Rhode Island on Less than an Apple a Day

In honor of International Worker's Day, I'm posting another article I wrote for my journalism class in the fall. It's about the future of local farming in Rhode Island, and I think it's worth a read. I feel terrible for just sitting on this one and never publishing it. Anyway, here it is for you.

Apple farmer Allan Hill is shaken all the way down to his roots – and his roots are deep. As he rumbles his big, old farmers-market pick-up truck along the dirt path that runs through his Johnston orchard, he talks about history and novelty. He points to the old house on his property that was built there in the late 1700’s and he explains the orientation of the rooms within it that were configured to catch the sun’s heat in the winter. Neither is it an accident that the front door faces away from the road, he says. It opens out onto the land, which was probably growing crops then as it is now.

The apple trees, which the truck passes on the left and now on the right too, are barren except maybe for the very tops – it is early December, and picking season has passed in all its frenzy. As he drives, Mr. Hill explains about planting – though he rarely does it anymore – and he tells how farmers choose the rootstock, or vigor, of the trunk in order to control the size of its top. Through the window, the long, thick, gray, reaching branches and squat statures of the trees give the impression that they are ancient and yet somehow otherworldly.

And in a sense, they are. The first trees were planted here by Mr. Hill’s father and uncle in 1929, which marked the beginning of Hill Brothers orchard. The land they used had been Mr. Hill’s grandfather’s since the 1890’s. Later, when Mr. Hill’s father and mother married, she wanted a farm to call her own – so in the 1940’s she bought an adjoining farm and planted an orchard, which was tended there separately. In 1950, Mr. Hill was born and he began to grow up in the house in which he still lives, while he watched his father tend the farm that he now tends. After Mr. Hill’s uncle died, Mr. Hill’s father bought out his sister-in-law and the entire property became their own. The name was changed to Hill Orchards, which is what Mr. Hill inherited from his parents.

Mr. Hill, however, now has no children of his own, and therefore he may be unable to keep the farm in the family.

“That’s gonna be a problem, coming up,” he says. “The odds are,” – he pauses –and then confides, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

The lack of an heir seems to be somehow metaphorical for the greater cultural trend that threatens the future of farming in Rhode Island, and, more generally, local farming in the United States on the whole. It seems to Mr. Hill that the current and next generations have lost touch with what it means to be a farmer. Even the farms that can be handed down are in trouble, he says.

This is because, somewhat ironically, the farm-lands are worth so much money. Real estate prices have generally been going up for decades, and Rhode Island has the highest land values in the nation – about $8000 per acre. That means that a farm that has 200 acres could be sold for about 1.6 million dollars on average – on land value alone.

Mr. Hill tells a story about how in the 1980’s someone from the planning department in Rhode Island visited a meeting of farmers, trying to figure out what would happen to local farming in the state. He predicted to them that there would be no farms left by 1990.

“And everyone thought he was crazy… But what he was saying was, the way land prices have gone up, it’s not economically viable to be a farm. How can you justify farming a piece of land that’s worth a million dollars? If you took that million dollars and put it in at 5% interest, you’re gonna make more money!,” Mr. Hill says.

In many respects, the planner was right. Farms have been fighting a losing battle against these economic pressures. Notably, Knight Farm – which had the first farm-stand in the state – was recently sold off. Yet what has kept many of the farms alive since 1990 has been the farmers’ tradition and values. No farmer wants to be the last link in the chain. Mr. Hill, however, does not have this confidence in the next generation.

“When they see that the land’s for sale, they just sell it, because they don’t have the connection anymore. It really is that way, because the generation before me – you know, they wanted money and all that, but the land was worth more than this. They would try not to sell. They wanted to keep it all in one piece - because that was the farm. It was an entity. It wasn’t just land to be used or abused or whatever. It was something special,” he says.

The United States was mostly founded on the backs of local growers during colonial and revolutionary times – in fact, one of George Washington’s favorite pastimes was to prune his apple trees. In those times, farming was by far the most common profession – most people lived rurally, and grew most of their own food. Later, with the advent of the industrial revolution in the United States – which actually began in Rhode Island – people turned away from this rural life, and the cities began to swell immensely.
Without land to cultivate, city-dwellers were forced to buy their food. Thus the local farm – which had once been chiefly just a source of sustenance for the family that owned it – became instead a commercial venture. Agriculturally, Rhode Island was known for its vegetables, especially potatoes. It remained this way for about a century.

Then, around 1960, the first chain supermarket arrived in Rhode Island. This marked the visible beginning of a gradual, but eventually drastic change in the farming and food industries. Centralized supermarkets no longer wanted to deal with local suppliers, as these suppliers could not produce wholesale in the bulk amounts that they wanted to buy. Food was now being trucked across the country on a regular basis, and farms were expanding and being bought up by large corporations.

With the shortage of land in Rhode Island, however, local farms could not expand to anywhere near the size of the new mega-farms. Therefore, land use was maximized on a few crops, and the state’s agricultural diversity dwindled. Farmers tried to focus on growing potatoes, but that was now threatened by competition from Idaho and elsewhere. Furthermore, the farming industry was going global, and local farms were forced to compete in a new and unbalanced kind of economic situation. In this way, what are called corporate food channels emerged, and local growers were marginalized. For instance, try to find a Rhode Island apple in a Rhode Island Stop & Shop and you will come out empty-handed, Mr. Hill says.

In short, the wholesale market has dropped out on local growers – centralized supermarkets do not want to deal with their relatively puny supply, and even if they did, the farmers would not make a profit on the prices with which they must compete. This has made it very difficult for them to continue with their family’s way of life.
Interestingly, however, the retail industry for local growers is very much alive. In the past ten years, the number of farmers’ markets in the state has risen from five to over twenty. Mr. Hill, who is the president of the four Downcity Farmers’ Markets – in Central Falls, Providence (Hope High and Parade Street), and Woonsocket – says that the markets are doing very well.

“The retail end has gone up. Stop & Shop is getting a dollar-fifty a pound for some of their stuff over there. So when I go out and ask a dollar a pound at the farmers’ markets, they all think I’m cheap – I think I’m doing really good! But, I mean, that’s a sign of the times. It’s strange,” he says.

From produce bought at the supermarket, only five cents on the dollar usually reaches the original farmers, according to Louella Hill (no relation to Mr. Hill), who founded the Sustainable Food Initiative at Brown University and now works for their Dining Services promoting local buying. She says that the rest of the supermarket retail cost goes to intermediaries – to pay for packaging, diesel fuel for shipping, and, importantly, food waste during transportation. An international produce broker once told Ms. Hill that he was losing 40 percent of his lettuce crop en route.

“He was shipping from Ecuador – South America – to Providence. Of course the lettuce will be damaged,” she says.

At farmers’ markets, on the other hand, all of the money goes directly to the farmer, whose transportation costs are minimal, and packaging and food waste are non-existent. Therefore, prices remain low while quality remains high. Also, farmers are able to develop a direct relationship with the community, while the consumers can actually meet the person who is growing their food. The point is to minimize the steps between the source – the farm – and the destination – your stomach.

“Farmers’ markets are amazing, because when you put the farmer directly in contact with the person that buys the food, you cut out the middle man,” Ms. Hill says.
It was at a farmers’ market, in fact, where Ms. Hill discovered her passion.

“A whole series of events were accumulating in my mind, but I wasn’t quite processing them,” she says, referring to her original lack of awareness of the dire situation of local farming in Rhode Island.

“A farmer I met at the [Brown] farmers’ market invited me to see his land, and as he was driving me around, he was pointing out this place where there used to be a farm, and now there’s a brand new spanking house up, and we passed this other place that used to be his brother’s farm, and there’s a new house up over it. And he drove me to his land, and there were two new houses on the edge of his property.”

“They can’t stand me,” he told her.
She asked him why.
“Because farming is gross! And the tractor is noisy and the manure stinks. People don’t really like farmers any more,” he said.
It was mid-November, and he was telling her about how it broke his heart that these lands were being lost. He said he wanted to buy a billboard somewhere near his farm where people would see it on their way to work. He wanted it to read: Do you enjoy this view? It won’t last long if you don’t buy local food.
Then she looked up and he was crying.

“It was so in my face and hitting me, that I realized I had to make people understand this.”

Ms. Hill was a student of Brown University at the time, and she went on to write her senior environmental studies thesis on creating a regional food economy here in Rhode Island, which became the foundation of her current work. She views what she does as more than just food services – she believes she is combining agriculture and social justice.

Although Brown is placing itself at the forefront of this crusade in the sense that it is making campus-wide changes to its food system, there are many other colleges across the country that are working along the same lines. Yale has received widespread praise for implementing an entirely locally-sourced, organic cafeteria. Other schools, such as Dartmouth, Vassar, and Cornell have started student-run farms, which is something that Ms. Hill is hoping can now be achieved at Brown.

“We have the land and the capability to run a student-run farm. This farm is very, very possible if we express that interest and bring it to life,” she says.

As of the moment, Brown has implemented an outreach program to local farms called Harvest Crews, in which students visit the farms once a week in order to lend a hand with the work, such as picking apples in the fall. The farmers are spared the cost of hiring more employees at that time, and the students learn why the fight to save these farms is important. This also helps to foster a personal connection. Building off of these relationships, Brown is many times able to buy food from the farms at reduced rates.

“I would be thrilled if other universities did this,” Ms. Hill says.

Many times, however, local produce is no more expensive than what the schools buy from corporate providers, she says. At times the task of buying local is merely as complex as just making a few phone calls.

“It’s like their numbers were scratched on our minds, but they got erased for the past forty years. Sysco and Sedexho have fulfilled all of our needs, just like Walmart. It takes effort, it takes vision – and understanding that by calling that local apple producer or by buying broccoli from that farmer that’s thirty minutes down the road, you’re doing something worthwhile. It’s an appeal to consciousness, and sometimes it’s even economical,” she says.

Ms. Hill believes that universities are a great place to start the movement towards (really, back to) local agriculture. Of course, there is the fact that schools have a constant, massive, and consolidated buying power – in a capitalist system, it is the consumer who wields the most power over the economy and its effects on society. However, there is also a less concrete aspect to Ms. Hill’s logic: it is a chance to put academic words into on-campus action.

“We are students sitting in classrooms where we are talking about economic development, biodiversity, genetic engineering, ethics – and then the food we have for lunch is directly connected to all of those issues… I think change happens at universities, because that’s what it’s for – because that’s what we do here,” she explains.

Mr. Hill is one of the farmers that has recently begun providing apples and other products to Brown. He agrees that schools are a great place for local farmers to find a market – he now also sells to Central Falls. He finds it very difficult, however, to break into the systems in which these schools have become involved. Although it may be more expensive, many times the schools find it easier to just order everything they need from huge corporate providers, because they have a breadth of product and transportation ability with which Mr. Hill can not compete.

Mr. Hill is worried about the future of farming in Rhode Island. He says that the future of local farming is, “over time, to become houses.” Lately, he has been struggling with own farm, which is growing more apples than he can sell in retail. When a tree dies, often times he does not replant it, and a gap is left instead. This year, he had to let apples hit the ground, rather than pay a costly labor and storage bills for product that he could not sell. The apples he has in storage, he will be selling possibly until March he says – ideally he would be done by Christmas. His next step, therefore, is to cut back an entire block of trees – to downsize. His only goal is to keep the farm going as long as possible.

“It’s going to change more – very, very quickly,” he says. “Because of all the housing – you watch. Things are gonna change… It’s going to be solid people. That’s what’s happening. And in the process, we’re ruining our whole environment. Well – what I consider ruining it. People think that a quarter acre lot is good, but that doesn’t quite make it in my estimation.” He laughs wholeheartedly. “If you know what I’m saying…

“Oh well, that’s just my point of view,” he continues with a sigh. “I’m looking at things from a different direction – that most people wouldn’t need to – want to hear.”