Farm preps for organic future

July 2, 2007

By RAJU CHEBIUM
Gannett News Service

BETHLEHEM TOWNSHIP -- Mark Canright and his wife, Amy Hansen, are committed to organic agriculture and are beginning to practice chemical-free farming with the help of the federal, state and local governments.

They bought a 38-acre farm in Hunterdon County in 2004, and they are confident of converting the entire operation into an organic farm by the end of this year.

If successful, they will be part of a growing trend -- New Jersey has about 2,200 organic farmers and experts expect that number to increase. The total number of farmers in the state, conventional and organic: 15,000 out of an overall population of 8.7 million last year.

Canright and Hansen have begun growing fruits and vegetables on Comeback Farm using natural substances such as manure-based compost and ground-up fish to nourish crops, instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides like their conventional farm neighbors in the fertile Musconetcong River Valley.

"It's a little quicker and a little easier to (farm) chemically. But then the tradeoffs ... are that fertilizer ends up in your local river. It's made out of petroleum so it can have toxic effects on soil," said Canright, the son of a Somerset County biology teacher-turned-organic farmer. "We have all the ingredients to grow tremendously with this amount of acreage. I have a decent amount of machinery. The demand (for locally grown organic produce) is knocking down the door."

Congress is considering providing more help to organic and smaller farms, like those in New Jersey. If New Jersey lawmakers and a growing number of congressional supporters have their way, organic growers would get increased aid and chemical-free agriculture would get more research support under next year's farm bill.

Most Garden State lawmakers support adding about $3 billion to the farm bill to help fruit and vegetable growers and aid land conservation. Others champion reducing existing subsidies to large growers of commodity crops such as wheat, soybean, corn, rice and cotton growers in the Midwest and South and boosting payments to organic and small farmers.

Organic benefits

Like many other organic farmers, Canright and Hansen say people are clamoring for chemical-free produce because it tastes better though it takes longer to grow and is more expensive than conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, which dominate grocery-store shelves.

"Organic is better for people's health and the health of the earth," said Hansen, a policy analyst at the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

Farmland conservation payments totaling $256,000 --- $49,000 from the federal government and the rest from state and local sources --- helped Canright and Hansen buy farm equipment, fencing to keep deer out, and seeds and saplings. They also helped them continue restoring their home, a 1740s-era farmhouse on the property, and essentially survive while they wait for all their land to become suitable for organic farming. Much of that money is gone.

"We have been able to limp along, on (my) nonprofit salary," said Hansen, 45. "Government money has been incredibly helpful."

Canright, 49, smiled slowly and quipped, "A wife with a nonfarm job --- very important to farm survival."

They received the payments by selling development rights to Comeback Farm, which ensures that it will remain in agricultural use forever. That curbs urban sprawl by keeping developers from buying the farm to build homes or shopping malls.

The payments came with a condition, Canright said: He can't farm on much of the land for three years while he preps it to become certified as an organic farm by doing things such as planting grass and "cover crops" to nourish the soil and get rid of chemicals that leached into it over decades when the property was a conventional farm.

Big plans

Canright has big plans for Comeback Farm once it gets full certification after this year. It is only partially certified now.

Organic growers can be successful in a wealthy state such as New Jersey because people will pay more for chemical-free food, said the Comeback Farm's neighbor, conventional grower Bill Jelliffe. A corn and wheat producer who has more than 100 acres of farmland, he engaged in a friendly debate with his organic neighbors about the merits of organic versus mainstream farming.

Without chemicals and modern practices such as genetically modified seeds that produce big yields, large-scale farming wouldn't be possible, Jelliffe said, arguing that organic farming alone won't produce enough food to feed America's 300 million people and export farm products the world over despite Canright's and Hansen's views to the contrary.

That's why future farm legislation will --- and must --- continue to support conventional growers, Jelliffe said.

"Uncle Sam will never let the American public run out of food," he said. "(Organic farming) is what I would call a niche market.

"You've got a certain clientele that's making good money --- husband and wife and a couple of children -- and they're looking to eat healthier, right? ... (But) there's also Americans out there just looking for something to eat. There are those people still here in America" who can't afford the higher-priced, chemical-free food."

The crops

Canright is growing organic vegetables on 4 acres now after getting early approval from the government. He anticipates having enough cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, snap peas, eggplant, lettuce and other produce to sell at the produce stand he plans to build by the end of July.

He recently planted apples, peaches and Asian pears on six additional acres. The seeds are under black tarpaulins and the peach saplings are beginning to sprout leaves, but the trees won't bear fruit for at least three years. Watermelon, corn and pumpkins are among other produce the farm will soon offer.

Much of the remaining acreage is meadowland, which Canright said he would mow and plow into the earth to serve as nourishment for the variety of crops he wants to grow.

But he has a lot of work to do, beginning with eradicating the stubborn rye that grows wild and tall on land he wants to convert into an orchard.

"Notice the thickness and color of this rye," he said.

"This is what we are up against. After 50 or 60 years of chemical farming on this land, there is not that much natural fertility in the soil. It is a multiyear soil building process," Canright said on a mild and breezy June afternoon.

"We will rotate around the different parcels of this farm. And the parcels that are resting --- fallow --- we'll do things like grow fertility-improving crops or spread compost on those lands and get them ready for when we do use them."

Then, squinting into the sun from under a baseball cap, Canright said, "It will be a farm forever."

Contact Raju Ahebium at pahebium@gns.gannett.com.

On the Web: www.nofanj.org/cof.htm, New Jersey organic farm locator.

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