Section A·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, May 4, 1999
An organically grown tomato looks ripe and ready inside Hertzel's greenhouse.
Tubes transport nutrients to Hertzel's tomatoes.
A murky colored chemical solution is contained in a large metal trough in David Hertzel's greenhouse.
Patience a requisite for organic farmers
Continued from page 1A
Breaking even
beating. Sometimes that's all it ever teaches you."
On a hill off the road, 20 miles north of Hickerson' farm, stands a barn-size green house where Beefstek tomatoes swell on 800 vines so thick they might gue bridges.
Soon none of them will be certified organically grown. David Hertzel is calling organics nuits.
"Some people live and die by organics," he says. "It's a religion for them."
Hertzel pauses inside his greenhouse, a green-ballled ball cap perched atop his head, a crackling CB on his hip, and dabs his left thumb into a tray of Early Girl and Big Beef tomato seedlings, all just a two leaves or less at this stage.
"They're all dried out," he says. "In sun like this they'll dry out in a day."
Five fans that look like jet engines rumble into life at the cue from an unseen computer. The fans ventilate plastic tubes, which inflate and unfurl like party favors under the translucent roof. Barrel-chested tomato plants inhabit the space beneath. Reared on seaweed, bone meal, blood meal, alfalfa and a little rock phosphate, the plants idle above Hertzel and the hay-strewn aisles like sleeping circus elephants.
Some of the tomatoes produced by these plants will go to a limited number of contracted customers. Most will be sold to Hv-Yve or the Community Mercantile.
A different approach
About half of these plants are organically grown. The other half are hydroponic, which means they are grown without soil and depend upon a chemical solution washing over their roots for their nutrients. Consequently, they don't qualify as organic.
Hertzel plans to switch his entire production to hydroonic.
As high-tech as his greenhouse is, Hertzel can't keep his soil fortified. The plants that come up are punier and more disease-susceptible, he says. Over the last few years he's seen his soil produce fewer tomatoes, around 500 pounds a week when he used to reach 900 pounds. Under organic rules, Hertzel can't use stronger synthetic fertilizers to revitalize his soil, and he can't afford to rest his soil any longer.
"The earth wasn't created to sit there and grow something over and over again," he says. "It's very rare to see a greenhouse succeed with soil alone."
"We couldn't keep production up," he says. "Organic farming wasn't financially supporting us."
The price of paying an inspection agency to certify his greenhouse taxed his earnings too hard.
"It's a racket, this organic certification," he says. "We say hundreds of dollars for inspection. We were very careful. But they won't let me commingle certain activities."
Diane Dysar, executive secretary for Eastern Kansas Organic Crop Improvement Association, says that farmers pay $250 a year to be able to use their organically certified label. They then pay a quarter-percent royalty fee on their gross organic sales.
Requirements for being certified are strenuous.
Fields must be chemical-free for three years, and the entire operation must be organically up to snuff within five years, Dysar says. They sometimes make exceptions on a case-by-case basis.
case in point: when inspectors came to Hertzel's greenhouse, they noticed the bags of rat bait he had used to ward off mice instead of Hertzel's full compliance with other standards.
Still, the restrictions needle Hertzel, who says inspectors lose sight of the larger picture in their imposition of requirements.
"They told me they had to go," Hertzel says. "But if I take them away the mice will literally eat my greenhouse."
"It's just too, too hard," he says. "We just about broke even last year."
These concerns consume too much of his time and money. Hertzel says.
And if you only break even, he says, in the long run, you only break down.
"They just taste better."
The fact is, Hertzel doesn't need the organic certification.
"I get just as much for the non-organic as I do for the organic," he says.
He doesn't need the label in part because he can still advertise his tomatoes as pesticide and herbicide-free.
In lieu of employing conventional pesticides, Hertzel dispatches an armada of beneficial insects—a fleet of 100,000 lacewings, squadrons of tiny, parasitic wasps and the slow-moving, but deadly ladybugs—all of which destroy plant life or anphils.
This strategy also reduces Hertzel's reliance upon organically certified, but still-poisonous pesticides.
More to the matter, Hertzel's tomatoes just taste better, says Sula Teller, kitchen manager at Milton's restaurant.
She takes out a cardboard box from a stainless-steel refrigerator. In the box, twenty ruddy organics roll up against a plum-colored, conventionally-grown tomato.
"There is a perceptible difference between organic and non-organic," she says, explaining that organic tomatoes have firmer consistency and better skin.
"Can't you see the difference?" Teller asks, holding up the conventional tomato for inspection
Sliced open, the organic tomatoes show a thick, vine-ripened interior, with a homicidal hue of red.
Teller says she uses organic tomatoes whenever the price drops low enough to fit within her budget.
"People aren't going to walk by a good tomato and spend 50 percent to make it organic." Hertz says.
But that's just it — avid fans of the organic tomato have their economic limits.
Sam Newcome, a cook at the Community Mercantile, agrees.
The sun shines down on one of the 800 tomato vines in David Hertzel's greenhouse.
"The only difference between organic and non-organic, if it's produced locally, is that you pay more for the first," he says.
Producing locally, however, is the financial condition organic farmers are in a position to exploit.
Sellina to a local market
Dan Nagengast's hair is wet.
Barr coat against the skin.
Rivulets of rain water drip from his ears as he slogs through one of his smaller fields in mud-spackled boots.
"The plants like this weather," he says.
Nagengast grew up on a traditional farm, then raised crops in West Africa for the Peace Corps and has run three farms in the last eight years.
He has planted two rows of parsley plants and now generously sprinkles a yellow powder that will dry up the root hairs of weeds.
Only four and a half acres of his 20-acre farm are in production, and he's probably making more money on his four-and-a-half than a conventional farmer makes on 1.100. he says.
He knows what he's doing. He's the executive director of the Kansas Rural Center, a non-profit organization that promotes organic farming.
"Last year was a particularly crappy year," Nagen-
gast says, adding that Hickerson shouldn't feel bad about losing money. "All farmers lost money on just about every acre."
But because Nagengast marketed his produce directly to consumers, he was less affected by global market prices.
Nagenagst and his family linked up with seven other small, organic farms six years ago to form the Rolling Prairie Farmers Alliance. For a $50 subscription fee, the Alliance delivers a weekly allotment of fresh produce that is 1,500 miles fresher than what fills most grocery stores.
Nengagest says that the Alliance has brought good money, largely because it puts the produce directly in the hands of consumers and takes the farmer out of the global economy. Farmers can pocket retail prices for their produce because there is no middle man.
ing straight to the customer lets farmers control their own destiny.
It's a marketing plan that would be advantageous for farmers like Hertzel, for whom the cost of organic certification is too high.
"If you can look your customer in the eye and say it's organically grown, then you probably don't need certification," Nagenga says.
Organic farmers can sell more than their produce, however.
Nagengast can sell the allure of his calendar-perfect farm.
People can pay to cut flowers from Nagen-gast's gardens that grow within sight of a glassy little pond that would make Thoreau pout with envy. As for the view, it's pasturelands all the way down the valley.
Nengagest says that he and his family have moved three times in the last eight years, always toward better land and better markets, putting their profits back into their farm and equipment.
this year we will probably start tak
ing some out," he says.
Bouncina back
Heading back from his hallowed field of
cocoa-powder topsoil, Hickerson gestures with a tan arm toward where 12 vines rise, like charmed snakes, crookedly into the sky.
Within a few years those vines will become a gooseberry hedgerow, pumping out bushels of the coveted fruit.
This week, Hickerson will launch a home-delivery service similar to Nagenast's Alliance, and he'll soon have customers making reservations to spend the day on his farm.
next week Hickerson will put peach, pear,
apple and cherry trees into the ground.
"Every year things get better," he says.
This farm will restore your faith in food.
— Designed by Chris Dye
— Edited by Seth Hoffman
and Juan H. Heath
HEY KU...
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