Chicago Tribune: Consumers are buying into organic farms
They believe in the health benefits of organic food but also see the ventures as investments. Article published June 28th, 2010
By Alejandra Cancino, Tribune reporter
Contact: mcancino [at] tribune [dot] com
Axel Burlin plucked oat grains from the farm field, rolled them around in his hand and marveled that he was growing cereal.
“Can I eat it?” the 10-year-old wondered out loud.
Axel was on his first visit to Two Roads Farm, a 400-acre organic farm in Shelby County in which his parents were investing $25,000.
As consumers become increasingly aware of what they eat, they are also taking control of where their food comes from. Some shop at farmers markets. Fewer go out and buy stakes in an organic farm.
It’s a small trend in Illinois that reflects the growing interest in organic food consumption. But the recession also has helped nurture this idea for people of means who want to invest their money in places other than the volatile, and now languishing, stock market or in certificates of deposit or savings accounts that pay 1 percent interest or less.
“It’s a safe investment,” said Dr. Stephen Rivard, who in 2006 diversified his portfolio by investing $75,000 in an organic farm. Since then, he has plunked down an additional $200,000 in two other farms. The return is not immediate, Rivard acknowledged, but he counts on eventually benefiting from increasing food prices and a steady rise in farmland value, especially because organic farms command higher prices than those where chemicals are used to kill pests and weeds.
Another investor, Howard Harris, said a side benefit is the fun his children have when visiting the farm: “The kids like saying that they are farmers.”
Axel’s mom, DD Burlin, is not only a believer that organic products are healthier and better for the environment, she said she is also helping test a model for organic agriculture than can be replicated around the country.
The River Forest mom also is a trained cook and for years has been focused on nutrition in preparing meals for her two boys and husband. Then last year she read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and realized she knew little about the origin of food.
The book prompted Burlin, 42, to buy food from local farmers who let their cows graze on pasture and didn’t spray vegetables with pesticides. But that wasn’t enough. She wondered how she could help other farmers move away from conventional agriculture so that more families would benefit. Then, at a conference on family farming, she met David Miller, a man on a mission to build an organic farm business that could compete with conventional farms.
He and his business partner, farmer Harold Wilken, like some others in the business, would help investors buy farmland and transition it to an organic operation. They would manage the farm through their enterprise, called Midwest Organic Farm Management.
Miller and Wilken started their business in 2006, challenged by the fact that less than 1 percent of Illinois farmland is certified organic. Transitioning a conventional farm into an organic operation takes at least three years. During that time synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers are not used. Also, genetically modified seeds aren’t planted.
Crop yields usually fall because the soil can’t produce as much. But the upside is that once the farm is certified organic, crops usually sell at higher prices, helping increase profits as well as the value of the land.
Miller and Wilken, who started with one farm four years ago, now manage eight farms. Five are organic and yielded organic crops last season — mainly corn, hay, oats and soybeans. The other three are transitioning to organic operations. Wilken supervises farm operations and the farmers, often offering advice from his seven years of farming organically.
The farms have different contracts with the farmers. In some cases, farmers split costs and profits with investors. And in others farmers lease the land and investors get rent.
Two Roads Farm investors expect to make a profit of 4 percent to 5 percent annually. Those investors include Burlin and her husband, Johannes, 45, president of Silliker Inc., a network of food testing and consulting laboratories.
Two weeks ago, Burlin packed her sport utility vehicle and drove nearly four hours southwest of River Forest to Two Roads Farm with her two children, Axel and Hans.
During their visit, the boys learned how organic farmers use crop rotations to replenish the fertility in the soil and Wilken took them and Burlin to the oat field to explain how he keeps weeds out by planting alfalfa between the oat plants in the spring when the ground is freezing and unfreezing.
the boys, it was a trip into a world they knew little about. They walked past a 1930s Sears house made from a kit that sat across from a field of soybeans. They watched a cow feed its calf. Keeping his distance, Axel wondered if the milk the calf was drinking tasted like the milk he drinks at home.
Hans wanted to know what farmers do with cows. “Do they shoot them?” he asked.
“No, they don’t shoot them,” Burlin said and smiled.
The tour ended on a dirt road dividing the cornfield from the oat field. The boys spotted round bales of hay and climbed on top of them.
“I’m pretending this is a train and I’m a giant,” said 8-year-old Hans, the younger of the two boys.
As the boys played, Miller and Burlin talked about raising turkeys and adding cows. The animal waste could help fertilize the soil, they said. As they walked toward the cornfield, they noted the weeds that grew because synthetic pesticides weren’t used. Weeds take nutrients from the soil that otherwise would nurture the corn plants, the farmers explained.
Miller bent down and started pulling weeds. Burlin followed suit. If a conventional farmer had seen them pulling weeds from a cornfield by hand, Burlin said, they would become the town’s laughingstock. They laughed at themselves.
Standing on a dirt road, Miller fixed his gaze on the horizon.
“Now you have been down the road less traveled,” Miller said to Burlin.
“I’m traveling,” Burlin said.
