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      ATTRAnews DIGEST
      The Electronic ATTRA Newsletter
      September 1998
       

      Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA)
      P.O. BOX 3657
      FAYETTEVILLE, AR 72702
      PHONE: 1-800-346-9140 --- FAX: (501) 442-9842

      CONTENTS:
      NCSA urges Gore to insure "strong, credible" organic rule
      Plans underway for National Small Farm Conference Oct. 12-15, '99
      38 ATTRA info packets downloadable on our WWW homepage
      Varied farm backgrounds help ATTRA staffers to empathize, put best foot forward for farm families
      Senate/House to conference on sustainable ag program FY99 budgets
      NCSA volunteers needed to promote federal sustainable ag policies
      New report profiles farmers using alternative pest management
      SAN issues second edition of Managing Cover Crops Profitably
      Today's quote


      NCSA urges Gore to insure "strong, credible" organic rule

      In a letter-writing campaign launched by the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (NCSA), Vice President Al Gore is being urged to exert his influence on the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) to enact a "strong, credible" National Organic Program (NOP) Rule.

      The NCSA appeal comes on the wings of a landmark number of comments that USDA received last spring concerning its draft of the Rule. Many of the 250,000 individuals and organizations offering public comment were upset that the USDA had ignored recommendations put forth by the respected National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), that was created in 1992 by Congress to write the Rule. In response to the protests, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman said the USDA would issue a new proposed Rule later this year and that the draft would not contain three items (called the "Big Three") that garnered the fiercest protests - genetically engineered food, irradiated food and food grown in municipal sewage sludge.

      The NCSA is distributing fliers that urge people to send Gore - a potential presidential hopeful -a letter, fax or email message.

      NCSA staffers suggest that people writing to Gore, "Be brief and to the point." People with little time to write are reminded: "A quick note is much better than none at all."

      Talking-points

      They offer the following talking-points for messages to Gore:

    • Tell Gore why organic standards are important to you.

    • Recommend that the USDA revised rule be posted for another round of public comment.

    • It is not enough that the USDA simply addresses the "Big Three" issue. The revision must be true to the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA) and all NOSB recommendations, recognize the authority of NOSB as recognized in the OFPA, include the determinations of the NOSB of approved and prohibited substances for the National List, and keep faith with consumer demands expressed in the comments.

    • The revision must respect current certification systems and establish an effective enforcement system. The revised rule should not be biased against small and medium-sized organic farms and certification programs that built the organic industry.

    • Organic livestock standards must require organic feed, limit the use of antibiotics and not allow factory farming.

    • USDA should not attempt to prohibit eco-labels that describe different methods of production.
    • To obtain the Action Alert flier and a sample letter to VP Gore, contact NCSA at P.O. Box 396, Pine Bush, NY 12566 Phone (914)744-8448, Fax (914)744-8477, Email: campaign@ magiccarpet.com

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      Plans underway for National Small Farm Conference Oct. 12-15, '99

      ATTRA is one of many agricultural organizations around the U.S. helping to plan the Second Annual USDA National Small Farm Conference from Oct. 12-15, 1999, at the Regal Riverfront Hotel in St. Louis.

      Titled "Building Partnerships for the 21st Century," the conference will provide an opportunity for those who work closely with small farmers to share ideas and examine new approaches. Audience participants would include leaders from the small farm community, educators, government personnel and officials, and non-governmental organizations.

      Solicitations for poster papers and exhibit booth space reservations will be sent this fall. A small number of scholarships are available (expense paid travel) for students making presentations and small farmers and ranchers who can take good ideas back to their communities or organizations.

      For further information or to submit conference suggestions, please contact:

    • Dyremple Marsh, Lincoln University, Jefferson City, MO; Phone: 573-681-5550

    • Norlin Hein, University of Missouri, Columbia. Phone: 573-882-9385

    • Denis Ebodaghe, USDA-CSREES, Phone: 202-401-4385, email: debodaghe@reeusda.gov

    • Mickie Swisher, USDA-CSREES/UFL, Phone: 202-401-4900



    • The Second Annual National Small Farm Conference will include sessions on:

    • Information sharing

    • Innovative approaches to small farm programming

    • Skills development, such as "how to develop your tool kit for direct marketing"

    • Follow-up reports on issues of the "1st Annual" Nashville conference

    • Progress report on strategies for implementing the recommendations as outlined by the National Commission on Small Farms

    • Special emphasis on collaboration and partnership as a method to achieve a competitive market advantage
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      38 ATTRA info packets downloadable on our WWW homepage

      Readers with Internet access can now download 38 ATTRA informational packets on the World Wide Web at: www.attra.org. Also on the homepage is the latest edition of the ATTRA Materials List which describes all 66 of ATTRA's standard materials. The website materials are:

      Horticulture:
      Lavender as an Alternative Crop
      Organic Blueberry Production
      Organic Culture of Bramble Fruit
      Organic Cranberry Production
      Herb Production & Marketing
      Mushroom Cultivation & Marketing
      Organic Potting Mixes
      Overview of Organic Fruit Production
      Postharvest Handling of Fruits & Vegetables
      Season Extension Techniques for Market Gardeners
      St. Johnswort as an Alternative Crop
      Sustainable Pecan Production
      Sustainable Small-Scale Nursery Production

      Marketing:
      Alternative Beef Marketing
      Community Supported Agriculture
      Direct Marketing
      Marketing Channels: Pick-Your-Own & Agri-Entertainment
      Organic Certification
      Resources for Organic Marketing

      Livestock:
      Beef Farm Sustainability Check Sheet
      Sustainable Beef Production
      Dairy Products On-Farm
      Matching Livestock and Forage Resource in Controlled Grazing
      Worms for Composting (Vermicomposting)

      Pest Management:
      Alternative Nematode Control
      Compost Teas for Plant Disease Control
      Disease Suppressive Potting Mixes
      Farmscaping to Enhance Biological Control
      Integrated Pest Management (IPM)

      Alternative Farming Systems:
      Introduction to Permaculture
      Making the Transition to Sustainable Farming

      Sustainable Ag Resources:
      Alternative Seed Suppliers -- Untreated, Heirloom, Organic
      Alternative Soil Testing Laboratories
      Internships, Apprenticeships, & Sustainable Curricula
      Sources for Organic Fertilizers & Amendments
      Sustainable Ag Organizations & Publications
      Sustainable Agriculture Curricula-K-12
      University Programs and Contacts in Sustainable Agriculture

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      Varied farm backgrounds help ATTRA staffers to empathize, put best foot forward for farm families

      A recent caller to ATTRA asked if any of our staff members had actual farm experience. "To tell it like it is, you got to know how it is," he quipped. Well yes, many of us were raised on farms, have served in the Cooperative Extension Service, worked as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign fields, and been involved in agribusiness. A few of us also spend some of our time on a commercial basis in the soil, barnyard and truck patch.

      ATTRA technical specialist Guy Ames and his wife, Carolyn, ship nursery fruit plants nationwide from their Ames' Orchard & Nursery, located in the Ozark Mountains near ATTRA offices. The extensive nursery and an orchard operation, which they developed as a "bootstrap" farm business venture over the past 15 years, specializes in disease-resistant fruit varieties for environmentally-minded fruit growers on the home scale and commercial levels.

      Guy's love for farming - burnished, of course, through the years by bouts of bad weather, crop pests and other setbacks - is something which other ATTRA staffers share. Most staff members have farm backgrounds, have served in the Cooperative Extension Service, worked as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign farm fields, and been involved with various agribusinesses. Several pursue farming endeavors in their free time, though not nearly to the extent of Guy and Carolyn.

      Sheep & cattle to veggies & herbs

      Project manager Teresa Maurer and her husband, Jim, raise Katahdin sheep for meat and ewelamb production. Public information specialist David Zodrow and his wife, Brenda, produce cross-bred Salars cattle. Technical specialist Janet Bachmann markets produce at a local farmer's market from her truck farm. Technical specialist Lane Greer has operated a U-pick flower farm the past three years. Information specialist Katherine Adam experiments with herbs and heirloom vegetables on a large lot near the Fayetteville (AR) town square. Technical specialist Steve Diver has a demonstration roadside flower bed featuring wildfowers, prairie plants, natives, herbaceous perennials and unusual annuals.

      "Our catalog currently describes 70 different varieties of the standard fruits: apples, peaches, plums, berries, etcetera," Guy says. "On the orchard front, we grow and sell apples for the most part, although we also produce blackberries, pears and other fruits. We try to grow things in the most sustainable fashion possible. We market the fruit at the Fayetteville Farmers Market and directly to restaurants. This year, thanks to God and the FDA, we are making and selling apple cider."

      Guy has an MS in horticulture, and before joining ATTRA worked as an educational specialist with the Missouri Fruit Experiment Station and as a research associate with the University of Arkansas Department of Plant Pathology. He draws from these pools of experience - along with his eight years of information research at ATTRA - as he tracks down information about sustainable horticulture production for farmers and other agriculture professionals who call ATTRA. Additionally, Guy's extensive hands-on farm experience enables him to pass along valuable firsthand information to callers and make value judgments about the accuracy and usefulness of information he counters from other sources.

      Technical specialist Lane Greer is in her third year of production in a pick-your-own flower and produce operation on a farm east of Fayetteville. Named Summer's Garden, the farm offers an acre of a variety of cut flowers and vegetables. New this year is the farmstand, where already-picked items are available for sale.

      Flower business blooms

      The farm opens each year around Memorial Day and closes at Halloween. Customers usually live near the farm, in a growing section of Fayetteville. The amount of business increased five-fold from the first year to the second. This encouraged Lane to increase her initial half-acre plot to a full acre.

      Most of Lane's advertising is done by word-of-mouth, but her farm was featured by a local TV station as the only place in the area to grow pick-your-own flowers. Location is key to her operation, since her farm is located on a busy highway.

      The experience helped Lane to better empathize with farmers who call ATTRA. "What a learning curve there is the first year! I never knew how hard farmers worked until now," Lane says. "Just getting ready for the growing season involves a lot of work, like growing your own plugs and scheduling holiday events well ahead of time. It's encouraging to be able to use my training in horticulture to do something I love, and I'm hopeful I'll make money at it some day."

      Urban herb production

      Another ATTRA information specialist, Katherine Adam, who handles ATTRA inquiries about herb production, experiments with herbs, heirloom vegetables, and native vegetation on a half-acre homesite near the historic Fayetteville (AR) Square.

      "Since the days when I had the first snowpeas of the season at the Fayetteville Farmers' Market, occasionally hauled a gallon of dried red clover blossoms to the Natural Foods Co-op, and painstakingly winnowed dried poke and maypop seeds to sell to a mailorder seedsman, I have been curious about different plants, especially those with culinary uses," she says.

      For the Seed Savers Exchange, Katherine (a Life Member) has done trials and grow-outs, and once established the provenance of some "Trail of Tears" bean seed for members of the Cherokee Nation in Oregon. Some of her cultivar descriptions have been appropriated for seed company catalogs.

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      Senate/House to conference on sustainable ag program FY99 budgets

      Most federally-supported sustainable agriculture programs will have level or reduced funding in FY99. The Senate and House are expected to conference on funding amounts in September.

      Amounts approved thus far by Senate and House ag appropriations committees for various sustainable ag programs are:

      • ATTRA: $1.3M, the same as FY98.

      • CFO (Conservation Farm Option): All funds deleted. FY98's appropriation was $15M.

      • CFSA (Community Food Security Act): $2.5M by both House and Senate.

      • EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program): $200M approved by Senate (the same amount as FY98) and $174M allocated by the House.

      • FPP (Farmland Protection Program): All funds deleted.

      • FRA (Fund for Rural America): All funds deleted. The Farm Bill did not authorize any FRA funds for FY98.

      • OFPA (Organic Food Production Act): $1M by both House and Senate, an increase of $500,000 from the FY98.

      • SA-PDP (SARE Professional Development Program): $3.3M, the same as FY98.

      • SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program): $8M, by Senate and House, the same as FY98.

      • WRP (Wetlands Reserve Program): $90.2M by the Senate and $97.7M by the House. FY98 funding was $219M.

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      NCSA volunteers needed to promote federal sustainable ag policies

      People are needed to serve as advocates for the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, a network of more than 200 organizations working for federal policies that support sustainable ag. Volunteers would respond to "Campaign Action Alerts" by taking on such tasks as making phone calls, writing letters or contacting their Congressional representatives.

      Recently, Campaign staff members and volunteers played an important role in convincing the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service to reconsider proposed National Organic Program (NOP) standards. Faced with more than 200,000 protests, the USDA is expected to issue a revised proposal later this year.

      ATTRA staff members Janet Bachmann and Richard Earles are serving as Southern region organizers for the Campaign. They are also working with the policy committee of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) to help develop and promote policies that support sustainable ag in the region.

      For more information or to volunteer for service, please contact Janet or Richard at P.O. Box 3657, Fayetteville, AR 72702, (501)442-9824, janetb@ncatark.uark.edu.

      Readers may also contact: National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, P.O. Box 396, Pine Bush, NY 12566, Phone : (914) 744-8448, Fax: (914) 744-8477, email: campaign@magiccarpet.com.

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      New report profiles farmers using alternative pest management

      Fields of Change: A New Crop of American Farmers Find Alternatives, a report released in July by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), profiles 22 farmers (fruits, vegetables, grains, cotton and dairy) in 16 states who are switching from conventional pest management practices, which are heavily reliant on pesticides, to profitable alternative ag practices that substantially reduce pesticide use.

      "All of the farmers made the conversion from conventional pest management systems to alternative pest management systems while maintaining, and in many cases improving, the profitability of their operations," the report found. The farmers now use alternative techniques such as scouting and monitoring for pest and natural enemy population levels; using precision pesticide application equipment; rotating crops and planting cover crops; switching to biologically-based pest control products; and using conservation tillage, irrigation management, and soil-building.

      "Fields of Change" is $14, plus $3 shipping, from NRDC, Publications Department, 40 West 20th St., New York, N.Y. 10011; (212) 727-4486.

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      SAN issues second edition of Managing Cover Crops Profitably

      To help farmers boost their bottom line while enhancing the environment, a new book from USDA's Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) greatly expands field-ready information on cover crop species and practices proven to build soil and provide a host

      of agronomic benefits. The 212-page Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 2nd Edition features information gleaned from the latest cover crop field trials, lab tests and on-farm experiences from every region of the U.S. It includes management details such as seeding rates and best killing methods, as well as broader considerations of how to design rotations to maximize benefits.

      Fully indexed guide

      Comprehensive chapters on the 18 most promising cover crop species, fact-filled charts and lists of seed suppliers, expert contacts and other relevant publications make the fully indexed guide invaluable for both newcomers and cover crop veterans.

      Range maps for the 18 cover crops help farmers zero in on which ones are best suited for their region. They then can turn to chapters on each species that detail the unique role each cover crop can play. Each chapter provides specific management information about soil preferences, seeding rates, field operations, managing and planting into residue, and cover crop mixtures with other species.

      Comparing species

      The book also features four comprehensive charts that make it easy to compare cover crop species. This section provides recommendations for the best cover crops in 14 bioregions and details 55 factors for each cover crop, describing its benefits, roles, traits and management.

      To order Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 2nd Edition, send $19 to Sustainable Agriculture Publications, Hills Building, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405-0082 (802) 656-0471. Visit the SAN/SARE web site at http://www.sare.org. Bulk discounts are available for 10 or more copies.

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      Today's quote

      "When we think of the loss of farmland, we often think only of a reduction in our ability to produce food and fiber. But rural landscapes have many other functions...Imagine enclosing a city such as New York under a huge plastic dome that allows light to pass but nothing else. The city is cut off from the surrounding countryside. Now imagine the effect of this enclosure on the environment of the city. The air grows stale and polluted, sewage accumulates, and supplies of clean water, raw materials, and food are depleted. Of less immediate concern to the trapped residents, their world no longer includes most other species, opportunities for recreation and aesthetic enjoyment of rural areas, or an environment conducive to rural cultures (can you imagine the Amish maintaining their culture within the dome?). Rural landscapes provide many functions other than food production."

      -- Richard Olson of the Center for Sustainable Agricultural Systems (CSAS) in a new book by Westview Press titled, Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes, that he co-edited with Tom Lyson. Here he also quotes from the 1996 book, Our Ecological Footprint.

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