How family farmers are planting for a sustainable future

Russ Kremer had a near-death experience in 1989. On his central Missouri farm, he was bitten by a hog and contracted a form of strep resistant to at least five antibiotics. His hogs' feed included antibiotics to protect them—but not humans—from disease.

Doctors cured him, but Kremer decided to start his farm operation anew, raising hogs naturally. "I quit cold turkey," he says. "I've basically been a crusader or an evangelist for raising hogs this way. I did it because it was the right thing to do."

Although there was little demand for natural meat then, today small farmers across the country are finding economic opportunity in the natural, organic, and locally grown food markets. Like Kremer, though, their motivation goes beyond the bottom line to values shared by both family farmers and urban eaters.

There are 2.1 million farms in the United States, but this number is deceptive, as it includes extremely small, virtually non-operating farms, says Frederick Kirschenmann, an organic farmer and professor of religion and philosophy who works at Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that only 10 percent of all farms produce about 75 percent of total farm sales. "We've been operating under the principal that fewer farmers are better. Fewer farmers managing more production makes the system more efficient," Kirschenmann says, and that means lower prices.

But having fewer farmers hurts rural communities, which maintain values such as family, health, justice, and stewardship. "If we are not careful, we'll have the continued loss of rural communities done in the name of efficient production," says Robert Gronski, policy coordinator with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC).

Beyond a "heartfelt reaction to the loss of the family farm," Gronski says, rural and urban Catholics alike are concerned about the health value and safety of their food, treatment and well-being of those who produce it, and especially the environmental impact of their diet. Aligning their concerns and values with their food choices has led many Catholics to support small family farmers.

Catholics from Iowa to Washington, D.C. are demanding farm policy that would create a more equitable system for small farmers. This system may be hard to change, and it will likely remain difficult for small farmers who grow commodity crops such as wheat, corn, and soybeans to compete with their larger counterparts, but demand for biodiesel is benefiting all farmers—large and small. Hope also lies in consumers' demand for safe, healthy food grown with sustainable practices. In this area, Kremer says, "there have never been more opportunities for a farmer to start a successful enterprise."

Kremer is no longer a lone crusader. He is president of the Ozark Mountain Pork Cooperative, made up of 52 farmers raising hogs naturally.

Each farmer invests in the processing facility and marketing structure and gets one vote in the cooperative's decisions. It allows the farmers to employ efficiencies of larger hog farms while maintaining their independence and identity as a "small farmer." "This gives them some market security," says Kremer, also president of the Missouri Farmers Union.

The cooperative is more than smart business. For Kremer, the decisions to farm naturally and operate as a cooperative came from his values as a Catholic. "There are colder, more rigid business structures that can somewhat come to the same goal," Kremer says. "A co-op is about loyalty and trust. You find people that have the same mindset as you do."

Market research also convinced the cooperative's members that consumers share this perspective. "I think that's our last hurrah: One of the last abilities of a small family farmer to survive is to build these relationships with the consumer," Kremer says. "We depend on what we call committed consumers and committed advocates, and there is no better affinity group to work with than the faith community."