Jim Slama
Jim Slama: Growing a food system for Illinois
Jim Slama
Jim Slama is a foreman on a major Chicago construction project – building a bridge between food producer and food consumer. He is president of Sustain, the nonprofit host of a project called familyfarmed.org – a “get there” project that brings together food producers, marketers, and distributors in a major new push to end the region’s almost total dependence on not-so-fresh food from faraway places. In April 2007 FPR reported that Chicago was seeking farmers for its farmers markets, while the farm bill reauthorization in Congress has a first-time focus on fruit and vegetable production. FPR talked with Slama May 11, 2007 about his vision for a new ag economy for the Chicago region.
FPR: Jim, could you briefly describe your organization and what you do?
SLAMA: FamilyFarmed.org is the primary program of Sustain, which is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the Midwest. Our goal is to act as a connector between regional family farmers-many of whom are organic- and consumers and trade buyers. We do that in a number of ways. Our website, which profiles many of these producers, is the first way we connect the farmers to new buyers. Another outlet is through our FamilyFarmed.org Expo, which brings together farmers, consumers and trade buyers. This year we had 120 booths, over 3,000 attendees, and many of the leaders in the local organic food movement national leaders as speakers. It’s really an amazing way to connect the key players in the movement.
FPR: That sounds great. I interviewed you last month while reporting on Chicago’s search for farmers. Do you think that the shortage of local food in the Chicago region has anything to do with the loss of farmland?
SLAMA: Well, I don’t know if it is the result of the loss of farmland or if it is a solution to the loss of farmland. I think that over the last 50 years, truck farming of vegetables near large urban markets has become a dying profession. And smaller grain farms on the urban edge can’t produce enough revenue to justify the high cost of land. Essentially agriculture, at least in the Midwest, has become large scale commodity-driven production focusing primarily on corn and soybeans. Such a system does not work in exurban areas. Yet the demand for local and organic food is through the roof. If we can build a system to grow much more profitable specialty crop production to meet the demand for local food it can play a valuable role in preserving regional farm land for high value food production.
FPR: I had one person tell me they thought that local farming went away was because of hard work and little pay. Why do you think it happened?
SLAMA: I think federal policies encouraged and subsidized commodity grain production. It is more work to grow fruit and vegetables than to grow grains, and the market was not providing any incentives to local fruit and vegetable producers to sell their product. If tomatoes were a penny per pound less in California, with the cheap transportation that we’ve had for the last 50 years, people were going to buy the cheaper tomatoes and ship them rather than buy from a local producer. So local producers left fruit and vegetable production and either moved into corn and beans or sold out to their neighbors who then became larger. The norm in Illinois is to have 2,3, or 5,000-acre operations doing strictly commodity crops. Fortunately, now the market is recognizing the importance of both local and organic food, and is willing to pay a premium. Ultimately this means that local food is a solution for losing farmland to sprawl development.
FPR: Okay, so you’ve turned the equation around a little bit. So there’s no shortage of land, then, in terms of fruit and vegetable production.
SLAMA: Within 100 to 150 miles of Chicago there are endless acres that could be utilized for fruit and vegetable production that right now are in corn and beans. Yet farmers can yield ten times or more revenue per acre for specialty crops than they can in commodity crops. In order to transition they need skilled labor to move from corn and beans to meats or fruit and vegetable production. So we’re looking at how to develop programs that give farmers the tools to grow products for these booming markets.
FPR: Do you think farmland preservation programs like that in Kane County are important to future food production or would you focus on profitability by itself?
SLAMA: I think it’s a combination of both. The Kane County Farmland Preservation program is a great model. They want to retain the rural heritage that the county is known for and they appreciate farming both as a profession and a way of life. In addition, there is a tremendous opportunity for farmers to grow specialty crops to meet the demand for local and organic food. There is a lot of money to be made by good producers! Of course we also need public support, because farmers need training, labor, distribution infrastructure, and warehouses to compete effectively with large scale commodity vegetable producers in California, Arizona, or Mexico. So therefore we’ve been working on passing state legislation we hope will rectify some of these issues and help Illinois take a leadership role and create the programs necessary to help bridge the gaps I’ve just described.
FPR: How is that going? Could you describe the food system you envision?
SLAMA: There is a great coalition working here to pass the Illinois Food, Farms, and Jobs Act. It is a very innovative program. The Act will create a task force of 32 members which the governor will appoint. Most of the members will come from the organic farming community, distributors and processors, food access groups, specialty crop producers, and the NGO community. These will be people who care deeply about local and organic food production. It gives us a year and a half to create a very strong and transparent process, where stakeholders create the vision for what we want involving a local food system. So whether it be programs to promote farmland preservation in urban edge communities, or getting the type of distribution and warehousing infrastructure that’s necessary to serve farmers both in rural and exurban areas, we will figure it out and then seek funding for it. We also envision programs that train farmers and help them access new workers. When the plan is complete we will seek state funding and also federal funding, because with the new farm bill it looks like there will be significant new federal resources for local and organic specialty crop production.
FPR: Yes, it’s very exciting what’s going on in Washington right now…. Jim, what is your background? How did you get involved in all this?
SLAMA: I was a journalist. For many years, as the publisher and executive editor of a magazine called Conscious Choice, I did a lot of reporting on organic food. I launched Sustain about 10 years ago and quickly we started focusing on food issues, one of which was working with the Organic Trade Association (OTA) and the ‘Keep Organic Organic’ campaign, which was a national multimedia campaign in response to federal standards that would have allowed food that was genetically engineered, irradiated or grown in sewage sludge to be called organic. We were shocked that the proposed standards would have allowed those practices. I think the USDA forgot that organic consumers spend a premium to buy organic food in order to avoid those kinds of things. We chose to fight rather than switch, and when the dust settled our coalition generated 275,000 comments and the USDA raised a white flag and said, ‘OK we hear you, we’re going to give you better organic standards. . . and they did. As a result of this I was very excited about organic, realizing that it had many environmental advantages and was an amazing tool for job creation and economic development. Yet after we decided to start a ‘buy local’ campaign in Illinois, we quickly realized there was nothing to buy. So being the social entrepreneur I am, the Sustain board and myself decided to take a hard look at what was lacking. This work has evolved significantly since then.