68 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
whose priority is generating returns quickly, says
Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director
of the Oakland Institute, a think tank in California.
Along with environmental impacts, she says, the
push for profits can create a “race to the bottom”
in wages and working conditions for farm laborers.
Last summer, after a farmworker from Gua-
temala died in Oregon’s heat wave, state officials
adopted emergency protections for laborers. As
temperatures topped 100°F—an extreme event
exacerbated by climate change—farmworkers in
the Pacific Northwest were still picking cherries,
berries, and grapes without access to shade or cool
drinking water, according to farmworker unions.
For its part, Farmland LP is a certified B Cor-
poration, meaning its social and environmental
performance is measured and verified by the non-
profit B Lab to meet higher industry standards.
Its lengthy road to organic farming begins by re-
storing nutrients and healthy bacteria to the soil.
To become certified organic by the USDA, conven-
tional fields must undergo a transition period of
three years, starting from the last application of
synthetic fertilizer or pesticides.
Frank Savage, who manages Farmland LP’s
5,800 acres in California, says the company usu-
ally starts by carpeting fields with a mix of deep-
rooted grasses and broadleaf plants whose rootsreach down 6 ft. to pull up minerals. It then leases
the land to cattle ranchers and sheep farmers,
whose livestock come to munch grasses and drop
their nutrient-rich manure.
After the three-year transition, Farmland LP’s
managers will devise a 10-year plan for rotating
crops on a property. That might mean growing
vegetables for a few years, then grains, and finally
returning the land to pasture for a three- to five-
year stretch. The goal is to rotate crops in ways that
benefit both soil health and the farm’s economics.
Since organic farmers can’t deter insects or ro-
dents with chemical pesticides, they have to find
more natural solutions. “It isn’t as simple as just
calling your pest manager out to shoot some chem-
icals,” Savage says. To curb infestations of moles,
which dig deep underground tunnels, his team
built raptor perches and owl boxes to attract preda-
tors. The farmers also grow long hedges of shrubs,
flowers, and other plants to attract pollinators and
beneficial insects like ladybugs that devour tiny
sap-sucking aphids. Wichner likens their approach
to farming as a “mosaic,” rather than the uniform,
single-plant fields of conventional farms.
Farmland LP’s fields also can’t use chemical
herbicides. So farmworkers use hands and hoes
to manually remove weeds that threaten to choke
seeds as they sprout from the ground. The practice
is labor-intensive and time-consuming, and it’s
partly why organic produce is more expensive to
grow and buy in stores, says Dwelley.Yet for all the careful planning, many factors
remain outside farmers’ control. The past few sum-
mers, Dwelley and a crew of 60 workers had to wear
masks while harvesting beans, at first because of
wildfire smoke, later because of COVID-19, and
then because of both at once. In October, Northern
California experienced bursts of drenching rain,
followed by months with hardly any measurable
rainfall at all. For the Dwelleys, the swings in pre-
cipitation mean they likely won’t be able to grow
as much sweet corn as expected this year.
Still, though every year is different on the farm,
demand for food is moving steadily in one direc-
tion: up. So is the need to conserve water and main-
tain soil health as the planet warms and weather
patterns shift. To that end, in 2022 Farmland LP
is preparing to launch its third and largest invest-
ment fund to date, with plans to expand in the Pa-
cific Northwest and other U.S. geographies.
Wichner says the families who sell their acreage
to Farmland LP “know that it’s going to be farmed
organically and regeneratively for the ongoing fu-
ture,” and not irrevocably become a parking lot or
subdivision. “The sale of that farmland is a really
big fork in the road that sets up what happens over
the next 50 to 100 years.” △
John Dwelley, a
fourth-generation
farmer, leases
hundreds of acres
from Farmland LP