The Doctor Meets The Farmers
Dr. Kracker sources all of its spelt from a group of farmers north of Detroit. I recently interviewed several of them to gain a better insight into where our grain comes from and how it is grown.
I grew up in Michigan and learned in school that Michigan soil benefited greatly during the Ice Age, when the glaciers reworked the surface of the land and deposited deep soils in much of the state. Some of this dirt is very sandy, some has a high clay content; that clay-rich soil can make plowing especially interesting and complex.
The group of organic farmers I spoke with in northern Michigan grow grains and beans for the most part; not as many raise animals. However, I did speak with one Michigan farmer who has a unique commitment to animal husbandry. Along with the clover and alfalfa that are part of his normal rotation, this gentleman raises cows, like his father did. His kids are in 4-H, so keeping the animals was a natural fit for him (no pun intended). The cows and steers are raised organically, and sold to customers seeking organically raised beef.
Most of the farmers I spoke with are third- generation farmers; some converted to organics as early as 1970, others just in the last decade. Some switched to organic methods after witnessing the successes of organic crops and hearing about the higher prices they commanded. Some had a deep concern about chemical farming and its impact on their lives, the soil and the community.
How did these guys get into spelt? Well, spelt had several things going for it. First of all, it’s in the wheat family, so they were already familiar with its cultivation. Secondly, spelt is robust, and therefore more resistant to the rusts and plant diseases that plague wheat. And thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, spelt is an ancient grain, hasn’t gone through the ag-school genetic improvement programs, and therefore has remained a simple plant with simple requirements. It doesn’t require the enormous amounts of nitrogen fertilizer that modern, high-yielding wheat or corn demand to achieve their full potential.
We urban folks read about the benefits of composting, and many of us keep a compost pile or bin in our yards. But large-scale composting may not be practical on a 700-acre farm. Not only that, although composting benefits the soil, it doesn’t add great amounts of nitrogen. And the one farmer who keeps the cows composts when they’re in the barn; otherwise the animals are on the pastures leaving their patties where they fall to decompose during the fallow cycle.
Dr. Kracker’s spelt farmers deal with the nitrogen question in two ways. Spelt is a winter wheat crop, meaning it’s planted in the fall, often as late as October. The seeds germinate and begin to grow, and although the spelt lies dormant during the winter, it grows vigorously once the days become warm in the spring.
When the spelt is planted, clover can be planted with it. (Clover is nitrogen-fixing; it will leave up to 100 lbs of nitrogen per acre.) The clover thrives as it grows alongside the sprouting spelt. After the spelt is harvested, the clover can either continue to grow, be cut for animal feed, or can go to seed, at which point the seeds can be combined or harvested and sold to other organic farmers. Above the clover is cut or the seeds harvested, the clover is plowed into the soil, and its protein-rich biomass adds to the nitrogen that the roots have brought into the soil.
Some farmers go off the farm for the nitrogen to supplant clover. A popular nitrogen source is the chicken litter that is trucked over from the poultry farms in western Michigan. (And organic farmers are not the only ones who recognize the value of chicken manure! During 2008, when fertilizer costs skyrocketed, there was quite a scramble for chicken litter, and our guys could only get what they had contracted for. There was not an extra load to be found anywhere in southern Michigan!)
Since these farms are organic and the use of conventional herbicides is out of the question, weeds are a constant issue. But then, it’s very hard to imagine weeding 500 acres by hand.
Our Michigan farmers have a variety of solutions for eradicating the weeds that rob their crops of necessary water and nutrients. For sandy or heavy clay soils, they let the weeds germinate, then till the soil to uproot the weeds and add them to the biomass. This process can be repeated a second time, but if the weeds still sprout too vigorously once the crop has been planted, both weeds and crop may end up having to be plowed under. If the field can’t be replanted, the crop is a total loss and the field lies fallow.
Where the soil is appropriate, farmers use the tried-and-true mold board plow that was invented by the Chinese centuries ago, brought to Europe by the Dutch, and then improved continuously as traction for the plow has changed. The mold board works only in deeper soils that are neither too sandy or too clay-rich. It folds 4 or 5 inches of soil so that any surface weed seeds will be unable to germinate from that depth of soil cover.
As you can imagine, no organic systems of tilling and cultivating to eliminate weeds are perfect, and farmers must balance the cost of running a tractor (when diesel costs more than $4 per gallon) with the expected financial loss of yield that weeds cause. Organic farming always means living with some weeds!
One thing often reported about family farms is that they are struggling in today’s economy, as they compete with large agribusinesses and navigate their way around government subsidies and trade regulations. We’ve read that many farmers are forced to work off the farm to make enough money to keep their farm (and family) solvent. I’m happy to say that in my small sample, this was not the case. The winter provides time to repair and maintain combines and tractors, do the bookkeeping that was neglected; and reflect and read—all things you’re too busy to do when you’re working sun to sun. (But one farmer joked that even in the winter, he still works “sun to sun,” because the sun rises later and sets earlier!)
All of the organic farmers I talked with are very enthusiastic about the future of organics, as well as their role in providing organically grown grains and seeds to all of us. Organically grown grain does cost more, but by supporting organics, we not only keep pesticides and poisons out of our diets, we also contribute to sustainable agriculture that makes multi-generational small farms, like the ones Dr. Kracker depends on, possible.
