Can buying from local farms boost local economy?

BY SOPHIA ALDOUS
S-E Staff Reporter

    With long blonde hair, pearl earrings and a neat-looking, fitted vest, some might say Jamie Henneman looks more like a businesswoman than a farmer.
    In actuality, both profes¬sions walk hand-in-hand.
    Henneman owns and oper¬ates the Lazy Lightning H Ranch near Rice with her husband, Chad, where they raise meat chickens, eggs, pork and grass-fed beef. They are also a participating farm in the Stevens County CSA program that provides local food on a weekly basis to program subscribers.
    It’s safe to say that this isn’t your standard nine-to-five, but Henneman said it’s also hard for her to consider it a full-time job, because it doesn’t bring in a lot of profit.
    “Most of our profit goes back into our capital expenditures, like processing equipment,” explained Henneman. “When you consider the average return of an investment in farming, it’s around one to two percent. The average return in any other kind of business is around 30 percent. So when things like freight, commodity crops and gas go up, all of that really af¬fects a farmer. All of that cuts into your already marginal profit.”
    A USDA survey in 2002 counted approximately 1,269 farms in Stevens County, with an average size of 416 acres. While Henneman and her husband own two acres, they lease out 40 more, all of which is dedicated to farming.
    “We built our own poultry processing unit last year, which helps,” Henneman said. “But right now we both have “off-farm” jobs to help keep things going. Eventually, we’d like to be full-time farmers with more acreage and less debt.”
    According to Terry Swa¬gerty, Small Farm Program Director for the Washington State University Stevens County Extension, the com¬bined population of both Ste¬vens and Ferry Counties is 50,000 with a total income of $1,000,000,000 year.
    Based on the nationwide percentage of income that people spend on food (12.8 percent) Stevens and Ferry County residents spend about $128,000,000 on groceries a year. Less than 10 percent of that money goes back to local economy.
    “What would happen if we put aside 10 percent of that food money to buy local?” Swagerty questioned. “That’s somewhere within the range of $10,000,000 to $13,000,000 that would be coming back to our commu¬nity. The question is how do you make it a sustainable, profitable industry that bene¬fits both consumers and our local farmers?”
    Swagerty said the Farmer’s Market that is held every year in Colville earned $122,000 in 2006, compared to the Farmer’s Market in Spokane that earned $469,000.
    “Of course, you have to take into account that Spokane has a higher population than Colville, but most of the prod¬uct at those Farmer’s Markets in Spokane is made up of Stevens County stuff,” stated Swa¬gerty.

‘You can look the producer in the eye…’

    After the 2006 North Ameri¬can E. coli outbreak, caused by uncooked spinach, Farmer’s Market sales around the country spiked. Swagerty said the rise in sales could be attributed to the accountabil¬ity that local suppliers seem to present to people.
    “You can look the producer in the eye; you can go out to their farm and see where the food is coming from,” said Swagerty. “That’s not to say that a person could never get sick from locally grown provi¬sions, but the issue is more containable. One example is when the USDA had to recall 143 million pounds of beef earlier this year. That’s a large amount of product spread all over the country. The closer to home your food is, the more you are able to hold the person who raised it re¬sponsible.”
    Henneman pointed to the theory that many people in a modern society are so re¬moved from their food source, that they may not know the advantages of buying local, or raising their own crops.  
    “Our standard of living in America has really changed over time, and even in a rural area where we have the land and the opportunity, many of us think it’s okay to just be a consumer and let someone else dig in the dirt,” said Henne¬man. “But by doing that, we begin to lose our relationship with food---with the tastes and smells of a sun-ripened tomato, or a cut of beef from an animal eating Eastern Washington Range grasses. By losing our connection to farming and food production, we are abandoning some very valuable knowledge and cultural values that can make a huge difference in a rural economy. And farming affects everyone, in the coun¬try, in the city, everywhere. Because who doesn’t eat?”
    The WSU Extension and the Stevens County Farm Bureau are currently attempting to design educational program¬ming to meet the needs of prospective and long-time farmers by encouraging peo¬ple to talk about the issues facing them in today’s world of agriculture. A meeting, or “Farm Forum,” was recently held at the Spokane Commu¬nity Colleges Colville Center with Swagerty, Stevens County Commissioner Merril Ott, Stevens County Farm Bu¬reau President Pete Simmons and a handful of community members discussing what di¬rection the programming should go in.
    “Our goal is to enhance agri¬culture from the smallest to the biggest levels in the county,” said Simmons. “Peo¬ple are capable of great things if they have the knowledge, and it’s about finding the best way to share that knowledge and make it work for you and your community.”
    
‘If you drive out agriculture, you drive out your food…’
    
    The idea was echoed by Ott, who said the goal of the Farm Forum was to try to provide information on sustaining an agricultural economy in Ste¬vens County.
    “If you drive out agriculture, you drive out your food,” Ott said. “It’s not about making people afraid, it’s about how we can make things better for ourselves.”
    According to Simmons, a trend over the past five years has shown that farms in Ste¬vens County are starting to shrink in size, moving toward 200 acres and less. This is due in part to commodity competitiveness, and genera¬tional succession, or “too much expense, not enough income.”
    “We want to try and develop markets for those small farms,” Simmons explained.
    In the end, said Swagerty, it’s not about telling people they have to purchase their food locally, just creating a continual market for home¬town agriculture.
    “We’re not trying to suggest that we’re going to raise eve¬rything here, or that people can’t have their citrus from Florida,” Swagerty stated. “And so far, I haven’t met anyone who’s argued against a local food system being a safe food system. It’s just about whether or not we can make it profitable.”
    For more information on Farm Forums, contact Swagerty at 684-2588.
    

    Rice Postal Clerk Stephen Meese and Jamie Henneman look over a shipment of chicks the Lazy Lightning H Ranch received in the mail. Photo by Dennis Branstetter.