Soil health vital to Ohio vegetable farmer

Farmer Lee Jones: And for every small farmer out there, or everybody that ever dreamed of having a farm, or anybody that's ever lost the farm, it represents the small family farm or the dream of one, or the optimism that small family farms actually have a place in American society today. And it's our belief that there are enough people that say that artisan production and small family farms do have a place and we're banking our livelihood, on the fact that good, clean, healthy foods done the right way, taking care of the people taking care of the land, is something that there are enough people in this country that will support it. And we're very, very grateful to have the opportunity we've been blessed to be able to farm at 19 years old, I stood right on this property. When interest rates were 22% Paul, maybe even before you were born, and 22%. If you can imagine interest rates at 22%. We had a hailstorm and it wiped out all the crops, the banks foreclosed. And I watched them. When I was 19 years old, watching every single thing that my parents owned off including every tractor, every piece of equipment, our home, my mother's car, and we crawled away, I'm not trying to create a rags to riches story, because it's not things can change in a hurry. But we started back over. In America, we produce food cheaper than any other country in the world. Now you can say wait a minute, I can go to Whole Foods and I can have $300 in the grocery cart before you bat an eye. But as it relates to our income, we produce food cheaper than any other country in the world, yet we have the highest health care in the world. There's a real conundrum there. In the last 100 years, we have had a 50 to 80% decline in the nutritional level of vegetables - 50 to 80% decline, it's fact, you can Google it, it's real. But no, I don't feel we're on a treadmill. I feel that supply and demand dictates everything. We are fortunate to have been turned on to the idea that there were enough people that were starting to understand the tragedy of what was going on. And they supported clean foods. We follow a philosophy called regenerative agriculture, we believe in it. And we believe that we personally believe that God, some of us take bigger two by fours and others to get our attention. And losing that form was our two by four. Well, he said, No, I want you to go in a different direction. So we did.

Paul Yeager: Well, healthy soil is something that I know that corn and soybean people talk about too. But in vegetables, I'm guessing it's extremely important to have that healthy soil.

Farmer Lee Jones: Okay, so I'm going to talk in layman terms, because that's how I understand that. We do have three scientists on staff, we have a lab, we're testing the biodiversity, the biology and the soil. There is more life below the earth's surface and there is above, if you can, if you can get your mind around the notion that and maybe your third your parents say it or you heard somebody say it, maybe it was tongue in cheek, maybe it thought maybe there was some truth to it, I need some vitamin D, I'm gonna go get some sunshine. If you can get your mind around that idea that your body has a receptacle for energy from the sun, then it's not such a far stretch to recognize and what's really cool is different types of plants accept different types of energy from the sun. So we do a lab analysis no different than the commodity guys are doing. In fact, the synthetic fertilizer companies will provide that service for free from them. Here's the deficiencies. It's all the mineral levels. Based on those deficiencies in the minerals, different types of plants will harvest different types of energy from the sun. So it can be clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, rye vetch, Sudan grass, we have 15 species planning, two thirds of the acreage is committed to harvest in the end energy from the sun. It's an unprecedented commitment. Two thirds of the acreage Can you imagine a grain grower trying to do that would be impossible. 

Paul Yeager: This is your showroom? Store? 

Farmer Lee Jones: Actually? Our market has been direct to restaurants, we shipped FedEx. We go as far as the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, and some of the Dubai we go into Disney down in Orlando, New York, Las Vegas. We shipped to all 50 states direct with no middleman. COVID hit and those restaurants were in trouble. And so were we. We did the USDA Farm to Family program for one round until they changed that, made it, fell back to their old bad habits of lowest bid. And the farm to family program then became a Cisco program, which was the cheapest, cheapest that they could do. We couldn't even get close even just at cost. So we launched a nationwide home delivery because we felt there was enough people that were looking for good clean food. And there are food deserts in the United States, but we could ship directly to them from our farm. 

Paul Yeager: You mentioned, the three scientists, it sounds like you might have three or four marketing people that are helping you understand where those new markets and new opportunities are.

Farmer Lee Jones: You know, it's really about listening to the customer. Listening to the needs, God gave us one mouth and two ears for a reason. We don't know much about marketing out here, Paul, we're just farm folks trying to figure it out as we go. We're not experts in this. We're vegetable growers. We're a family business, we have 168, full time team members, we have a profit sharing, there is nothing that makes my brother Bob Jones, the CEO of the company, and I am more happy than to be able to share profit sharing check. The single greatest asset on this farm is not land. It's not tractors, it's not greenhouses. It's not equipment, its people. We have 1000 years of experience, combined with when you add up the number of years that some of our team has been here, when all of our team is here. That's 1000 years of experience here at the chef's garden. They're vitally important to us and its people, ultimately, obviously, AI is going to be a part of the future. It's not going to replace anybody on this farm, it's going to make people more efficient, we have to embrace that it's important. 

The full MtoM is available now. 

Contact: Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org