Ask Cleo Braver how she decided to leave her work as an environmental lawyer to start an organic farm, and she’ll tell you it happened in a flash – one instant in time and she knew that’s exactly what she needed to do.
Braver was at a conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and saw a sign saying “Be the change you want to see.”
That’s all it took.
Having spent years as an environmental activist, she was convinced by the scientists that the Bay is dying in large part as a result of agriculture – feed corn, soy, chickens. The current food system produces very cheap industrial food, but at a very high cost. Braver decided to take a role in changing that.
Today, Braver is a full time organic farmer, who grows fresh produce and sells to a CSA clientele, farmers markets, Easton Market Square, and now – four different Whole Foods markets on the western shore. She has put 35 acres of her 156 acre farm in buffers, which provide a filter for water and habitat for disappearing wildlife. 9 months after she put the wildflower buffers, she began to notice growing populations of native endangered wildlife, such as quail.
Braver is on a mission to create a food revolution, and her timing couldn’t be better. Across the nation, organic and sustainable farming practices are changing the way people grow and eat food, and the tide is definitely turning for organic. But 90% of the tomatoes eaten in the US, according to Braver, are grown in Mexico or Canada. A widespread concern about food security is generating new conversations about our larger agricultural economy.
“Organic food is healthier for us because it is free of synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers and because there is significant evidence that it contains higher levels of nutrients”, she said. “In addition to providing more nutritious food, this type of farming creates jobs (it is labor intensive rather than reliant on chemicals), it frees up land for implementation of good environmental practices (like buffer strips, cover crops and fallow periods), and it can help us grow a Maryland economy”.
Braver gave a tour this week for a dozen members of Future Harvest – A Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. The group included DNR wildlife protection staff, several organic farmers from the western shore and Baltimore, masters gardeners, UMES staff and others. More of a conversation than anything, the group sat in Braver’s living room, and shared information about everything from best practices, to grants available for new farmers, and vegetable varieties.
Future Harvest is a network of farmers, agricultural professionals, landowners and consumers living and working in the Chesapeake region, which includes Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington DC. The organization promotes profitable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable food and farming systems that work to sustain communities.
Braver was recently at a government conference looking at infrastructure, and is excited about helping to shape an entire new infrastructure across America for food security – things like centralized systems to pick up and transport produce so small operators don’t have to pound the pavement for market and spend days transporting food to various outlets, but can focus on growing food, which is what farmers want to do. By creating infrastructure reaching from marketing and sales to packing and transportation, organic food can grow into a larger share of the supermarket aisle. At the same time, those organic farming practices can help address larger regional issues such as water quality.
Braver says there is unbridled demand for organic food, especially things like heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom varieties are grown for nutrients and taste, not thick skins and transport-ability. “Your choice”, Braver says, “you can either eat something with nutrients and taste, or something with pesticides”. She has this conversation often with patrons of the farmers markets where her produce is sold.
“Sometimes, our organic foods are even cheaper than the ones with chemicals. A lot of people don’t have a clue. Just because someone is selling something at a farmers market does not mean that they grew it, or that it’s even local. Plenty of people purchase produce from the big suppliers, and repackage it, selling at farmstands and along the side of the road. It’s pretty easy to just ask them – “did you grow this? Who did? How was it grown? These are questions anyone should think about asking every time they buy food”, Braver said. “What do you really want to eat?”
It should be added that many local farmers use sustainable practices without going the extra steps to become certified organic. It’s a big step to choose to become certified — expensive, and limiting. Alison Howard of Homestead Farms, another certified organic farm in Kent County, once said “everybody wants to be mostly organic, but not certified so they are free to use chemicals when they find themselves in a dire situation. But dire situations are exactly when you need to be certified organic so you don’t use chemicals”.
As important as the food, are the conservation practices that Cottingham Farm has embraced. They have have installed over fifty acres of Conservation Reserve practices including an eighteen acre wetland which is a habitat for teal, black duck and other disappearing native waterfowl; thirty acres of warm season grass buffers around all fields to prevent water, sediment, nitrogen and phosphorous runoff as well as provide habitat for the disappearing native quail; two acres of native trees and shrubs on the water’s edge; over twenty acres of cover crops; and almost ten acres of meadows.
You can find fresh produce grown by Cottingham Farm at Easton Market Square, at certain Whole Foods and on the menu at Eastern Shore, Baltimore, Washington and Annapolis restaurants which feature fresh, local and sustainably produced ingredients.
See Cleo Braver’s farm website for more information about the history of her farm, her philosophy and the practices that she and her team implement as a commitment to their community, Goldsborough Creek and the Chesapeake Bay.
For more information on Future Harvest CASA – see their website and sign up for the email newsletter.
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