‘Organic growth’ fuels record-breaking agritourism season, experts say

By Nicholas Simon | Capital News Service

Grandpa Tiny’s Farm in Frankenmouth. Courtesy image.

Michigan farms that offer agricultural tourism opportunities have seen record-breaking attendance over the past two years.

Farm tourism operations were already starting to see growing numbers before the pandemic, with 2019 a banner year for many operations. Then, COVID-19, which spread across the country in 2020, made travelers rethink vacation plans to urban areas.

Hot rural travel destinations like cider mills, corn mazes and U-pick farms were supercharged by the shift, said Wendy Winkel, the president of the Michigan Agritourism Association based in Traverse City.

“2020 was record-breaking, absolutely phenomenal, due to the nature of our businesses,” she said. “Last year was a launchpad — we were excited because it was the re-discovery of farmers markets and local produce. It almost created new habits for buyers. We all gained a lot of new customers.”

Some farmers were apprehensive going into 2021 because they thought things couldn’t get better than last season. But as more farms reported their fall numbers, members of the association were surprised to see even more growth, Winkel said.

“Personally, I’m up 20% from last year,” said Winkel, who owns an historic farm that offers a petting zoo and event venue in Frankenmuth.

The growth over the past two years has been organic, fueled by word of mouth and tradition more than by marketing campaigns, said David Lorenz, the vice president of Travel Michigan.

A young visitor holds a rabbit at Grandpa Tiny’s Farm in Frankenmuth. Courtesy image.

“It’s part of our culture,” Lorenz said. “It’s part of what makes the authentic Michigan travel experience so authentic. It’s real Americana, and it’s something people have been doing well before we had all these devices for entertainment.”

Many farms are looking to expand their tourism offerings. New ventures, like event venues for weddings, are also an increasingly popular option, said Theresa Sisung, an industry relations specialist for the Michigan Farm Bureau.

In an effort to innovate, many operations are looking to traditional side businesses like butcheries and dairies to diversify their income. Farms that invested in such operations have been big winners over the past two years, Sisung said.

“Throughout 2020, and now into 2021, there was a really big rise in the locally grown movement as folks were struggling to find things in the grocery store,” Sisung said. “So there was an uptick in profits, especially among operations that have a market at their farm.”

Experts like Winkel say Michigan farmers can expect increased visitation rates to stick around because of broader changes in consumer habits and because a large percentage of first-time visitors return.

“We’re hopeful that the pandemic, as horrible as it is, was an opportunity for agritourism to re-ignite and catch fire,” she said.

Lorenz said farmers should expect more growth in the coming years as local customers come back and out-of-state visitors start returning in large numbers.

The Pure Michigan campaign has increased efforts in recent years to advertise seasonal rural experiences like fall leaf tours and promote brand awareness of Michigan products in cities across the country, he said.

“We have over 130 varieties of deciduous trees,” Lorenz said. “Unlike out East where they tend to grow together in big stands of ash or maple, in Michigan you’re more likely to see a great variety of fall colors all mixed in that same part of the forest.”

Recently, this type of marketing has been effective in Southern cities that can’t offer seasonal or rural opportunities. That brand awareness is beneficial to Michigan farms because it expands demand for their products to markets across the country, Lorenz said.

Trendy restaurants in the Dallas area have started to sell a variety of Michigan products like beer from the Saugatuck, Holland and Grand Rapids area, as well as a $15 plate of french toast that features Michigan-grown blueberries.

Sisung said she thinks growing interest in agricultural products and experiences indicates a broader cultural shift towards authenticity and tradition, a trend farms are more than willing to embrace going forward.

“You see it everywhere now, you see everyone is talking about pumpkin spice,” Sisung said. “I think it was just more people looking for the happy, they were looking for the positive, they were ready for fall instead of pushing it back.

“The same thing is happening with Christmas—people are pulling forward the happy.”

“That definitely bodes well for us,” Sisung said. “It’s definitely a big positive out of all this.”

Federal regulations hinder farming with drones

This scan shows a cornfield as seen from a drone. Green and yellow indicate healthy plants and red indicates bare soil, dead plants or, in this case, an insect infestation. Image: MSU RS&GIS

By Nicholas Simon
Capital News Service

In the sky above one of the largest Christmas tree farms in North America, visitors are more likely to hear the whirring blades of a drone helicopter than the jingle of Santa’s sleigh.

“We fly over a field and, using drones, we collect imagery and create 3-D models that help us determine how tall the trees are and help determine a count of those trees,” said Kate Dodde, a drone pilot for the Dutchman Tree Farms in Manton in Northwest Michigan, south of Traverse City.

Other Michigan farmers across the state say that the use of drones could revolutionize farming, but researchers working with drones say federal laws fail to meet their needs.

“You have to be in sight of the aircraft with unaided vision and you can’t use binoculars.” said Robert Goodwin, project manager for Michigan State University’s RS&GIS, which stands for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System. “You can use extra people in the field with radio contact to keep an eye on it. But, if your using drones you’re trying to limit labor, not bring more people into the field.”

Farm advocates say that regulations confuse farmers who would otherwise adopt the technology.

“I think a lot of farmers are still trying to figure out what they all need to do for regulations,” said Theresa Sisung, the industry relations specialist for the Michigan Farm Bureau. “It depends on what they want to do with their drone.”

Custom software allows the drone to identify the quantity and height of Christmas trees in a certain plot. Inventory like this used to require a team of people taking measurements for each tree by hand. Image: MSU RS&GIS

The Federal Aviation Administration determines which regulations and permits apply to drones based on how high they fly, how much they can lift and whether they are for commercial or private use, Sisung said.

Farmers have found temporary workarounds to restrictions, such as the need to keep the craft in sight.

“We bought a bigger drone; we went from a (12-inch) drone to a 3-foot-wide drone   that’s bright orange,” Dodde said. “With that, we can fly further and farther because we can see it.”

The FAA uses the Advanced Aviation Advisory Committee to regulate commercial drones. Until recently none of its members represented farmers.

In January, Congress passed a bill introduced by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, that expanded the advisory committee to include farm and local government organizations and representatives.

“Rural America deserves a seat at the decision-making table, and farmers across Michigan must have access to every opportunity to utilize drone technology to improve their business,” Peters said in a prepared statement.

The primary use of drones is surveying and determining a plants’ health by the color of its leaves. Farmers can tell much about a crop based on this data, researchers say.

Goodwin’s team is working with a drone that carries cameras that gather 10 times as much data as earlier drones. Researchers can view over 500 color spectrums to find the best one for an application. Identifying emerging diseases and novel insect infestations are two applications for this technology, Goodwin said.

The industry is in its infancy and farmers are discovering new applications daily, Dodde said.

Getting nearly instantaneous measurements is an improvement over the old system of sending an army out into the field with measuring sticks and a tally counter, she said.

This is especially true during a nationwide Christmas tree shortage, which gives the farm an advantage over the competition.

“In our industry, you sell a tree based on how tall it is,” Dodde said. “So it’s really helped, especially right now where supply of Christmas trees are tight.”

Michigan seed libraries grow food resilience

The seed library at the Lucile E. Dearth Union Township Library in Union City, Michigan, provides seeds and other gardening resources. Image: Michigan Seed Library Network

By Kayla Nelsen

More than 650 public libraries, garden and community centers across Michigan will receive packets of Boston Pickling Cucumber seeds next spring as a part of a seed saving and swapping program.

Seed saving is the practice of collecting and storing mature seeds for planting in subsequent growing seasons. As with books at traditional libraries, seed libraries contain seeds that circulate among community members. Once the original seed is planted and matured, the new seeds from the fruit are harvested and returned to the library to restart the cycle.

The program, called One Seed, One State, is organized by the Michigan Seed Library Network. The program unites the state in a learning experience, said founder Bevin Cohen.

Michigan Seed Library Network founder Bevin Cohen promotes seed libraries at a seed swap in Midland, Michigan. Image: Michigan Seed Library Network

“Hopefully we’re giving people a chance to get their foot in the door to see what seed saving is all about,” he said. “Everybody’s growing the same plant, so it’s a shared experience.”

The Michigan Seed Library Network was created in 2018 with only about 30 seed-swapping locations, Cohen said. Now Michigan has more than 100 of the 400 seed libraries in the country.

“I realized that I was teaching the same concepts and ideas, answering the same questions at each library that I visited,” Cohen said. “So I thought we needed a network, an umbrella, if you will, a hub for resources.”

It is the only seed saving network in the region that functions as a state-wide alliance. Cohen said he hopes the network will lead the region in making seed saving more accessible.

The network launched as a website, then became a nonprofit organization in 2019, said board member Pam Quackenbush. The network functions as a resource for independent seed savers and newly-started seed libraries. The website provides a seed library locating map, how-to guides and promotional materials.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1eGoFBAq1TZO6yJcI9OdiqvBDc2Ootv4v

Michigan has more than 100 of the 400 seed libraries in the United States. Map: Michigan Seed Library Network

The growth of seed libraries is due to increasing recognition of seed saving as a way to combat the loss of crop diversity from commercialization, said Deborah Lynch, the director of the Grosse Pointe Grows seed saving program and a librarian at the Grosse Pointe Public Library Ewald Branch.

“The loss of diversity puts us at a disadvantage when things go wrong,” Lynch said. “If we have local communities conserving the genetic material of different varieties, that could actually be a saving grace for us.”

Cohen said seed saving is at the root of food security, as conserving genetic material increases the nutritional quality of crops.

“When we save our seeds from our own gardens, they adapt to our local climates and that’s going to ensure more vibrant plants, which is the cornerstone to food security,” Cohen said. “Food is only as local as the seed it grows from.”

The Michigan Seed Library Network is profiling seed libraries on its website. With further development, the network hopes to become a nationwide seed library-planting resource, Quackenbush said.

Seed packets in the seed library cabinet at the Herrick District Library in Holland, Michigan. Image: Michigan Seed Library Network

“Baby steps is where we want to start with this,” Cohen said. “When we do things we’ve never done before, it can seem daunting.

“But really, people have been seed savers since the dawn of agriculture. If you wanted to eat food, you had to grow it. And if you wanted to grow that food, you had to save your seeds,” he said.

Climate change threatens wild bees that blueberries need

By Eric Freedman

Extreme weather tied to climate change poses a greater threat than insecticides to the wild bee populations that are essential to Michigan blueberry growers, a recent study says.

Growing blueberries in Michigan. Image: MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Wild bees, which pollinate blueberries more effectively than honeybees and bumblebees, are subject to two major stressors that cause strain or tension: extreme weather events such as drought, storms and early freezes, as well as chemicals in insecticides.

Blueberries are big business in the state, which grows about 100 million pounds each year, according to Michigan State University Extension. M

The new research results highlight the importance of providing suitable habitat for wild bees, according to Julianna Wilson, a co-author of the study and the interim tree fruit entomology specialist at MSU Extension.. about 100 million pounds of blueberries every year,

The study involved three rounds of trapping wild bees over a 15-year period at 15 highbush blueberry farms in Ottawa, Allegan and Van Buren counties. Researchers found 35% of the 162 wild bee species known in Michigan.

Locations of 15 blueberry farms in Southwest Michigan in the study. Image: “Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment”

Those counties, as well as Berrien and Muskegon, make up the state’s primary blueberry- growing region, according to the Michigan Ag Council.

They discovered that bee abundance – the number captured in traps – dropped by 61% and species richness – the number of species present – dropped by 33% between the first (2004-06) and second (2013-14) sampling periods.

Why the dramatic decline?

The study cited “extreme” weather in spring 2012 – right before the second testing period – when the Great Lakes region “experienced record-high temperatures in March, causing early flowering of spring-blooming trees and shrubs and early emergence of bees. This was followed by hard freezes in April, causing widespread loss of flowers and a subsequent reduction in fruit crop yields.”

There was a “limited recovery in species abundance and richness” in the third sampling period (2017-18). During that time, “some species showed dramatic species declines,” while others showed “stable or increasing prevalence,” according to the study in the journal “Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment.”

The authors are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, MSU, University of Manitoba and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation,

Some bee species are more vulnerable than others to such situations, the study said, and “extreme hot or cold weather conditions are likely to affect survival of species, especially those at the northern limit of their distribution.”

Rising spring temperatures cause plants to leave winter dormancy earlier, it said, thus putting flowers at higher risk from frost damage and putting bees that depend on those flowers at higher risk.

As for pesticides, the study said, “In agricultural systems, the increased prevalence of invasive pest species can make crop management more reliant on insecticides (that are) harmful to beneficial insects, including pollinators” such as bees.

Shelly Hartmann, a co-owner of True Blue Farms in Grand Junction and a member of the Michigan Blueberry Commission, said, “For many years Michigan blueberry farmers have supported a wide diversity of bees.

“Growers have installed pollinator plantings to support wild bees, they avoid spraying in the daytime when bees are active, they are implementing integrated pest management and they select the least toxic option, when possible, to control the pests,” said Hartmann, who also chairs the California-based U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council.

The study found that, contrary to what many people thought, pest management problems aren’t the major challenge facing those wild bees.

Wilson said, “The bees we were talking about are a spring-active bees, and pest management program are later in summer when those bees aren’t around anymore.”

Hartmann said, “Growers are balancing multiple goals and are focused on delivering a safe, healthy nutritious product to the marketplace while also supporting the land on which they farm.

“Growers work hard to protect and enhance their environment and wellbeing every chance we get.,” she said.

Not all is gloom-and-doom, however.

Wild bees, Wilson said, have evolved “to take advantage of a lot of opportunities and niches in the environment.

And if growers know that wild bees are more productive pollinators than honey bees and bumblebees, they have an incentive to preserve and provide habitat for the bees, she said.

The study said a recovery in the richness of bee species suggests that populations “are relatively robust to these types of perturbations,” referring to extreme weather events.

It called for consistent monitoring of wild bees at the species level to determine the status of populations and to identify species at highest risk.

Hartmann said, “In closing, bees are our friends.”

Pandemic tests resiliency of community supported agriculture

By Andrea Vera

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world, a devastating scenario for local growers loomed on the horizon.

A weekly CSA share of tomatoes, bell peppers, okra, potatoes, beans, eggplant, garlic and squash. Image: Wikipedia.

Small farmers already had a hard time competing with large corporations when supplying people with fresh produce, but quarantine and lockdown orders had the potential to completely cut off farmers from their customer communities.

Before the pandemic, many small farmers relied largely on cooperative partnerships with consumers and local organizations for their day-to-day business.

That relationship, dubbed community supported agriculture (CSA), frequently takes the form of a share program to which consumers subscribe ahead of the growing season, entitling them to a share of fresh, high-quality produce each week.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County in Ithaca, New York, reports that CSA programs guarantee growers an income, discourage waste in production and consumption, and preserve environmental integrity by encouraging crop diversity.

NPR reports that investing in CSA and other local agriculture programs has become increasingly appealing for U.S. farmers at a time when disrupted supply chains have heightened their economic uncertainty.

Prior to the pandemic, Renee Delaney, the founder of Small Scale Farms in Hamilton, Ontario, found herself doing everything she could to improve the Canadian food system after struggling as a single mother to feed healthy foods to her growing boys.

Delaney turned to growing her own fruits and vegetables and soon learned the value of sourcing local produce when it came to her family’s health, the sustainability of agriculture and the resiliency of the local economy.

Opening her marketplace, what she calls a “food hub,” right as the pandemic made a turn for the worse, Delaney used her community connections to start a large-scale CSA program that sourced produce and specialty goods such as honey and beef jerky from several farmers, supplementing that with some of the food she was growing herself.

Around the same time, restaurants were shutting down and many people were fearful of potential exposure at the grocery store.

Almost immediately, Delaney’s sales shot through the roof, reaching upwards of 400 boxes each week after having just opened her CSA.

“I’d never felt that sort of support before,” she explains.

As a small business, and a new one at that, Small Scale Farms was overwhelmed with the influx of CSA subscriptions and had a hard time organizing sufficient staff to run delivery and pickup orders.

Pushed into the deep end, Small Scale Farms opted to grow its online operations and address understaffing problems sooner than planned. Those fixes, however, ultimately consumed the extra profit from increased customer demand.

Then restrictions were lifted.

“They forget about the farmer,” Delaney said, as her sales plummeted and customers flocked back to Walmart for their groceries.

It’s all about convenience for the consumer, Delaney noticed.

As soon as another lockdown went into effect in Ontario, Delaney saw another spike in her CSA subscriptions.

Such ups and downs make running a profitable business tough.

Delaney characterized her pandemic experience running her CSA as “neither positive or negative – it just is.”

Some 200 miles to the east in Trumansburg, New York, Ian Merwin and his wife own and operate Black Diamond Farm and Cider.

Known for fresh fruit and hard ciders, they run two popular CSA programs directly from their farm, in addition to selling their cakes and ciders to restaurants, bars and grocery stores.

Merwin highlights the stability that CSA programs provide his family: “It’s always nice to get the money up front instead of having to make it on a weekly basis over a 3-month period.”

But the stability that comes from the guaranteed income so many CSA farmers rely on was put at risk due to COVID-19.

While Delaney worried about not having enough workers to fill incoming orders, Merwin expressed unease when it came to keeping his workers employed. “Helping us keep people working, that was my biggest concern.”

Thanks to the Paycheck Protection Program and government grants, Black Diamond Farm was able to continue its operations at full capacity through the pandemic, avoiding layoffs.

Shifting operations quickly to curbside pickup with mask requirements for customers and employees, people were kept safe while maintaining a steady stream of business.

Unlike Small Scale Farms, Black Diamond Farm didn’t see much fluctuation in its CSA membership throughout the pandemic.

Due to storage capacity, it has a limit of 60 subscriptions each season, but Merwin estimates that the number could have doubled without a cap.

There was a drop in sales to restaurants and bars due to lockdowns, but online sales nearly made up for that loss as customers took advantage of the safety and convenience of delivery.

With at least 80% of its CSA customers being regulars, Merwin said he doesn’t envision his sales dropping off when restrictions are lifted.

Delaney says that for CSA farms without the consistency of the Black Diamond Farm’s clientele, creating partnerships and fostering community collaborations are perhaps the most important ways to sustain and grow sales.

“Creating a sustainable food system should be a no-brainer,” Delaney says. “It’s a no-brainer to keep the money in the community, besides the fact that it’s fresher and healthier.”

To find and support a CSA program near you, consult the USDA’s Local Food Directory.