When the vengeful Romans plowed salt into the smoldering ruins of Carthage in 146 B.C., the conquerors left a message that the world gradually forgot: Farming, rather than maritime trade and commerce, had been the real source of strength in the city that once rivaled Rome for control of the Mediterranean and that was eradicated by “ethnic cleansing.”

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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agricultural industry has the highest rate of occupational fatalities, about 32 per 100,000 employed people or eight times the national average. And tractor rollovers are the deadliest type of injury incident on farms.

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A hundred years after his death, monuments to Franklin Hiram King dot the landscapes of farm country all over North America, even in places where his name is unknown or has long been forgotten. King invented the cylindrical silo for the same reason that he wrote the book some say launched the organic agricultural movement, Farmers of Forty Centuries.

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Tide Mill Farm is remarkable in a myriad of ways. It is most certainly a family farm – an enduring homestead that has been passed down and worked by the same family since 1765, after Robert Bell, at age 14 or 15, arrived from Scotland in the still mostly wild coastal territory of the native Passamaquoddy that today is part of Washington County near the easternmost point in the United States.

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Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens of The Martens Farm and Lakeview Organic Grain (www.lakevieworganicgrain.com) in Penn Yan, N.Y., were the keynote speakers at MOFGA’s 2009 Spring Growth Conference. They have been farming organically since the early ‘90s and were the first in their county to do so. They now farm 1400 acres of organic corn, soy, spelt, barley, wheat, triticale, oats, rye, red kidney beans (sold to Eden Foods), cabbage for sauerkraut, and hay.

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The Harrisons are typical of the growing number of career changing new farmers populating small farms in Maine. Career changers, usually in their 40s and 50s, bring to the farm expertise from careers in teaching, business and even medicine as well as the financial assets they generated – but not necessarily farm experience.

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Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine, and Andrea Berry of Hope Seeds in Glassville, New Brunswick, presented a talk about seed and potato seed tuber production at the 2008 Farmer-to-Farmer Conference in Bar Harbor.

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Local has replaced organic as the most dynamic sector of the retail food market. Sales of local foods grew from $4 billion in 2002 to $5 billion in 2007 and are projected to reach $11 billion by 2011.  Organic food sales are still larger, approaching $20 billion, but organic foods sales seem to be slowing while sales of local foods are accelerating.

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At a conference on grain growing in January 2008, I overheard several dairy farmers talking about “Henry's press.” Being curious, I followed up with Henry – Henry Perkins, that is – who  lives in Albion.  Sure enough, he had purchased an oil press, or “extruder,” and was gearing up to grow soybeans and sunflowers in 2008 so that he could press oil from them.

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One August morning a few months before her death, Betty Weir spoke to me emphatically about the importance of young people learning to grow food and about what she had accomplished independently over her lifetime.

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In June 2008, I represented NOFA at “Cultivate the Future,” the 16th Organic World Congress and General Assembly of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), in Italy.

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Thinking about starting a farm? Looking for good land, good markets that are reasonably close, a little (or a lot) of start-up capital, a place to live, a way to pay bills in the off-season, a community of organic farmers, equipment that isn’t outrageously expensive or in disrepair?

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When I give presentations on farming in Maine, I usually begin with this true-or-false quiz:

• In the last two federal agricultural censuses, the number of farmers in Maine increased.
• In the same period, the amount of Maine farmland in production increased.
• Maine has the fifth youngest farmer population in the nation.

All three statements are true.

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Russ Libby, MOFGA’s executive director, opened MOFGA’s 2008 Spring Growth Conference in March by asking, “What are the implications of changing energy prices and changing climate on Maine farmers?” He acknowledged Maine Rural Partners and the Risk Management Agency for underwriting the cost of the conference.

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In November 2007, MOFGA welcomed keynote speaker Amigo Bob Cantisano to the Farmer-to-Farmer Conference. As a farmer, crop advisor and organizer, Cantisano has had enormous impact for over 30 years on U.S. organic agriculture. He founded or co-founded California Certified Organic Farmers, The Ecological Farming Association (organizer of the Eco-Farm Conference), Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, We The People Natural Foods Cooperative, and Farms not Arms – an activist group working to turn swords into plowshares and trying to stop the war

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Dr. Dickson Despommier and his students at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health propose a multi-story, intensely managed, indoor farm producing traditional greenhouse crops as well as pigs and fowl year-round.

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Hardy Vogtman, Deputy Minister for the Environment for Germany, is optimistic about the future of nature conservation and organic agriculture in his country. In the last election, the Greens increased their votes by 25%, so they have more input now; and three Ministers are Greens. Also, this is the first time the Social Democratic Green Government has been reelected, “because Europe for a long time tended to be going to the right,” which “was not good for nature conservation or organic agriculture.”

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Members of MOFGA were treated to talks by two thoughtful and entertaining organic “stars” at the Farmer to Farmer Conference in November 2002: grower Eliot Coleman from Harborside, Maine, and Hardy Vogtman, Deputy Minister for the Environment for Germany. Coleman began by defining organic agriculture as “a system of agriculture which pays maximum attention to the effects of agricultural practices on the nutritional quality of the crops produced and the well being of the environment in which it takes place.”

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The Working Horse & Oxen Association (WHOA) represents more than the interaction between human and draft animal; it also represents a way of life. The association demonstrates, through the use of affordable, low-tech harvesting, how draft animals can partner with small farmers to accomplish many farm tasks using traditional techniques, low impact practices, and non-fossil fueled equipment.

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