Finding New Ways to Farm in Kentucky
The Community Farming Alliance (CFA) pushed the state to develop a long-range plan that identifies building new markets for Kentucky farmers as the top priority.
by Deborah Webb
Tribby Vice wipes the sweat from his brow after completing the day's milking. He has tobacco to attend, hayfields to cut, and a cabbage field yet to weed on this typical 16-hour day. His Fleming County farm has supported five generations of Vices—three of which still live on the farm. Making sure that his farm continues to provide for future generations has required more of Tribby than long hours in the fields. It has led him to explore new ways of farming that protect the ecosystem. Most recently, it has involved him in the politics of his community, helping farmers diversify out of their dependency on tobacco—the cash crop that has been the mainstay of Kentucky's rural economy.
 |
| Tribby Vice speaks to a reporter at a CFA rally. By: Community Farm Alliance |
Across the state, Reda Clayton escapes the kitchen heat to wait on a customer. She and Lita Goodrich, her chef and business partner, opened their café and gourmet-to-go, Eve's Sweet Revenge, two years ago. As a successful African-American female entrepreneur, Reda is already expert in obtaining credit, making due with scant resources, and implementing a business plan. Six days a week, Reda buys food for the cafe from local farmers, creates her own recipes, is her own publicist, and keeps the books. Reda decided not to open her business in Portland, her Louisville neighborhood, but across town where customers have more disposable income.
Though the urban grit of Louisville and the gentle rolling hills of Fleming County seem to belong to two different worlds, the challenges their residents face are similar. Reda Clayton and Tribby Vice both live in communities plagued by poverty. The average farm income in Kentucky is $12,000, while the average income in Portland is slightly over $8,000. Over the last year, Reda and Tribby have both made the most of a new farmer-led Kentucky initiative to build a local food economy.
Building a New Vision for Kentucky Agriculture
"The summer of 1999 was a rough one. We had a bad drought. Tobacco quotas were cut again.(1) People were losing half of their stable farm income, and they knew it would only get worse," Tribby explained. "The tobacco settlement had been announced.(2) Farmers knew that the companies would try to make up that money from our income and by raising the price of cigarettes. The farm community in Kentucky began to look at those funds as belonging to farmers, as funds that should help us build a new future."
Kentucky, with 90,000 farms, is fourth in the nation in total number of farms and second in number of family farmers per capita. Most Kentucky farmers, including dairy farmers like Tribby, have depended on the stable income provided by Burley tobacco. After the class action lawsuit brought by attorney generals in 48 states, Burley quotas plummeted. Farmers realized that tobacco would no longer sustain Kentucky's agricultural system, and they needed to create a new basis of support for family farms.
Tribby met with other farmers at the Community Farm Alliance (CFA), an organization that has been organizing farmers for 15 years. "The more we talked, the more we realized we had to propose what our dream solution would be. We were forced to think about how we could sustain family farms and our rural communities without tobacco. We began to see that the answer lay in building a more localized food economy," said Tribby.
While Kentucky is a leading farm state, it ranks 43rd in consuming local products. Most Kentucky produce is shipped out of state for processing.
"We don't feed our own people. We grow commodities for large corporations. We compete with growers from all over the world. In that system, none of the farmers are really making any money," Tribby explained. "We knew that we could have adequate consumer markets for farmers within Kentucky. However, years of producing commodities left us without the local processing, marketing, and distribution infrastructure to serve those markets. We decided that a portion of the state settlement fund should be used to help farmers diversify out of tobacco and support direct marketing strategies, cluster markets and farmer cooperatives."
Tribby and other CFA members developed a plan for using tobacco settlement funds to realize that vision. "We knew if we were going to make tobacco settlement dollars work for the people most affected, those people would have to be involved in decision-making. That's where we got the idea of democratically-elected county councils."
They also knew that just handing money to counties was not a good idea. The farmers recognized the need to coordinate programs at the state level and decided that a farmer-driven board should serve that function. The farmers put these and other ideas in a document called "Vision for Kentucky Agriculture" and sent copies to the media and policymakers.
While most other states have applied their tobacco settlement money to general expenditures, the vision Kentucky farmers put forward has prevailed, with the state legislature allocating half of the $3.45 billion in settlement funds for agricultural development. The enabling legislation, House Bill 611, passed during the 2000 General Assembly, created a democratic process through which local communities and farmers have a great deal of say in their own futures.(3)
CFA Chair Ed Nelson explains, "We organized and pushed the state to create a process whereby tobacco-dependent counties would have to plan their own solutions, led by democratically-elected county councils made up of a majority of farmers, including women and minority farmers."
After two years, 118 counties have submitted plans developed by locally-elected county councils. More than 900 farmers volunteer on county councils across the state, helping to implement the solutions to Kentucky's farming crisis. Meanwhile, the state developed a long-range state plan that identifies building new markets as the top priority. The state is funding 240 local projects, and hundreds of local projects funded by county councils are underway. The first two years saw the appropriation of $184 million. The results are new ways of farming, a greater diversity of crops, certified kitchens for value-added processing, new farmers' markets, and greater participation in local government in almost every county in Kentucky.
Building Local Food Markets
CFA member Ivor Chodkowski markets his certified organic produce through a community-supported agriculture project, farmers' markets, stores, and restaurants. He also coordinates a farmers' market in Louisville. His experience with direct marketing has convinced him of the need to organize consumers, restaurants, and others in urban communities to support a more local food economy.
Ivor's organizing is opening up a whole new set of challenges for CFA. While farmers were able to use the state's tobacco settlement dollars to turn their plans into reality, Kentucky's urban residents have no such resource—yet.
 |
| Reda Clayton at her restaurant, Eve’s Sweet Revenge, in Louisville, KY. By: Community Farm Alliance |
Ivor is working to change that. "If I can get [Reda] better-tasting food at competitive prices, her business has an edge over restaurants serving vegetables from California. If we can help her create a few jobs and expand into retail sales by processing some of her original recipes in a certified kitchen, then we all benefit. But, right now urban neighborhoods don't have access to the state tobacco settlement funds. Without cost-share assistance from the state, what can be done is limited. People like Reda deserve the same opportunity we farmers had; they need power over economic resources."
To build local food markets that benefit both urban and rural communities, CFA will help Reda and her Louisville neighbors do what Tribby and thousands of other farmers did—shift the balance of power so that ordinary folks have some say over decisions that affect them. The job won't be easy. Influential state policymakers are still promoting a corporate-dominated model that undermines this bottom-up approach. The Governor supports a vision for the state's economic future based on high-tech biotechnology firms, and last year legislators proposed a bill relieving corporations like Tyson and ConAgra from any liability for environmental damage caused by their contract operations. The challenges are many, but CFA will continue its efforts to preserve viable family farms.
In Eve's Sweet Revenge, a CFA flyer announcing a meeting about a cooperatively-owned store and canning facility planned for Louisville hangs beneath a quote from Margaret Mead, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Deborah Webb is Executive Director of Community Farm Alliance, based in Frankfort, KY.
(1) Tobacco quotas have been cut by 66 percent in the last five years.
(2) The lawsuit between the tobacco companies and the attorney generals over health related costs.
(3) HB 611 establishes a process for distributing a significant portion of the tobacco settlement money to counties based on their economic dependency on tobacco production. Those local funds will go to projects aimed at diversification of local farm economies that are submitted to and approved by county councils made up of local farmers, subject to final distribution through a state Agricultural Development Board. That board also has control over distribution of funds earmarked for state agricultural development projects.