Birmingham, Alabama
Jerry Spencer is an entrepreneur. So it was with a sense of adventure that this chiropractor of 20 years–a man who had never in his life grown a single tomato plant much less a garden–dug up his front lawn one day and planted a vegetable plot far bigger than what would feed his family of eight.
That was 1996. By 1999, after a few years selling surplus veggies to Birmingham restaurants, expanding his garden and adding a flock of laying hens, Jerry enlisted 40 people to join his fledgling Community Supported Agriculture program. By the end of the season, membership had grown to 65 people paying up front for four to 12 months of weekly boxes of in-season vegetables raised at Mt. Laurel Organic Gardens .
Fast-forward another six years to 2004 and Mt. Laurel has enlisted 25 farms to supply produce and meat to 400 members of the CSA, renamed Grow Alabama . To coordinate the network of farmers ranging in size from two to 25 acres, Jerry hired a full-time office staff of about eight people, each equipped with computer, desk and file cabinet. He also has a field crew of three full-time, year-round workers, and hires extra help for peak harvest times.
For his own part, Jerry spends 20-hour days visiting member farms to offer support on improving quality and transitioning to organic, recruiting new farmers to join the CSA, dreaming up a name for the nonprofit arm of his venture, scouting grant-writing opportunities, enhancing the Web site, working with marketing consultants on how to promote the business… Oh, and tending 27 acres of mixed vegetables, a tilapia pond, 600 laying hens, 400 chickens a month, 400 turkeys a year, ducks, rabbits, quail and pheasants.
The shower is his phone booth as this Superman converts from farmer to professional and back several times a day.
“It’s getting to be bigger than just a little CSA,” Jerry understates.
If big, his goal is simple: to reverse the statistic that over 80 percent of the food eaten by Alabamans is grown out of state.
“I started hearing about the hard times that Alabama farmers were having [competing] with big corporate farms in California , Arizona , New Mexico and Florida … It is such a Third World here in Alabama with farmers going out of business and great land not being worked,” he lamented. “And a farmer really loves farming.”
With hard work, ongoing reinvestment in the project, and at least 10 years time, Jerry thinks the dream is realizable. That means growing fast, which he expects to do. “I think I have my bases covered and we are going to double by October [2004],” he said, when he expects Grow Alabama to have up to 1,000 members.
Not a rich man, but Jerry’s got a head for business. When he ran a chiropractic practice, he set goals from himself like 200 clients a week. With the CSA, he estimates a farmer needs at least 100 members to make a living, and his personal goal was a minimum of 200. He recognizes the need to diversify and recommends that farmers in his network raise at least four crops to ensure proper crop rotation and for insurance in the case of a crop failure.
He’s also sensitive to the concerns of the marketplace, pointing out the contents of a CSA box are less expensive than similar quantities of the same veggies sold at a large chain grocery store. And through a CSA program, the farmer still earns more since the price isn’t whittled away by a series of middlemen and it’s paid in advance of the season.
Jerry also touts the range of produce as a selling point, with as many as 40 vegetables delivered throughout the season and up to 20 varieties of each. The okra comes in three different colors and heirloom tomatoes in a myriad shapes, sizes and hues. Above all, he emphasizes the salubrious freshness of the food as the biggest reason to join a CSA.
Jerry’s hope for the success for his own business is part and parcel of his vision for the future of Alabama agriculture. That’s why his non-profit is positioning itself to pick up where the extension service has left off, and he’s even prepared to hire agents with an organic bent that were laid off by Auburn and Tuskeegee universities.
Furthering the outreach effort, the nonprofit plans to acquire land and operate several organic demonstration farms throughout the state, starting with a 42-acre plot in downtown Birmingham. They would host workshops and field days to teach farmers and gardeners about cover cropping, composting and earth-friendly pest control methods, and sell the produce to the CSA business. The sites would also host cooking classes for adults and environmental field trips for classes of school kids.
Jerry marks his personal financial success in farming by being able to send his son to college. For society, it’ll be when all other Alabama farmers can send their kids to college, and all people have access to produce and meat harvested only 48 hours before dinner time.