Carmen Fernholtz of A-Frame Farm talks about what is important when it comes to Organic Farming. Organics were founded on principles and proper practices.“Do organic not because the price is better, but because it’s the right thing to do for the soil for society and for yourself.”Be sure to check out A-Frame Farm, Minnesota’s facebook page.
Know Your Farmer | A-Frame Farm, Minnesota
Carmen Fernholtz:
My name is Carmen Fernholtz. My wife, Sally and I farmed about 450 acres certified organic near Madison Minnesota. Madison is located very Western edge of the state. We grow generally the crops in the area corn soybeans small grains that’ll vary from year to year wheat oats barley and some alfalfa.
When you were here earlier today you caught me out in the field. My nephew and brother had both brought to come by not. We were going to take our first go at a harvesting Kernza, Kernza is what we call a perennial wheat. Kernza is a miniature wheat seed.
And I say miniature Yeah, it’s maybe an eighth the size of a regular wheat kernel. To me the biggest piece here is that we can keep the soil covered something growing in there ’12 months of the year minimizing the soil disturbance captivating a lot of carbon and just moving closer and closer to emulating nature.
Carmen & Company
You know there’s a lot of talk out there now about how organic is sort of becoming industrialized and I am nervous about that. I really am because back in the early 70s. I was actually helping write some of the rules in organics and eventually, the government adapted some of these things and put them into the standards. But organics was always founded on principles, as well as production practices. And to me, the principle is based on West Jackson’s famous quote and it’s probably not his original but anyway, I always credit him with it, eyes to acres ratio.
We need to increase instead of decrease the eyes to acres ratio and that’s the principle that I’ve always wanted to live on. And so it’s not free. It costs something. But look at what you’re doing then and protecting the environment enhancing the communities and everybody just does better really today. When I look back over the years, I’ve been doing it. I’m starting to see some pressures that I’m a little nervous about.
A-Frame Farm has organic integrity
I’ve always said over and over and over. Organic is 95% integrity. But another good friend of mine says expect what you inspect. And so if we’re not doing proper oversight Human nature says we’re going to try and cut corners again, when we look at the standards. And we look at and be real direct. We look at the standards of hydroponics and we look at housing for livestock.
Those standards are not what we had originally intended when we started putting together these standards that we wanted access to outdoors. We wanted that crops growing in the soils is what we wanted. And when we start cutting those corners it doesn’t stop there. Patrick Lee you said when the organic bill was signed he said organic is a choice.
It’s not a directive. It’s a choice. And so you as a farmer and you as a consumer have this choice. And you can choose or not choose it.
We can keep those standards strict we can maintain that strictness because if you don’t like them, then you find a different source of your food. But this is what we want. This is the choice that we’ve made.
You know a topic today is climate change and what’s causing it and who is Responsible. With perennials in the landscape we’re taking a lot of that carbon out of the air and storing it back down in the soil. And if we look at some of the Kerns of, for example, they’re down 8, 10, 12 feet. Those roots are down there forever and they’ve take in carbon down there with them.
More scientists tell you that it’s the increase of CO2 in the air that’s causing climate change. So we can pull that back out, put it in the ground. It’s a win-win-win. It’s a win for the farmer, environment, consumer, and for the soil.
