Aidan Ideker interviews Lee and Wayne James, the sister and brother farming duo that founded Tierra Vegetables in Santa Rosa. During the conversation, they discuss issues with our current food system, challenges faced by sustainable, small-scale farmers, and tips for growing your own vegetables at home. Learn more at http://www.tierravegetables.com/

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Aidan: Would you remind explaining what sustainable farming is to our audience members who may not be familiar with the term?

Wayne: I mean, yeah. To me sustainability is not depleting, destroying your environment, your economical situation, social. It's not disturbing or destroying or depleting any of those parts of the whole ecology... and everything. I think perfect sustainability is not possible, that's perpetual motion basically. I don't think that being as sustainable as possible is what we look at doing.

 

A: Yeah, so can you explain a little why you think sustainability is impossible?

W: What's that?

 

A: Why is sustainability impossible?

W: Well, it's, if you're… I mean, you can get pretty close to it, but you’re always using up resources. I mean a lot of things we do here are burning resources; we still use petroleum resources, that's not a sustainable product, and how do you do it without eliminating all these resources that you use being depleted? No, I think we need to look at limiting how much we deplete things, and conserving things as much as possible. But I don't think it's possible to completely eliminate all consumption of all resources.

 

A: Yeah

W: And renewable resources... we need to look at using more renewable resources, yes. But even things like solar and all these other things, which are great, but in the production of solar panels, in the production of these they're using resources that are not renewable. A lot of the minerals and things that go into making these solar panels are being depleted from… They’re resources that will go away. 

 

A: Yeah

W: So perfect sustainability, it isn’t possible. But yeah, I think sustainable not only on farming, but to be sustainable in anything you need to look at not depleting or destroying, or using up resources, or any of that. Resources can be community resources. There's so much that goes into it, it’s so hard.

 

A: Yeah, you said that you've been farming since the 70s…

Lee: I decided to stay. There's several things that I really wanted to tell you.

 

A: Well feel free, was it pertaining to that last question that I asked?

L: Okay yeah, but because one thing that I really wanted to point out. You had asked what other people can do... We're struggling here to make a sustainable farm to feed our local community, and it’s a huge amount of work. And the main problem with sustaining small farms is that there's not enough money in them for anybody to want to even do it. 

W: Because there's the other end of agriculture, which is providing cheap food. 

L: Cheap food, and subsidized a lot of--most of the food that most of the people eat in this country is subsidized. It’s all based on corn, and the corn and soybeans are heavily subsidized by the government and it ends up being Doritos and hamburgers and it's cheap and people can buy that at Walmart and they either aren’t knowledgeable or willing or taught enough that you've got to support local sustainable quality nourishing food, or it's not going to be here in times in crisis. Everybody wants local vegetables right now --well, where have they been for the last 30 years, just buying cheap stuff out of China, at Walmart. And the whole  is not sustainable, it’s based...it's too global and it's too cheap and the people who produce it here need to be able to make a living at it. 

W: Yeah. If you go back and look at the food system a hundred years ago, where it was sustainable, it was generated local, you grew your own food, sold locally and produced locally. They did consume resources still, but not like we are now. And it's gone into the system of this mass production now. People a hundred years ago would spend two-thirds to three-quarters of their total income on food. 

Lee: Now they spend it on medicine!

W: Now they spend less than 10%, and it needs to be that people are spending more money on food so that the food system can be able to support itself. So we've got to rely on cheap food, and we built this huge economy on cheap food, which is not sustainable. It's just destroying the environment, it's destroying everything. 

L: So you guys don't really be needing to ask questions about sustainable little farms like us. The question needs to be is that the whole food system needs to be turned upside down, and we can't be putting all of this subsidy into soybeans that get exported to China for milk production, and all of our milk went to China. The whole food system is not sustainable, and it's not just little sustainable farms like us that are trying to do sustainable, it's everything that needs to be changed from the top down. You’re the guys that need to figure it out. 

 

A: Yeah, it is a heavy topic because it is so interconnected with money and power and policy. 

W: I got into it, and I think Lee too, because we wanted to support ourselves with good food and we wanted to make some sort of living, so we were saying, “Let's support a few other people with good food, eat healthy.” And that’s great, but when you're talking about feeding millions of people the same way... 

L: We need millions of farms. 

W: We need either millions of farms, or we definitely need a whole different system, and that's going to be a very difficult thing to figure out.

L: But this virus problem might help with that, hopefully. 

W: Yeah, I don't have any answers on how to feed the whole world with sustainable agriculture, but I think that as much as we can, the more that we do in sustainable farming that feeds more people, the better off we are. I mean, you just look at even the fact that the virus situation, the consequences of the fact that people are not driving as much, our smog has dramatically changed. So if we can get just people to eat more good food, we should make a tremendous change

 

A: Yeah 

W: It’s not like we’re going to correct the whole system all at once, but we need to work in that direction.

 

A: Yeah, I mean ‘you vote with your dollar.’

W: And there are people that have the financial means to be able to support farms,  and I think that needs to be done but...

L: The government needs to support them as well. 

W: And then the government needs to support the farms to be able to support the people who don't have the means to buy… that can only afford to buy super cheap food. A lot of government programs should go into not supporting big commercial farms, but supporting CSAs and small farms to feed these people.

 

A: Yeah, that all makes sense to me. So I'm just going to ask a question relating to sort of what you just talked about- how not all of the population has the means right now to support local agriculture and local CSAs. In the meantime, while we wait for policy change that leads to support for local farms and sustainable farming practices, what is one thing right now that you would ask the general public to do for local agriculture?

W: Yeah, I think the best thing they can do is vote with their dollars and buy local products and support small, sustainable operations.

L: And they can-- just don't spend money on-- don't go into Walmart and spend $50 on--what kind of junk do people buy there?-- I mean don't buy that stuff. Don't buy low quality meats, don't buy cheap cheese... there's a lot of stuff you could just stop buying and you’d have enough money to buy nourishing vegetables and nourishing quality meat and milk.

Ellery: It's surprisingly cheap to get the base ingredients if you're not buying pre-prepared… If you're buying a whole bunch of pre-prepared food, or even fast food, it’s pretty cheap to buy the basic ingredients: your carrots, your lettuce, your potatoes. It's surprisingly cheap to buy those base foods. Where you get a lot of price in the fast food industry is because you have to pay all the workers to make the food, so if you make the food yourself you can save money in the form of using more time.

W: Yeah, we need to teach more people how to cook.

E: Oh, very true.

W: Some of us learned how to cook, and a lot of people didn’t. A lot of the cheap food is also extremely unhealthy, it's just sugars and fat, and it's causing a huge amount of cost in our social system here with the health problems

E: They produce craving foods so that you reach for that first before trying to cook for yourself.

 

A: Do you think about teaching people how to cook is one of the ways that we can get them to support local agriculture?

W: I think that's definitely part of the whole thing, is educating people and educating them about good, quality food, and how to prepare it, and how to deal with fresh food. A lot of people grow up never eating anything really fresh. It's all just pre-prepared McDonald's, and wherever they go to eat. I don't know, I always ate real food.

L: And then also what Ellery just said, processed food is especially made so that you crave it. I mean, it's physiological craving for that kind of food and you have to teach your body, you have to re-teach, re-tool your whole chemistry of your body to get over that craving for those kind of salt, fat, sugar-based foods and change your body to crave nourishing food and that takes-- 

W: Well, it's an addiction

L: It’s an addiction, and sometimes you can't even get over it. I mean, you're stuck, you start out that way as a kid, you're stuck, your body is addicted to that kind of food and you'll never be able to eat real whole foods. That’s a bad situation to be in.

 

A: Definitely, yeah, I have done a few research reports on this subject and I am definitely very passionate about it as well. Of course, I don't have as much experience in the sustainable topic area as you guys do, so that's why I look to you guys. But to you guys--this is sort of connecting to everything that was just talked about the last 20 minutes--to you guys, what do you think are the responsibilities that come with being a farmer?

E: I’m not a farmer.

W: Yes, you are. 

E: Eh, kind of.

W: The responsibilities for the farmers? 

 

A: Yeah, that come with being a farmer.

W: As being a sustainable farm, you need to look at your practices and you need to be able to look at what you do and how it affects things. Whatever you're doing, how it affects not only your farm, but your crop, your neighborhood, your employees--your everything. Even the global situation one thing that comes up, that I talk about quite  a bit. There’s a product called neem oil, it's an organic product, very effective, very good on controlling bugs for a lot of different things, but now, since the organic farmers in the US have a lot more money than the farmers in India, all of the neem oil is being exported from India so none of the local Indian farmers can actually get any. These big chemical corporations are making lots of money off the neem oil selling it to the farmers throughout the states, and that really isn't sustainable, you know. It's a great product, but why should we be buying it here when the farmers in India should be the ones that should be able to use it? It’s a local product that they now can't get, because these chemical corporations have bought it all up. Just looking at how you do things, what you do, and how it affects everything else, and be aware of it. I mean, that's the thing that farmers need to look at and it's... I've made mistakes, I'm sure I'll make lots more mistakes. You know, you learn from what you're doing, and hopefully we create a better pathway forward.

 

A: So what is some advice that you could give to gardeners who also care about the environment, but aren't quite sure how to best grow food sustainably at home?

L: Don't buy neem oil, for starters. Swish your bugs by hand.

W: If it’s a small operation, you can do so much by hand and do it very intensely, and I think just minimal inputs, you know. The least amount of input you can do is the best way you can go about things.

E: Collect your own seeds!

W: You know, it’s inputs like plastic mulches, and plastic different things are not really--maybe they’ll make things grow better, but it's another input, it's another resource it’s being used up, and now we have to deal with all these things that are really not recyclable and not reusable. Just limiting the amount of resources that you're using and reuse what you have, make your own mulches, make your own compost, reuse everything you have. Yeah, it's--you’ve got to sort of invent things as you go along. Find out how.We have a unique source here: we have a yard landscaping company, and they were looking for a place to get rid of all their organic matter. They were taking it to the landfill, to the dump. Well, we got them to bring it here and we pile it up, and they actually grind for us, and we put it back into compost and use it as one of our main inputs into the field. This is a product that's locally generated, so we’re not trucking in compost from hundreds of miles away, they’re just right across the highway from us, so they just drop it off on the way home. Just using a local source. But all of these things ultimately are connected. The yard waste that we get comes from some commercial landscaping which... The movie theaters and all the people who are going to the theaters throw their garbage in the bushes as they leave the theater. It gets raked out of the bushes and ends up in my compost. Think about what you're doing when you throw your candy wrapper in the bushes; somewhere some poor farmer down the road has to pull it out of their field. 

 

A: Yeah 

W: So many of these things are so connected and people just don't think about it- it's sort of out of sight out of mind-- which is not true.

 

A: So before we're done I just have one quick question that I'm curious about. As you know, I'm personally an avid --I think aspiring would be a better word-- aspiring home gardener. I'm curious if you employ permaculture techniques at your farm and if you would recommend them?

 W: Permaculture I think it's a great tool. There are some techniques I've looked at and tried to incorporate into the operation; we're more of a commercial production type thing. Permaculture for a home garden I think would be a really good way to go about it. A lot more on a smaller scale I think it works. I have not really investigated large-scale permaculture operations that much; there's so many different techniques and different ideas out there and all of them that I've looked at really have good basis, but actually to make for each and every individual farm... Each and every individual Garden it's going to be different how it works for you. How things in your actual environment, your surroundings, and where what resources you actually have available to deal with permaculture. From what I know about it, it’s more for a small-scale production. I haven't really been able to see how I can fit it into a... We're  actually-- were still a pretty small-scale production here.

E: Yeah we are.
W: Yeah. I mean there are a lot of farms... We have about 20 acres under cultivation but we're feeding I would say... we're feeding somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 to 300 family units 

 

A: That's impressive.

W: A portion of their diet, not a hundred percent.

 

A: So before we're done... I think I'm done with my questions, I don't want to keep you guys too long. It took a lot longer than I thought it would! 

W: It's alright. We had some complications and I’m not doing anything else right now.

 

A: Is there anything else that you would like to tell me or tell people who may be listening about agriculture, sustainability, the food system?

W: No.

 

A: Okay.

E: When you're buying locally, you recognize that it might more expensive than the store, but you have to think about things like how much hand labor goes into small farms, because not everything's mechanized. And how much work and people hours it really takes to plant and grow and clean all of our food before it gets to your table. So when you're going out to buy it don't think of it as, ‘Oh my gosh this carrot is so much expensiver than the one in the store,’ think about it as you're supporting these other families that are working in our fields and working in our stores.

W: Yeah, well put. This operation here puts $300,000 to $400,000 a year back into the local economy-- very local economy-- very, very little, but ultimately even though I buy fuel from a local distributor it goes into the… they’re multinational corporations. Insurance and all that goes in the bank corporations. A lot of my money eventually goes off that way, but I try to spend my money as local as I possibly can. I go to a local hardware. I don't go to home Home Depot even though I can pay half the price. I want to support local people as much as I want locals to support me. It's a little frustrating that I go down to the local hardware and spend my money there but none of those people ever come to buy vegetables for me. 

 

A: Yeah. Yes it's definitely a two way avenue and I can see how it's going to be difficult to change our mindset as a population. 

W: Yeah when you spend $3 a pound for our carrots, a dollar of that goes directly back to the employees here. All of my employees that are working here, a third of what I'm making goes back into them. Two-thirds of it almost goes in just overhead and just other costs. I broke it down before. By the time it's done, Lee and I don't make hardly anything, but we have everything paid for, we're able to live a lifestyle here ,and that's been sustainable for us. But now as we look at retiring, it's another problem-- that's a whole big issue about small-scale farmers and how can they retire without selling their farm off to some developer to make enough money to live on? How can this land continue to be able to be affordable to farm? That I think it's one of the biggest issues now facing small farms is actually being able to afford to buy land. And then when your done farming, the only thing you have is the land and you can't sell it to another farmer because you need to get as much money as you can to retire to support yourself.

 

A: Yeah. 

W: I mean that's a huge issue facing the whole local food industry too.