What you didn't know about local farming - Guest Blog by Budding Moon Farm

After being in contact with the owners at Scobi Kombucha about our produce, they asked me to write about our growing methods at Budding Moon Farm and the reasons for what we do.  If you aren’t familiar with us, Budding Moon Farm is a mixed vegetable and fruit farm five miles west of Spearfish (you can learn more about what we grow and how we distribute it from our website buddingmoonfarm.wordpress.com or on Instagram @buddingmoonfarm).  Our growing methods are practiced with three goals in mind – healthy environment, healthy produce and healthy community, and each of these goals is interconnected.

We start with making sure each decision we make and action we take promotes a healthy environment because that is necessary to grow the healthiest food possible and support the healthiest community possible.  Although we are not certified organic by the National Organic Program, our growing methods meet and exceed the national organic standards. Keys to promoting a healthy environment in our production include feeding our soil with cover crops and compost instead of fertilizers, never using pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, planting flowers for pollinators, protecting native plants, and keeping plastics off our soil.  So you may be wondering, “What is the big deal about growing this way?”

First, we choose to feed our soil with cover crops and compost (only from our vegetable waste and certified organic animal manure).  Yes, our plants would grow with fertilizers, even fertilizers certified for organic production and we could claim that we are “chemical free.”  However, those fertilizers do not contain all the micronutrients a plant needs. The plants may look green and healthy feeding on fertilizer, but it is likely they are lacking micronutrients, which we need from the vegetables and fruits we eat.  So instead, we feed the soil with cover crops – crops that are grown to feed and protect the soil.  

Cover crops provide numerous benefits, but most importantly, they feed the microbial life in the soil.  Just like kombucha is made with a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), healthy plants grow in a symbiotic relationship with millions of microorganisms.  The plants exchange sugars with these microorganisms for micronutrients in the soil, even micronutrients that are not near the plant’s roots. This relationship can also signal nearby dangers to plants, such as pests and disease, so they can ready their natural defenses.  As you can see, the benefits of healthy soil are similar to the benefits we get from kombucha and other probiotic and beneficial bacterial sources. However, fresh produce has been found to have even more probiotics than supplements (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/probitoic-foods/595687/). Food grown in abused soil or without soil – such as hydroponics – lacks the benefits of food grown in soil that is full and alive with beneficial microorganisms.  

Another extremely important practice we follow is never using pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides – not even ones approved for organic farming.  Our reasons for this are straight forward: -cide means ‘to kill’ and these things are meant to damage cells and kill things. Some of these products are less dangerous than others, but if they are meant to damage and kill cells, it would not be responsible for us to share food grown that way with our community.  Additionally, some of these products are extremely dangerous to humans, especially children. But, even if the product has been deemed ‘safe’ for human use and consumption, it still damages the environment. Pesticides cannot tell the difference between a harmful insect and a beneficial pollinator; they kill them both.  Herbicides cannot differentiate between invasive weeds and beneficial native plants. And fungicides will not only protect my crop from damage, they will kill the fungi in the soil that make micronutrients available to my crop. Using these things would give me quicker results, but in the long run it damages the environment, food, and community on which we depend.  Scobi kombucha has also committed to using ingredients that protect the environment and keep their customers safe. Not because it is easy or most profitable, but because it is the right thing to do.

The final growing practice we follow is not placing plastic covering on the soil.  This practice is very common in vegetable and fruit production, even organically grown produce (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/07/729783773/organic-farming-has-a-plastic-problem-one-solution-is-controversial) because it saves the farmer the time consuming task of weeding and it artificially warms the soil to expedite plant growth.  Less time spent weeding plus faster growing plants means more money for the farmer. For us, that still doesn’t justify the damage done.  Recently, studies have shown that plastics in contact with the soil are leeching chemicals linked to cancers into those soils and the plants growing there.  This makes sense to me. Think of a water bottle that is set in the sun for even just two days – when you taste that water, it seems off. The sun warming the plastic has done something to it.  Now think about plastic on the soil – not only is it black (versus clear) to absorb more energy, it is left on that soil in the sun for months or sometimes years. Another problem with plastics on the soil is that they break down and leave microplastics in the soil that enter our food chain.  

So, although it is easier, we don’t believe using plastics this way would be responsible to our environment or the community eating our produce, not to mention all the plastic waste it would create.  Today, it is almost impossible to entirely avoid plastics in nearly every area of our lives. We do use plastics on our farm as greenhouse covering and trays for starting plants, but we are working to limit the potential for contamination by making our greenhouses moveable and building our next seed starting trays from wood.   At Scobi, they are following the same path using glass to share their kombucha and encouraging customers to reuse their glass bottles for a healthier product and healthier environment.

So, what can you, the consumer do with this information?  If possible, buy produce directly from a farmer you can meet face to face AND ask them questions about how they feed their plants, if they use any pesticides (even organic), and if they use plastic weed barriers (you can also ask them other questions about how they treat their employees, how they keep the food safe, etc.).  Unfortunately, just because the farmer is local and grows on a small scale doesn’t mean they do it responsibly (I don’t want to support a neighboring farmer who is damaging the environment and polluting our community with pesticides and herbicides just because they are local). But, every farmer I know who grows responsibly wants to talk about it because they are proud of the decisions they make.  It makes a difference to purchase from small local producers and farmers so you can make informed decisions that are good for you, your community, and the environment. We hope to hear your questions soon!