Farmers Fill Natural Niche

Ask organic farmer Patrice Gros if he gets complaints from his neighbors, and he’ll ask what you mean.
Apparently the wet, thick rabbit manure that covers his family garden smells like gold to a guy with an MBA from UCLA.
Gros, owner of certified organic Foundation Farm in Eureka Springs, is one of the area’s small, organic farmers who contribute to a multi-million dollar micro industry that’s difficult, if not impossible to quantify. Estimates from the United States Department of Agriculture and the Organic Trade Association put the national certified organic food market somewhere between $7.8 billion and $14 billion each year.
Those figures have made big box retailers like Bentonville’s Wal-Mart Stores Inc. tune in.
Wal-Mart began to expand its organic offerings in early 2006, though spokeswoman Karen Burk declined to say how much revenue the company made in the category last year. She did say some stores offer as many as 200 certified organic items.
Some people believe Wal-Mart’s influence on its vendors will help push the market to $23 billion within a few years.
But the organic farming market in the Natural State has been as slow as a summer slug gnawing up the lettuce.
According to the USDA’s 2004 agricultural census, only 1 percent of Arkansas’ 14.4 million acres of farmland is involved in certified organic crop production. However, those 144,000 acres represent a dramatic leap from a mere 997 in 1997.
Many farmers and sellers said the organic movement really started catching on in 2005 and local demand outweighs their capacity.
Not a bad reason for a business-minded farmer to consider turning from conventional methods to labor-intensive and expensive organic farming.
Filling a void is what it’s all about, they said.
Small Farm, Big Business
Gros (a French name, but Americanized is aptly pronounced “grows”) gave up his life as an accomplished California financial adviser for American Express about 12 years ago.
“I was doing well,” he said. “But there’s a difference between doing well and finding your passion.”
He apprenticed with an organic grower for about four years, then Gros and his wife set out in search of the American dream. Near Eureka Springs, they found 12 “gorgeous” acres and a house for $50,000.
Gros has since switched farmland, but has slowly built an enterprise that draws from experience and a financial background.
His farm now resides on 10 acres, but of that only 5 are in use. Of those 5 acres, only 1 acre is actually farmed, the rest is used for paths and compost. This is a gentle, sustainable way to farm, he said.
Even for a small and niche business, Gros keeps it diverse.
“I don’t specialize, I grow as many things as possible that sell well,” he said.
There are five primary ways for a small farmer to sell their wares, Gros said: small-farm friendly stores, such as Ozark Natural Foods in Fayetteville; farmer’s markets; restaurants and chefs looking for premium ingredients; roadside farm stands; and subscription services paid by consumers for a share of the crop.
Gros’ business is divvyed among the first three, with about one third in each.
“You always want to have another channel, just like any business,” he said.
Gros made about $42,000 in revenue off his farm in 2006 and his projections show he’ll add about $10,000 this year. He could have similar growth next year.
A reasonable expectation, he said, is for his farm to generate up to $100,000 in sales and he reckons the Northwest Arkansas market can sustain 10 organic farms at that level.
Zach Freeman, produce manager at Ozark Natural Foods, said such a market is conceivable. Freeman buys red leaf lettuce, globe eggplants, peppers, carrots, red and green butter lettuce and heirloom tomatoes from Gros.
ONF, which makes about $8 million in annual revenue, retails about $2,000 worth of Gros’ produce per week in season and the two men have hammered out a more aggressive production schedule for 2007, Freeman said.
To that end, Gros is starting an apprenticeship program called the Foundation Farm School this spring. The 15-hour per week program mixes fieldwork with classroom instruction on the business of certified organic farming.
Anyone who wants to learn more about organic farming is welcome, Gros said, though the tuition may be pricey for some: It’s each person’s labor for 12 of the 15 hours.
Local vs. Big Box
Certified organic foods are almost passé now since much is available in convenient cellophane packages.
Buying “local” is a growing niche among food aficionados, is local.
One study by an Iowa group said local food travels about 45 miles and conventional food travels about 1,500 miles from field to fork.
A great deal of food grown and marketed as local also happens to be organic.
Local purchasing has been one of Whole Foods Market Inc.’s corporate virtues. The Austin, Texas-based retailer made $203 million in net income for fiscal 2006 (ended Sept. 24), up a whopping 157 percent from 2002’s $79 million.
Burk said Wal-Mart makes an effort to purchase locally in its various markets as well.
Locally grown and consumed food gets back to the way things were 100 years ago. Back then, hardly any food traveled more than a few miles before it graced a plate.
Bunch of Shiitake
While local is trendy and some, like Gros, make it a personal philosophy, many organic farmers aren’t shy about tapping into other markets.
Carol Ann Rose, co-owner of Sweden Creek Farms of Kingston, harvests between 800 and 1,000 pounds of certified organic shiitake mushrooms every week. The farm ships up to 300 pounds each to clients in Texas and Maryland from the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport each week, she said.
Rose, a former systems analyst for AT&T, said the labor involved in producing the crop is ridiculous.
“There’s a lot of biology,” she said. “It’s not a factory. We’re not stamping out mushrooms.”
Mark Holaway owns Jubilee Farms of Huntsville, and raises pasture-fed steers, chickens, hogs and lambs. The butchered livestock sells at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market for three to four times as much as store-bought meat.
The taste is claimed to be infinitely better than sodium and phosphate-ridden meat from the store.
While trying to supply his livestock with organic feed, Holaway ran into roadblocks. His solution was to buy the only organic feed mill in Northwest Arkansas. Organic Essentials now mills about 75 tons of feed per week.
His grain comes mostly from neighboring states and organic soybeans from southern Arkansas. Much of the feed goes right back to those states to feed cows producing certified organic milk for a Searcy-based co-op, Central Organic Milk Producers.
COM is working to revitalize Arkansas’ lagging dairy industry by filling a void. Larry Hale, manager of COM, said he has six Arkansas farmers lined up for organic milk production and that the first certified organic milk shipped out of the state on Feb. 20. COM ships tankers to Virginia, where the milk is pasteurized, bottled and sold.
The bottom line? Both the feed and the milk double the cost of conventional counterparts.
Rose said local and organic are a worth it.
“Buying local is important because it gets food dollars to local farmers and it also helps improve the entire environment,” she said. “If you’re going to eat food, why not eat it locally grown?”