(The Center Square) – The USDA has announced $75 million to help farmers transition to organic practices. Longtime farmer Dave Bishop of PrairiErth Farm in Atlanta, Ill., says chemical-free farming is an opportunity for rural communities to keep local dollars in state.
“We have the best farmland in the world, yet we import the stuff that we actually eat from other places. When we buy our food from outside the area, we are exporting our wealth outside,” Bishop told The Center Square.
He went organic in 1988, after a devastating drought caused a complete and total crop failure on his family’s corn and soybean farm in central Illinois.
“We knew we had to completely change the way we had been operating. First and foremost, that meant diversifying,” Bishop said.
He went back to farming the way his grandfather did. He brought livestock back to the farm. He brought small grains back, as well as corn and soybeans. Diversification became his crop insurance, he said. Today, PrairiErth also grows organic produce that is sold locally.
With federal crop insurance, the government is paying monoculture corn and soybean farmers whether they get a crop or not, Bishop said.
“Is that the food system we want to have? There is a better way, bottom line,” Bishop insists.
Bishop’s alma mater, Illinois State University, is transforming its 600-acre university farm to “regenerative,” the preferred term for organic.
“It is a matter of how we reorient our food system toward not only more organic types of practices but more localized systems where we keep the money that we earn from the land in our communities instead of exporting it out of the communities,” Bishop said.
Bishop references the work of food systems analyst Ken Meter, author of Finding Food in Farm Country. In one region in southeastern Minnesota, Meter found that farmers spent $500 million a year on inputs that they bought from outside the region. The residents of the region spent another $500 million outside of the region to buy food to eat (out of a total of $670 million).
“That means the region ships out as much money producing and buying food as the entire value of all commodities produced.” Meter said.
The answer is to produce more and better local food and sell it locally, Bishop said. If consumers buy 15% of the food they eat from local producers, a region can generate more income than two thirds of what the farmers now receive in subsidies. Illinois has a huge opportunity to shift farming practices and revitalize rural communities, Bishop said.
“If you drive through rural Illinois today, you see the boarded-up towns in central Illinois that are the result of four decades of exporting the wealth out of our communities,” he said.
The $75 million in USDA funding for regenerative compliance and training is part of the Organic Transition Initiative (OTI), a multi-agency $300 million effort to support beginning and transitioning organic farmers in the United States.
“By strengthening our technical proficiency and providing technical and financial assistance through new tools and practices, we can better support producers through the challenges of organic transition,” National Resource Conservation Services Chief Terry Cosby said at the funding announcement.
Grants, training and programs are available to farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and producers transitioning to organic and regenerative practices. Bishop recommends contacting the local USDA service center and visiting USDA farmers.gov/organic.
