"U.S. agriculture today is broken in some significant ways." Karla Chambers isn't shy about telling it like she sees it.

"My great grandfather homesteaded in Sherman county in 1885, so my family has been farming in Oregon for 115 years. One tractor today costs more than what my great grandfather paid for the entire farm." As the fourth generation on the land, Karla and her husband, Bill, have transformed Stahlbush Island Farms over the past ten years from a chemically-intensive operation into a "sustainable farming system." The change has been good for more than just the soil. "We're more profitable today than we ever were under the old conventional systems," says Karla.

Karla and Bill Chambers

On 2000 acres of intensive row crops, they grow sweet corn, pumpkins, broccoli, wheat, spinach, grass seed – 15 crops in total. Their farm was the first to be endorsed by The Food Alliance, a Portland-based non-profit which has developed a "seal of approval" for sustainable agriculture producers. Their products also carry the Salmon Safe seal, recognizing their efforts to protect water quality. The Chambers' have received national recognition for their sustainable farming system, including a Founders of a New Northwest Award in 1999 from Sustainable Northwest.

So when Karla criticizes U.S. agriculture, she speaks with some authority.

"The vision of agriculture that we've been working under is not working for farmers. The cheap food policy we set course on 40 years ago, with its price controls and commodity markets, has forced farms to grow ever larger to keep up with rising input costs. Most of us are going broke. We're already down to less than 1% of the U.S. population living on farms, and how many more farmers will we lose during the current economic cycle? I don't know about you, but I don't want to see a food system in the U.S. that is significantly dependent on imports. Nothing less than our national security is at stake."

Karla and Bill have been developing an alternative vision for agriculture, and are sharing that vision with growers and other leaders from all over the world.

"Rather than relying on a tool chest of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, Bill has focused on really using natural systems to their fullest. At the core of this is using cover crops to naturally grow nitrogen, and rotating crops to naturally break disease and insect cycles. We have taken some of the best methods from the organic community, as well as advanced science from the conventional agriculture community, and combined them to move toward a lowest-cost farming system. We are focused on a safe and sustainable farming system, and on growing produce that is more affordable to consumers than the current high cost of organic production allows."

"To overcome increased labor costs associated with sustainable practices, Bill has focused on mechanization, using innovative technologies from other industries to reengineer and retool our equipment. This doesn't necessarily mean getting back to being capital intensive. We are moving away from large heavy equipment, and substituting lighter, lower impact equipment."

Stahlbush Island Farms frozen vegetables

Stahlbush Island Farms’ profitability is based on more than "lowest-cost agriculture." In addition to changing the farming system, they have vertically integrated their business, acting as both the grower and the processor. For example, Stahlbush Island Farms grows and processes all of the pumpkin for Ms. Smith's pumpkin pies, a popular national brand of prepared desserts.

"Typically you would have a farmer, a broker, a processor and a customer in the chain of custody. We are taking out 2 or 3 of the margins, consolidating them within our vertically integrated structure. We have eliminated overhead and increased our margins by selling directly to the customer. Our goal is to have a very efficient economic structure."

These efficiencies have allowed Stahlbush to pay their employees more, and offer benefits including medical, dental, 401K plans, and informal profit sharing. It has also allowed their business to grow smart and remain profitable during times when U.S. agriculture has been very unprofitable. Karla comments: "Survivability is pretty important if we want to keep land in production."

"If we compared the balance sheets of farmers today and those 40 years ago, they were probably better off then. Commodity prices have reached a 40-year low in the past 3 years, while energy, chemical, and equipment costs have increased significantly. There has been massive consolidation among those entities that farmers buy and sell with, and farmers have lost control of agriculture in the process."

"Cheap imports have made it impossible for farmers to compete with nations that pay labor 35 cents an hour, when we pay a minimum of $6.50 for the same hour. As a result, we face a choice: we can import the food or import the labor. Currently we are doing both, U.S. agriculture currently depends on an illegal labor force, with 60-70% of Hispanic workers in the U.S. here illegally. The direction agriculture took forty years ago has also put it in conflict with environmental agendas."

In the wake of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Karla sees no easy answers. With free trade or continued subsidies, US agriculture still faces an uphill battle to fix the flaws that are tearing it apart. One thing is clear, however. "Preserving our ability to grow a food supply should be in our national interest. Our research, extension and education institutions, along with producers of all shapes and sizes, have to become more open to rethinking our farming systems and agriculture as a whole."

"These institutions need to get focused, not only on conventional farming systems, but also on certified organic and sustainable farming systems. With prices being set at the global level, US agriculture will require lower cost and more environmentally friendly models to survive. Our cost structure is too high in the global marketplace. As we look at the environmental conflicts the industry as a whole finds itself in at a state and federal level, it makes tremendous economic sense to focus on sustainable agriculture."

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