How To Find A Sustainable Farm
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More and more households are looking for sustainable farm to buy their produce from. This is a right call to make for many reasons. First of all, that’s the best way to be sure that your family is getting healthy food on their table every day and there’s no task more important. Secondly, these farms are local and that’s a way to help your community and make it more interconnected.
It’s important for a homeowner to learn about the local market and the local industry and to find out which farms can be trusted, and which are actually eco-friendly.
What you need to do is to actually visit the farm or the local farmers market and to ask what their definition of sustainable is. Many local communities have written guidelines and farms need to apply for the status of sustainable farm.
Crop Rotation
Soil gets damaged simply from the fact that it’s being used for farming and after a while it produces less quality produce and less produce overall. Sustainable farms don’t use any artificial tools to prevent this from happening or to mitigate it.
The way to do it in an eco-friendly fashion is to rotate the crops and to have at least one period of time on your farm when nothing is growing. Inquire about these practices with the farms you want to buy from.
Crop Diversity
Monocultures also have a devastating effect on the soil sometimes even with rotation. What you want is the farm to have crop diversity meaning they will grow a variety of different produce on their farm and preferentially change things up as seasons change.
It’s useful to ask the farmer to give you a list of produce they are growing and offering even if you don’t plan to purchase all or even most of them. Most farmers will be glad to do it.
Beneficial Insects
There’s a misconception that all the insects that could be found on the farm should be a cause for concern and that the farm needs to do something to get rid of them. This isn’t really the case and many organic farms decide to preserve the eco-system as it is and keep useful insects such as ladybugs on their farm.
Again this is something to talk about with the farmer in great details. First of all you want to know do they keep the insects and if they do, you’ll want to know which of the insects they consider to be a natural part of the eco-system.
Managed Grazing
In a way managed grazing is similar to crop rotation even though it’s about animals and not plants. Managed grazing means that the animals don’t go to the same pastures to be fed, but are rotated to get different crops and different areas of a farm.
Moving animals this way is good for both the soil and the animals. Most farms that set up this practice will boast about it when trying to sell their produce because it’s a sign that they are both eco-friendly and that their meat will be superior to competitors.
Local Farms Only
When you take the effort to buy sustainable produced produce you should also go the extra step to be responsible to the environment and cut down on your carbon footprint. When it comes to purchasing food carbon footprint is increased simply by transporting the food.
That’s something you can prevent by buying from local farms only. It’s best to set up a parameter in which you will look for the farms that suit your needs. That’s usually set at 100 miles from your home.
Alternative Energy Sources
In the end, there’s a lot of work to be done on a farm that will require the owner to use carbon based energy. It’s not on the buyers to decide how the farmer will power their own home, but you’re still allowed to ask about the energy sources they are using. However, this shouldn’t be a deal breaker for you deciding to purchase from a sustainable farm.
There are incentives for farmers to use solar panels, mostly done via tax cuts. Many farmers use this opportunity in order to create a holistic approach to eco-friendly farming.
Conclusion
The best way to be sure your family is getting healthy and responsibly produced food is to purchase it yourself from local farms. There are many farms these days that claim to be sustainable and eco-friendly and you’ll need to make sure and educate yourself about the matter.
There are a few practices that a sustainable farm should follow and use and it’s best to talk to the farmer about them or to buy from a farmers market that imposes these rules on its vendors.
Do you want to know how to become a farmers market vendor? Click here.
