Criteria For Choosing a Place To Grow 50,000 Garlic

I'm looking for a plot to plant an acre of garlic in October to November, about 50,000 cloves. They'll come from the approximately 8,000 bulbs I expect to harvest in July. I've been considering 5-6 farms to plant the garlic.  Thanks to my internship last year I have an idea of the questions to ask. But I've found that it's still a bit of a mystery to choose the "correct" place. I know what questions to ask, but figuring out what to do with the answers is another thing. Some of the questions I've used in my query are listed here. Items marked with a #1 are a priority, 2 are less important.

• Location    
• Growing Zone   
• Are Owners Aware of the features of their farm?    1
• Owner is Ok For Peter to get garlic plot Organic Certified?    1
• What is the Past Growing method in proposed garlic plot?    1
• Crop Rotation History    1
• Distance to Other Alliums on farm or neighbour's farm (to protect against disease such as stem and bulb nematode)?   
• Land Orientation & Slope   
• Soil Type    1
• Soil Properties    1
• Weed Types
• Access to Irrigation
• Exposure to wind
• Opportunity to plant living mulch in late Aug? 
• Cost to Access Certified Organic Compost    2
• Cost to Access Certified Organic Mulch    2
• Does soil Requires Spring Preparation for Oct, 2011 Planting?    2
• Access to min 1 ½ acres in 2011    2
• Potential To Expand to more acreage  in 2012 and beyond?    3

• Access to Labour in That Area?    2
• Access to Machines and reliable Repair    1
• Access to Handheld Tools    2
• Access To Curing Shed    1-2
• Access to Electricity? (for fan)   
• Access to Long term Storage    2

• Overnite Accomodation?   
• Ok To Bring Workers onto land?   
• Access To Outhouse (for workers)    2
• Access to Markets    2
• Someone to keep an eye on plot     2
• Consideration (method of payment)
• Opportunity to learn from farm owner    3
• Does Owner have Tax Exemption Certificate? (maybe they can get it through my garlic sales)?   
• What type of liability insurance do they have?
• Other Issues   

Baby Steps

My friend Eric is wanting to get into farming and is considering various possibilities. He has a full time city-based job. It reminds me of where I was two years ago, when I resigned from my job in New York, and I was back in Toronto. To get into farming represents a massive swtich for most people. It's much more than making a career change. How would a person start on this quest? What baby steps could a person take?

Here are some ideas on how to start into farming. Some seem trivial, but they are a way to reintroduce us city dwellers back to nature. Along the way you'll discover if you really ant to farm

1. Buy a package of seeds and plant them (better yet, invite someone to plant the seeds with you).
2. Plant a window box in your home or at the office.
3. Go to a farmer' market and get to know the farmers. Ask if you can visit their farm.
4. Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where you get a basket of produce every week for the season. Many CSA farms will invite customers to visit their farm, and some will welcome volunteers.
5. Start a compost pile, either with red wriggler worms or a hot compost. You'll be amazed to watch vegetables break down. It's a great science experiment for kids.
6. Start a garden on your balcony or in your backyard.
7. Join a community garden or volunteer with one.
8. Watch for other city-based opportunities, such as volunteering to install a roof top garden.

If you feel bold, you could intern on a farm or become a woofer. Woofers are people who volunteer on farms for short periods of time. It's like being an intern but it's a lesser level of commitment for both the volunteer and the farmer. Go to "World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms" - http://www.wwoof.org/.

The quantum leap would be to buy a farm. I know city-based people who bought a farm without any experience. Many wish they'd first interned and learned more about farming before buying their own farm.

Start with small steps. It will open up your mind and lead you to like-minded people and exciting idea.

Madison Avenue On the Farm

As I'm writing my Garlic Plan for the farm business course I'm taking through Everdale (Farmers Growing Farmers), there are two motivations. One is a concern about farm issues, including food security and the need to expand our production of locally produced food, to increase local food prices and, the need to increase peoples' awareness of the importance of locally produced food, one of which is locally grown garlic. My other motivation is concerned with the sales and marketing and distribution aspect of garlic. In this area I'm looking at garlic as a product, and what's the best way to develop this product. I'm using techniques that, I hope, are similar to what a marketing company does when they develop a product.

The difference for me is that I feel a greater level of satisfaction doing product development for my locally grown garlic than if it were say, a new design for a soup spoon. We don't need for people to buy another set of soup spoons, but we do need people to buy more local food, and for farmers to be paid a fair price for their hard work in producing that food.

I do find however, that I sometimes need to temper my position, as some people seem to feel that being a farmer and a business person do not belong together. I disagree. I think that a farm can be a platform to help educate people about local agriculture, and it can also be a well run business, marketing strategies and all. The more that farmers can borrow from the marketing methods of Madison Avenue the better off they'll be. There is a limit, however.

Perhaps a Few Guidlines are:
Farmers must recieve a fair price - this means that the farmer has to do a better job of recognizing his/her value. Only in this way will they do a better job of negotiating price.
Farmers must find more ways to sell directly to Consumers - Middlemen mean less profit and control for farmers. A problem is that there are not many direct sales options, aside from CSA (community supported agriculture), on-farm sales, and farmers' markets. There are however, more and more farm product distribution models emerging, such as 100 Mile Market, which gather and distribute farm products direct to consumers. Also, there are more companies which are creating added value products from local ingredients, such as Easy As Pie.

These companies remove the burden of conducting marketing and distribution from the farmer, but these new middle men are more philosophically aligned with farmers and, I assume more willing to negotiate a fair price. They are not the people and companies pushing cereal at the supermarket, where farmers receive a mere fraction of the profits. We need more of this new type of distribution model, since CSAs, farmers' markets and on-farm sales are limited in their reach.

(There are false farm friends emerging. These are corporate entities which purport to be supportive of farmers, and are not. As the demand for local produce grows it's not surprising to see corporate motivated companies pretending to be farm friendly. More on this later).

Farm Products Must be true to the cause - we can't get to the point where we're selling products just to increase the bottom line, without regard for other factors. For example, Greenhouse tomatoes grown in oil-fueled greenhouses may be stretching the limit. If the idea of organic and local farming is to lessen our dependence on petroleum-based fertilizer and oil-dependent global transportation, then raising oil-heated greenhouse tomatoes, although "local," would be a false solution, a mirage. Perhaps the solution is to sell tomatoe-based preserves in the winter - relish, tomatoe soup, etc. Or, we simply get used to the idea of not having tomatoes in the winter. And when summer comes, those lush heirloom tomatoes taste all the better.