Volume 12, Number
13                                                           
November 10, 2009

The Farmer

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The Science and Business of Farming vs. the Art and Hobby of Gardening: Part
I

By Dr. Ridgely Abdul Mu’min Muhammad

It is customary for me to write articles to be no longer than 600 words or
two typed pages so that they could fit into a newspaper column. However, this
time I am not trying to bring a bit of news or a warning about the food system
or a growing tip for your garden. Now I must get down to the business of
teaching which will take more time and space. Now it is time to teach you how to
think like a farmer, so please be patient with me as I try to grow this crop.
(smile)

In the Spring of 2006 I was blessed to visit Cuba as a guest of The Honorable
Minister Louis Farrakhan. While there I noticed the many gardens throughout
Havana along with produce stands next to these gardens. The city residents would
go down to their local garden produce stand and pick up the day’s vegetables
to fill out their menus for their daily meals that they cooked at home.

When I got back to the states in 2006 I encouraged the members of the
Ministry of Agriculture to promote home and urban gardening projects across the
country. This effort had three purposes. One was to provide fresh produce to our
city cousins across the country. Another was to give our people a taste of how
nature worked since most of us have been spoiled by city life, junk food and
fast food restaurants. As the people attempted gardening they would have a
better appreciation of what it takes to produce food and thereby be more willing
to support our efforts in the Ministry of Agriculture by increasing their
donations to the Three Year Economic Savings Program.

We are quite pleased with the success of our gardening program and will take
some credit for the national resurgence of home and urban gardening. We are also
quite grateful for the increase in the monthly donations to the Three Year. But
now it is time to shift gears and move towards the third reason for instituting
the gardening program. We plan to grow some farmers from our many gardeners.

We are not forsaking our gardening program, however we have to select a few
of our gardeners and prepare them to be farmers. At our 2009 Saviours’ Day
Convention held in Chicago, Minister Farrakhan announced his desire for the
Nation of Islam to obtain 2 million acres of farmland. A friend of mine made a
little joke which got my attention. She said that a group of believers from
Atlanta were discussing the Minister’s plans and said, “Who is going to farm
that 2 million acres of land? Oh, Dr. Ridgely, all by himself.” Ha, Ha, that
ain’t funny (smile). I have a hard enough time farming 1600 acres of land,
much less 2 million. Therefore, I would be wise to find or grow some help.

I used to make this statement, “It would be easier to make some black
farmers Muslims, than to make some city Muslims into farmers.” Well, I am
probably not qualified to do either, but I must attempt both. As vice-president
of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA) and fighting for
justice for the black farmers in their class-action lawsuit against the USDA, I
discovered that most of the black farmers are way beyond their prime and many
have died in the 10 year period of the lawsuit. This fact was really bothering
me until I took another look at who was actually doing the farming on the large
commercial farms in Southwest Georgia.

Yes, most of the commercial farms are owned by white people. However, many of
the skilled labor and production management is done by the black hired hands. On
top of this fact is the situation that most of the white commercial farmers are
also getting older and because of the reduced profitability in farming, many of
their children will not take over the farming operations, but will probably sell
the land after their parents die. This means that a lot of very skilled black
farm labor and black farm managers will be looking for new opportunities once
‘massa’ is dead. So this is one pool of farmers that we can draw from to
help farm 2 million acres. I estimate that we would conservatively need about
500 good farm managers and 10,000 skilled workers to successfully utilize 2
million acres of farmland. Of course these are just estimates. But even to make
such estimates requires a lot of understanding of the science and business of
farming, which is a lion’s step away from the art and hobby of gardening.

So now I must begin to teach the science and business of farming to those of
us who have made the first step into gardening. What one must first realize is
that you can grow almost anything in a controlled environment on a small strip
of land. Successful gardening requires a lot of time, attention and care per
square foot of your garden bed. Gardening is very labor intensive, but can yield
high quantities of produce or beauty per square foot because of the amount of
care and attention to details that a hobby gardener can devote. However, when
one stretches out to acres instead of square feet, the game changes
significantly.

When you grow vegetables in your home garden for your own consumption, you do
not have to worry about making a profit or covering the payments on land and
equipment. However, when you start growing acres of crops, costs and returns per
acre and returns on investment become major factors. To start us off I will use
navy beans as an example of a crop that can be grown in a garden almost
anywhere, but is commercially grown in only a few areas of the United States.

As I was thinking about how to start training farmers and farm managers, I
thought about and dusted off my Ph.D. dissertation that I completed in 1987 at
Michigan State. The title of the manuscript is “Evaluating Decision Rules and
Planning Tools in Farm Decision Making: A Conceptual Framework.” My advisor
and head of my dissertation committee at Michigan State, Dr. Hepp, told me on
completion of my dissertation that I had actually accomplished three
dissertations in one. My main objective was to develop a framework for
evaluating the benefits of computer aided planning tools in farm management.
However, this task required that I had to develop conceptual frameworks that did
not exist just to do my primary analysis. The development of these frameworks or
models that I pioneered could have been another dissertation all by itself. One
day I hope to publish this dissertation as a book and make it required reading
for my students.

I learned many things about how good farm managers think during this study
and I use that frame of mind and scientific analysis in tackling the real world
problems that I face as the farm manager for Muhammad Farms. While finishing my
dissertation, I took a teaching and research position at my Alma Mata, North
Carolina A&T State University. In the beginning of my “Computer
Applications in Agricultural Economics” course I would tell my students that,
“In the past you have been taught what to think. But in this class I will
teach you how to think.” It was fun to see those bewildered faces trying to
figure out what I was talking about. However, many got it by the end of the
semester and learned how to think in the process.

This reminds me of what I heard the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan say,
“There is no such thing as a dumb farmer.” That is right. If you are dumb,
you had better learn fast or you will not be farming long. Farmers have to
handle a lot of information and make a lot of decisions. I like to say at
Muhammad Farms, that I solve more real problems in a day than most people face
in a year. I say “real” problems because they affect the bottom line of how
the farm will fare financially and the safety of the workers. However, for most
hourly workers, they get paid the same amount of money each week regardless of
their performance. But the farmer only gets paid after a good performance of his
crop. A farmer must do everything correctly and then he will have a fifty
percent chance of making a profit. White farmers have been able to cover some of
their risks by government subsidized crop insurance programs or direct payments
from the government. The black farmers’ lawsuit was to address the fact that
these programs were not made available to black farmers.

Of course non-farmers have a lot of problems too, but many of them are
self-inflicted and made out of mole-hills that they grew into mountains because
of boredom. My talk may seem boastful, but believe me I do not consider myself
much smarter than a wild deer, a fact that I will explain latter as we talk
about growing navy beans commercially. Deer and navy beans don’t mix (smile).

Navy beans grow quite similar to green beans or snap beans. In fact they look
very similar and if you pick navy beans in their green succulent stage, they
taste quite like green beans accept they are a little stringier.

You can grow navy beans in gardens located in any of the fifty states as long
as you have 100 days of frost free weather. The pods are fully matured after 75
to 90 days and even if you get a heavy frost after the pods have filled out, you
can still have a crop of beans.

Be sure to plant the beans in a sunny spot and water your plants twice a week
unless you have a rain that week. One of our beginning gardeners asked us
whether she should continue to pinch off the yellowing navy bean pods from her
plants that she was growing in her backyard. We had to tell her not to pick off
the yellowing bean pods, because you want all of your bean pods to turn from
green to yellow to brown before you harvest them. In fact you want the beans to
rattle in their hulls before you pick them. Navy beans should be picked dry.

You should look out for insects and critter damage. Wild animals love navy
beans, therefore to protect them you can put up a small fence around your
garden.

The Ministry of Agriculture included navy beans among the 13 crop varieties
that we made available in our garden seed package for a 50 by 50 foot garden
plot. We knew that one 50 foot row of navy beans would not produce enough dried
beans for two bowls of navy bean soup, but we wanted them to learn about the
process of growing navy beans.

Navy beans prefer a mild climate with ample rain during the growing season
but not at harvest. Michigan is number one in navy bean production. Other major
producers of navy beans and other dry edible beans include North Dakota,
Nebraska, Colorado, California and Idaho. Very little if any navy beans are
grown in Georgia due to a hot dry climate during the early summer and a moist
climate in the late summer and fall.

Since we purchased our 1600 acre farm in Georgia and because the South is
where the majority of black people live, we wanted to grow some major staples
for our Nation. Although South Georgia is well suited for many vegetables and
even soft wheat, no one grew navy beans commercially in this area when we
arrived. So naturally all of the farmers and farm experts thought that we were
crazy for trying to grow navy beans here. After contacting the University of
Georgia to find out that no one there knew anything about growing this crop, a
good farm manager would simply leave it at that and not try to grow navy beans
until the University of Georgia had done some research and come out with
recommendations on how to proceed. Of course we could not wait that long with
the fall of America at our door.

When doing scientific analysis of a problem, scientists try to eliminate as
many variables as possible to concentrate on a particular variable to see how it
affects the performance of the item under investigation. However, a farmer has
many variables that he can not control or cannot afford to control. To
experiment he must determine that the value of that knowledge far outweighs its
cost and those returns or profits must show up before he runs out of time and
money. Scientific research is usually publicly financed or subsidized because no
one farmer can afford to do so. Another way to research is to produce enough
data points to cover the number of variables that you may have, then do a
multivariate analysis to pin point the probable factors that have the most
influence. Of course each year you experiment costs time and money and again you
can go broke in the process.

To grow beans a farmer in Southwest Georgia must choose a proper seed variety
and must contend with early and late frosts, drought conditions, heat, weeds,
insects, disease and wild animals. After 13 seasons of experimenting, we think
that we have learned when best to grow the beans and how to control for disease
weeds and insects. However, after controlling all of these factors we have
discovered that the deer trump the deck. In fact many of the problems that we
were having were caused directly by the deer or the deer were a contributing
factor to other problems that reduced yields.

We have tried many different methods to control the deer, many of which were
recommended by the Agricultural Extension service. However, none of them were
effective and one county extension agent laughing opined that if I were to
discover a fool-proof method of keeping deer out of beans, we both could get
rich.

For 13 seasons we have attempted to grow and harvest navy beans with varying
degrees of success. We had to determine how weather affected the crop, so
different times of planting were tried. We observed that navy beans grew like
green beans and all commercial green bean growers chose only irrigated cropland
to grow beans on. However, we did not have ample irrigation until 2005 and
Southwest Georgia was in a drought from 1997 to 2004, so the blistering heat
burnt up many of our bean fields.

The irrigation system that we installed consisted of 6,800 feet of 8 inch pvc
pipe sunk 36 inches deep costing $27,000. This provided water outlets for 205
crop acres. The water is pumped by a 140 hp John Deere motor. The water is put
on the crop by a hard hose traveling gun system for which we paid $30,000. The
irrigation pond had to be dug which cost $10,000 and the 6 inch well which feeds
the pond cost $14,000. Therefore the total irrigation system totaled $81,000 or
$395 per irrigated acre.

When we were successful at getting some beans to harvest, some of them would
have little brown spots caused by insect bites. Since we did not want to use
insecticides, this caused major quality issues. Of course there is a machine
with a laser eye that can pick out the bad beans and spit them out with a burst
of air. Large pecan farmers here in Georgia use this machine in their grading
operations and they cost about $2 million. We have sorted out these spotted
beans by hand, but the labor costs would force us to sell the beans at a price
above what the white man charges in his stores. And although our Muslim family
asks us to grow the beans without chemicals, they have not been willing to pay
for “organic”. I guess they just pray for “organic” or pray over the
white man’s beans that do not even claim to be “organic”.

Weeds have been a major factor against us in growing beans. Although we did
not want to use strong chemicals to fight weeds in our beans, there were not
many chemicals available on the market even recommended to use on our beans
anyway. Therefore, we were left with mechanical control or cultivation. We had
to insure a weed free planting zone and cultivate tight and often. However, even
after we had done a good job of fighting the weeds up until the drying stage of
the bean pods; it was in those last 20 to 30 days that a whole new set of weeds
would grow in among our beans. And because the pods were drying and easy to be
knocked off of the vines, we could not get close enough with our machines to
destroy the weeds without destroying our crop. This meant that by the time we
mechanically harvested the beans, weeds would either choke up the harvester,
scratch and discolor our pretty white beans or cause them to spoil because of
the moisture content of the green weeds chopped up among the beans.

In 2008 we decided to plant our beans, not in the spring, but in the middle
of summer so that they would mature later in the season. We could afford to
plant them in late August when it usually very hot and dry, because we now had
irrigation. We planted them in late August because the beans set their pods in
60 to 75 days after planting. Therefore the pods would be set by the beginning
of November. First frost generally occurs in the middle of November, so we felt
that our beans would have matured by then and any late weeds would be killed by
the frost, and by the time we were ready to harvest the beans, the weeds would
be dead and dry.

However, Southwest Georgia had the earliest hard freeze ever on October 23,
2008. All of our beans were destroyed, but we felt confident that we were on the
right path, because up until this killing frost the beans were looking good and
the weeds were few. So, we decided to move our planting dates back to the first
and middle of August for 2009. As I write this article (November 10, 2009), the
beans are doing quite well on about 40 of our 75 acres that we planted. However,
the deer have ravaged at least 35 acres of our beans, eating them down to the
ground. We know that it’s them because we see their tracks and we run them out
of our fields, sometimes four times per day, but they come back in the middle of
the night and continue feasting.

From looking at the damaged beans we see that they look like beans in other
seasons that we thought were damaged by the drought or insects or bad soil. It
was the deer, the deer, Bamby and friends all along. Bamby and friends would go
down each row and chew our bean plants from a height of 12 to 18 inches down to
a height of 3 inches. These last three inches of plant would still put on from
two to four pods of beans by harvest time, but our combine cannot get down to
them without plowing into the ground digging up dirt. The dirt would then stain
and scratch the beans causing them to be poor of grade.

This year we will machine harvest the tall beans and hopefully get volunteers
and pick your own customers to hand pick the rest. Of course it might take eight
hours per person to pick one 50 lb bag of dried navy beans.

Back to those deer; of course there is one sure fired way to keep the deer
out. Put up a 12 foot fence around the perimeter of your bean field. Oh, did I
mention that to keep disease out of your beans, you have to rotate navy bean
production so that you grow beans once every three years in the same field. The
two other years you must grow something else. Therefore, if I want to grow 100
acres of navy beans, I would have to set aside 300 acres for their production.
If I want to fence in this area, I would have to fence in 300 acres and not 100
acres. The perimeter of a 300 acre field is 2.4 miles. Therefore, we would need
to put up and maintain 2.4 miles of 12 foot fencing to keep the deer out.

When I told my brother about our deer problem, he said, “Just stop growing
what they like.” That’s pretty smart except, we like what the deer like.
Have they studied “How to Eat to Live”? (smile)

Someone else suggested that we grow a crop of beans as a sacrifice to the
deer. We did, about 35 of our total of 75 acres that we planted, they ate.
(smile again)

As a scientist I have noticed something about deer behavior that gives me
hope that one day we can adequately control them. We noticed that as you walk
through a navy bean field if you can see our house, and you look down, you will
see beans. However, when you move to a position in the field where you can not
see our house, and you look down, you will probably see that all of the beans
have been chewed down. Evidently, the deer believe that if they can’t see us,
then we can’t see them; smart deer. From our house we can see about 60 acres.
Therefore considering the three year rotation plan needed to keep the disease
out of navy beans; we could successfully grow 20 acres per year.

However we have 900 acres of cropland on our 1600 acre farm. Well, I have
solution for that. We simply have to develop a community as I have outlined in
my book “Commonomics: Developing a Post Yakub Economy.” Every 60 acres or so
should have a house strategically located so that the deer can see it.
Therefore, 15 houses with families in them could solve our problem. And
especially if they have loud and playful children, a natural scare crow to every
wild animal, we can be assured that the deer will be few and far between.
(smile) Now the humans can grow and eat navy beans in Southwest Georgia in peace
and ship them to other regions.