ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Fourth generation peanut farmer Luke Green of Banks, Ala., produces organically grown peanuts, markets them in his peanut butter and his small family farm thrives economically when others near him are closing.
In O'Donnell, Texas, where cotton is king but the market is glutted, growers within the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Co-op are getting higher prices than conventional growers on their organically grown cotton from clothing manufacturers and feminine hygiene product makers.
Duncan Hilchey, senior extension associate in rural sociology in Cornell's Farming Alternatives Program, said Luke Green and the Texas co-op are flourishing while others struggle because they are part of the "new agriculture." Hilchey spoke last week on "The New Agriculture: Forging Links Between Producers and Consumers" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
Although the new agriculture is growing, the researcher still believes it is a fragile and vulnerable segment of the industry. And he believes that with proper economic cultivation, there is room for small family farming to thrive. New agriculture -- a way for traditional, small family farms to compete in the changing marketplace -- places emphasis on new ideas, entrepreneurship and unique marketing strategies to sustain business, said Hilchey. "I estimate that as much as 15 percent of the farms in the U.S. are engaged in some kind of new-agriculture activity."
Hilchey described new agriculture as being more oriented toward local markets than conventional agriculture; more labor, land and management intensive; more concerned with high-quality and value-added products and less with quantity (yield) and least-cost production practices. Finally, he said, new agriculture tends to forge direct market links to consumers.
Specifically, new agriculture activity can have many forms, such as organic farming, community-supported agriculture farms, farmers' markets, small-scale food enterprises, small-scale grower cooperatives and direct marketing of goods produced on the farm.
"Small-scale food enterprises have exploded; it's the only segment of the food manufacturing industry in a growth phase right now," Hilchey said. "From the farm kitchens and home kitchens, most of the innovation in the food industry is coming out of small-scale processors. Large food corporations have all but gutted their research-and-development areas and opted for acquiring and merging with these small-scale food enterprises."
In the mid-1960s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were two dozen farmers' markets in the United States. Today there are 2,200. "When it comes to agricultural direct marketing, we're the envy of the world," Hilchey said.
But the new agriculture is subject to the market's changing winds. Hilchey said supermarkets have recognized that consumers like fresh, local products, and they are beginning to imitate farmers' markets in their own marketing.
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