A Sustainable Transition

Jean Peterson and Al Sterner, of Peterson Produce, farm 200 acres of vegetables, hay, and set aside land near Delano in western Hennepin County. Their farm is split up into three sections. The homestead, which is adjacent to busy Highway 12 just east of Delano, has a 60 acre plot of land. Their principle marketing method is their farmstead roadside stand at the end of their driveway. Nearly all of the farm’s vegetables are marketed from the roadside stand as are products, such as muskmelons and sweet corn, which are purchased from neighboring farms. In recent years, some of Peterson Produce vegetables have been sold to a neighboring vegetable grower who sells to restaurants.

Al and Jean have been farming for about two decades. Ten years ago they decided to start using integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. In the transition of the farm from what Al calls “conventional” to “sustainable,” the makeup of the farm’s crops, and management strategies, changed dramatically. The biggest change was in sweet corn production.

“We used to have 25 acres and now we have less than five acres,” he says. “When we switched over to sustainable we started to feel the added burden of trying to keep on top of those weeds without chemicals. So we have shifted away from the large scale production of sweet corn although our overall marketing of it has actually increased. That’s one of the compromises we make. Instead of growing all the corn we sell, we buy a lot of conventionally grown sweet corn from our neighbor.”

Al figures that they could bump their sweet corn production up to as much as 20 acres and still not have enough to satisfy their market. To manage weeds and insects in the five acres they do have, they use a combination of intensive hand hoeing, mechanical cultivation, and flame weeding.

Al says flame weeding works best if you can rotary hoe the field a couple of times and knock down the weeds with a mechanical cultivation first. Flame weeding requires experimentation and practice to perfect.

“You should flame corn,” Al suggests, “before cultivating. The ridge of soil left by the cultivator may block the flame from hitting the weeds within the row.”

With all the added tractor time for weed control in corn, Al and Jean cut way back on corn acreage and moved more into tomatoes, green beans, beets and carrots. “Those crops, “ Al says, “hadn’t ever required the level of herbicides that corn had.” As a result, when the farm cut out herbicides, no management changes were required in those crops.

Experimentation

In 1997, Peterson Produce was able to use grant funds from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Program and the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute to compare yields in onion in four different research treatments. The four weed control treatments were: 1) A two row tractor mounted cultivator and hand hoeing; 2) tractor mounted flaming and cultivating with hand hoeing; 3) hand held flaming and hoeing with tractor mounted cultivating; and 4) herbicide with hand hoeing. In the experiment, hand hoeing time was lower with the herbicide treatment but so were onion yields.

Onions take flame weeding well, according to Al. But he suggests not flaming right after transplanting or if the plants are stressed from dry weather. If the onions are well established and have adequate moisture, damaging their leaves from flaming doesn’t significantly set them back. Like most tools, flaming requires a learning curve before it’s effective.

Peterson Produce does continue to grow pumpkins and squash. They are, however, thinking about getting out of the squash because of their battles with the cucumber beetle. “We tried some of the organic sprays and they didn’t do a good job on the cucumber beetle,” Al says. “But then not much does.”

Al says that they were able to “go cold turkey” with herbicides because they had the tools: flame weeders, tractor drawn cultivators, and hand held hoes.

Al and Jean have worked on building organic matter and nitrogen with green manure plow downs. They’ve experimented with field peas as well as with winter rye. Al has found the biggest challenge in using green manure plow downs is that they usually need to be planted in August. August is an extremely busy time for a vegetable producer. It’s also a time when soil moisture required for seed germination can be in short supply.

It is the premium prices they receive for their crops that make their new system work. Even though they’ve reduced labor inputs to their onion crop, eliminating chemicals from their box of management tools has caused Al and Jean to increase their capital and labor inputs. Al says he knows that if he saves a thousand dollars on chemicals, he’ll have to spend at least that much on labor. They’ve had to purchase the rotary hoe and the tine cultivator. And they have to spend more time observing and monitoring weeds and crops so they can use those tools in an effective and timely fashion And, finally, they have to spend more time in the tractor seat, or on the end of a hoe handle, cultivating than they did when they sprayed.

“I’d rather spend my money on kids with hoes out in the field than on the chemical company,” Al says. The extra labor and capital costs have been offset by improved prices, however.

“I think we’ve maintained the profitability of the farm by balancing the extra expenses with the premium prices that we get for crops grown without chemicals,” Al said. “A lot of people – both organic and conventional – talk about how they can’t make enough money to make it worthwhile. That’s marketing. You need to get your customer to understand that it costs money and that you need to make more than five bucks an hour to do this. We’re blessed with a great location so we have the ability to educate most of our customers on a one-on-one basis.”

The education has paid off. Peterson Produce has a bevy of loyal customers that seek out the herbicide and insecticide free corn, carrots, beets, and other crops. “The first question they ask,” Al says, “isn’t how much the corn costs.” They ask if Al and Jean grew the vegetables.

______________________________________________________________________

This article is one in a series which can be found in “A Bountiful Harvest: Minnesota Fruit and Vegetable Growers Manage Pests,” Sept., 2002. The publication was produced by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) with funding provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 5, Chicago, IL. For the entire article please go to the MDA’s web site at:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ipm/fandvipm.html