Want to be a rebel with a cause? Buy organic. Better yet, buy locally grown organic.

That's the advice of organic-foods advocate Leslie Duram, chair and associate professor of geography and environmental resources at SIUC. A Kansas native, she grew up hearing about farm buyouts and farmers' disillusionment with conventional agriculture. Since the early 1990s she's been investigating the organic farming movement as a possible solution to those economic woes

Several years ago Perspectives reported on a survey Duram did of organic farmers in Illinois. Her new book, Good Growing: Why Organic Farming Works (University of Nebraska Press), is a comprehensive work geared to general readers as well as academics.

Duram's countless conversations with family farmers have led her to conclude that organic farming is the only viable way for small- to medium-sized family farms to thrive in the United States. To make that point, her book quotes extensively from five farmers across the country that she's been visiting and interviewing for more than a decade. This technique allows the farmers to talk directly to the reader, as it were, about their experiences and concerns.

Their certified-organic enterprises are diverse: a 500-acre vegetable and sheep farm in upstate New York; a 14-acre citrus grove in Florida that has been organic since the 1940s; a 300-acre livestock, soybean, and grain farm in northern Illinois; a 5,700-acre grain farm on the high prairie of eastern Colorado; and a 250-acre vegetable farm in central California. Despite their differences, the five operations are doing very well, Duram says.

These farmers have learned to focus more on profit margins than on yields. Although yields tend to be lower with organic farms, there also are lower input costs, since the farmer isn't spending money on pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizer. Plus, many organic foods are marketed directly to the consumer, cutting out the middleman, and many carry a premium price.

Thus profits can sometimes be higher than on conventional farms. Joel Rissman, who raises cattle, chickens, soybeans, and grain on 300 acres in Illinois, says he has a goal of realizing as much income with his certified-organic farm as his neighbors do with a conventional 1,000-acre spread--and he thinks this will be attainable.

Duram used her interviews to identify what qualities are needed to be successful at organic farming and what issues are of most importance to organic farmers. These farmers have many things in common, she has found.

They're independent enough not to care what their neighbors say about their "strange" farming techniques. They're frugal, fixing and even making some of their own equipment. They emphasize diversity in crops, which gives them the flexibility to compensate for the lack of chemical control of insects and weeds.

They're entrepreneurial in trying different marketing techniques, especially direct marketing to consumers. Finally, they'll do whatever it takes to get the information they need, and they run on-farm experiments to see what works best for a given crop. As Naioma Benson, co-owner of the organic grain farm in Colorado, says: "Organic farmers are innovators. If America loses family farmers, they've lost innovation."

Duram notes a range of ecological benefits that organic farms provide to society: improving soil resources, reducing the amount of agrichemicals entering water supplies, and diversifying the gene pool for agriculture by planting "heirloom" seeds (older varieties no longer frequently cultivated).

Building soil quality and a healthy farm ecosystem is a top goal for all of these farmers. That involves techniques like using a rotation schedule of three or four crops in one field; using beneficial predator insects to help control pests; using "green" manure (vegetation grown to be plowed under, providing nitrogen and other nutrients) to build soil fertility; and getting the proper balance of microbes in the soil. It may also mean soil-conservation measures such as planting trees in areas bordering streams, to reduce runoff.

In Good Growing, Duram reviews information from more than 300 published studies, done both in the United States and abroad, on the sustainability, economics, and nutritional advantages of organic farming. But she is as interested in the social aspects of organic farming as the strictly agricultural ones.

Organic farms, especially those that market locally, strengthen communities, she says. They offer a way for small- and medium-sized family farms to stay in business, countering the trend toward farm buyouts, corporate agriculture, and dwindling rural populations.

Duram suggests a number of policies that the federal government could adopt that would help organic producers. They include providing technical assistance (little is now geared to organic production), paying farmers for the conservation improvements they make on their farms, and providing subsidies to help farmers through the three-year transition period from conventional to organic farming. (To be certified organic, fields must be free of synthetic chemicals for three years running.)

Organic products are growing in popularity, and organic farming, Duram says, is "becoming mainstream--for better and for worse." The trend toward organic production by large corporate farms is good from an environmental point of view but doesn't offer the same benefits to local communities that family-owned farms do, she says. She encourages consumers to know where their food comes from and buy locally.

Or, to give the last words to Terence Welch, a marketing manager hired by the California farm: "I always tell people: the most revolutionary act you can commit is to go to a farmers' market and buy from an organic grower. Because then you have bypassed the whole distribution system.

"You're buying food that's local, so you're supporting your community; you're supporting an agriculture that's benefiting the earth."

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.

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