Mainers are leading a national push to restore family farming

It was 20 degrees below zero when farmer Jim Gerritsen got up on the early morning of Feb. 13. Gerritson operates Wood Prairie Farm in rural Bridgewater, Maine, near the Canadian border in Aroostook County, the most sparsely populated county east of the Mississippi River. With more land than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, it’s home to only about 71,000 people.

“Like a lot of rural areas, we tend to have a great capacity for producing crops, and we don’t have much of a local population for consuming those crops,” Gerritsen said at a recent talk at Blue Moon Evolution restaurant in Exeter, where he gave a farmers’-eye-view of the economics of our current food supply chain.

For some 200 years, potato farming has been central to the economy of Aroostook County. As recently as 60 years ago, northern Maine was the top producer of potatoes in North America.

But that has changed. Increased rainfall due to climate change has resulted in barren harvests. Steady wetness from May to September made 2011 the toughest growing year local potato farmers have experienced in a generation.

“This fall, because of the terrible weather conditions, there were fields as large as 180 acres where not a single potato was dug,” Gerritsen said. “The kind of tragic loss that occurs with that is pretty devastating.”

To make matters worse, farmers in northern Maine are losing out to larger farms in western United States with federally subsidized irrigation and low electric rates. A large farm in North Dakota, for instance, might irrigate with electric pumps at a rate of 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour. For Gerritsen, that rate is 18 cents per kilowatt hour.

“We’ve been out-competed not on the basis of competition alone, but on the basis of federal subsidy and the development of larger and larger farms,” he said.

The net result is that small family farmers in Maine find it increasingly difficult to make a living. Gerritsen spoke of a Maine farmer who grows Russet potatoes for McCain Foods, the world’s largest producer of frozen French fries. It costs about $3,000 to raise an acre of potatoes, he said. That acre will yield about 33,000 pounds of potatoes, for which Gerritsen’s friend will make about $2,300.

Once those potatoes are converted into fries, however, they have a retail value of about $96,000. Thanks to the state meals tax, Maine’s government will make about $6,000 off those sales—more than twice as much as the farmer who grew the potatoes.

When you buy French fries at McDonald’s or Burger King or Wendy’s, Gerritsen said, about 90 cents of each dollar will go to the restaurant. Of the remaining 10 cents, seven or eight will go to the processor and two or three will go to the farmer.

“There’s an institutional bias against family farmers, and this is an important reason why family farmers have not been able to make it,” Gerritsen said. “This is the problem that commodity agriculture is facing.”

With the industrialization of agriculture stacking the odds against family farmers, Gerritsen worries his children will not be able to carry on the 200-year-old tradition of potato farming in northern Maine. But he’s not going to let that happen without a fight, beginning with a lawsuit against the agriculture giant Monsanto.

Gerritsen was in Exeter as a speaker in the Food and Health Forum, launched by Blue Moon owner Kathy Gallant and cooking instructor Tracey Miller. While guests enjoyed a locally sourced, three-course dinner, Gerritsen discussed his role as a plaintiff in the suit against Monsanto and his vision for restoring family farming in America.

Other farmers from Maine and around New England share Gerritsen’s vision. Five towns in Maine have passed their own local food ordinance, giving control back to small-scale farmers. And U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) is pushing federal legislation to help small farmers across the country.

the Monsanto paradox
Gerritsen is president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, which filed a suit against Monsanto in federal court in New York City last March. Over the following weeks, so many organizations expressed interest in joining the suit that OSGATA filed an amplified complaint with a total of 83 plaintiffs, including individual family farmers, independent seed companies and other agricultural organizations (including the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire). The combined plaintiff group is comprised of more than 300,000 people.

Their grievances with Monsanto are multi-faceted, but they primarily involve the biotech company’s development of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. According to available data, Grocery Manufacturers of America estimates 70-75 percent of the processed foods found in supermarkets today contain genetically engineered ingredients. Monsanto is required to label these products in European countries, but not in the United States.

The use of GMO seeds has become so pervasive that they’re showing up in small farms that have no intention of using them. Pollen from Monsanto seeds can spread to neighboring farms and contaminate their crops. This is especially troublesome for organic farms, which cannot sell GMO crops or seeds as organic.

“When you’re an organic seed seller, that hit on livelihood is significant,” Gerritsen said.

What’s more, farms that grow GMOs—inadvertently or otherwise—without paying royalties to Monsanto are subject to a lawsuit for patent infringement. The combined economic harm caused by GMOs and the threat of legal action is enough to scare some organic farmers out of the industry.

“We’re going to the court to try to gain protection for family farmers that could easily go bankrupt having to defend themselves from such a frivolous action,” Gerritsen said.

At the core of their legal argument is an issue Gerritsen calls “the Monsanto paradox.” The corporation obtained patents for its GMOs by arguing that they are unique technological inventions. But, at the same time, Monsanto representatives convinced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that their products are substantially equivalent to traditional crops and therefore do not need to be labeled as GMOs. Gerritsen and his lawyers view this as a contradiction.

“Either your invention is unique and deserving of a patent and should get one, in which case the product should be labeled, or if it shouldn’t be labeled it’s not deserving of a patent. It’s got to be one or the other,” Gerritsen said.

Also, U.S. patent law clarifies that an invention merits a patent only if it has “social utility.” Since GMOs are believed to have a variety of negative health and environmental impacts, their social utility is in question.

Monsanto filed a motion to dismiss the OSGATA lawsuit in July. The plaintiffs filed their rebuttal a month later and requested to make an oral argument. The court granted that request in December, and opening arguments were made in New York on Jan. 31. In a show of solidarity, Occupy demonstrators and other anti-Monsanto activists gathered en masse outside the court building.
Gerritsen has been encouraged by the support.

“I think we’re on the verge of great change. I think we’re seeing the beginning of the end of transgenic or GMO agriculture,” he said.

But altering the nation’s food system will take more than a single lawsuit. Gerritsen credited people on the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast for working to revive a food culture that connects farmers directly to consumers, citing the success of community supported agriculture and fisheries in the area (Gerritsen’s Wood Prairie Farm established Maine’s second CSA back in 1990).

“We’re going to have to develop our own ability to go around (the industrial) model of agriculture,” he said. “What we need is a new vision of how farmers and eaters can develop alliances and relationships which are mutually beneficial.” 

A number of small towns in Maine have begun operating outside the industrial model of agriculture to develop exactly those sorts of relationships. But they’re encountering resistance from state and federal authorities.

local food, local rules
In March 2011, residents of Sedgwick, Maine, unanimously voted to adopt the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance. The small rural town in western Hancock County became the first in Maine—and possibly the nation—to declare food independence. The ordinance clarifies that the people of Sedgwick “have the right to produce, process, sell, purchase and consume local foods thus promoting self-reliance, the preservation of family farms, and local food traditions.”

The ordinance exempts local food producers from state licensing and inspection requirements for products sold at farmers’ markets, roadside stands and other direct transactions between farmers and consumers.

“We hold that federal and state regulations impede local food production and constitute a usurpation of our citizens’ right to foods of their choice,” it reads.

Sedgwick farmer Bob St. Peter, director of Food for Maine’s Future, said the impetus for a local food ordinance arose in 2009, when Maine was considering a bill aimed at helping small-scale poultry farms. The Legislature passed a law allowing for the on-farm slaughter of up to 1,000 birds, which could then be sold directly to consumers through farmers’ markets. It seemed like a positive step, until the Department of Agriculture began adding rules to the legislation, including a requirement that the slaughter of any bird take place within an approved facility. That facility, the department said, could be as simple as an $800 Rubbermaid shed from Home Depot.

“For myself, I don’t see how that’s more sanitary,” St. Peter said. “I also don’t want to spend any part of August inside a plastic shed taking the guts out of chickens. It’s already not a very pleasant activity.”

His complaints fell on deaf ears, and the law wound up including requirements that St. Peter and other small-scale farmers found prohibitive. 

“It is currently illegal in the state of Maine to butcher one chicken outdoors and sell it to your neighbor,” St. Peter said.

Frustrated by the outcome of the legislation, farmers from several small towns in western Hancock County began crafting what would become the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance. Soon after Sedgwick approved the ordinance, Penobscot, Blue Hill, Trenton and Hope followed suit. Their efforts have inspired similar resolutions in communities in Vermont, Arizona, California and Utah.

But the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance is in direct conflict with state and federal laws requiring milk distributors and food establishments to obtain a license from the Maine Department of Agriculture.

Last April, Maine agriculture commissioner Walter Whitcomb sent a letter to certain municipalities warning that state law preempts the ordinance, and that farmers who violate state regulations would face enforcement actions. 

“These laws are intended to protect public health by regulating safe food handling practices,” the letter reads.

The department followed through on its warning last November, when it delivered a court summons to farmer Dan Brown, owner of Gravelwood Farm in Blue Hill. The lawsuit accuses Brown of selling milk and other food products without proper licensing, and of selling raw milk in a container without a “not pasteurized” label.

The National Family Farm Coalition sent a letter to Whitcomb last November urging him to drop the suit against Brown. In his reply, Whitcomb said the coalition’s position was “misinformed.” He noted that Brown was selling milk in “used, dented and unlabeled plastic fruit juice containers,” and that the milk’s bacterial counts showed contamination levels “10 to 15 times greater than allowed by law.”

“We believe the products sold by Mr. Brown pose a significant health risk to consumers, demonstrating why regulation of the sale of these products through state licensing and inspection requirements are reasonable,” the letter states.

But St. Peter does not believe Brown’s products are as unsafe as the Department of Agriculture has indicated. If they were, he said, people would be getting sick. He knows several families who drink Brown’s milk on a regular basis.  

“They have children and they all drink the milk and they’re healthy and happy and want the state to leave Dan alone,” he said.

St. Peter believes the state is trying to make an example of Brown as a warning to other unlicensed farmers who sell goods in the five communities that have passed the local food ordinance. He cited similar incidents around the country, where federal agents have raided unlicensed farms that produce raw milk. In St. Peter’s opinion, the U.S. government has failed to recognize people’s natural right to food.

“People are questioning, do we or don’t we have this basic fundamental right to choose the food we eat? And the government says no,” he said. “We’re having an unprecedented debate over whether or not we get to choose what we put in our bodies.”

That debate is now stirring in Washington, D.C., as well, thanks in large part to Maine’s own Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.

the federal shift
Supporters have collected about 1,600 signatures on a petition urging Gov. Paul LePage to withdraw the lawsuit against Farmer Brown. But so far they have been unable to schedule a time with the governor to deliver the petition and state their case in person. Finding allies in state or federal government has proven difficult.

But Pingree is one such ally.

“She is, as far as I know, one of the only people in Washington who are really taking this issue head on,” St. Peter said.

After meeting with St. Peter and other Maine farmers, Pingree sent a letter last November to Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In it, she raised concerns about FDA practices, such as raids on farms that produce raw milk. She also questioned the appointment of Michael Taylor, a former lobbyist and executive for Monsanto, as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods.

“Would it not better serve all types and sizes of agriculture in the United States to have someone in this position with less of a perceived bias towards large scale genetically modified agriculture?” Pingree wrote.

Pingree spokesman Willy Rich said he was not certain whether the congresswoman has received a reply from Hamburg. But Pingree is keeping busy with speaking engagements around the country in support of the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act, which she introduced on Nov. 1.

The bill modifies several provisions of the federal Farm Bill, the current version of which expires in September. It would provide funding to help farmers build infrastructure, like slaughterhouses, to process and sell their food locally. It would create a crop insurance program tailored to the needs of organic and diversified farmers. It would provide schools with credit to purchase local foods and update federal policies that currently inhibit them from doing so.

The bill would also allow food stamp recipients to spend their money electronically at farmers’ markets. And it would require the USDA to research traditional seeds, not just genetically modified seeds.

“What we’re hoping to do is get as much of this included in the big Farm Bill as possible,” Rich said.

Pingree spoke about the bill in Rhode Island last week and in Boston the week before. The bill now has 55 co-sponsors in the House and eight in the Senate.

“As the buzz continues to build, we have people really coming out of the woodwork to support it,” Rich said.

How much of the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act will ultimately make it into the revised Farm Bill remains to be seen. But the issue is clearly gaining momentum, and much of it has been generated out of the state of Maine.

What does Maine know that the rest of the country does not? According to St. Peter, Maine has simply stuck by long-held family farming traditions. 

“We still have a very strong small-scale agrarian culture here where a lot of these practices are still in use—small-scale diversified farming. That’s not the case in a lot of the rest of the country, where the local agriculture has been supplanted by commodity agriculture and industrial agriculture,” St. Peter said. “For us, it’s a day-to-day struggle or effort to figure out how to feed our communities.”

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