Finca Luna Nueva Lodge Blog

Forty years after the appearance of bumper stickers asking “Have You Hugged Your Child Today,” there are now dozens of slogans suggesting you hug everything from your AK-47 to your plumber.  However, in the face of a food supply whose quality and safety come into question every day, there is a shift in food consciousness, and we see that happening little by little with the elevation of small farmers to the legions of rockstars, and bumper stickers now ask “Have You Hugged a Farmer Today?”  Or better yet, there’s this one:

If like many of us, you purchase organic products we would hope you recognize that  behind those products displayed in your supermarket or farmer’s market is the face of a farmer who toiled long and hard, dawn to dusk, doing a job that most of us couldn’t begin to do.  And sadly, most people are completely unaware of what it takes to get food from the farm to the table.   Thankfully, recent articles in The New York Times (“In New Food Culture, a Young Generation of Farmers Emerges”) and the Huffington Post (“Have You Hugged a Farmer Today?”) raise awareness of the importance of small farmers and the struggles they endure competing against behemoth Agribusinesses whose only goal is profit, quality and safety be damned.  As there are more and more food recalls and outbreaks of salmonella and e.coli, the public has every right to be concerned, and the public is reacting by paying closer attention to what they buy for their families’ meals.  For many young people, food recalls are just a fact of modern life.  They’ve grown up with them, so it really isn’t surprising that this age group is seriously considering farming as a career choice.

“Tyler Jones, a livestock farmer here, avoided telling his grandfather how disillusioned he had become with industrial farming. After all, his grandfather had worked closely with Earl L. Butz, the former federal secretary of agriculture who was known for saying, ‘Get big or get out.’

“But several weeks before his grandfather died, Mr. Jones broached the subject. His grandfather surprised him. “You have to fix what Earl and I messed up,” Mr. Jones said his grandfather told him.

“Now, Mr. Jones, 30, and his wife, Alicia, 27, are among an emerging group of people in their 20s and 30s who have chosen farming as a career. Many shun industrial, mechanized farming and list punk rock, Karl Marx and the food journalist Michael Pollan as their influences. The Joneses say they and their peers are succeeding because of Oregon’s farmer-foodie culture, which demands grass-fed and pasture-raised meats.

“People want to connect more than they can at their grocery store,” Ms. Jones said. “We had a couple who came down from Portland and asked if they could collect their own eggs. We said, ‘O.K., sure.’ They want to trust their producer, because there’s so little trust in food these days.”

Fresh from the farm, photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

For Garry Stephenson, coordinator of the Small Farms Program at Oregon State University, he had not seen so much interest among young people in decades. “It’s kind of exciting,” Mr. Stephenson said. “They’re young, they’re energetic and idealist, and they’re willing to make the sacrifices.”

And for the naysayers who insist that only monocropping, and the use of toxic pesticides will feed the world, an article that appeared in Seed Daily detailing the report from the United Nations that clearly dispels that myth.

“Food production in poor countries can be doubled within 10 years if small farms switch to ecological agriculture, a study issued by the United Nations says.

“Agroecological” projects have led to an average crop yield increase of 80 percent in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116 percent in Africa, says the U.N. report released Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland.

Brillian green broccoli, brimming with phytonutrients, photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

In Africa, crop yields doubled over a period of 3-10 years, Olivier De Schutter, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a statement. “Conventional farming relies on expensive inputs, fuels climate change and is not resilient to climatic shocks,” de Schutter said. “It simply isn’t the best choice anymore today.”

The report comes as food prices are near record highs, with the United Nations estimating that the world, now populated by 6.7 billion people, will expand to 9 billion by 2050. Feeding them will be a major challenge under a business-as-usual scenario. Ecological agriculture could make things easier, the U.N. report says.

In Japan, farmers have eliminated pesticides from their rice paddies and replaced them with duck and fish that eat weeds, seeds and insects, while providing fertilizer with their droppings.  In West Africa, stone barriers built alongside fields have slowed down runoff water during the rainy season, allowing an improvement of soil moisture, the replenishment of water tables and reductions in soil erosion.  In Zambia and Malawi, a country that experienced a dramatic famine six years ago, farmers planted a fertilizer tree near maize fields and saw double or even triple yields. The tree, native to the region, takes nitrogen from air and stores it within its leaves, which, when they drop, fertilize the ground. De Schutter said agroecology is becoming increasingly popular even in developed countries such as United States, Germany or France.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

“However, despite its impressive potential in realizing the right to food for all, agroecology is still insufficiently backed by ambitious public policies and consequently hardly goes beyond the experimental stage,” he said.  “Governments need to back ecological farming by empowering small-scale farmers in poor countries who can then make a real difference on the ground,” the report says.

So let’s stop the mantra that it can’t be done!  Because it can, and we showed you how it was being done in rural India in our last blog entry.

But what we are really excited about is that organic farming on a small scale is suddenly the chic thing to do, no matter where you are living.  Even in an urban jungle, people are growing tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and lettuce on rooftop and terrace gardens.  Not having a big backyard is no longer a deterrent to those who value the quality and flavors of something you have grown yourself.

Heirloom yellow tomato -- photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico

As Cynthia Houng says in her article Urban Farming, The New Hip Thing, “Urban farming has also become unbearably hip among the young, urban professional set. These days, it seems like everyone is starting a garden. I have three luscious tomato plants growing in my front yard. My friend just put in a bed of kale and a handful of grape vines. We all joke about our plans for a greenhouse, or a chicken coop, or a backyard orchard.

“We can (with some careful shopping) afford the organic produce. So why are we drawn to the idea of a kitchen garden? Why do we tell ourselves that we want small farms?

Big, beautiful beets! photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

“We want to be green. We want to be environmental. We want to be responsible, and ethical. Mostly, though, we want to be in charge. Gardening gives us some semblance of control-over our lives, our spaces, our bodies, our household economies.  Then there’s the American dream of self-sufficiency. We still dream of the household as the ultimate locus of production, though few of us produce anything at home anymore.”

I guess I was lucky.  When I was growing up everyone had a garden.

Organic kale, photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

My grandparents grew most of what they ate; they also had chickens, goats, and bees. What was left over from the summer harvest was canned, or stored in the root cellar for winter.  Being in the garden with my grandmother, or watching my grandfather collect honey, are my fondest memories of my grandparents, and I was taught from the get-go that the source of your food was the most important thing.  And long after my grandparents’ passing, my mother still gardened, which was easy to do in the Alaska summers with 20 hours of daylight that produced 50-pound cabbages and a three-pound carrot.  No matter where I have lived I have had a garden, even if I only grew two or three things.  Where I live in Costa Rica, I am surrounded by small-scale farmers who grow coffee, beans, corn, squash, and bananas, and who show up at the local farmer’s market with their fresh bounty every weekend.

Rainbow carrots - photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Nature Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

But if I were going to hug a farmer, it would be Steven Farrell, General Manager of Finca Luna Nueva, the organic, biodynamic, sustainable ginger and turmeric farm nestled in the rainforest on the road to the Arenal volcano.  Steven wasn’t always a farmer, and he has an interesting story about how he wound up at this place in his life.

In 1969, Steve was a typical 20 year old with eating habits to match, and as a result he suffered from migraine headaches and other minor problems directly attributable to his diet. But then came a light bulb-moment while watching a PBS broadcast out of Chicago with a Ben Franklin look-alike solemnly reciting the ingredients in a coconut cream pie. To Steve’s amazement, the ingredients were a litany of artificial flavorings, preservatives, emulsifiers and other chemicals with difficult to pronounce names , but nary a speck of either coconut or cream!

“That program got me thinking about the food we consumed and I wondered if there was another way of eating. In the late sixties, Adele Davis was about the only organic guru around, but I followed her advice and changed my diet, became a vegetarian, started doing yoga and meditation, and began to distance myself from what was happening politically and culturally in our society.”

Steve continued his transformation and twenty-eight years ago moved to Costa Rica to

A clump of turmeric, fresh from the ground

grow macadamia nuts. He intercropped ginger between the trees and in 1988, began exporting organic ginger to the United States. A few years later, he purchased what is now Finca Luna Nueva, and by 1996, the farm’s organic ginger and curcuma were included in New Chapter’s organic whole food vitamin line. Steve also serves as a consultant for the company.

No John Deere tractors for Finca Luna Nueva!

When asked about the food and health crisis in our society, Steve responded not with pessimism, but with unbridled enthusasm. “We can go a long way towards healing ourselves by changing our diet. One of the biggest problems is that society has been inculcated with the concept of taking a pill to counteract poor eating and lifestyle choices. But lifestyle can actually be your medicine once you take control of your food. We should make sure we eat locally and organically. Local being more important than organic–but if you can get local and organic food, so much the better.”

Gathering various pods on Finca Luna Nueva

Steve settled back in his chair in the shade of the overhanging  porch of Casa Luna and continued his discourse on the state of our food supply.  “I would even go so far as to say how we react to things and situations is related to our diets. Nutrient-dense food gives us a life-force that is missing in “dead food” (processed food). Once we are full of life-force we are able to see things more clearly. You begin to notice the things that affect us that you weren’t previously aware of. Wendell Berry, the author, poet, philosopher, and defender of rural life and small-scale farming, says that eating is one of the most political things we can do. We have to take control of what we eat.”  When I brought up the recent study out of England reporting that organic food wasn’t any better for you than conventionally grown food sprayed with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, Steve’s response was clear.

“The nutrient density is highest in the first 48 hours. Depending on your soils, that density can be 80% higher when comparing vegetables grown on good soil. Organic vegetables will not be high in nutrients if soils are not balanced. The high diversity and probiota of soils makes nutrients available to plants just as flora in our gut make nutrients available to our bodies. Pesticides kill beneficial bacteria that occur in the soils, so naturally there is a higher residue content in non-organic foods. The problem is that pesticides are everywhere and even on an organic farm such as Finca Luna Nueva we might find pesticide molecules simply because someone sprayed 300 miles away.”

Plowing, the old-fashioned way

Steve commented on how disconcerting it is to learn that pesticides outlawed in the 70s were recently discovered in fatty tissues of fish in northern Canada– not in the oceans, but in freshwater inland lakes! “With wind currents and rain, pesticide traces are all over, but what we are trying to do by eating organic is to lessen the number of molecules and increase our intake of the antioxidants that eradicate the free radicals banging around in our bodies.” He talked about the “colorful foods—red, green, orange and yellow—that have a high antioxidant content. “If we had to come up with one reason to eat local fresh organic, it would be because it is better for the environment and our bodies.

Harvesting turmeric

Steve’s organic ginger and curcuma are key ingredients in the New Chapter vitamin line, which uses whole foods rather than chemically-derived vitamins.

When asked about the looming food crisis, and the potential shortage of food, he stated emphatically, “We can avoid the problems farming has encountered by changing our practices.  We need to move away from mono-cropping, the use of toxic chemicals, and shift to a more balanced system, which is where biodynamics come in.  We must also understand our food and make a new relationship with food.  We should see the food we eat as a source of life and energy instead of just something to fill our gut.  Find people in your community who grow their own food, get to know them, and support them. Not only would you help them avoid those chemicals, you would help the earth. Be aware of where your food comes from. Grow

Luscious strawberries right from the grower, photo courtesy of Erika Orellana, Natura Mercado Organico, Costa Rica

something in your garden. There is great satisfaction in that especially when you eat it. You’ve made a connection with the earth, and your taste buds will know the difference. Rather than bland, ten day old vegetables in stores, you can get a real nutrient boost by eating fresh organic produce picked moments before you eat them. Here in Costa Rica you can grow almost anything year-round. Create a small garden plot and encourage your neighbors to do the same.”

Farmer Steven Farrell on the left

Sage advice from a local farmer whose career path started with a coconut cream pie.   Have YOU hugged a farmer today?