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Local Progress

It’s been one heck of a growing season in the Flathead

By Mike Jopek

Yesterday was the last farmers market of the 2016 growing season for Whitefish. It’s been one heck of a season in the Flathead. Some produce like pears and cucumbers grew great, other veggies like late-season tomatoes succumbed to the repetitive nights of temperatures in the twenties.

This Friday, our farm will host one of the several tours the Alternative Energy Resources Organization put together as part of their statewide annual meeting. We’ll talk about some of the stuff we’ve learned over the decades of farming the Flathead.

On this AERO farm tour, we’ll try to mostly talk about pragmatic things that may help inform the next generation of beginning farmers on more permanent infrastructure needs like game fencing, drip irrigation, row covers, hoop houses, barns, perennial plants, and the importance of community involvement.

As some locals know, besides farming, I’ve chaired multiple legislative committees that deal with statewide farm policy. State and national policies, everything from agricultural property tax valuations to federal crop insurance eligibility, have big impacts on beginning farmers and small-scale food production.

My interest in farm policy was upheld at last month’s market when the local Farm Services Agency agent from the United States Department of Agriculture came and chatted me up about the agency’s new crop insurance programs that can help protect small fruit and vegetable growers from devastating losses accompanying the chaotic weather patterns that are now more a part of localized food production.

As any farmer knows, hail and freeze can quickly end the farm season. Sen. Jon Tester as part of the 2014 Farm Bill guided some of the new reforms to federal crop insurance toward more small Montana farms.

Tester is likely the only farmer left in Congress. Anyone who cares about food access and affordability, or what’s in our food, where on the planet it was grown, or what our kids eat while at public schools will quickly grow to appreciate having an organic farmer’s hand on the national food policy of Congress.

From both that food policy perspective as well as from the day-to-day practicality of operating a small local farm for the past 25 years these kinds of crop eligibility reforms represent big steps forward toward a food system that work better for Montana’s small producers.

Much of the next Farm Bill should continue these kinds of small farm advancements but also acknowledge some of those real obstacles facing today’s beginning farmers. There are multiple infrastructural needs beyond the more obvious access to cropland. There’s plenty of need for technology advancements to farm stuff like planter’s paper, drip irrigation and grow tunnels.

AERO is a membership-driven organization that for the past 40 years has been linking people across Montana with agriculture and energy solutions.

This weekend the organization will feature keynote speaker Mary Berry of the Berry Center. The center says that their mission is “putting Wendell Berry’s writings to work by advocating for farmers, land conserving communities, and healthy regional economies.”

AERO’ 2016 Expo and Annual Meeting is held at the Red Lion Hotel in Kalispell from October 7 to 9. See the statewide organizations website at www.aeromt.org for details. One can attend a tour, listen to Berry, or attend the entire weekend.

This year’s theme, “What We Need is Here,” comes from a poem by farmer and philanthropist Wendell Berry, Mary Berry’s father. AERO’s annual meetings traditionally feature multiple panels, workshops, and demonstrations.

Some of this weekend’s other farm tours include the brewing and agricultural sciences projects at Flathead Valley Community College, Lower Valley Farms and New Agrarian Tools.

Other AERO speakers include Steve Thompson of Climate Smart Glacier Country, Jim Oldham of Equity Trust, and Fred Kirschenmann of Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.