"a flight from
reason"
Is it possible for a farmer
who bids fair to win a state championship on his tons-per-acre of alfalfa grown
on his fields to be threatened with foreclosure of his mortgage because he is
using what some authorities (subservient to the manufacturers of chemical
fertilizers) call "unproven methods in agriculture?"
FmHA Threat
That is what is happening to
Harold Aungst, a hard-working eco-farmer who milks a 100 head herd of Holsteins
in McVeytown, Pennsylvania. In July of this year, Aungst received a letter (see
inset) from the USDA’s Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), an "equal
opportunity lender," recommending that he seek "additional management
assistance" to help turn his operation around since he was in
"jeopardy of losing his farm." Aungst’s lack of repayment ability on
his total debt to FmHA was, the letter stated, "due to his low milk
production and unproven farm management practices."
In his response to this naked
threat, Aungst wrote to the FmHA administrator in Washington, D.C., that the
best proof that he was a good farm manager was the fact that, though he had been
consistently denied additional operating capital over the last three years, he
had been able to get along without it – so well, in fact, that competing in
the Five Acre Club Contest run in Pennsylvania to see who can raise the best
crop of alfalfa as measured in tons per acre, he had just harvested a first
cutting of 3.3 tons to the acre. "I would like to make you aware," he
added, "that the state average is 3.4 tons to the acre for the whole
year and we about have that on the first cutting along with three more to
go!"
Aungst added, "Indeed we
have already won the contest as far as cost of fertilizer goes because we have
hardly any cost! We only applied manure in 1983 and nothing to speak of in 1984,
and now we have that kind of tonnage to demonstrate."
In closing, Aungst said he was
alarmed that his formal application for loan restructuring under terms of the
Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act was not even mentioned in the
FmHA’s letter. Even more alarming was the fact that all records of his
discussion of the request at a hearing with FmHA officials, his banker, and an
Extension agent were stricken from the transcript of the proceedings.
ALFALFA YIELD
In his office, a windowless
recess in the cellar of his farmhouse, Aungst, affable, mid-fortyish, his eyes
flashing, told me that it was Dan Carlson’s "Sonic Bloom" method of
crop stimulation which had created his outsized alfalfa yield and which,
together with other "alternate" eco-agricultural methods, had been
considered "unproven" by authorities who hold farmers’ futures in
their hands.
Aungst ran into Carlson at an
"Ag Progress Days’ meeting. When he tried the "Sonic Bloom"
method on a plot of alfalfa, the crop was tested at Pennsylvania State
University (PSU) to reveal a level of 79.8 TDNs, a figure well surpassing 76.0
TDNs considered extremely high.
This figure was also matched
by a seemingly unbelievable rise above normal protein content, though Aungst had
to resort to what almost amounted to subterfuge to document it. When PSU
officials made the measurement for protein which revealed a count of a fantastic
29% – as against 16 to 18% for average alfalfa – they were openly dubious.
"They told me," related Aungst, "that so high a protein content
just couldn’t be. Well, I replied, you
measured it with your own equipment. Isn’t the equipment working right?
"They said no, there was something wrong
with the computer printout part of the equipment which was malfunctioning and
that was why they couldn't give me a computer readout to attest to the 29%. They
just wrote the figure down on a scrap of paper and handed it to me. I was
disappointed . . . suspicious.!
So suspicious was Aungst that he and his
fellow farmer-workers decided to wait around for an hour or so, until they could
send one of their party into the room housing the computer to re-check whether
the computer was actually working or not. When the sample was re-run through the
device, its operator's mouth dropped open. He had not realized that the second
sample came from the same batch and that had earlier revealed the 29% figure.
When he did realize this, he broke down to confess that he had been told by PSU
officials not to computerize the Aungst alfalfa so that no record of its
protein content would be available.
"The kid was up against the wall,"
remember Aungst half amusedly, half wryly, "and when he re-ran it, this
time the printout unequivocally showed 29%!"
"Why on earth would the officials be
afraid of running your sample," I asked.
Aungst grinned a bit sourly. "Why would
they do something like that? My best guess is that they didn't want to be showed
up and forced to admit that someone had a method of beating their own fertilizer
programs all hollow. That's all I can figure."
"But that's preposterous," I
commented. "You'd think that as custodians of agricultural science they'd
be racing out to your farm to see what you're doing to get the kind of tonnage
and protein-yield.
"Yes, you would think so," agreed
Aungst, "if things were done fairly, that is. After all, when someone gets
a much better result with a new method, that's supposed to demonstrate progress,
isn't it?"
Dumbfounded, I could only ask: "Well, who
or what is putting pressure on the PSU officials to deny such success?"
Aungst sighed reflectively, "Well,"
he began, "you have to know that PSU is a land grant college like dozens
across the nation and, as such, receives research grants from companies making
chemical products to apply to the land. I guess it's a question of you don't
bite the hand that feeds you. The professor-experts have their tails in a
doorjamb because to continue the new programs of their own, they count on grant
money to finance them. With what they're doing, every step they take seems to
carry them backward at a high rate of speed. That's because the carbon layer in
the soil that helps the bacteria life in it flourish is being burned out with
all those NPK fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, throwing everything into
imbalance."
"But aren't some of the younger
researchers getting wise to this?"
By his expression I sensed my question was
mine.
"What they're taught, "replied
Aungst, "is that their seniors know the answers and they aren't about to
buck the system. They're like our Extension agent about 12 miles up the road
from here who told me to my face that all farmers are dumb. I didn't say a thing
in reply. I just took it. But a few weeks later, I had to set with this same man
together with my bankers and the FmHA officials in the same room. I was supposed
to sit there and accept a lot of his advice as to what I should be doing on my
land to improve my financial situation. What that meant was that I would have to
do exactly as he and the university folks said I had to do. The FmHA and the
banks treat these academic experts as gods of knowledge that be!
"Anyway, continued Aungst, "when I
talked to Dan Carlson early this year, he said to me: Harold, before you take
off your first cutting, why not try my sound-and-spray method on it and go for
big tonnage? Well, big tonnage is what we got and though the official
results aren't yet in on the second cutting my eyeballs told me at harvest time
that we'd be up to about 6 tons of hay per acre for the first two cuttings
alone, with two more to go."
Aungst rose from his chair and crossed the
room to fetch two large bunches of dried alfalfa from a table top. He stood
their stalks on the floor and the tops of the plants came up to his chest.
"These are the kind of plants we raised," he said, "they're about
4-1/2 feet tall." He grasped one of the bunches by the stalks and flailed
my legs with its leafy top ends. "You'll note," he smiled, "that
none of the leaves, dry as they are, fall off the plants even when they're
whacked hard against your body. That's a prime indication of a healthy plant.
Any time you see alfalfa hay losing its leaves when dry -- it's called dusting
-- you know that the quality is low. Old time farmers would rub samples of dry
alfalfa between their hands and if it duster, they'd say: Don't buy it.
The methods his advisers wanted Aungst to
adopt were exactly those he determined to do away with about three years ago
when he came under the severe financial stress that brought his mortgage
situation to the attention of the FmHA in the first place. Realizing that unless
he made some radical changes he would lose his farm, he decided to go the
biological farming route. The change-over was risky and tough, but Aungst knows
his decision was the right one.
-- Acres, November 1985
