Local farmers don't have a row to hoe

Jun 2, 2009      Tennessean

Sherry Mitchell and Clay Carey

Sumner's farmers have watched their plots vanish, with neighborhoods and shopping centers rising in their place.

Shrinking profits are pushing small farmers out of business, forcing the market centers that depended on the livestock, tobacco and other staples they produced to instead embrace pursuits like manufacturing or tourism.

"This is actually the worst year we have had in 30 years," said Patrick Kelley of Kelley's Berry Farm just outside of Castalian Springs. "Sometimes you do consider quitting."

Overall, agriculture remains a $44.2 billion business in Tennessee, representing one-ninth of the economy. From 2002 to 2007, the federal government says, the value of the state's farm products rose 20 percent to $2.6 billion, and average farm revenue was up by about one-third.

But operating costs - taxes, fuel, fertilizer, labor - have gone up, too. The average Tennessee farmer's net income was about $3,000 in 2007, down about 25 percent from 2002.

Regina Gammon, owner of Hendersonville Produce, hasn't seen a drop-off in the number of available farmers to supply fresh produce, despite the economy. But she says many have had to diversify to keep up.

"I haven't had any trouble getting fresh produce, even with the drought a few years ago," she said. "The real farmers, they have their irrigation set up and they know how to keep things going. That's their livelihood."

One way that local farmers are managing to stay afloat is to diversify, Gammon said.

"I know the farmers that we use, they have to diversify - sometimes they have strawberries you can pick, at other times, they may have peaches or blackberries," she said. "There are different things they do with their farm than just wholesale."

Although there was slightly more farmland in Sumner in 2007 than in 1997, the number of farmers has fallen 2 percent.

In the counties around Davidson, profit has dwindled to almost nothing, with farmers actually losing money.

Suburban growth fuels changes

Much of the change in Sumner is driven by suburban growth. Between the rising cost of doing business and the rising demand by homebuilders for open pastureland, industry experts say, it often is difficult for farmers to say no when builders come knocking.

"A lot of farmers may not have a 401(k), but that farm they have is their lifetime investment," state Agriculture Commissioner Ken Givens said. "As they get older, a lot of them can't afford to conserve it."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the typical farm in Tennessee is around 138 acres, about the size of Nashville's Centennial Park. But operations that size are disappearing, and the gap between big farms and small farms is widening.

Statewide, 152,656 acres of farmland - an area about half the size of Sumner County - became something else between 2002 and 2007, when the USDA's latest nationwide farm census was conducted. The Nashville area's total farmland shrank by 11 percent during that time, although the number of farms held fairly steady.

Industry experts like Givens say much of the change was caused by falling tobacco production. Once among the state's biggest farm products, the crop has fallen sharply since federal price supports ended in 2005.

With the state's help, men and women who stay in agriculture are learning sophisticated production methods and how better to sell their goods - tactics given little thought by previous generations of farmers.

Big harvests are gone

In Portland, the commercial center of northern Sumner County, big-time harvests are long gone.

The city proclaims itself the Strawberry Capital of Tennessee. In the 1960s, local legend holds, freight trains would haul 30 berry-filled boxcars out of Portland daily during the season, typically early May to mid-June.

The receiving station where strawberries were once sorted and shipped out is gone. Back then, local farmers said, selling berries in bulk was easy, and many Portland-area farmers did it.

Today, much of the bulk production comes from California and Florida, and local officials say fewer than a dozen north Sumner growers still raise strawberries in large volume.

"The only way you can sell 'em is right here on the side of the road," said John Crafton, 75. The farmer raises berries with his son off Highway 52 just outside Portland, on the same land his father and grandfather tended.

People didn't get rich off strawberries in the old days, Crafton said, but they didn't go broke raising them, either. Today, the high cost of chemicals and fertilizer turns a lot of farmers away.

But in town, the berry seems to be everywhere. Strawberries are painted on doors and windows of local businesses. Anti-littering signs admonish residents to be "berry clean" - with drawings of strawberries to drive home the point.

"It is our heritage. It is who we are," said Amy Wald, executive director of the town's Chamber of Commerce.

Today, tourism from strawberries is more valuable than the berries themselves, she said. The town's annual Middle Tennessee Strawberry Festival last month drew 20,000 visitors.

"That's double the daytime population of this town. That's huge," Wald said. "It's a big revenue producer."

Cattle farmers hit, too

For Gallatin cattle farmer Frank Freels, this is the worst year since the drought of 1984 and it all boils down to the economy.

"It's just tough right now because everything has gotten so high, especially parts for tractors and machinery," Freels said. "You can buy hay cheaper now than you can cut it, and the cattle prices are not high enough to match everything else. It's just tough times right now and I don't know if it's going to get better or worse."

Moving past tradition

New farms are still sprouting up, the federal ag census said. They typically are about half the size of older farms and are run by younger people.

Farmers increasingly are dabbling in organic fruits and vegetables that urbanites crave, said Givens, the agriculture commissioner, and the state's growing immigrant population has made Tennessee the nation's second-biggest producer of meat goats.

While farmers turn to new products, the state is helping them find more efficient and profitable ways of doing business.

Tennessee has provided nearly $38 million in matching grants to farmers over the past four years. The money helps pay for genetics improvements, better hay and grain storage, marketing programs and farmers' efforts to branch out into new enterprises connected to the land.

Moving forward, it will be harder for whole towns to build economies around farm products the way some did with crops like tobacco, Givens said.

But where growth is happening, farming could still tie communities together at a smaller level. If the demand for organic fruits and vegetables continues to rise, the commissioner said, so could smaller community gardens. That has happened outside towns like Chicago.

"I think we've still got far greater potential in agricultural production than what we're realizing," he said.

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