Published: Friday, July 19, 2013 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, July 18, 2013 at 9:08 p.m.
Both are small-scale farms tucked behind a residential neighborhood that represent a growing reality of small farms on the edge of the city.
Siembra, which in Spanish means "sowing," is emblematic of another national trend with plenty of local momentum: the rise of young farmers.
Owned by Cody Galligan, 34, and his partner, Veronica Robleto, 33, the couple lives on the farm with their two children, Naim, 5 and Sofi, 2.
Galligan and Robleto grew up in South Florida suburbia -- Galligan in a "green-thumb" household where he nurtured a taste for locally grown products.
"I was always interested in connecting with food sources. Anything local -- mangoes and oranges -- felt special to me," Galligan said.
After high school, he volunteered with community gardens, learning from migrants who had brought native plants from places such as Haiti and Guatemala.
But it was not until he and Robleto ventured north to Gainesville that Galligan realized farming could also be their livelihood.
At Micanopy's Sandhill Farm, Galligan got "a crash course in farming," when the owners decided to move and asked him to take over the operation.
After doing that for a while, Galligan decided to invest in his own farm and saw a "serendipitous sign" advertising land for sale in the same spot where the sign for Siembra Farm is today.
"The forces of life pushed me towards this thing," he said.
That was two years ago, and Siembra Farm, which also is a CSA, or community-supported agriculture operation, sells its goods locally and just finished its second season of farming.
'A privileged life'
Galligan does the odd carpentry job during the summer, and Robleto has a part-time job as a program assistant at the University of Florida law school.
But for the most part, they pay their bills through farming. She spearheads the farm's marketing and sales, and he is in the field.
His hours are "sunup to sundown," Galligan said. "It's a privileged life to have in many ways. I'm never watching the clock."
He is mostly self-educated about the entirely organic cultivation of his crops -- he reads a lot online and networks with other farmers.
Robleto said they sell about 60 baskets per week -- which are filled with enough veggies to feed a family of three or four. They say they got most of their customers by word of mouth.
"I feel like the vegetables speak for themselves," Robleto said.
"I pretty much use the veggies we grow," she said. "You can't compare them with anything you buy at the store."
In fact, she rarely has to go to the store because, as Galligan explained, "We trade chicken, meat and eggs with the Crazy Woman Farm."
Farming lures youth
According to Mike Rogalski, head of the young farmers and ranchers committee at the Florida Farm Bureau in Gainesville, operations like Siembra Farm are on the rise in Florida.
At the committee's recent annual meeting, half of the 190 participants were farmers from small operations, and that number has increased.
Small farms also are budding throughout the country.
"We have an incredible number of people in late teens to early 30s who want to farm, who are passionate about it," said Fred Kirschenmann, distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "They don't want to raise thousands of acres of corn and soy, but (grow) food to feed people."
Danielle Treadwell, a horticulture professor at UF, said small farms are popular with young people because they are accessible, especially as land becomes increasingly expensive.
"People can afford to buy one to two acres at a time," she said.
Many of these farmers are not in it for the money, Rogalski said, adding that farming can still be a precarious occupation that is dependent on the whims of nature: Tropical Storm Debby wiped out a number of farms in 2012.
"There are some years where they may do very well, and others where they may struggle," Rogalski said.
Kirschenmann said that most of the small farmers could be considered "hobby farmers," because most have another source of income. According to the agricultural census, from 2002 to 2007, 300,000 farms were started and none made more than $10,000 per year.
Many of these small growers have not grown up on farms, distinguishing themselves from the historic trend of farming being a trade passed down from one generation to the next.
"The biggest draw is they're starting to realize the world population is growing; if folks like them aren't willing to step up to the plate and help, we're going be into a huge issue," Rogalski said.
Marty Tatman, the head of the young farmers and ranchers committee for the Farm Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C., said, "Farming is a very important and noble profession. As we see a growing population, we need more innovative farmers to help with that process.
Although the niche for small, organic farming is "huge right now, we see a lot of our young farmers and ranchers going back to the farms they grew up on," Tatman said.
Historical reversal
That reverses the phenomenon of young people leaving family farms as they became harder to manage, Kirschenmann said.
By 2007, 30 percent of commercial farmers were over the age of 65, compared with 6 percent under age 35 -- a reversal of trends in the 1930s.
"As farms got bigger, it became more and more difficult to do it. As a result, the age of farmers kept going up," Kirschenmann said.
The United States could see yet another reversal, as young people enter the profession and the face of farming changes, he said.
"You have to start to look at other issues here: commodity agriculture has been so successful because we've had relatively cheap energy and fertilizers and equipment and adequate amounts of fresh water," Kirschenmann said.
"As you look ahead over next two to three decades," "none of these resources are going to be here. Fertilizers' (prices) are going up. Fresh water resources are being drawn down. We've got more unstable climates. These large, industrial-type farms are not going to be able to operate. Who's going to grow our food?
"Urban agriculture will play an increasingly important role. You are going to have smaller, more diverse farms; family-sized farms operating on the basis of less energy inputs."
Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130719/article/307199994
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