future promise

Everdale Environmental Learning Centre: Harvesting Heads of Lettuce, Planting Seeds of Change
Anil Kanji, 2003

I wake up at 5:30 on a chilly summer’s morning. The full moon is still high in the sky, and the rustling in the grass outside my tent suggests nocturnal creatures are still about. I get dressed, grab my water bottle, and in the pre-dawn haze head down past fields of crispy lettuce, beets and chard to the farm workshop.
By 10 in the morning I have planted several beds of lettuce seedlings, with four rows in each bed. After a break, some members of the farm crew and I head to a neighbour’s property where we’ve rented a field. The remainder of the morning is spent weeding huge beds of eggplant, and then running through a large field of rye, hunting down giant thistles.

I’ve joined the farm crew for one week, at the Everdale Organic Teaching Farm, part of the Everdale Environmental Learning Centre. This is the start of a typical day. The farm crew consists of a farm manager, three farm apprentices and a motley crew of farm volunteers. These young farmers are part of a new force of change in Canada – a growing community of young people interested in giving back to the earth, and keen on learning how to build sustainable food systems, starting from the field and working their way back to the table. None of the farm crew come from traditional farming families; most have been university-educated in the city, in unrelated fields. All have a streak of activism, and now, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, their work combats food insecurity on many levels. Far away from the policy-makers and the lobbyists, Everdale fosters subtle yet effective direct action against corporate, centralized food systems, winning hearts and minds one organic food box at a time; one CSA member at a time. Everdale “strives to demonstrate, in practical ways, the enormous promise of sustainable agriculture.” (Everdale, 2003). By exploring some of Everdale’s programs and projects, I will illustrate that Everdale has achieved this mission and I’ll demonstrate how each success enforces food security on individual, local, and national levels.


History:

Everdale Environmental Learning Centre is a 50-acre farm and educational centre in Hillsburgh, Ontario. It originally operated as a free school from 1966 to 1974 based on the model of A.S. Neil’s Summerhill. Summerhill sought to give children freedom and power over their own lives through a democratic school structure and non-required classes, promoting self-respect and a sense of responsibility to others. Between 1975-1997 several ventures were attempted at Everdale, but none succeeded, and the property fell into disrepair. In 1998, Gavin Dandy, Karen Campbell, Lynn Bishop and Wally Seccombe revived Everdale Place by creating the Everdale Environmental Learning Centre. Their rather ambitious goal was to fulfill Everdale’s original role as an educational institution by teaching sustainable agriculture and growing produce, whilst returning the fields, soil and buildings to working order. They also aimed to forge co-operative relationships and partnerships with progressive food organizations, local farmers and food-consumers.
So far, Everdale has been successful. Since obtaining organic certification six years ago, the cultivated acreage has gradually increased from two acres to seven and during the twenty-five-week harvest season, almost 100 local households depend on Everdale for all of their fresh produce needs. Additional produce is also sold to organic distributors in the region, specifically a number of “food box” delivery programs in Toronto. Everdale’s steady increase in acreage and wholesale business indicates the promise of organic agriculture as a viable, sustainable alternative. Additionally, support from local households demonstrates that community members can build relations with the people who grow their food, buying food locally and directly from the farm thereby avoiding the detachment and environmental consequences of shipped-in food


Future Farmers:

One of the most serious long-term threats to Canada’s food security, and indeed its economy, is the steady ageing of the nation’s farmers. According to Statistics Canada, more than a third of Canadian farmers are over the age of 55, and only 12% are under the age of 35. (Edmonds, 2002). Because a local food economy is a important part of the future of food in Canada, environmentally, culturally and economically it’s essential that support networks be built for young farmers breaking into the industry. A local food supply has greater economic multipliers than an import-based one, and alleviates a great deal of the fossil fuel dependence tied to an import-based economy. (Koc, MacRae, 2003) The Future Farmers program at Everdale responds to this need. Future Farmers is an intensive six-month-long farming apprenticeship for individuals interested in a career in organic farming; the fastest growing sector of the agricultural industry. Apprentices live and work on the farm for an entire farming season, working five days a week with the sixth day reserved for field trips or seminars. Everdale is part of CRAFT, the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training. The members of this organization of nine Ontario farms all run apprenticeship programs similar to Everdale, and enhance the internship programs of each member farm by coordinating field trips to other CRAFT farms. CRAFT is a vital first step in building a network for these young farmers, enabling them to form their own systems of support within the organic growing community. They also gain a wider range of experience with other growing and management practices, as they practise techniques specific to each CRAFT farm.
Everdale is also a member of the local chapter of the Canadian Organic Growers and part of the network of farmers who supply Field-to-Table's Good Food Box. Everdale has hosted several meetings that have explored how these networks could work more cohesively. Everdale’s participation in these networks, and its creation of structures to support new and potential farmers, deters isolation and builds sustainability of the farming community. Networks empower groups of farmers to operate as a cohesive group (on a larger scale), and thereby enforce food security, specifically the availability, accessibility and adequacy of the food supply, on provincial and national levels. Although 95% of Canada’s agricultural land is in the west, and bulk commodities currently dominate the landscape, Everdale depicts an embryonic indicator of what could be possible if we commit to developing local food systems.



Community Shared/Supported Agriculture:


The produce we harvested in the morning is placed on tables in the farm store for the CSA members. A whiteboard lists the quantities of produce that each member should take. An apprentice interacts with the members, who chat and joke with each other, as their children busily pick fresh snow and snap peas from the “pick your own” section up in the fields. I can’t help but think that this is what grocery shopping should be all about!

“CSA is the return of culture into agriculture, a culture that is needed by both the farmer and the consumer.” (Everdale, 2003)

Everdale’s Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) program has nearly 100 members, all of whom live locally. CSA members make three equal payments throughout the 19-week growing season, and in return receive a share of the farm’s weekly harvest. CSA members share both the risks and rewards of the farm, meet face-to-face with the people who grow their food at the site where it is grown, and, it is hoped, gain a new appreciation of how a healthy food system is sustained.
Although CSA is still emerging in Canada, it has great potential to contribute to food security, both for communities and individuals. Farmers gain access to much needed capital at the start of the growing season and are guaranteed an income throughout the season. In some CSA programs members can barter time for food, and gain access to healthy food at reasonable prices. Members may also have a say on what food is grown; for some opening the door to obtaining food that is culturally acceptable. CSA reinforces the relationship between consumer and producer, and adds an element of community. It takes its lead from foraging societies, who would share the burden of work and risk for mutual benefit (Koc, MacRae, 2003). The fact that CSA farmers are directly accountable to their consumers gives them the potential to help address all of the “A”s of Food Security (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, Appropriateness and Agency


Wholesale Food Distribution:

The other main venue for Everdale’s produce is wholesale sale to four organic “food box” companies: Field to Table, Green Earth Organics, the WOW Box, and Front Door Organics. The relationships are highly symbiotic. FoodShare, for example, gets fresh, local produce at reasonable prices, while Everdale gets a reliable market for its food that’s sympathetic to its philosophy. Everdale and other local farmers reduce FoodShare’s reliance on food distributors, and ensure that the Good Food Box is able to “[make] top-quality, fresh food available [and accessible] in a way that does not stigmatize people, fosters community development and promotes healthy eating.” (FoodShare, 2003) Everdale thus partners in ensuring key components of food security for individuals accessing the Good Food Box and community networks that create food secure systems.


Seeds Alive!:

In mid-morning I work with Bob Wildfong on the Seeds Alive! field. Sets of tomatoes, peppers, beans, onions and lettuce have been farmed in alternate rows, interspersed with annual flowers. We painstakingly count the flowers and fruits on each of the crops - data which Bob will later plug into a database to track the performance and progress of each seed variety grown. Each variety seems to have been bred over generations for different reasons: Here’s a lettuce that can survive the winter…there’s a tomato plant that bears harvestable fruit 10 weeks before other varieties. In a way, Bob’s role is that of a detective – he’s using his clues to build a profile of the plant, and trying to figure out why it was bred.

An essential element of sustainable food systems is diversity in crops grown. As monocultures and ‘oligocultures’ become more prevalent, our food supply becomes more vulnerable to pests and disease. Diversity ensures a healthy food supply resistant to these threats. Because diversity is anathema to the centralized control of large-scale industrial agriculture, food processors and retailers, once-prized heirloom seed varieties are becoming extinct. Another threat to diversity is the advent of Genetically Engineered (GE) seeds, which can be engineered to express a number of traits, including chemical dependence and/or resistance. Biotechnology has even been patented to program DNA in seeds to kill their own embryos, forcing farmers who usually save seeds to purchase new ones every year (Shiva, 2000). The fear is that the genome from these GE seeds could eventually move into surrounding, open-pollinated crops, spreading traits like chemical dependence, or worse, sterility.
Seeds Alive! is a joint project of Everdale Farm, Seeds of Diversity, and the Big Carrot. The project aims to protect crop diversity by growing rare and heirloom vegetable seeds, and provide them to farmers and gardeners in the surrounding bio-region. The focus is on vegetable varieties that are at risk of becoming extinct. Everdale’s hope is that “(b)y continuing the propagation of these rare and heirloom varieties we are preserving the diverse living genetic code which makes sustainable agriculture and healthy ecosystems possible” (Everdale, 2003). The seeds come from the Seeds of Diversity living gene bank, Canada’s National Gene Bank, and from gardening enthusiasts Bob meets from all over the world. Seeds Alive! helps protect Canada’s food supply by building diversity, and by exploring the characteristics, capabilities and possibilities of various breeds that could someday be grown in surroundings hostile to other plants. Finally, heritage seeds are good news for organic farmers, as they’re much more likely to thrive in organic soil than commercial varieties that have been cultivated in highly controlled, artificially fertilised, weed- and pest-free environments (Hemming et al., 1990).

Grow Biointensive:

One of Everdale’s most exciting projects is the Grow Biointensive Demonstration Garden, a project of Future Farmers graduate, Tarrah Young. The design is based on the Grow Biointensive garden developed by master horticulturist Alan Chadwick, and is outlined in the book How to Grow More Vegetables, by John Jeavons. The Grow Biointensive method combines biodynamic principles with French Intensive gardening techniques to yield four times more vegetables, use 20% less water, and 99% less energy than conventional and commercial agriculture. This is achieved by an emphasis on “growing soil” by double digging. by using compost, and by utilizing close plant spacing and companion planting to deter weeds and pests. The Grow Biointensive garden serves as a model of how a 200 square foot garden (the size of some front lawns) can provide one person with 300 pounds of vegetables or enough vegetables for an entire year, requiring only 30 minutes of gardening per day.According to the farm apprentices at Everdale, the most obvious solution to food insecurity is having individuals, families and communities grow their own food. This concept puts an interesting bend on the “right to food” argument. In most of the world, the right to food is inexorably linked to the right to land. Perhaps we could shift our energy to demand the “right to land”; specifically a 200 square foot plot in a neighbourhood community garden for each Canadian. Each community garden could have a permanent “farmer” who would assist members in growing their food. If each garden employed the Grow Biointensive method, the entire Greater Toronto Area (population 4.7M) could be fed on land equivalent to 54 High Parks (Toronto’s 400 acre urban park), which would still only equal about 2% of the total GTA land area1. Through Grow Biointensive Everdale provides an example of a means to meet food security needs for individuals, communities and nations, which can be expanded and replicated easily.


Curriculum Alive!

Everdale offers a number of child and youth programs that bring participants back to nature to meet their food. This summer, Everdale is running a children’s environmental day camp for the first time (ENVIROKids). Some of the activities include:

- harvesting fruits and vegetables;
- dehydrating fruits and veggies in the solar dehydrator;
- building a solar oven;
- using vegetables and plants to dye clothing; and
- planting seedlings and experimenting with the effect of light and water on them.

Although these activities may seem trivial, they foster a vital understanding in children’s minds of where their food comes from.
Everdale has also been working with “at-risk” youth since 1997, providing them with an opportunity to learn about farming and the bioregion they live in. Participants are usually sponsored by social agencies, such as Covenant House in Toronto, to “get their hands dirty” and gain a sense of accomplishment from working the soil. In fact, Everdale’s first crop was a field of garlic, planted by “street kids” from FoodShare's Just Grow it program. Networking with various organizations in this way helps to cultivate a multi-sectoral perspective to food production and a holistic approach to working as a community
Everdale has taken these experiences and built them into a learning guide with the help of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. The Farming Alive! guide is designed to meet the curriculum of Ontario’s public school courses such as Science, World Issues and Geography.
Educating young Canadians about sustainable food systems forges a connection with the land, but also builds a sense of empowerment around food, especially for those with no farming background. It’s easy to be overwhelmed touring a large-scale agricultural operation – food production can be perceived as a large industry that is out of the hands of ordinary citizens. Upon touring Everdale with their small raised beds and the Grow Biointensive Garden, one gets a sense of how food is naturally grown, as well as how easy it is to do so for oneself.


Opportunities for Future Growth:

Developing mechanisms to ensure fair pricing:

In order to fulfil Everdale’s mandate to be an “exemplary, not-for-profit facility for co-operative education” (Everdale, 2003), it needs a steady stream of funding. Much of this is raised through grants, but revenue is also raised from the sale of produce from the farm to regional distributors and CSA members. Because Everdale needs to grow enough produce to remain economically viable within the current system of food production, distribution and consumption, it needs to overcome some of the system’s shortcomings.
Gavin Dandy, Everdale Farm Manager, spoke with me about the way that the current food production system places all the risks on farmers, while saving the profits for distributors, processors and retailers. He gave the example of organic lettuce, which has a current market price of $0.60 a head. This price may rise or fall depending on growing conditions and production levels. If the farmer down the street has a bumper crop and sells her lettuce for $0.50 a head, Everdale will have to cut their price. The price in the supermarket, however, remains the same, with retailers and middlemen pocketing the difference. Gavin jokingly proposed that farmers band together to form a “Lettuce Board”, to set a provincial fair price for lettuce that reflects the costs of growing it. I speculated that such a board would have tough going in our current system; surely centralized retailers would simply start sourcing their lettuce from the USA. And if the government attempted to block imports of lettuce, they would come under fire from the US for contravening NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) with “protectionist” policies. Gavin pointed to the provincial milk marketing board and the powerful Dairy Farmers of Canada: a member-owned national lobby, policy and promotion organization. The Dairy Farmers of Canada and the respective provincial milk marketing boards have been very successful in setting prices for milk in Canada that are significantly higher than average world prices (Solomon, 2001). They have achieved this by applying a great deal of pressure on the government, and by employing aggressive consumer-targeted marketing campaigns (Ibid. 2001)
Everdale has already begun working with its networks of farms, making inroads into cost-saving measures such as shared food distribution. Perhaps the idea of a lettuce marketing board is not so absurd after all.

Waste Diversion:

To best preserve its crispness, we harvest lettuce early in the morning, before the sun comes up. One member of the farm crew is ahead of me, cutting the lettuce just above the soil. As I collect the lettuce, I notice that overly small or deformed lettuce has been thrown aside...

I was shocked at the amount of food waste that occurs before produce leaves Everdale Farm. The issue of food waste on farms is certainly not unique to Everdale, and at least at Everdale most of the food not sold is composted or tilled back into the soil, serving a secondary purpose of returning nutrients to the soil. Still, it is difficult to see a large pile of fresh produce sitting in a compost pile - other mechanisms to distribute this food should be in place. For every ten lettuces harvested, for example, about 2 will stay on the ground (after they’ve already been cut) because they’re too small or misshapen to be marketed. Approximately 3 more will be removed at the cleaning stage, because their leaves are a little rotty or pest-eaten, or because the lettuce falls apart. According to the apprentices, an average of 40% of all food planted is “wasted” before it leaves the farm.
Part of the challenge to effectively dealing with waste is the sheer amount of work required to operate a commercial organic farm. Between planting, weeding, and rushing to fill orders on harvest days, finding time to implement procedures that may in turn become time consuming is extremely difficult. Nonetheless Everdale is well positioned to set an example and divert some of this food to the community at large. If bureaucratic obstacles are carefully worked through, the possibilities could be endless: the food could be offered to food banks who could pick it up with refrigerated trucks; a small processing facility could be built that would freeze the produce or add added value by creating ready-made “salad mixes”; or local community groups could purchase the food at a large discount on harvesting days. As well, farmers raising livestock could purchase produce “seconds” at a low cost for animal feed. Most of the farm crew, when taking produce for their own consumption, take from the pile of food that’s about to be composted – why not expand this to individuals in the community who are willing to help harvest in exchange for as much “seconds” as they can take home? Everdale could offer reduced CSA prices to individuals who are interested in harvesting their own produce or who are willing to eat misshapen lettuce heads. Ultimately, the onus for reducing this waste rests on consumers. We need to learn that the picture-perfect produce we see in advertising bares little relation to what actually comes out of the ground. Farms also need to be creative in ways that “seconds” can be used and in developing partnerships to ensure that less food is wasted.

CSA Demographic:
Some apprentices expressed frustration that although Everdale’s wholesale produce finds its way into the mouths of people of all cultures, classes and backgrounds via urban food box programs, CSA members at Everdale seem to be culturally and economically homogenous. To some, the apprentice’s concern may be a moot point – CSA by definition is supposed to support the surrounding community, and on first appearance, Hillsburgh seems to reflect that demographic. My interaction with CSA members included mostly older couples or middle-aged mothers with their children in tow; none of whom were visible minorities, and all of whom seemed to be middle class (as evidenced (unscientifically!) by the quality of vehicles they arrived in). Upon further research, I discovered that the Township of Erin (where Hillsburgh is located) has a food bank that served 227 families in 2001, and that in Wellington County (Erin’s Greater Regional Area), over 13,000 individuals used a food service project (i.e. food banks, school breakfast programs, meals on wheels and food vouchers) in 2001 (WGHC, 2003).
Clearly there is demand for accessible, affordable food. The challenge for Everdale’s CSA program will be to become more inclusive, and present itself as a sustainable alternative to food banks for its members. A simple way to do this might be to make the CSA membership fee relative to income, and therefore more manageable for interested families. For example, the price of a Full Share in Everdale’s CSA program is $550, payable in three instalments. Everdale could devote a certain amount of CSA shares to lower income users, who would still pay the full price for a full share, but would instead pay at a weekly rate starting six weeks before the growing season and ending when the growing season is over. This would equal $22 per household per week for a family of four. A practical strategy such as this one would prove more sustainable than food banks in the local community, would empower poor individuals and families by helping meet basic needs, and would build ties across class in the community. In the long term, CSA as an alternative to food banks could also be a practice that stimulates policy change at a national level.


Summary of Contributions to Food Security:

Everdale contributes to food security on many levels and in many direct and indirect ways. On an individual level Everdale provides local consumers with fresh, organic produce. Everdale also offers opportunities for individuals interested in learning about organic farming and takes an active role in educating individuals who wish to pursue organic farming as a career by offering the free hands-on Future Farmers training program. It facilitates networks of support for this next generation of farmers and also offers workshops for the next generation of consumers, providing inner-city youth with an opportunity to see where their food comes from and providing an opportunity for street youth to build confidence and develop practical experience.
Everdale contributes to food security at a community level through its CSA program, feeding members of the community and providing a healthy, accessible alternative to large-scale food production. Its involvement with numerous networks of farmers and community-based organizations supports other local efforts at building sustainable community, and helps develop an expanding platform for healthy living practices. As a wholesale operation Everdale expands its supply and its networks to provide organic food throughout the GTA in the organic Good Food Boxes. And as an organic farm Everdale preserves the soil for future generations, and is an investment in food security for the community.
Locally, provincially and nationally Everdale contributes to the genetic diversity of Canada by providing a safe testing-ground for new or long-forgotten plant varieties.
Everdale serves as a model of what’s possible – for farmers considering switching to sustainable techniques, for young farmers looking to get into organic farming, and for urban farmers who can transplant the techniques of Grow Biointensive farming to the city. Employing a new ethic of food delivery and consumption, Everdale is also a model of realistic and relevant methods of interaction between farmers and consumers.

We’re in the workshop, coming to the end of a fourteen-hour day. We’re peeling a huge pile of 5200 onions. Talk flies around the room – sometimes we discuss serious things like food supply chains, other times we crack jokes. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my week with these young farmers, and as I peel yet another onion, I reflect that I’ll never see vegetables in the same way again.