Succession planning
Solving the dilemma of Australia’s farming future
This is a story of two growers who in their own words ‘aren’t joiners’. The phrase belies the fact they run one of the foremost small scale organic market gardens in Australia, have established an iconic garden tool business and now, after an energetic six week trip overseas, are setting out to address succession planning and the dearth of young people working in sustainable agricultural production. And did I mention Michael Plane is aged 78? Joyce Wilkie and Michael Plane may not be joiners, but they are visionary and inspiring activists. Spend ten minutes with them and you’ll be inspired about the prospects of small scale vegetable growing in this country. Spend an hour and you’ll be ready to jettison your job and go farming with them.
Joyce, 59, met Michael at Canberra’s Australian National University where they both worked as geologists in the late 1970s.
They retired in the 1980s, to Allsun Farm and their next careers, on 40 hectares (100 acres) at Gundaroo, 45km north east of the nation’s capital.
To the locals’ disbelief, Michael vowed never to remove any timber from the block.
He kept his word - two acres of intensive vegetable cultivation, two acres of improved pasture for 150 free ranging hens and 25 acres of native pasture for meat goats - the rest bush.
By the late 1980s, Joyce had eagerly taken up vegetable production. She soon discovered their tools were not up to the task, so Michael began manufacturing and importing hand tools. Interest grew and with it an engineering workshop.
Gundaroo Tiller was born, retailing implements and equipment specific to small scale market gardeners, including the renowned broad fork.
Gardeners all over Australia, home and commercial, discovered the pure pleasure of using an efficient, ergonomic tool.
“We had a small vegetable garden and very limited water supply at first, but Joyce had a passion for vegetable growing,” said Michael. “I said you can’t go on like this with a lady’s spade and a bread knife, you need some decent tools.
“Overseas market gardeners were using non-inversion tillage to open up the soils, so I made broad forks and found all sorts of wonderful tools not available anywhere in Australia.”
During that time they raised two sons and began selling produce direct to restaurants and subscribers, established networks with international growers and continued to adhere to their farm philosophy, ‘take one risk and learn one new thing every day’.
“The whole way along our scientific training put us in good stead. We took the best of the tools which Mike found all over the world, as well as resources Eliot (Coleman) put us in contact with and patched together something that worked for our personalities, on our block of land and with our markets.
“Market gardening is not the easiest occupation, nor the most profitable, but we just love growing vegetables. Our kids think we are quite crazy,”says Joyce.
Fast forward to May 2010. Joyce and Michael left the farm and tool business in capable hands for the first time and travelled to the US, England, Wales and the Czech Republic.
With Michael’s health declining and their two adult sons, Emrys and Rory not prepared to take the farm on, they decided to look to friends, including Joel Salatin and Eliot Coleman, to solve their succession dilemma.
Michael and Joyce co-opted friend and photojournalist film maker Fred Harden to document their travels, knowing the people and places they would visit had interesting and important stories to tell.
Fred needed stamina; in the United States alone they visited Abingdon (Anthony and Laurel Flaccavento, Abington Organic Farm), Berkely (Edible Schoolyard, Chez Panisse and Alice Waters), Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm in Maine, Los Angeles, Meadowview, Millwood, Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, San Francisco, Staunton, Virginia, White Post and the Yucca Valley.
Growing the Growers
Back home at Allsun Farm, the website was launched (http://www.growingthegrowers.com) they hoped to turn the footage into a documentary and air it on national television.
Post production costs are a hurdle at this stage, but Canberra-based Roaming Films have expressed an interest. It’s definitely no travelogue, Michael and Joyce have some great stories to tell the world.
“As soon as we hit the ground in the US, people started telling us about the young farmers - it’s a real movement over there - graduates who have decided they don’t want to follow their chosen career, but go farming. We were staggered,” Joyce says.
“Yes, inspiring and the sort of model we want to replicate, to give young people a really good start in farming, by apprenticeship, with hands-on training rather than academic,” says Mike.
Out the travels came ‘Growing the Growers’, their project to grow and tend a new generation of switched on, enquiring, practical, small acreage farmers: • growing new home gardeners, through early learning models such as school kitchens and gardens,
• growing new markets (farmers’ markets, on farm shops, regional food stores, community supported agriculture) to give young farmers a better and fairer income,
• growing new farmers through internship or apprenticeship.
In their trademark way, the pair have set up their own farm to receive the first of several new interns this year.
“We’ve already made inroads and have had young people who want to go farming spend time with us,” says Michael.
“It has been a wonderful, wonderful experience - a couple of them have really gone to succeed on their own small farms.”
Internship
Joyce says internship requires more responsibility and commitment than the Willing Workers on Organic Farms scheme (WOOF) they participated in for more than a decade.
“WWOOFERS became an imposition on our family as we became more commercial and less interested in the social exchange and interaction.
“It was a lovely exchange when our children were little and we were just starting out, but we started to get cranked up”, says Joyce.
“Now we can have interns here for long periods of time without impinging on our family, so there is less personal impact, but we can give more and teach more.”
This year, alongside the interns and teaching a course in starting a small scale organic farm, the pair will
mentor Stephen Couling, 51, as he establishes Milkwood Permaculture’s first market garden.
In 2009 Stephen completed an internship at Milkwood, a small teaching farm near Mudgee in NSW and now he’s charged with feeding the institute’s staff and course participants.
“I’m feeling a bit like an over-absorbed sponge at the moment, but it’s very, very good. We’ve got a blog site up and running so when I am back at Milkwood we’ll be constantly in touch via email, blog, skype, telephone,” says Stephen.
“It’s passing on the knowledge. Apprenticeship is a very traditional and valuable way to learn.
“Joyce and Michael didn’t hesitate to say we’ll give you a hand, even though they have never been to Milkwood, such is their generosity of spirit,” he says.
“As a teacher, to mentor is the highest accolade. It’s a truly wonderful thing when your students outdo you, and we’ve had a few. So why wouldn’t you do more of that?” says Joyce.
“I can’t see the point of keeping it a secret. I think what we are most interested in is having many more people growing good tasting, nutritious produce,” says Michael.
Doubtless Stephen and future fellow interns at Allsun farm will receive the same close attention and care Joyce and Michael give to nurturing their vegetable crops and honing their tools. They’ll certainly gain practical farming skills, marketing ideas, hard won knowledge.
They can’t help but also be imbued with Joyce and Michael’s activism and enthusiasm, their drive and generosity and compassion, their absolute joy of growing seeds, the physical farming life and of watching people grow and be better than themselves.
Early on, Joyce Wilkie saw the potential for a documentary or television series from their trip. A DVD, or even a book. But, as Fred Harden says, the real story is about them.
“Joyce often says we don’t pick the brightest people to be farmers, we tend to pick the D student who can’t do anything else, so you end up with an agriculture that doesn’t work.
“Well, here’s a couple of scientists, well read, smart as tacks and tapped into an international organic community. They can think their way out of any limitation and use knowledge and information to make things work,” says Fred.
“Theirs is not a forced hospitality, they are naturally like that. The little patch of ground that they’ve got, the tool business, the seeds - what they are doing is giving everything they know to that other person,” he says.
“I think they see the next generation
Internship - 10 things you
were about to ask
What is internship?
Like apprenticeship, it’s a program to provide practical experience in agriculture.
Who provides it?
Established, successful farms, run by experienced growers, for example: Allsun Farm in Australia, or Four Seasons Farm in Maine, USA, offer private internship to individuals or couples. Formal internship is associated with education institutions such as Australian Apprentice Certificate IV courses run through TAFE colleges, or industry bodies, or Dairy Australia. Milkwood Permaculture offers five internships each year on its small organic teaching farm near Mudgee, NSW. Turana College at Hawkes Bay, New Zealand offer a biodynamic Certificate in Applied Organics and Biodynamics, which includes an internship for overseas participants.
International agricultural exchanges example: iagora, internoptions, broker internships and there are other facilitator organisations.
The largest, Agriventure, is run by the International Agricultural Exchange Association (IAEA), a non governmental, non-profit membership organisation. Since 1965, around 30,000 young people have been placed in farm work placements worldwide.
Is it the same as WWOOFING?
No, WWOOFING (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) is more of a social exchange; participants stay with their hosts as family and work voluntarily for about four or five hours a day, in exchange for food and board.
Stays are usually quite short, a few days or weeks. WWOOFING can be an experiential way to travel but the responsibilities and commitments of an internship are much greater.
How long is an internship?
Three months is considered a minimum length of stay.
Milkwood Permaculture moved from a WWOOF-LIKE arrangement with a two month minimum stay (working eight hour days for five days) to the current model, where interns pay for a 12 week structured experience with hands-on learning and attendance at all on-farm courses in regenerative agriculture.
The privately run US internship model Michael Plane and Joyce Wilkie promote has a minimum commitment of three months. They believe shorter stays are of little value to the intern and can be a financial and emotional drain on the farmers.
Agriventure offers traditional internships of between six months and a year and seasonal opportunities for as little as a month.
Do interns need farming
experience?
Not necessarily. Interest, intelligence, enthusiasm and spirit are more important.
A background in conservative or conventional production systems can actually be an impediment to the small scale, diverse farming systems Joyce Wilkie and Michael Plane advocate.
“Organic and sustainable agriculture is not taught particularly well in academic institutions”, says Michael.
“What we need is people who understand farming in a much more practical way.
“Take two of the world’s leading farmers - Joel Salatin didn’t learn farming from going to university, he started life as a journalist and Eliot Coleman started farming life as a professor of Spanish literature.”
Stephen Couling had no agricultural experience before interning at Milkwood, but he did have a strong background in project management, an ideal fit for small scale farming.
“These kind of skills come very nicely to running a diverse mixed vegetable organic market garden.
“It’s not grunt work, you have to be educated and intelligent to do well.
“Mike and I have no formal training nor history in conventional agricul- ture. But we didn’t come carrying baggage to be unloaded,” Joyce says.
Agriventure’s career enhancing programs require participants to have at least two years full time practical experience, but other programs are less prescriptive.
Milkwood selects interns who have completed a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC).
Taruna’s program would benefit participants with some level of biodynamic knowledge, but is not essential.
Is it only for young people?
‘ Growing the Grower’ looks to encourage young, vital people into agriculture, beginning in the early school years. But coming to farming in later life brings other skills, life experience and an open-mindedness about agriculture.
Stephen Couling is 51, Joyce began farming at 30 and Michael at nearly 50.
Agriventure is limited to those aged 18 to 30 years. To date, Milkwood’s interns, all tertiary educated and 22 to 49 years, were mostly from Australia, but also Japan, Canada, Germany and France (many came to Australia primarily to do the internship) and their current intake, aged 22 to 34 are from Malaysia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
What are the farmers’
responsibilities?
Internship is a learning exchange, but it also involves responsibility and duty of care. This may include an awareness of the cultural and language differences of overseas interns.
“Interns are young and they are our future and we have to really look after them,”says Joyce. “Growers have to consider this; it is not simply free labour and if they have nothing to teach, or give, they can’t be involved.
“They need to be aware of the work requirements and workplace safety responsibilities true for any business.
“That covers everything, from the workplace, to what they’ll eat, to what you are prepared or not prepared to pay them.”
Joyce Wilkie is setting up the ‘Growing the Growers’ website to give information and support to prospective farms with this in mind.
She wants to create some guidelines for both farmers and interns that will help set up a new way of learning to farm. A directory of farms that offer internships will be the next step.
“We are very tiny and we can only take one or two interns at a time so the website is a medium to spread this much further, much faster,” she says.
And the interns?
Internship is a learning exchange, but it also involves attitude and engagement.
Capacity for hard work is not the only criteria; willingness to listen, observe, reflect and question, humbleness are all valued traits. Joel Salatin and Eliot Coleman both advocate a strong interview and selection process.
Not all interns fit, according to Joyce. “Some people just don’t get it. They don’t get the same rewards out of hard work that Mike and I and Stephen get. Such joy in the physical work and growing things.
“Some have left here shaking their heads, but over the years most have gone away and taken something really positive with them,” she says.
Milkwood interns become ambassadors, according to Kirsten Bradley, expected to work hard with hands and head and to make the most of the opportunities that move through the farm, in the shape of students, teachers, fellow interns, WWOOFERS and other guests.
Is it paid?
In some cases, interns pay for their experience, either to the host organisation or a broker. Private farms generally provide a small stipend, depending on the work, responsibilities and the level of experience.
Conditional on country of travel and type of internship, Agriventure charge from $4,200 to $4,800 for basic internships which covers travel insurance, flights, visas, ongoing support and a trainee allowance less board, lodgings and taxes (in Australia approximately $1,080 per month for a 38hr week). Milkwood’s fully catered 12 week program costs $3,000.
What happens after the
internship is over?
Anything! Kirsten Bradley says Milkwood internships have been as much about developing a peer group passionate about regenerative agriculture and Permaculture, as anything else. Former interns are now co-ordinating Milkwood’s city-based courses, running a sustainable resort in Thailand, farming in Canada, doing aid work in Haiti, managing an organic market garden and farming in central west New South Wales.
Previous Allsun Farm trainees and workers have paved their own way, establishing successful commercial gardens. One now share farms with Joyce and Michael and together they’ve tapped into restaurant markets larger than they’d thought possible.
For Joyce Wilkie and Michael Plane it is a now a more immediate concern.
“The internship is a two-way process. More help with the day-today means we can keep the farm running and keep growing vegetables, whereas if we don’t I can see in the next five years the farm will shrink, because we just won’t be able to do it all.
“The farm is the hardest operation of all to keep running and the least profitable, but it it is the most important because we must grow food.
“It is just, absolutely, essential,” says Joyce. CONTACTS: Milkwood Permaculture: e:kirsten@milkwoodpermaculture.com.au; Turana College NZ: e: info@ taruna.ac.nz; Agriventure Australia: e: nyree@agriventure.com; Dairy Australia: http://www.dairyaustralia. com.au; WWOOF: wwoof@wwoof.com.au; Growing the Growers: http://www.growingthegrowers.com