earlier.

ISDA began certifying organic farm products in 1990 and livestock in 2000. “Certified organic” products are raised on land free of the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or growth regulators for at least three years. Organic production systems emphasize sustainability and the use of natural inputs, relying heavily on such things as crop rotation and composting for soil health and fertility.

Direct marketing: plan before you plant
“Producing crops may be the easiest part,” says Cinda Williams, CALS sustainable agriculture coordinator and a founder of Rural Roots. “Well before the first seed is planted, growers need to think through who will buy what they produce.When growers sell direct to customers, they do better economically,” she adds.Most of the classes on page 16 focus on planning.

Well-organized and hard-working small-acreage growers can maintain a living from marketing to a combination of area stores, grocers, restaurants, and the public. For most, the best outlets are farmers markets, farm-side stands, letting customers do the picking (u-pick), or community supported agriculture (CSA). Idaho is home to at least a dozen CSAs— where groups of customers pay growers in advance for a weekly or monthly box of produce. To locate Idaho direct sales options, see web resources.

Farmers markets—fun shopping, social outlet, meet a grower
Farmers market numbers jumped from fewer than 300 in the United States in the 1970s (three in Idaho at Boise, Moscow, and Bonners Ferry) to 3,100 in 2002 (16 in Idaho).

New ones last summer in Payette and this summer in St.Maries—both launched with considerable support from UI Extension— nudge Idaho’s total to 24.

“Now an integral part in the urban/farm linkage,” says a USDA web site, farmers markets “continue to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm.”

The USDA concludes such growth, “clearly indicates that farmers markets are meeting the needs of a growing number of farmers with small- to medium-size operations.” Attendance indicates they’re adored by the public.

Rural Roots web site publishes 2003 economic estimates from four northern Idaho markets based on informal one-day assessments. They show average shopper groups spend $15 to $17 per market visit.Moscow Farmers Market, one of Idaho’s oldest and most beloved—open Saturdays from 8 to noon all summer—on audit day had 3,234 visitors and 60 vendors who raked in an estimated $25,500. Customers spent an additional $19,000 next door in downtown Moscow shops.

U-pick and roadside stands
For owners, u-pick options eliminate the cost and effort of harvesting food. For consumers, u-pick and roadside stands can be adventures reconnecting urban families with their food source.

U-pick operations across Idaho provide everything from blueberries at Riley Creek Blueberry Farm near Sandpoint, to 150 kinds of summer vegetables at Shoemakers in Blackfoot. Most growers told us during interviews they had benefited from UI Extension faculty or staff on matters of crop information, seminars, Idaho Master Gardener resources, marketing, and generally in troubleshooting production problems.

Classes Sponsored by CALS and UI Extension faculty, the following semester-long classes— popular with small-acreage food producers—by fall 2004 may qualify as requirements of a 15- to 18-credit certificate program in “Sustainable small-acreage Farming and Ranching.” Some will be available for web delivery by 2006. See course list at http://cultivatingsuccess.ag.uidaho. edu/.

In Moscow, Twin Falls, Sandpoint Sustainable small-acreage Farming and Ranching offers help evaluating which small-acreage enterprise is right for each student.

In Moscow Ag Entrepreneurship helps smallacreage producers increase profitability through sustainable agriculture and direct marketing.

In Boise and Caldwell Living on the Land, Ada and Canyon County’s UI Extension provides conservation focused classes for small-acreage landowners. Topics include groundwater protection, waste, and pasture management.

“Small farms contribute more than farm production to our society,” concludes the USDA 1998 study. “Farms, particularly family farms, can be nurturing places for children to grow up and acquire values of responsibility and hard work. For lots of reasons, we need them.”

--by Mary Ann Reese

Also see One Day at Killarney Farm.

© 2004 University of Idaho, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.