Thread: Great Expectations Down on the Farm

Often today we hear about the family farm being turned into an integrated farming system combining, for example, pigs, chickens, tilapia, corn, and vegetables. Now the traditional family farm may be diversified and producing all this, but separately. The pigs are in a pen here, the corn is in that big field away from the house, the chickens are over there, the tilapia are in a pond next to the corn field. Each is managed separately.

Now let's integrate.

The pigs produce manure to feed the corn and generate methane to use for cooking. The corn is used to feed the pigs, feed the chickens, and make tortillas for the family. If the family produces enough corn it can be exported, usually straight across the border to Guatemala if the family lives near the border. The chickens produce manure to feed redworms and feed the algae in the pond. Some of the chickens are stewed to go with the tortillas to make tacos for the family.

The algae feeds the tilapia, which are either cooked for the family to eat or sold in the market. If the family raises enough tilapia they can be sold to an exporter, quick frozen, and end up as 'today's fresh catch' in a seafood restaurant in Miami. The redworms help produce compost that feeds the vegetables.

The vegetables are eaten by the family with the surplus going to market and the scraps going to the compost pile. The vegetables are grown under a covered structure using drip irrigation and no commercial fertilisers or pesticides. That makes the vegetables worth more, especially when they are sold to the big resorts that cater to rich gr...tourists.

But the real difference between the traditional family farm and an integrated farming system is one of attitude. The traditional family farm is seen as a way of life, just a way of surviving. Such farms are often described as subsistence farms, producing just enough to feed the family with little left over for the market and often needing outside income, most often a job in town, to supplement what is produced on the farm.

The integrated farming system turns the family farm into a business. Produce from the farm is expected not only to feed the family, but to generate enough income for the family to do much more than just survive. Such a farm is sustainable agriculture. It can support itself.

Originally Posted by garza

The pigs produce manure to feed the corn and generate methane to use for cooking. The corn is used to feed the pigs, feed the chickens, and make tortillas for the family. If the family produces enough corn it can be exported, usually straight across the border to Guatemala if the family lives near the border.

I thought this might be a bit of a stretch. How big is the standard family plot and how much corn can they realistically produce?

The chickens produce manure to feed redworms, feed the algae in the pond, and to go with the tortillas to make tacos for the family to eat.

As written it sounds to me like the redworms, the algae, and the family all eat chicken manure? Might need an edit for clarity.

The algae feeds the tilapia, which are either cooked for the family to eat or sold in the market. If the family raises enough tilapia they can be sold to an exporter, quick frozen, and end up as 'today's fresh catch' in a seafood restaurant in Miami.

Usually algae is the deadly enemy of aquaculture (other than in the filtration systems) but I don't know about Tilapia, do they eat algae?

...especially when they are sold to the big resorts that cater to rich gr...tourists.

Tempting! Very tempting to put that cleverness there but it depends what your audience is whether you think they'll tolerate that little half-slip or not.

But the real difference between the traditional family farm and an integrated farming system is one of attitude.

The traditional family farm is seen as a way of life, just a way of surviving. Such farms are often described as subsistence farms, producing just enough to feed the family with little left over for the market and often needing outside income, most often a job in town, to supplement what is produced on the farm.

The integrated farming system turns the family farm into a business. Produce from the farm is expected not only to feed the family, but to generate enough income for the family to do much more than just survive. Such a farm is sustainable agriculture. It can support itself.

Nice tight little article

Foxee - I was wondering if anyone would be interested enough to read and respond to this.

You need 15 pigs as a minimum to get a biodigester to work efficiently. You have to calculate how much corn you will need to feed each pig, and that will depend on age, weight, breed, and such. Then you have to go to your records and see what kind of yield you have been getting in corn. (You have been keeping records, haven't you?) Now you can know how much you need to plant to feed the pigs, and you should already know how much your family needs.

What comes out the bottom of the biodigester is sludge that is safe to use as fertiliser, and what comes out the top is methane to run the cook stove. One farmer joked to me that the pigs cook themselves.

You see what happens when you decide to do a fast edit to cut the word count and forget to go back and proof it carefully. The tacos are made with stewed chicken, not stewed chicken manure.

Tilapia will feed on almost anything, but in the wild their most common food is algae. On diversified but non-integrated farms tilapia are fed with high protein pellets. On an integrated farm the chickens can be reared in a pen built on a slightly sloped cement slab. Daily hosing of the slab washes the manure into the pond.

If I were writing this for the Belize Ag Report I would probably leave it there. If this were part of some official report, of course, it would not be there.

I mentioned records above. The situation is improving, but I've been to farms with extension officers who would ask the farmer what his yield was with the last corn crop. They would take a guess, but weren't sure. One of the basic ideas of integrated agriculture is to turn the family farm into a business, and that means keeping accurate records.

I talked with an onion producer in Orange Walk last season who was complaining about contrabanderos smuggling low grade Mexican onions across the border and selling them in the markets at 30 and 40 cents a pound. 'How much does it cost you to make your crop?' I asked him. '53 cents a pound, and I need 60 cents to show a decent profit.' He knew exactly how many pounds of onions he had and to the penny what they had cost. He ended up selling at 50 cents, so he almost broke even. He was luckier than some.

Thanks for your comment and for your correction. I'll go back and adjust that.

I'm familiar with the concept of the methane digester and did wonder how much input it took to make output worthwhile. The idea of a self-sustaining small farm as an interdependent system is appealing.

It sounds good but how does one manage without pesticides? It's too labour-intensive to go around squeezing the grubs off the cabbages by hand, and natural products such as garlic sprays are of dubious worth. That "covered structure", if sufficient to keep out pests, may also exclude enough sunlight that the vegetables do not thrive.

It is difficult - for me anyway - to separate my opinions on essay content from structural story issues. The idea of a self-sustaining small farm is appealing. It depends on how much the capital outlay is to the family for machinery and pond construction and such.

Otherwise, I agree with Foxee about the manure sentence, it needs to be clarified. Mmmm, clarified manure with tilapia tacos. And I suggest moving the subject sentence of the 'traditional farm' to be closer to the statement about the difference, as I did below.

Originally Posted by garza

But the real difference between the traditional family farm and an integrated farming system is one of attitude: The traditional family farm is seen as a way of life, just a way of surviving. Such farms are often described as subsistence farms, producing just enough to feed the family with little left over for the market and often needing outside income, most often a job in town, to supplement what is produced on the farm.

Nice touch with the 'rich gr ...'

Foxee - You can produce methane with very small digesters and only two or three pigs or a flock of chickens, but for efficiency you need more volume. There are very large biodigesters in countries like the U-S but they are not practical for small farms. And yes, the idea of the integrated farming system is attractive and is beginning to catch on worldwide.

The Backward Ox - Organic agriculture is very labour intensive. That can be seen as a problem or as the solution to a problem depending on the situation. If the farm is producing a steady and substantial income sufficient to provide a good quality of life for the family, then the young people growing up on the farm will see it as an attractive way to make a living. The young people from subsistence farms know only hard work with little return and they often drift into town, adding to problems of unemployment and crime. An organic farm run efficiently still requires the hard work, but organically grown produce brings a higher price with lower input costs. The farmer and his family can make a decent living on the farm.

Natural systems of integrated pest management are, in fact, very effective. Plant marygold around the edge of your vegetable plot and many insects will stay away. Do companion planting, like cilantro planted around tomatoes. Pests that like tomatoes don't like cilantro. Don't do any mono-cropping in your vegetable patch. That means keeping the same or similar plants separated so that if one plant becomes infested, the problem will be localised. So you don't plant a long row of tomatoes, but mix them with other plants, and be sure the other plants are not closely related to tomatoes. So you don't mix sweet pepper and tomato, because they are of the same family. First cousins on their father's side, I believe.

This inter-cropping is one of the factors that makes organic agriculture more labour intensive. It's far more efficient to harvest your tomatoes if they are all together in one long row.

The screen material used in covered structures is designed to provide sufficient light and air while keeping out pests. Vegetable production increases inside a covered structure, and inter-cropping is not required because you have control over what gets in. For that reason I see a lot of covered structures with crops of tomatoes and sweet pepper growing side by side with no problem. Those two vegetables bring a good price in the market, and putting them in a covered structure allows the farmer to increase production, reduce input costs, and make more profit.

Water use is more efficient. Drip irrigation is used and the amount of water needed and used can be controlled.

Mister URL - 'Capital outlay' is the real problem in setting up an integrated system. In most cases the shift from traditional farm operation to an integrated operation is taken in steps as money becomes available.

I've seen a couple of demonstrations that have been, in my opinion, a waste of grant money from donor agencies. The farmer sees the 'tropical greenhouse' imported from Israel, the biodigester imported from Guatemala and set up by a consultant from Costa Rica, the tilapia pond that needed expensive equipment to dig and also needs concrete nursery pens built with a steady supply of clean water to operate. It all looks great, until he figures out it will cost him over a hundred thousand dollars to get started.

I'm a big believer in starting small. Take it step by step. Work the elements into what you already have one at a time. The concept is good, but the transition needs to be planned carefully. Otherwise the intended improvement can turn into unmitigated disaster. This is true for the farmer, and it's true for the government.

Take soybeans. We have a big grain drying and storage facility that cost millions of dollars rusting away in Orange Walk because the decision was taken some years ago to ignore the advice of some (ahem) who said the smart thing would be to build a dozen small drying and storage facilities around the country near the fields. No, I was told, we are going BIG into soybeans, so we need a really BIG drying and storage facility. That was some years ago, and the last time I checked not a single bean has ever been put into that facility.

I straightened out the manure problem, and I will change the spacing as you suggest with the 'attitude' sentence. It came out the way it did because this had been planned to be formatted in Word for possible use elsewhere, and the paragraphs were to be tabbed and not spaced. I write in Notepad or Vim and only go to a word processor for formatting.