From LeadingtheCharge.com

WINCHESTER, N.H. – Jenny Wooster is tending to a tray of cabbage seedlings, careful to make sure they have enough room to spread. Crowding means competition for light and moisture, and the risk of premature death.

In a few weeks they’ll be transplanted from the temperature-controlled greenhouse to the fields of Picadilly Farm where new dangers – weather, animals, disease – threaten their growth and the livelihood of Jenny and her husband, Bruce.

“It’s pretty scary when you measure your income in quarters and your outgoing expenses are in the thousands of dollars,” said Jenny, 36.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t keep track of how many farms start each year, and many of those going into business are doing so with plans that don’t rely on a traditional wholesale market.

And some new farmers, like the Woosters, have modeled their businesses on community supported agriculture programs which rely on customers who pay a fixed price at the start of the season in return for a certain amount of produce.

Fewer local farms could lead to a lack of diversity in available crops, a hit to rural economies and a more vulnerable supply as dependence grows on large centralized farms that transport their harvests across the country.

Between 2005 and 2006, the number of farms in America dropped by 9,000. Currently, there are just more than 2 million farms, 160,000 fewer than there were 20 years ago, according to the USDA.

“The idea that a farm in itself could provide a sufficient income for a family is rarely a reality,” Gillan said. “But it can happen.”

Why?

The Woosters don’t come from farming families. They grew up in the suburbs – Jenny on the west side of Cincinnati and Bruce in Concord, Mass., – and it wasn’t until the early 1990s when they got their first jobs on small farms. Jenny left Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in anthropology and women’s studies but no clear career path. Bruce, 37, graduated from Stanford University as a self-designed “human ecology” major “more interested in figuring out the meaning of life than in a particular occupation.”

They met while working on Brookfield Farm, a vegetable and livestock operation in Amherst, Mass., in 2000. A year later, they took jobs on Appleton Farms in Ipswich, Mass., and soon began thinking about starting their own farm and family.

Each liked the payoff of having something to show for their work at the end of the day. But more importantly, the idea of producing wholesome food for their community became a mission, not just a career.

With a decade of agriculture experience, a business plan and more debt than either ever had, they bought this defunct dairy farm for $420,000. They borrowed another $140,000 for equipment and other costs, and moved in April 2006 with their 5-month-old daughter, Beckley.

They’ve divided their time during the last year between honing their marketing strategy and preparing for the upcoming growing season. Much of their days are spent planting seeds and making sure the fledgling plants are growing properly in their two greenhouses.

And there are other chores. A tool storage cabinet needs to be built. The tractors need to be prepared for plowing. Beckley has to be driven to daycare.

Evenings are usually spent at the computer, going over expenses and customer orders. And sometimes, there’s time for a reality check.

“We feel a real sense of freedom, even though we have the weight of our debt,” Jenny said. “And I didn’t have to ask myself once today,

why am I doing this?'”

And selling their crops as shares through a community supported agriculture system helps relieve some of the risk.

For about $500, shareholders can come to Picadilly Farm once a week and choose a certain amount of eight or nine items from whatever crops are harvested. Because the money is collected at the start of the growing season, the Woosters will have the money in hand even if bad weather deals them a lousy harvest.

Along with the financial reasoning, the system fits in with the Wooster’s push for people to have a direct connection with their food.

Right now, they’re struggling to make those connections. Their goal was to have 60 shareholders by the start of this season, but have so far lined up only 20. Their advertising campaign has relied on their Web site, flyers handed out in their community and meeting people at local agriculture fairs.

They’re setting up other deals with co-ops and neighboring farmers in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont to ensure they’ll gross the $225,000 they need to pay their mortgage and cover their operating costs. But they might have to consider selling wholesale, which exposes them to more risk.

“If they have a bad year with too much rain or not enough rain or an early frost, they could lose all their equity in one fell swoop from Mother Nature,” said James Radintz, director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency loan division.

The agency issued about $1 billion in low-interest loans last year to new farmers, who the USDA classifies as having been in business for less than a decade. Radintz doesn’t know the success rate of new farms, but said he keeps hearing how hard it is for new farmers to succeed with so much debt.

“I said

you guys are crazy,'” vegetable farmer Tracie Smith recalls telling Jenny when the two met for dinner a few months ago. “We’re all crazy. You have to be to be a farmer. We just don’t get the kind of compensation that we should for all the work we do, but you can only charge so much for a vegetable.”

Smith has been growing vegetables on Tracie’s Community Farm in Sullivan for the past nine years and has made a profit of about $10,000 during each of the past three seasons. Unlike the Woosters, she’s farming on someone else’s land and has no debt.

“They’re going to be working their entire lives to pay off their loans,” she said.

The Woosters know they have little margin for error. Their first federal loan payment of $12,000 is due in September and they plan on just covering their costs during the next three years. But they need to turn a profit by 2012, when they’ll have to start repaying their friends a $120,000 loan. If things don’t look good by then, they know they might have to move and take other jobs to pay their debts.

They don’t have disability or crop insurance, and there are no government subsidies for the vegetables they grow. They’d like to be able to save some money for their retirement so they aren’t forced to sell their land when they get older.

“We’re never going to have money for nice vacations and fancy private school tuitions,” Jenny said.

By mid-April, Picadilly Farm’s 71 acres were still waiting to be plowed. An unusually cold start to spring followed by days of heavy rains pushed back their planting schedule by about two weeks.

But there are signs of luck. Had Jenny and Bruce planted before the rainstorms, chances are the young crops would’ve been ruined. And their land is sandy enough so it will drain quickly.

Meanwhile, the seedlings sit ready in the greenhouse – sprouts of cabbages, onions, broccoli and peppers – wisps of hope that profits will eventually outgrow the risks.                  

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.