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Farming is an entrepreneurial business.

Written on November 18, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Organic, agriculture

Farming is the epitome of entrepreneurship. It is not easy work. It is a business that first requires an understanding what the market wants: How much does the market need, what can you sell and to whom? Then you have to figure out if you can grow it for a certain cost and still make a profit. If you approach it any other way you will most likely fail. Like any other new venture, it all starts with the market.

A recent article in the New York Times, “Young Farmers Find Huge Obstacles to Getting Started,” sites many of the issues of getting into farming and how hard it is. Many farmers cannot affordthe land, and even if they can, they have a hard time getting the farm working and selling the produce at market. Yes, it is hard to run a farming business.

By way of example, suppose I decide to sell pencils. Everyone needs pencils, right? They are always consumed. So I buy the wood, lead/graphite, metal, and rubber, and then I purchase the machines to roll stamp and press the pencils. And finally I rent the building to do all this in. I spent all my capital to do this. Then I go to the corner store and ask him to buy my pencils to sell in his store. The store owner (being the nice local merchant he is) ask how much I will charge him for the pencils. I tell him, “$1 a piece, they are locally made”. He tells me, “I buy pencils from my supplier for 25 cents, and I don’t think my customers will buy $2 pencils.”

Then I pursue the option of opening a corner vendor kiosk and selling my pencils direct to the customer for $1 each. I sell a few, but within a year I am out of money, out of pencils and out of business. That’s when I say this is a hard business. Yes it is.

So what went wrong? I did not understand the market, the customers and the customers’ need to get a product at a specific price. It’s that simple.

When you read the article about how tough it is to be a farmer and how many new farmers failure, put this in context: They say that 22% of new farms turn a profit the first year. That is great actually. But only 1 out of every 5 farmers make it all the way to sustainable profitablility. How many other new business start ups fail in the first 1 to 5 years? How many actually make it through that long, hard start up phase to actually make a profit? 1 in 5. Sound familiar?

Farming is also unique in that one learns to farm through trial and error. Failure of a crop is inherent in farming and then you learn to do it better.

The top 5 reasons for business failure are:

1. Lack of experience

2. Insufficient capital (money)

3. Poor location

4. Poor inventory management

5. Over-investment in fixed assets

All of these elements are within the control of the new businesses owner. These reasons apply to farming and business. A well thought out business plan mitigates these issues.

Farming is a hard business but you need to start with the notion of the market and then you have a fighting chance.

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A Whole New Look at Green Building

Written on November 7, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Energy Efficiency, Uncategorized, agriculture, sustainability, waste water

Urbanization is reaching new levels around the world. In developing countries the continuing influx of people from the country side and small villages is accelerating. These people are searching for better paying jobs and a way to support their families. There is also a trend towards greening the cities; becoming more energy efficient, recycling water, creating local (roof top) power generation, etc. Cities are wonderfully efficient if designed right. In these urban settings, the power and water consumption are lowest per capita, and the walkability makes living easier and healthier.

One of the biggest trends is the greening of roofs and walls in buildings. The popularity of “green walls,” “vertical gardens” or “living walls,” is hitting a new benchmark. Many new firms are developing the technology and services to support these efforts, such as Gsky plant systems. Establishing plant material on rooftops provides numerous ecological and economic benefits, including stormwater management, energy conservation, mitigation of the urban heat island effect, and increased longevity of roofing membranes, as well as providing a more aesthetically pleasing environment in which to work and live. It is truly remarkable what we will begin to see in the next decade.

Just when you thought sustainability and Platinum LEEDS was as good as it gets, leave it to the Italians to redefine the green building. The Vertical Forest Buildings of Milan are reaching for exactly that: living in a vertical forest. They are amazingly efficient with water (gray water) heat and light shading. These could be one of the most beautiful buildings to live in. Your personal yard and forest on the 20th floor. Very clever.

I believe the innovation we will begin to see in new developments around the world will redefine what good standard of living is in cities. The resource and living benefits of mid to high density living, coupled with as much nature as possible, will reset the way we look at urbanization.

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Rethinking Existing Infrastructure Systems

Written on October 12, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, agriculture, sustainability

On October 13th, I will be giving a talk to The Wharton Program for Social Impact and the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL).

The essence of what I will be speaking about is how the world needs to rethink or redo how we live. This is more than a question of sustainability, instead it addresses what will be needed to allow us to thrive again on this planet. While it might sound lofty, it is all about how to invest into and profit from the redesign of our core services. I will speak in depth on how Bio-Logical Capital, a land development and conservation company, is looking at large landscapes to restore, redevelop, and conserve the land so the human settlement can thrive within the natural environment. We are creating a living model that will not only function well, but be a great place to live and profit so that many can follow.

Our basic services and systems of water, energy, agriculture, transportation and housing are all in major need of not only an upgrade, but a fundamental philosophy and design change. It is not that these services and systems were ever bad, they are now just outdated in function, design and technology. Just because something worked 100 years ago does not mean that it is right for today. These systems were never designed to carry the loads they are experiencing today. More importantly they never really looked at natural systems as an alley, but rather viewed them as an impediment and obstruction that needed to be altered to suit man’s needs. We keep patching a framework that is now a flawed design.

Let’s look at water and wastewater for starters. Water naturally flows down hill. It rains up top and runs in rivers to the ocean, then is evaporated into the atmosphere and back again. Our water systems do the same: We take water from a source use it, filter it and dump it back to the ocean. We take rainwater and wisk it away to big pipes and dump it in the ocean. Good right? Not really. Nature stores water everywhere. Good rich soils, forests, and aquifers store water and hold onto it for dry times.

Natural systems have cycles that the animals and plants learn to work with.

Our water system interrupts all that evolutionary work and short-circuits it. So how do we redesign this? First, we must think decentralized solutions. We need to recycle water on a local basis, using gray water (which is practically potable) where ever possible. We need to use natural water stores for rain in the land, soil, and aquifers. We need to use more decentralized natural filtration techniques (biomimicry). We should use that big brown pipe full of wastewater and harness the energy from the waste, which will either be additional revenue or an offset of cost. We can also resell the nutrients from the wastewater as well as sell the gray water itself as a product. This shift is so fundamental that the costs of such a system are dramatically less and the profits much more.

To touch on agriculture as I have written before, if we use the natural systems we can grow food more sustainably, growing healthy soils and healthy food in a post industry agriculture system that is robust, resilient and abundant. Food and agriculture are central to the health of a community. Knowing where your food comes from is not only necessary for good health but wonderful in that it brings people together. A large part of the failures of our healthcare system can be attributed to our food system. Natural agriculture solutions work in cooperation with nature and leverage its resourcefulness.

I use these two examples to show what is possible in all the basic services. Bio-Logical Capital is in process of rebuilding communities based on the principles of natural systems, as pioneers of stewardship development. How can mankind fit into this landscape and build a living environment that we all would like to see and be part of?

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Urban Farming Is Catching On Fast

Written on September 18, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, agriculture, marketing, sustainability

San Francisco is getting smart and ahead of the urban farming game. The city recently passed a law allowing people to sell the produce they grow in their own yard. Urban farming has been accelerating and under the radar for a while now. Approving this practice makes sense, especially in these difficult economic times. The San Francisco Urban Agricultural Alliance can help people get started with advice on how to farm and even how to find land.

This is in sharp contrast to the issues that I discussed in a prior entry about Novella Carpenter, and the challenges she faced in the city of Oakland that was trying to shut her down.

A great piece to read, “Farming the Concrete Jungle,” goes deep into the movement that is sweeping the economy not only for financial reasons, but health and even environmental. The article points out how it’s better to have a pretty garden then a overgrown, littered and abandoned lot next door, and a little extra cash and good food makes life a whole lot better.

Creating a product to sell (and in this case growing a product) is the first step of any business, but then you have to know how to sell it. Most urban farming is not your average lemonade stand, unless you have the property in a major walkway. You need to think about the whole business. Growing the product is one skill set you need, but knowing what to grow and finding buyers for your product is actually more important. Farming is a business like any other and it is a tremendously entrepreneurial.

For most people, you start out by growing only for your family and friends. Then as you succeed, you can expand your ambitions and hopefully your wallet.

I do think there is an opportunity to band together a set of growers for products then identify the customers and the produce they would like and sign a deal. But then you have to deliver the goods. Customers need consistency, so they know they can count on your product. If you think urban farming is for you, think carefully and do your homework, talk to a lot of people and customers to get the lay of the land before you venture too far.

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Good Food Is The Answer To Many Issues

Written on August 30, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Economics, Organic, agriculture, stewardship, sustainability

What is good food? First and foremost, Good Food is food that tastes great!

But it is also real food, grown right, prepared right. It is healthy for your body and healthy for the environment. If we grow real food the right way we heal our environment. We create great soil that nourishes the food that nourishes us. This same soil rich with biology will be rich with minerals and store gases and hold water. It is fundamental to a healthy environment.

Good soil does not run off in the rain. Good soil is rich in its biology that for every 1% increase in biological mater in soil will hold water like a sponge, 20,000 gallons per acre.

A friend of mine recently, cited that we need to appeal to people’s greed. Greed for sugar. A carrot grown in a rich healthy soil can have a Brix count(amount of sugars present) of 30, while a industrial grown carrot, 5 to 10. Ask yourself or anyone, “Do you want to eat this sweet delicious carrot or this cardboard rendition?” One costs 25 cents the other 10 cents, but which would you eat?

In a wonderful interview of Alice Waters in a United Airlines Magazine, She said,” We need to pay for it. We need to pay for the food and pay the people who produce it. That’s profound and terribly important. We still think we can get it for free. And you know, it’s that idea that we have been indoctrinated to believe that food should be fast, cheap and easy. And it’s really that kind of thinking that is destroying the world.”

She is talking about the environment and our health. The environmental damage from our industrial agriculture damage is undisputed. The damage to our health is dramatic. Our processed food industry is not about real food or health. It is about tricking our bodies to eat more of a bad thing. Our bodies also have to eat more to get anywhere near the nutrients that we require. The rest we store as fat and then comes Diabetes.

The chart above that summarizes what has happen to us as we journeyed down the industrial agriculture road. Our costs of food fell from 17% of our household budget to 6%. Inversely our healthcare budget has gone form 7% to 17% of our budget. There is almost a direct correlation. This is not entirely due to food, but a very direct correlation to the food industry and diabetes with all its co-morbidities is the major driver of cost in our health system.

Industrial agriculture is also the major driver of our environmental issues, from the methane released by our industrial livestock systems to our releasing of fertilizers and pesticides into our ground, water and air. This culprit needs to be fixed.

Amazingly this is in our control. This is the one area we can tackle if we focus. We need to understand cheap food is not good for anyone nor is it really cheap. The true costs to us as people and our environment is huge. We just lost track of what is really important.

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The Right to Grow Food and Then Some

Written on June 9, 2011 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Organic, agriculture, sustainability

Last summer my family started our own garden in our yard. We thought we’d picked a reasonable size of five, 6’x4’ beds. We planted the usual things, lettuces and tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, and zucchini, with a few herbs like basil, dill, thyme and rosemary. We planted and waited. And boy did it produce! It produced so much, and so often, that we had to give it away to family, friends and neighbors. Everyone who crossed our threshold was sent home with a large brown bag of vegetables. We even had one friend who stopped by daily to hand pick her dinner salad. Realizing we couldn’t give it away fast enough, my youngest daughter wanted to sell the excess lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers in a makeshift farm stand converted from her old lemon-aide stand – how fun, how harmless and how entrepreneurial.

So a couple months ago, I read in the San Francisco Chronicle about Novella Carpenter and her Ghost Town Farm being shut down by the city of Oakland, ““. You can check out updates to her plight on her blog Ghost Town Farm

Thinking that she was doing the right thing, improving her town while at the same time providing fresh, wholesome, locally grown produce, Novella did the same thing as my daughter, although on a much larger scale. From all appearances, it seems like a win-win. But the city doesn’t see it that way. They step in and say she isn’t allowed to grow and sell without a zoning change and permits to sell. Ostensibly, Christine is breaking the law.

I think the laws need to change. We should be encouraging, not discouraging, this type of neighborly endeavor. This was not a commercial operation designed for making a living and commercial profit. It was undertaken to make the neighborhood better. It engaged the community, and more importantly, the kids within that community, and showed them what could be done with a plighted piece of land all the while showing them how food is grown. Pretty powerful.

So back to the law prohibiting her from selling her produce. You have to realize what it was trying to achieve. It was designed to protect neighborhoods so no one person creates a business that then changes the character of that particular neighborhood. No one wants lots of people and cars and parking and all the issues that come from a commercial downtown setting to come to their neighborhood. But a little local corner farm stand wouldn’t have that same affect. It encourages people to walk, to socialize with their neighbor’s, to eat and shop local, and to have pride in their neighborhood. We have to rethink our laws and policies in these difficult economic times. We have to have to be flexible and adapt and design rules of governance the match the needs of society.

Community gardens create neighborhoods and put people in touch with nature and the food they eat. Allow people to dig in and help and learn and grow to be food smart. Isn’t this what it is all about?

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Water is the Key to Life in India (and everywhere else)

Written on November 12, 2010 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Organic, agriculture, sustainability, waste water

“We don’t have a water problem now, we had a good Monsoon.” Yes, that is as long range as most people think. After a drought for 4 years, and water tables falling further then any where in recorded history and well beyond where people believe it has ever been, yet the issue is not in the forefront of peoples minds now. So why worry?

So lets go back in history. It is fascinating is to see how well designed the forts and palaces of the 15^th and 16^th Centuries were. Two of the most beautiful are the Amber Fort in Jaipur and Fatehpur Sikri on the way to Agra. They were both built around the same time as the Taj Mahal. Water was harvested from the entire complex. Every drop of rain water flowed to catch basins around the palace/fort, which was usually a beautiful and very deep stone pool. Water was drawn up by a system of ascending ox driven, rotating wheels with buckets and aqueducts on the buildings ending up in the water holds on top.

Then water was used to its fullest and most beautiful potential. High pressure, gravity fed water fountains were used for entertainment and tranquility. Innovative air conditioning systems cooled the royalty. Cloth hung over dripping pipes atop open breezeways and chilled the air. Lastly, the water was used for drink and bathing. All this water was filtered and channeled back to a lower catch basin only to be used again. Some of the wastewater was also filtered and channeled to the gardens and fields if possible.

Some of the first damning was done in India, to capture more of the run off and rain from the Monsoons. This enabled cities to thrive where before it was barely possible to exist. All this innovation was dramatic back then. Today, India is at the point it will need a new set of innovative ideas to collect, store and distribute the water that comes but one season a year.

Water is an issue that potentially could bring the country to a standstill. This will require long term planning with corporate drivers and government policy in alignment.

As I continue my travels across India, I am constantly impressed and amazed at this country. It moves increasingly forward in its chaotic and frenetic way, a way that defies logic. Yet it works, things get done. Through the frenzy, problems are solved and results delivered. “Anything for profit,” gets addressed sooner or later. The government is like any other: Good intentions but difficult in delivering the results. But I fully expect that India will figure this out and come through with some very creative solutions.

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India Bound…

Written on November 4, 2010 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, Economics, Energy Efficiency, Organic, agriculture, stewardship, sustainability, waste water

I am heading over to India to understand and learn more of its culture, business, opportunities and challenges. As we all know, India is a vibrant economy that drives and thrives with chaos. It is an amazing country of wild entrepreneurs that see no limit to what they can do and that push the impossible through.

Their issues are many as India grows at 9% per year and pushes any conceivable obstacle out of its way. The predominately young population now thinks the sky is the limit. The good life is ahead. The middle class is exploding, the under classes are striving. Education is so highly sought after that kids travel hours everyday to learn.

But the scariest thing I just saw was in my partner’s recent presentation on the state of conditions in India — He is from there, and he pointed out that the biggest issue he sees for India is scarcity of water and power.

Wow! Power is scarce. Every building and every hotel needs its own diesel-powered generator because every week (many times a week) the power is shut off. Residences live without power for up to 8 hours a day. Their grid is immature and their power generation is a decade behind the growth. They are building power generation plants and unfortunately, many coal fired ones.

Water is much scarier issue. India is running out of water. The aquifers have been drained to the point where there is less then one year’s supply of water now (after the monsoon) and at one point they had less then 150 days of water left.

China is building its dams up in the Himalayas and diverting any water they can to themselves. India is building dams to divert water from Pakistan. Conflict is looming and everyone is scared. No one wants to face the hard facts. Even the power of the growing monsoons that flood the cities and countryside for months are no help. Monsoon water isn’t caught stored, filtered or used well.

These issues will cause mayhem in India. But don’t count them out! A rethinking of these systems is needed and new types of infrastructure need to be built. But, as is classically Indian, it will not be done in the methodical Chinese way but rather in the helter skelter approach that India is famous for.

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How Can I Help?

Written on October 15, 2010 by Roland Van der Meer in Community, agriculture, global warming, stewardship, sustainability

People often wonder, “Am I doing enough to help our world, our environment?” Some wonder why they should even try because what impact could they possibly have. My wife, on the other hand, has a more challenging question: “Do you expect people to go back to ‘old ways’ to sustain the earth?” And then she gets tough… “People worked for centuries to get off the farm, and you want to send people back?”

The concept of civilization fosters the idea of the pursuit of intellectual endeavors and those of leisure, not hard, back-braking work. What are we advocating? Then, she sends me a list to “help the environment,” (see below) and asks if I expect her to do all these things?

Now, my wife is as progressive a person as I know, and really is thinking about these big issues. However, she is pragmatic and understands how people think and behave.

So here is my simple answer: “No!” You don’t have to go backwards, you don’t need to do all these things. It is impractical — as it is foolish — to think people will really do this entire list. If we’re lucky, maybe people will do 10 or 20 of them. The list ranges from suggestions that read like your homeowner “to do list,” to some that are really impractical to others that you just want to say, “get real.”

The bigger issue surrounds the kinds of things are we advocating, to use the latest techniques, methodologies, and technologies to create best in class solutions to our mounting issues. Many of the existing key infrastructure sectors, water, energy, agriculture, real estate etc, are rooted in a very antiquated paradigm that has not evolved to keep up with what we now know to be awful solutions. They were never bad when designed but they have not evolved because they worked well enough. We have taken the evolutionary path of lowest cost solution to the extreme and siloed everything. We have gone beyond the optimal economic, environmental, social solution to our way of live. It looked like the best economic solution, but now, it is clearly not.

A new economic view reveals what needs to be provided, made, produced, or grown. For example: Local food taken to the extreme is crazy. The goal is not “buy everything local,” but buy what is economic locally. The complete cost of brought in food has never really been understood. If I can employ the land, the people and produce the right crops that have a better economic total value to the local economy then it makes complete sense. This new thinking is due mostly to the fact that we are now living in a world of scarcity and limited growth capacity. This changes a lot of thinking.

Our political, community and business leaders need to rethink how the systems we have put in place can service us better.

But just for fun, go ahead and see how many on this list you can actually do:

Skills for an Eco-Friendly Do-It-Yourself Lifestyle: Go green one skill at a time

Honing your green skills is part of growing and learning to walk softly on the earth. How many things do you really know how to do in order to increase your green and decrease your carbon footprint? Here is a list of 99 skills to try in order to become a more green do-it-yourself-er.

Food Skills
1. Read and understand product labels
2. Bake bread
3. Make your own bread starter and keep it going
4. Make cheese, yogurt, and kefir from local milk
5. Preserve food by canning
6. Preserve food by drying
7. Forage for local wild foods safely
8. Raise a couple of backyard chickens
9. Make your own tofu, tempeh, and soy milk
10. Eat locally and in season
11. Grind your own flour
12. Grow your own produce
13. Grow your own herbs
14. Grow your own sprouts
15. Blend your own herbal tea
16. Have a repertoire of vegetarian recipes you can use for various occasions
17. Fish or hunt responsibly, if you eat meat
18. Make homemade pastas and other pantry basics
19. Cook a variety of foods well
20. Utilize a menu to minimize food waste
21. Throw a party without compromising your green values
22. Make your own vanilla extract
23. Sharpen kitchen knives so they last
24. Make homemade granola bars, granola, waffles, and other breakfast items
25. Make baked goods “from scratch”
26. Understand terms like, “organic,” “Fair Trade,” “all natural,” and “GMO”

Household Skills
27. Sew well enough to repair clothing
28. Sew well enough to make your own clothing and reusable shopping bags
29. Sew fitted cloth diapers for your baby
30. Knit or crochet dishcloths
31. Know how to reupholster a chair
32. Make your own laundry soap
33. Make your own dishwasher detergent
34. Make your own house cleaning supplies
35. Use diatomaceous earth, bay leaves, and other “eco-friendly” natural pest deterrents

Home Maintenance and Repair Skills
36. Use non-electric appliances rather than electric
37. Know where to find non-electric appliances
38. Program a thermostat
39. Tile a counter top
40. Use 0 VOC paint
41. Repair a screen
42. Use caulk
43. Make simple appliance repairs such as replacing belts
44. Find what you need by bartering, or using CraigsList, eBay, and thrift stores
45. Repair a leaky toilet
46. Repair a leaky faucet
47. Replace a faucet
48. Check your home for energy leaks using incense, a candle, or a device that is created for that purpose
49. Unclog a drain without using Drano or harmful chemicals
50. Insulate an attic with eco-friendly insulation

Gardening Skills
51. Build a compost system
52. Use compost to enrich your soil
53. Plan a garden for your climate
54. Understand xeriscaping
55. Plant a multi-seasonal vegetable garden
56. Build a simple cold frame for salad all year
57. Build frames for raised bed gardens
58. Make a rainwater catching system
59. Use a manual reel mower
60. Use companion planting methods to control pests
61. Build a bat house to encourage bats and decrease mosquitoes
62. Use predator insects like praying mantis to control garden pests
63. Know what heirloom seeds are and why you should use them
64. Learn how to plant open pollinated vegetables for best yields
65. Learn how to save seeds from your own produce
66. Plant trees and bushes to cut your energy bills
67. Use soaker hoses to conserve water
68. Sharpen and maintain tools

Health Skills
69. Know how to use herbs and natural remedies to treat common illnesses
70. Make your own soap
71. Make your own skin care products
72. Use essential oils for health and cleaning
73. Make your own deodorant

Transportation Skills
74. Tune up a bicycle and make repairs
75. Do simple maintenance on your car
76. Arrange or locate a carpool
77. Learn to use hypermiling techniques
78. Plan eco-friendly air travel

Energy Skills
79. Install exterior solar lighting
80. Install a solar panel
81. Know where to find the most eco-friendly, green power source available to you
82. Connect home electronics to power strips for easy shut off
83. Check the wattage of an appliance
84. Calculate annual kilowatt usage

Conservation Skills
85. Use e-mail rather than conventional mail
86. Switch to a paperless office
87. Locate the local library and use it rather than buying books, DVDs, and tapes
88. Adjust your computer settings to make it more energy efficient
89. Use Skype and other technology to limit the need for travel to conferences
90. Learn to plan eco-friendly vacations, such as camping (and leave no trace)
91. Replace a hobby with an environmentally friendly hobby
92. Locate and use recreational green spaces such as hiking trails, parks, and public gardens
93. Understand and be able to explain what cradle-to-cradle means
94. Understand and be able to explain what carbon emissions are
95. Understand and be able to calculate a carbon footprint as well as explain what it is
96. Know where to recycle technological items like computers, microwaves, televisions, etc.
97. Identify and sort a variety of recyclable materials
98. Know where reusable items can be substituted for disposables
99. Understand and be able to explain cap-and-trade
100. What would you add?

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Additional thoughts on the managed range cattle operation

Written on October 1, 2010 by Roland Van der Meer in Energy, Organic, agriculture, agroforestry, cattle operations, sustainability, waste water

So how can you best summarize the impact of a managed range, mob grazed, cattle operation? The following table sheds light:

1 liter of fuel for 450lbs of beef vs 1 liter of fuel for 1 lb. of beef
Soil diversity impacted
Denser cattle per acre
Free food year round
Less carbon generation
More carbon sequestration
Less methane generated
Labor reduction
Less machines needed
Less water loss
Less soil loss
Healthier farmer, family and community

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