Category: strategy


With 100 acres in production and 200 acres in cover crops, Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, Vermont invests almost more time in managing their cover crops aka “green manures” than they do their marketable crops.  But climate smart farming means caring for soils, keeping carbon in the soil (not the air) where organic matter is a key factor in the production of quality crops.

As farm manager Isaac explains, “This takes a ton of time – we spend a lot of time dealing with our cover crops. You sort of think you plant it and away you go and you come back two years later. Planting soil into sod and getting the sod to die off before you go back into production is really difficult; it’s machinery intensive. So we’ve been doing multiple cover crops on different fields over two seasons. This is our third planting of oats on this field this year so we took straw off of these fields twice and that’s for mulching.”  Isaac uses about 300 lbs of seeds per acre to get the density of oats he wants for green manures.

As soil guru Fred Magdoff confirms in his book Building Soils for Better Crops, “It’s not easy .. Improving organic matter content requires a sustained effort that includes a number of approaches to return organic materials to soils and minimize soil organic matter losses…  All practices that help to build organic matter do at least one of two things – add more organic materials than was done in the past or decrease the rate of organic matter loss from soils.”   Knowing your soil types and rates of aeration and importantly, your starting point for percentage of organic matter will let you know whether your farm is on the trajectory for climate smart farming.

 

 

While political discourse hit new lows this past year, concern for climate change hit an eight year high in 2016.

US concern for climate change

US concern for climate change

Whatever headwinds affect legislation in the new year, a number of localities, states, and organizations are taking action.

Already, 165+ jurisdictions have signed or endorsed the Under2 MOU. Together, this group including Vermont and our neighboring states, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 7 other states and five Canadian provinces among others, represents more than 1.08 billion people and $25.7 trillion in GDP, equivalent to more than a third of the global economy.

This global compact among cities, states and provinces aims to limit the increase in global average temperature to below two degrees Celsius.  The Under 2 MOU calls for parties to aim to increase energy efficiency and develop renewable energy and to collaborate on climate change adaption and resilience efforts, scientific assessments, communication and public participation.

It is in this spirit of collaboration, communication, and adaption that UVM Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture partnered with the USDA Northeast Climate Hub produced three videos showing Northeast farmers talking about their farms and how they’re experiencing climate change and are adapting with cropping strategies, water management and soil protection practices which mitigate climate impacts and help them farm successfully.

 

This past fall, 51.2 percent of the Northeast experienced moderate to exceptional drought, the largest extent since 2002 in the 17-year USDM record. Vermont was 3.5 F degrees warmer than its 20th century average, and this past year was the 2nd warmest year on record. period. This past fall was drier than on average, 2.38 inches less rain that the 20th century average.

In Vermont, Andy Jones, Manager, Intervale Community Farm in Burlington, VT explains how he uses irrigation to maintain soil moisture. Andy talks about his strategies in managing water, whether too much as in the summer of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 or not enough as in this past summer 2016. Andy shares his thoughts on seeding rates and timing for the cover crops which protect the Intervale’s’s soils and shows the equipment he uses.

In New Hampshire, Pooh Sprague of Edgewater Farm, explains that even though his farm location is within feet of the Connecticut River, in dry periods, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to access enough water for this crops.   With increasingly erratic weather in the CT river valley, Poo has increased his use of hoop houses to protect his crops and extend the growing season.

Farms aren’t built in a single person’s lifetime.

Not far from the Connecticut River, Upinngill Farm sits on a hillside overlooking the river valley. The second generation of farmers in the family, Sorrell grew up farming with her father and now has her own two children growing up on the farm.  She says, “farms aren’t built in a single person’s life lifetime.”

Farmers throughout the northeast are experiencing the effects of extreme weather due to climate change and are managing their farms with the resources they can find.    It’s at this community level that the Intervale Community, Edgewater, and Upinngill farms are doing their bit to adapt to the new normal of climate change.

 

This week’s scattered showers are not enough to bring relief to the sustained dry summer we’re having in Vermont. Not suprisingly, the degree to which farmers and their crops are affected depends on their access to water and their irrigation systems.

In general, Champlain Valley farmers may be faring better than their neighbors in the Pioneer Valley, Masssachusetts.  While Vermont is experiencing abnormally dry weather, much of Massachusetts is facing severe drought conditions.

Moreover, Vermont farms that have invested in irrigation systems are reaping the benefits of this prolonged warm, sunny weather balanced by regular irrigation. With normal precipitation levels in Vermont at less than three quarters of their normal amounts, maintaining soil moisture is challenging but farms with healthy soils paired with an irrigation system are well positioned for this stretch of unusually dry weather.

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Percentage of Vermont experiencing abnormally dry weather from 2000 to 2016

In Burlington, Vermont, the Intervale Community Farm (ICF) started building its irrigation system 20 years ago.

We’re fortunate for being in the floodplain that we have abundant water supply with a main stem river and also some large high capacity wells in the floodplain – it has made us a much more resilient farm as we can contend with dry periods by using a mix of sprinkler and drip irrigation,” says Andy Jones, ICF’s farm manager.

Summers are hotter, the highs are higher, the existing soil moisture evaporates, and the plants transpire it more.  We use drip irrigation where we have plants that don’t want water on the leaves or that are spaced far apart so we can get some real weed control benefits and some water efficiency benefits by not watering the whole area. For winter squash, melons, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, peppers, we use sprinklers and for almost everything else, drip irrigation.

However, drip lines can be problematic for organic farms, which are using mechanical cultivation as their main weed control tool. As Andy describes, “it can be pretty challenging to move drip out of the way If you want to go through there every week with a tractor. Every time you’re moving the drip line and when you go back and weed, you have to move the drip line and then when you want to irrigate again, the irrigation line is not in the right place.”

Screen Shot 2016-08-08 at 12.22.36 PM

Andy describes that ICF’s sprinklers are spaced much farther apart so it’s easier to do routine weeding along with irrigating. There are also some cooling benefits from irrigation on a hot day with cool weather crops. And crops like greens and brassicas are hard to germinate in sandy soil without top water.

Andy points out the certain crops such as carrots, spinach, beets need water coming from above in order to germinate.  Drip lines don’t typically spread the water wide for germination of these crops to occur.

Covering 20 acres of their production field, ICF’s main sprinkler and drip irrigation system is a mix of old and new equipment.  Over the years, the farm’s investment in irrigation amounts to about $35,000.


I can’t imagine growing vegetables on sandy soil in a warm place like the Champlain Valley without irrigation – it’s absolutely critical to maintain crop quality and growth for a lot of our crops.”


Challenging conditions on Massachusetts Farms and Relief in Sight

Given this summer’s particularly dry conditions, irrigation can make the difference between a great harvest and poor harvest for many crops. Our neighbors in the Pioneer Valley, MA are taking a big hit. From crop loss to delaying second plantings, farmers without irrigation systems,  are holding out for rain, trying to catch up with laying irrigation lines, and even recruiting more workers and volunteers for hand watering.

In response to a UMass Extension survey, 80% of MA farm respondents are losing at least 30% of a specific crop. This data will determine whether USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) in Massachusetts can seek federal disaster assistance.   In order to seek a disaster declaration and relief for Massachusetts’s farmers, the Farm Service Agency requires documentation of the extent of crop loss for each county.

While climate change in Northeast has meant a trend of warmer and wetter weather, this precipitation is occurring as more extreme episodic events and not necessarily when it’s needed, during the growing season. While five years ago we had record Lake levels and extreme flooding, for the past several summers, we’ve experience extended dry and hot periods in the Champlain Valley.   Farms like the Intervale Community Farm that have invested in irrigation systems and planned their system according to crop and soil type are well positioned to have a bumper year.

Irrigation has been essential as otherwise we would have lost so many crops as irrigation allows us not only to keep things growing and bulking up, but other crops we can’t even germinate without irrigation so it’s the difference between a crop and no crop.

Drought assistance can be found by contacting your County’s FSA office, USDA’s drought program assistance.  Information and technical assistance on developing a resilient farming strategy and building soil health in the face of climate change can be found at UVM Extension’s Center for Sustainable Strategy.

Normal temperatures at the end of March in Burlinton, VT are typically in the mid 40s like today.  Over Easter weekend, it was 16 degrees warmer than normal. With the warmest winter on record, what does this mean for Vermont farmers?

Revisiting Tamarack Hollow Farm, I checked in with co-owner Amanda Andrews. How is your new location working out?

Our new farm was great last season and held up during the heavy spring rains while our old farm was flooding. That said, heavy rains continue to be a worry, and so we are planning with erosion in mind.

To control erosion, we are planting low-growing cover crops between beds, moving towards a permanent raised bed system. We also installed drainage tile in one field with heavier soils to ensure it dries out quickly, even with heavy storms.

Spring is coming early this year – did we even have winter?   How has this affected your plans? Any thoughts on pests and diseases?

greens in hoophouse intervale

“With the warm winter, we are expecting heavier pest and disease pressure, so we are planning to use more row covers to control insects – and the diseases they spread.”

“Certain vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers), we are only growing in tunnels. I am growing additional varieties of greens this season, especially looking for heat and disease tolerance as the three month forecast looks like a warm spring and summer.”

 

Best Management Practices go hand in hand with Climate Change Adaptation

Our interview continues with Rachel Schattman of the Agroecology and Rural Livelihoods Group about the Vermont Agricultural Resilience to Climate Change Initiative

Center for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA): Were there any Best Management Practices (BMPs) which were adopted for resilience reasons that didn’t fit into the strategic categories you identified: diversification, water management in the context of soil health, and innovative production?

Rachel: The way we selected the BMPs to highlight was that we looked at what the farmers were practicing and the degree to which these farmers felt that the BMPs protected them from the effects of climate change.  We definitely could have added more BMPs; rotational grazing is a great example of a strategic practice that can improve soil health and therefore water management on the farm.  Manure injection and riparian buffers qualify as BMPs that have great potential to protect farms from some effects of climate change.

We chose the practices  as examples of what farmers in Vermont are doing now, not an inventory.  There were a couple of BMPs that stood out as not fitting into one category, but which spanned many: monitoring of farm ecosystems (aka “agroecosystems”), was highlighted as a key approach for increasing resilience. In brief, if we don’t really know what’s going on in farm systems, it’s hard to make the best decisions about how to adjust farming practices. Having monitoring systems that deliver consistently reliable and useful information is critical for improving sustainability.

How to build better relationships between university-based researchers, farmers, municipalities and other public institutions so that the flow of data is used effectively is equally as important as deciding what we need to monitor.

CSA: On occasion, we have heard from farmers that they are optimistic about the effects of climate change, such as a longer growing season. Did you speak to any farmers who felt this way?

Rachel: Sometimes farmers would make off-hand comments to the effect of “a longer growing season isn’t something to complain about!” or “Wouldn’t it be great to grow avocados in Vermont?”

Avocados in Vermont?

Avocados in Vermont?

When not speaking in jest, however, several farmers confirm what researchers also know: more frost free days in a growing season is only one piece of the puzzle. Daylight hours, which have a large impact on many kinds of crops, will not change as the climate warms. In addition, increased warm and wet weather could have a negative effect on crops if it is accompanied by an increase in plant pathogens or increased numbers of pest generations.

One farmer who grows crops in a river valley in central Vermont noted that even in late summer seasons where frosts did not kill his crops, he faced an increase in pests and plant disease that undermined any benefit he garnered from the warm weather.

CSA: Did you notice any BMPs that were of particular value specifically for organic farmers? For conventional growers?

Rachel: We interviewed farmers of both organic and conventional operations, but we didn’t notice BMPs that were specific to either group. Often, organic producers distinguish themselves by noting that soil health and the long term sustainability of their operation guides their decision making and therefore their choice of management practices. The group of organic farmers we interviewed for this project echoed this – but so did the conventional growers!

One dairy farmer comes to mind who manages a farm spread between several towns in northern Vermont. He is a fifth generation dairy farmer and is very good at thinking about the long term sustainability of his family’s operation. He is particularly attentive to managing the flow of nutrients and water on his farm and uses practices that minimize manure run off and seepage from stored feed.


Management practices were based on planning timeframe rather than type of operation – conventional or organic.


The BMPs we identified were not aligned with either organic or conventional farming approaches. Rather, we found the more stark distinction between groups of farmers to be based on the timeframe in which they were planning their management strategies. Farmers who think strategically about the distant future of their farm may be more attracted to some BMPs, while farmers who only plan one to five years ahead may be more attracted to others.

Each BMP varies in terms of the timeframe in which it is effective. For example, if a farmer diversifies their markets today, they have almost immediately realized the benefit of that strategy. If that same farmer plants a riparian buffer along a stream bank, they may see 15 years pass before that buffer is established.

Photo credit: Lars Gange & Mansfield Heliflight

Fields damaged by flooding in Waitsfield. Photo credit: Lars Gange & Mansfield Heliflight

CSA: Effective communication between service providers and farmers requires a lot of work and trust-building; this can be especially true around the topic of climate change. Are there key characteristics of the service providers you interviewed, and the way they communicated that enable them to develop strong relationships with farmers?

Rachel: While we didn’t ask farmers specifically about qualities of effective service providers, we did ask them where they received their most useful and trusted information. We can also make our own list of qualities of service providers based on our anecdotal observations of those we interviewed and our experience with this group.

Farmers reported a few organizations to whom they looked regularly for production advice including:

However, before they mentioned an organization or technical service provider, all of the farmers said that they relied heavily on their peers.


All of the farmers said that they relied heavily on their peers.


This tells us that practitioners want to learn from practitioners, and that a good service provider is one that can facilitate learning opportunities between peers. We believe that a deeper level of climate change science needs to be shared with farmers, and that providing opportunities for key individuals to keep abreast of new research will benefit wide networks of farmers.

Second, we observed that the technical service providers that could most effectively work with farmers on limiting climate change risk understand climate change on a global level. They take initiative to educate themselves beyond what they hear on the news and can distinguish good quality information from theatrical politics.


Rarely do these service providers approach farmers with climate change adaptation as a primary goal.


Rather, addressing risk in all its forms is their mission and approach, and sharing the excitement about innovative adaptation approaches is part of what makes them invaluable to farmers.

CSA: Thank you for talking with us. Any additional thoughts you’d like to pass along?

Rachel: There is a big elephant in the room, and that is that this project is primarily focused on climate change adaptation, but does not address climate change mitigation. There are some that say that climate change is still too politicized a topic, primarily because of debate over if human activity causes climate change or not.  In our study, we found that most people believe that climate change is real, and many believe that human activity is a significant driver. This last point is the most contentious in the United States, as anyone who listens to the news or follows politics knows.


We found no one in our small sample of farmers and technical service providers who denies anthropogenic influences on climate change.


Furthermore, we contend that in order to be resilient in the long run, we all have to acknowledge humanity’s role in the changes to come. Even as we take ownership of this fact, the science is clear that climate change is happening and we will have to adapt. That is the justification for the focus of our work. The full report can be found here.

Schattman, R.E., H.M. Aitken, V.E. Méndez & M. Caswell (2014) Climate change resilience on Vermont farms: a research report for service providers. ARLG Research Brief # 2. Agroecology and Rural Livelihoods Group (ARLG), University of Vermont: Burlington, VT.

Suzy Hodgson at UVM Extension’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) interviews Amanda Andrews of Tamarack Hollow Farm about her experience with farming on a floodplain in Vermont and her recent move to higher ground.

Can you describe your move to Vermont and farming on the floodplain in Burlington?

Amanda: I moved up here in 2010 after working on farms in New York State. My partner and I started leasing land on a former dairy farm, which had been abandoned in 1978. It had changed hands a number of times and the City of Burlington wouldn’t allow residential development; it was zoned agriculture, with the Winooski winding between it and the adjacent Ethan Allen Homestead and the Intervale Center.

We knew the Intervale Center socially and knew about the Winooski prime soils there. We knew it was floodplain and what was happening at the Intervale, where it floods yearly in the spring with the snowmelt. Our farming friends said that we’ve only had one flood that was ever a problem in the 20 years we’ve been here. It’s a “non issue.” Flooding wasn’t holding anyone back.

tamarack1

Tamarack Hollow Farm. Photo credit: Amanda Andrews

CSA:  What was your experience farming on the floodplain?

Amanda: When we started our farm, there was no problem. We had a normal planting season on 2.5 acres and as part of our lease agreement, we rejuvenated and cleared 35 acres for new pasture for our livestock in 2010. But in 2011, there was the heaviest snowfall in 30 years and that spring was the heaviest rainfall.  That year Lake Champlain flooded where the Winooski meets the Lake and it backed onto our farm. The lake level reached a record high of 104 feet. This was our 2nd spring so we thought it must be a freak occurrence. We were under lake level and the water didn’t clear off until the end of June when we could plant.

CSA: When and how did you make the decision to move to higher ground?

Amanda: At the end of August 2011, Tropical Storm Irene hit and our farm was flooded again. 2011 was a total loss.


Having two major once-in-a-lifetime events in one year, we decided seriously to think of moving even though we had just arrived.


Summer 2012 was really great but still in the back of our minds, we continued looking, talking with the but most of the available land was large dairy farms without much vegetable soils, and we didn’t want a mortgage, a big old barn, and be tied to livestock. The economic collapse of 2008/09 meant people weren’t spending $12/lb. on meat.

Summer 2012 was really great but still in the back of our minds, we continued looking, talking with the Vermont Land Trust but most of the available land was large dairy farms without much vegetable soils, and we didn’t want a mortgage, a big old barn, and be tied to livestock. The economic collapse of 2008/09 meant people weren’t spending $12/lb. on meat.

In 2013, our farm flooded in May, June, and July. Spring snowmelt wasn’t a problem; it was heavy rains. We had standing water on our farm and an adjacent wetland took over 10 acres of our vegetable fields. On July 4, a microburst storm came over the lake from the Adirondacks and hit Burlington;  sewers were overflowing in Burlington. The next day the river flooded and our farm was flooded.

Tamarack - flooded

Standing water on spring greens, Tamarack Hollow Farm, Burlington, May 26, 2013. Photo credit: Amanda Andrews

CSA: What were your losses?

Amanda: We had done all our direct seeding in April. We’d planted peas, carrots, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, winter squash, spring greens, we lost all spring and summer vegetable. We had to move all our livestock, equipment, everything off the farm.

We put all our  workers in furlough and lost upwards of $75,000 worth of produce. We waited for the farm to dry out, and at the end of July, we planted everything. What did work to our advantage is that since we lost so much in May and June, we seeded extra fall crops as we had extra space. Having lost the spring crops, we had space for fall crops, broccoli, kale and kohlrabi. We seeded heavily and had an OK fall – it didn’t put us out of business. If we had flooded again that fall, it would have been the end.

CSA:  Have the weather-related effects of climate change been what you expected? Have they been manageable?

Amanda: What we experienced in Burlington, it wasn’t necessarily the snowmelt, the historic reasons for flooding, it was heavy rainfalls, short duration, and very very heavy. With four inches-in-a-day rain storm, even if you’re not on a floodplain, that sort of rain can still screw you over. I’d make crop plans over the winter with contingencies on top of contingencies. If there is flooding in May, this is what we do; if there is flooding in June, this is what we do. If in August… I had to have contingencies for all of these as we were going to flood at some point during the growing season.

People said it’s a flood plain, what did you expect? Floodplains flood predictably, but what happened in the past five years is totally unpredictable flooding and that’s the difference. It’s not that you’re going to flood between April 1 and May 1, which is what it had been for hundreds of years.

Now, you might flood in June, July, and/or August; we have experienced flooding in every summer month. That is not in the historical record. The Winooski flood plain is farmed in every town the Winooski goes through. Because we were closest to the Lake, we got it the worst. We got everyone’s floodwater but we’re not the only ones going through this.


It’s definitely a risk, if you’re further upstream, flooding may be manageable. Downstream, we were flooding that much more often. It’s a tradeoff for that prime soil.


CSA:  What particular site characteristics were you looking for beyond higher ground?

Amanda: A lot of the farmland that exists in Vermont is on the Winooski and for obvious reasons we shied away from this. What we wanted was really, really well-drained soils. We weren’t interested in dairy farms as they had poorly drained and shallow soils. And anything with clay was out. I cross-referenced potential agricultural parcels with the State’s soil maps for soil types, topography, forests, wetlands, and water bodies. We found an agricultural parcel with Vershire-Dummerston complex – a sandy loam – which is very well drained., not A+ but 84 on the scale 1 to 100 with no asterisk for flooding risk like our Winooski farm.

Plowing the new farm, Tamarack Hollow Farm, Plainsfield, May 9, 2014

Plowing the new farm, Tamarack Hollow Farm, Plainfield, May 9, 2014. Photo credit: Amanda Andrews.

CSA: Are you planning to change your crops?

Amanda: There will be slight change in our crops. Down at the Intervale, our planting was bottom heavy. Our experience of climate change is that the spring season is shrinking; it’s later to start, with very heavy storms, and heats up rapidly. Now we have high dry land, so we can get to our fields in spring but spring is not as long.

My experience is that spring is starting later and ending earlier. We’ll have high tunnels for spring production and perennials that come up on their own so I don’t need to be in the fields to cultivate. We’re trying to do things that aren’t dependent on tractors in the spring when soils are wet.

A big risk is increased diseases. We’re getting diseases and pests that used to just affect southern growers. We don’t grow berries yet and are looking carefully where we put them. We are looking for disease resistance in our seed varieties and there’re lots of successful breeding programs and surveys to see what farmers need in varieties.

It is troublesome. I wish we could grow all heirloom varieties, but as diseases are shifting, the resistance packages bred into the heirlooms no longer cut it. And we have new weed species moving up from the south. We need to know how much viable weed seed is in the soil and to keep that down as a long-term management goal.

CSA: Moving forward, how are you planning for climate and weather changes? Any specific example for plants?

Amanda: We’re buying rhubarb and asparagus and getting perennials established. We’re growing more herbs as you can get them in the ground earlier in the spring. The first project we did after water and power was put in a huge walk-in cooler. For us, business plan-wise, lots of fall crops are easier to grow, fall is extending.


While we’re losing spring, we’re getting longer falls.  So we are trying to be very fall heavy to make more income in the winter so we can be buffeted from the shorter spring. It’s a shifting calendar.


We’re not considering strawberries, it’s becoming more and more difficult due to a lot of spring rain making it difficult for strawberries to fruit. Ten years ago, we probably would have put in an acre of strawberries as that was the thing to bring people to your farmstand. Instead we have ton of storage crops that we can sell in the December and January and markets have been responsive. Now you can grow rutabagas and carrots and sell them.

CSA: What advice would you give to other farmers from what you learned about climate change?

Amanda: Farming was hard enough before climate change, it’s not like it was easy before and now it’s really hard. If you really want to be a farmer, there’s nothing that can be said to keep you from trying farming. What did the farmer do when he won the lottery? He kept farming until it was all gone. You’re going to keep doing it until you’re broke.


I can’t imagine surviving climate change in a bubble. Our greatest resource for planning and surviving is communicating with seed companies, growers, Extension services, knowing what’s happening in southern VT, MA. What’s a problem for them this year will be a problem for us next year. I have peers in Pennsylvania and talk to them all the time.

If you look at Vermont projections for climate change in 50 years, it’ll be Pennsylvania. 


 

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