Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the Farm, my fellow Americans:
We are fifteen years into this new century. Fifteen years that dawned with weed seeds touching our soils; that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly battles; that saw a vicious flea beetle invasion spread across our broccoli and the cauliflower. It has been, and still is, a hard time for many.
But tonight, we turn the page.
Tonight, after a breakthrough year for Fresh Earth Farms, our corn is growing and creating ears at the fastest pace since 1999. Our squash bug rate is now lower than it was before the squash bug crisis. More of our kids are eating healthy foods than ever before; more of our members are renewing than ever before; we are as free from the grip of black rot as we’ve been in almost 30 years.
Farm members, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this:
The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Farm is strong.
At this moment – with a growing membership, shrinking weed seed banks, bustling potato harvests, and booming tomato production – we have risen from the drought freer to write our own future than any other farm on Earth. It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come.
Will we accept soil pH where only a few crops do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to a soil pH that generates rising production and chances for all vegetable that make the effort?
Will we approach the farm fearful and reactive, dragged into costly pesticides that strain our equipment and set back our beneficial insects? Or will we lead wisely, using all elements of sustainable agriculture to defeat new threats and protect our plants?
Will we allow our veggies to be sorted into factions and turned against one another – or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled the farm forward?
In two weeks, I will send a budget filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan. And in the months ahead, I’ll crisscross the acres making a case for those ideas.
So tonight, I want to focus less on a checklist of proposals, and focus more on the values at stake in the choices before us.
Seven years ago, Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis were newlyweds. She waited tables. He worked construction. Their first child, Jack, was on the way.
They were young and in love in the Twin Cities, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
“If only we had known,” Rebekah wrote to me last spring, “what was about to happen to our garden and the farmers’ market.”
As the crisis worsened, Ben’s garden dried up, so he harvested what tomatoes he could find, even if they kept him on the road for long stretches of time. Rebekah took out student loans, enrolled in community college, and retrained for a new career. They sacrificed for each other. And slowly, it paid off. They bought their first hoe. They had a second son, Henry. Rebekah got a better shovel, and then a rake. Ben is back in construction – and home for dinner every night.
“It is amazing,” Rebekah wrote, “what you can bounce back from when you have a CSA share…we are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.”
We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.
Members, Rebekah and Ben’s story is our story. They represent the hundreds who have joined the farm, and volunteered, and planted, and harvested. You are the reason I started this farm. You’re the people I was thinking of six years ago today, in the darkest months of the crisis, when I stood on the steps of this tractor and promised we would rebuild our farm on a new foundation. And it’s been your effort and resilience that has made it possible for our farm to emerge stronger.
We believed we could reverse the tide of weed pressure, and draw new members to our soils. And over the past five years, our farm plots have created more than 11 million new peas.
We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign veggies and protect our plants. And today, Fresh Earth Farms is number one in kohlrabi and tomatillos. Fresh Earth Farms is number one in carrots. Every three weeks, we bring in from the fields as much green beans as we did in all of 2008. And thanks to lower cucumber beetle populations and higher weed management standards, the typical member family this year should save $150 at the grocery store.
We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive bok choi. And today, our younger students have earned the highest pea and carrot scores on record. Our high school vegetable consumption rate has hit an all-time high. And more members finish their rutabagas than ever before.
We believed that sensible organic practices could prevent another crisis, shield cucumbers from powdery mildew, and encourage native pollinators. Today, we have new tools to stop weeds from going to seed, and a new watchdog to protect us from grazing deer and abusive crows. And in the past year alone, about thirty new member families finally gained the security of healthy eating.
I have no more campaigns to run. My only agenda for the next two years is the same as the one I’ve had since the day I swore an oath on the silty loam of this farm – to do what I believe is best for our soil. If you share the broad vision I outlined tonight, join me in the work at hand. If you disagree with parts of it, I hope you’ll at least work with me where you do agree. And I commit to every member here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I will seek to work with you to make this farm stronger.
I want our actions to tell every child, in every member family: eat your vegetables, and we are as committed to improving your health as we are for our own kids.
I want future members to know that we are a people who see our land as a great gift, that we are a people who value the taste and texture of every tomato – heirloom and hybrid, yellow and red, determinate and indeterminate, cherry and beefsteak, juicy and meaty, tomatoes with cracks and deformities.
I want them to grow up on a farm that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of fruits and vegetables; that we are Fresh Earth Farms.
I want them to grow up on a farm where a young mom like Rebekah can sit down and write a letter to her farm’s Chief Farming Officer with a story to sum up these past six years:
“It is amazing what you can bounce back from when you have a CSA share…we are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.”
My fellow farm members, we too are a strong, tight-knit family. We, too, have made it through some hard times. Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked our beans, dug our potatoes, and begun again the work of replanting the farm. We’ve laid a new irrigation system. A brighter future is ours to harvest. Let’s begin this new chapter – together – and let’s start the growing right now.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless this farm we love.