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After Jim and Moie Crawford
switched from wholesale to direct marketing, their profits soared.
Photo by Chris Fullerton. |
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Jim
and Moie Crawford
Hustontown, Pennsylvania
Summary of Operation
More
than 40 varieties of organically grown vegetables on 25 acres
200 laying chickens
Co-founders of a 20-member organic marketing cooperative
Problems Addressed
Environmental concerns.
Former gardeners, Jim and Moie Crawford sought to grow vegetables both
profitably and in an environmentally sensitive manner. “We were both
interested in gardening,” says Jim Crawford. Near where he grew up,
a farmer grew produce and sold it in the neighborhood, “so I developed
a desire to do this from my childhood.”
That memory inspired the adult Crawford, who, in 1973, began farming
in ignorance but with a lot of enthusiasm and good connections with
other farmers.
Operating at a profit.
Rather than accept wholesale prices, the Crawfords help found the Tuscarora
Organic Cooperative in 1988. The co-op establishes an efficient marketing
system that helps ensure premium prices the farmers need for economic
success.
Background
Today, the Crawfords use an
intensive management system incorporating crop rotation, cover crops
and organic soil inputs to operate their 25 acres of organically grown
vegetables near Hustontown, Pa. To keep pace with the fresh produce
market, they grow more than 40 crops of vegetables, with from 180 to
200 plantings each year.
The Crawfords direct market their produce at farmers markets in Washington,
D.C., and through the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative.
Focal Point of Operation
— Intensive vegetable production
Intensive management practices allow the Crawfords to raise more than
40 vegetable crops on 25 acres, two cold frames and a greenhouse. “We’re
direct seeding crops in the fields from as early as the end of March,
if the weather permits, all the way into mid-September,” says Crawford.
The only time they are not seeding in the greenhouse is September.
Because their business revolves around the fresh produce market, the
Crawfords strive to extend the season as long as possible in their cool
Pennsylvania climate. They begin harvesting vegetables by the end of
April and are able to sell storage crops such as winter squash, turnips
and potatoes into the winter.
They start early spring and late fall crops under “high tunnels” — plastic-covered
hoop structures measuring 20 by 100 feet. The greenhouse is used mainly
to start plants for field planting, but salad greens also are grown
there to harvest in late winter.
Each season,
the Crawfords move 180 to 200 vegetable plantings from their greenhouses
into the ground, often setting out 500 to 2,000 transplants at a time.
“To make this work, there are lots of things happening in any given
week,” Crawford says. This is no understatement.
To accommodate the consumer market demand for a daily supply of fresh
produce, the Crawfords plant beans 15 times and lettuce 25 times. Corn
is planted nine times with each crop harvested for a week’s marketing,
extending the corn harvest to nine weeks from late July to late September.
Most vegetables are planted anywhere from four to 25 times, with a few
nonperishable crops, like winter squash or pumpkins, planted only once.
Plants started in the greenhouse and transplanted into the field require
hand work. “We have owned three transplanters in our time, but we’ve
ended up discarding all of them because our plots are so small that
we are actually better off transplanting by hand,” says Crawford. “With
only a couple thousand plants at a time and continual adjustments to
the machine for different crops, it isn’t worth the trouble.” They do
save time, however, by using seed planters.
One of their main sources of organic matter is composted manure from
their 200 laying hens, along with manure from local chicken farms. Crawford
also spreads mushroom soil, a fertile byproduct available by the truckload
from southeast Pennsylvania’s active mushroom industry. The “soil” is
actually the spent remains of composted matter such as hay, leaves,
manure and sawdust that mushroom producers use to cultivate their product.
Crawford leaves a portion of the farm fallow each year.
The Crawfords devised a rotation for crops that require more fertility,
especially nitrogen. For example, they’ll plant sweet corn in the first
year on soil freshly spread with manure. They follow the next year with
tomatoes that do not require the same high level of nitrogen. The third
year is a crop of beans or peas that produce their own nitrogen. In
the fourth year, Crawford spreads more manure and plants a crop like
squash that requires a fresher source of nitrogen.
They control insects and weeds primarily through their well-managed
rotations supplemented by hand labor and mechanical cultivation. They
also use beneficial insects to control pest populations and have applied
some biological pesticides, such as Rotenone.
The intensive hand labor required is more than the couple can do themselves.
They hire six apprentices from early spring to late fall who live in
a nearby “tenant house,” which the Crawfords purchased down the road,
or with them on the farm. They employ an additional six to nine hourly
employees, including high school students, during peak times in the
summer months.
Economics and Profitability
Effective marketing of the Crawford’s organic vegetables became a critical
component of their success. “The simple way to do it was to load everything
you had onto a truck and haul it down to the city to the wholesale market
— unload it and get a few bucks,” Crawford says. “We tried that.” They
also would deliver wholesale products to retailers and restaurants.
They soon realized those approaches did not bring prices to justify
the time spent managing sales. It also did not appeal much to buyers,
such as chefs, to deal with an individual farmer when they were used
to choosing from a huge line of offerings from distributors.
“We thought that by forming a cooperative and getting a group of growers
together, we could be more attractive to the market and operate much
more efficiently,” says Crawford.
The Crawfords were one of five growers to form the organic cooperative.
They now have 20 certified organic members with a 5,000-square-foot
office and warehouse equipped with coolers and short- and long- term
storage facilities. By marketing the produce wholesale through their
cooperative, the farmers incur a much lower marketing cost per unit.
Crawford describes the operation as a produce wholesaling distributorship.
Growers bring their produce into the warehouse and co-op staff oversees
sales. The co-op usually makes two deliveries per week to Washington,
D.C., using one or two 16-foot trucks. During peak times, they may make
three deliveries in a week.
Co-op staff promotes sales over the telephone and sends out notices
of produce availability. The major customers of the cooperative are
small retailers and restaurants, and a few institutions. Restaurants
buy about 60 percent of the produce. Co-op sales for the 1999 season
totaled almost $700,000, which represents a steady increase since 1988,
Crawford says. Gross produce sales from their farm alone totaled close
to $250,000 in 1999.
“We have increased our sales by 100 percent in the past 10 years by
becoming more intensive and successful in our practices,” Crawford says.
Environmental Benefits
Crawford credits the increasing
capacity of the farm not only to the intensity with which they farm,
but also to sustainable practices he feels has improved the quality
of the land. The Crawfords are able to maintain fertility in their land,
even under intensive use, through crop rotation and incorporating cover
crops, minerals and other organic matter into the soil.
“To be operating in what we think of as a sustainable way, we’re not
depleting soil,” Crawford says. “We’re building up the resources, which
is very important to us.”
Each year, they test part of their acreage, usually patches that have
generated some problems. They not only look for the soil’s phosphorus,
potassium and organic matter content, but they also evaluate trace elements
like calcium and sulfur. Crawford is proud of the increased fertility
of the soil, which he says has improved in the past 27 years. Those
improvements can be seen in both improved plant quality and increased
production. “We started with land that was not particularly fertile,”
Crawford recalls. “We were at a fairly low point, but we’ve seen an
enormous change in the fertility of our land since.”
The Crawfords’ rotational system is more complex than that of larger,
conventional farmers because of their wide array of crops. “We’re always
sure not to plant any crop in the same ground more often than every
three or four years,” Crawford says.
Community and Quality of
Life Benefits
The Crawfords run an organized
apprentice program they structured to benefit employees as well as help
with their labor needs. Not only does an apprentice receive a monthly
salary and free room and board at the tenant house, but he or she will
likely earn an end-of-season bonus. Moreover, all of the apprentices
participate in educational seminars the Crawfords hold about various
aspects of producing and marketing produce.
Working in the Tuscarora Organic Co-op puts the Crawfords in regular
contact with other farmers who share their values. At about six meetings
a year — and in phone conversations that take place frequently throughout
the season — the group trades information about new techniques, pest
control and the like. “It’s a very important part of co-op,” Crawford
says. “We’re learning all the time.”
Each year, the co-op organizes a production plan that guides members
in what to grow, and how much, to ensure the co-op’s markets are well-covered.
The co-op continues to evolve as farmers hear about Tuscarora — and
its market edge. “We’re not closed and static,” Crawford says. “We continue
to grow and change.”
Transition Advice
Crawford cautions that those wishing to get into a family-sized vegetable
operation may have a difficult time economically. They should expect
to take a lot of risks and put in a lot of hard work. “We’ve survived
because we have spent the last 27 years trying to develop a model that
will support us,” he says.
On a brighter side, Crawford says a cooperative that markets your produce
can make all the difference. “Marketing cooperatively is a fantastic
improvement,” he says. “You are part of a much larger system of which
there is a lot more to offer to the buyer. And you’re much more competitive
with the mainstream.”
The Future
The Crawfords plan to continue
with the vegetable operation and hope to steadily increase the production
on their 25 acres. They have not increased the acreage they farm for
many years, yet they feel it still has potential for more production.
Profile
written by Mary Friesen
For more information:
Jim and Moie Crawford
HCR 71 Box 168-B
Hustontown, PA 17229
(814) 448-3904
moiec@hotmail.com
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