Biomass, Meet Pasture...Pasture, Biomass

In addition to my position as your humble Pasture Outreach Coordinator, I've been spending a portion of my time providing outreach and logistical services to a community wood biomass project.  The Center for Sustainable Ag and UVM's Rubenstein School of Natural Resources have partnered with Vermont Family Forests, Forest Guild and a Mad River Valley energy group to learn more about wood energy resources in two communities, how that wood is harvested, how it's used, and how it's paid for.  Wow, what an eye-opening experience that has turned out to be for my pasture work.

Through the course of the project, which is now wrapping up (you can read project reports at www.uvm.edu/forestcarbon), we've looked into how sustainably the resource is managed; how it's processed; how the higher and lower-valued products are marketed; how the land manager, the land owner and the processor receive reasonable rates for their products;  and how external policies affect every day decisions. 

Sound familiar?  Yeah, I thought so too.

Let's not forget the seasonality of wood production (a concept that I admit had never occurred to me).  Many loggers work in the winter when the ground is frozen and timber mills must hose down their saw logs out in the yard to make sure the wood stays moist enough to saw and NOT dry enough to catch fire. 

For the direct-sale marketers out there, this will also seem like a page torn out of your books: high end saw timber highly subsidizes the ability to provide wood chips or lower-expense biomass at "cheap" prices.  Not entirely unlike the Rib Eye steak allows for cheap(er) hamburger.  Can farmers make money on a ground-beef only cow?  Can loggers/landowners/forest managers make money on forests cleared for wood chips?  That last questions was resoundingly asked at a woody biomass field trip our project hosted in April.  I was personally struck by the similarity of the responses I heard from the logger to the responses I have heard from many dairy farmers.  Customers are not always willing to pay for us to manage the way that we would like.  In the case of state contracts for wood chip heating facilities, the contracting system seeks the lowest price, which may not be enough money (realistically) to manage wood harvests in agreement with state law.  Hmmm.  Do we want the least expensive, or do we want to protect our environment and create livable wage jobs?  These are questions that will need to be addressed in the future for all of our working landscape industries.

Finally, a thing that resonated with me was what Bob Perschel of Forest Guild said in his presentation about new sustainability guidelines for biomass harvest developed by the Guild.  To paraphrase: "We, the foresters and loggers, know more about the impacts of policy on the forests than anyone else.  Shouldn't we be the ones leading the way?"

Well, that made me think about grass-based and sustainable farmers too.

Would you have known this forest was logged last year by looking at it?  The biomass from this property in Lincoln, VT was logged according to sustainable guidelines and the cord wood sold in a pilot project following a CSA style.  Prices were structured for the wood buyer to pay true costs (or close to them) of this management to the logger and land owners.

Whither Processing?

With many meat livestock farmers that I talk to, sooner or later the topic of slaughter & processing comes up.  Rarely does it seem to generate positive comments.  Either the farmer feels like processing is too expensive, that they don't get everything back that they should, or that there just isn't room in processing line when they need one to be.  Often the complaints refer to more than one of these issues. I'd be remiss if I pretended that I myself haven't had these experiences...the bill is how much (GULP)?

On the good side, I have a pretty positive relationship with my local processor and have heard the comments from the other side of that processing bill.  Farmers who raise animals when the grass is green and want to ship everything in a September/October window of time.  Farmers who don't understand the cuts of meat and options...such as if you want pork steaks, you have to cut up a ham.  Farmers who are slow to pay.  Processors have to pay to keep good help on, even in the slow times of the year.

On and on, it's a complicated system, and a very personal one.  Each contributor to the relationship has the ability to make or break the business of the other. The side I fall on in this situation is that we all have to work together, because together we will succeed or together we will fall.  The customers out there wanting to buy our products...they need us to succeed.

There will be more posts about this in the next few months as the VT Meat Workshop Series gets going, but in the mean time, we all need to take the time to learn  more about the State of Meat in Vermont.  For a great overview, check out the Farm to Plate Initiative Strategic Plan section on livestock infrastructure and meat processing.  It;s an excellent read and a good place to start your education.  Already it's been useful for mine.

Grass-based Media Smackdown

About a week ago, VT was visited by our illustrious NY grazing partner-in-crime Troy Bishopp of Bishopp Family Farm.  For those of you who don't know Troy, you can acquaint yourself with his writing and farming activities at his web site:

http://www.thegrasswhisperer.com/

Technically, Troy was visiting our comprehensive grazing training group for our second training in the series (on planned grazing, more on that in another post).  Troy is never one to avoid over commitment (and apparently neither am I), so he agreed to come a day early and lead a training for farmers wanting to improve their media skills.  The training was great (although too short to get to all the topics), and one of our attendees showed up the rest of the group by submitting a letter to the editor the very next day!  Even though I do outreach and media work a lot, there was plenty for me to learn and the process gave me a good kick to restart our VPN blog.  For those with long memories, we had a blog several years ago, but the interface was grumpy and cumbersome.  A new day.

As a result of the media training and the advent of our new (again) blog, I'm announcing a grass-based grassroots media campaign.  Let's spread the word about the benefits of grazing to the public.  Let's share our perspectives as grass-based farmers through our newspapers and with our neighbors.  Let's talk with farmers and neighbors (and farming neighbors!) about new ideas to address water quality, farm profitability and quality of life.  Let's step up with our stories of success so that policy and decision makers can learn from us.

So I've just started with some quick notes in several local newspapers:

Submitted to the Randolph Herald 4/11/11:

Caption: NY farmer and "Grass Whisperer", Troy Bishopp, recently visited Bethany Church teaching local farmers how to become more media-friendly.  Bishopp encourages farmers to share their experience and perspectives about current events and how they relate back to farm issues.  Workshop attendee Jinny Cleland of Four Springs Farm took the plunge with her Herald letter to the editor in last week's paper.  (Photo: Jenn Colby)

and to the VT Standard in Woodstock, VT 4/12/11:

Caption: Bill & Cathy Emmons of Cloudland Farm hosted a training workshop for agricultural advisors helping farmers improve their pasture management skills.  NY farmer and "Grass Whisperer" Troy Bishopp and Jennifer Colby of the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture led the training for attendees from five states.  After grazing on a delicious roast beef and caramelized onion sandwich buffet, the group was ready to dive back into debating the finer points of grazing grass and clovers.  (Photo: Jenn Colby)

So let the grazing smackdown begin!