Waterkeepers Chesapeake (Fair Farms Campaign)

An Overview Of Our Solution

Fair Farms is a campaign that brings “Marylanders from all corners of the state together to work towards a new food system, one that is fair to farmers, invests in homegrown, healthy food, and restores our waterways instead of polluting them.” The campaign launched in December 2015 and is convened by Waterkeepers Chesapeake. Agriculture in America is a rigged game. Public policy supports industrial agriculture over sustainability at all levels. The Fair Farms campaign uses the stories of sustainable farmers, chefs, food advocates, and public health and environmental organizations to change consumer behavior, driving demand for more sustainable products in the marketplace. The long-term goal of Fair Farms is to leverage that consumer demand to change outcomes on public policy issues around sustainability at all levels of government.

Who is this solution impacting?

Community Type

Suburban

Organization type

Nonprofit

Ecosystem (select all that apply)

Freshwater

Oceans/Coasts

Population impacted

5.97 million

Size of agricultural area

2,020,000 acres

Production quantity

$1,050,557,000 (crops, nurseries, etc) and $1,220,840,000 (livestock, poultry, etc.)

People employed

Describe your solution

Fair Farms began with a goal of bringing together “Marylanders from all corners of the state to work together towards a new food system, one that is fair to farmers, invests in homegrown, healthy food, and restores our waterways instead of polluting them.” The approach of this campaign is unique, bringing consumers into an online communications effort, providing them with information about food/farming using storybanking and the voices of people who work at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and the environment. The campaign then brings consumers up a ladder of engagement designed to change behavior. These behaviors may start with a “like” on social media, grow to a subscription to our weekly eblast, continue to writing a legislator on a policy initiative, or attending an in-person event like a movie screening, or forum. In the end, each of these behaviors leads consumers to recognize the role their buying habits play. If they aren’t buying sustainably, growers won’t grow sustainably. Our end goal is to change the system by voting with our folks. Developing the connection for people between how food is produced and how production methods impact agricultural lands, helps them make informed decisions, while activating them to engage with sustainable business and farmers. Additionally, through this growing fabric, we can develop a new community-based, diverse farming system better tuned to our future needs, robust local economies, and a healthier Chesapeake Bay.

Describe your implementation

Understanding the imbalance in our nation’s management of agricultural lands — the connection between conventional/industrial farming (on-farm practices, subsidies, zoning, etc.) and environmental degradation — is difficult and confusing. For most people, absorbing what is wrong with the current system and making a connection to the way their behavior relates to the problem is nearly impossible. In order to ensure success, Fair Farms set out to not only recognize the difficulty in communicating that story, but confronting it. The campaign spent two years in the planning phase, using focus groups, creating communications plans, and finding just the right language to reach consumers. Telling the stories of farmers, who are businessmen and women, and connecting them to policy initiatives at the local, state and federal level, is the main focus. In delivering the stories of partners, we help consumers make a connection to their food and the farming practices that brought that food to market. In most cases, we ask our consumers to connect those stories to an action. For example, can consumers hear the story of a farmer who began raising organic livestock after a cancer diagnosis, she felt that the way most food is produced makes people sick — and connect that to a policy at the state level to limit the use of antibiotics in livestock that are not sick? We face significant industry opposition, but use our growing audience to support our actions.

External connections

We identify compelling storytellers from farmers to environmental organizations that we bring into the Fair Farms movement. Our partnerships with organizations plays a central role in the campaign. Our campaign includes 139 partners – with 92 farms, farm markets, CSAs, restaurants and businesses, and 47 nonprofits. Our partners range from national organizations like Farm Aid to local farms here in Maryland. We also are partnered with local groups like the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility. We help these allies tell their stories through a series of professionally-produced videos. In our efforts to highlight the voices of partners, we often find that they come to their methods from varying viewpoints. So far, these have included a desire to leave a lasting legacy of care for the land as an example to their children, and a concern for the environment. We have been able to utilize our partnerships in meaningful ways on the policy level. For instance, we led efforts to bring our partners together in support of antibiotics legislation this session. Multiple farmer partners and businesses came out to support legislation that would limit antibiotics in animals that are not sick. We also have worked with partners like the Maryland Pesticide Network on final language on the Healthy Soils bill in Maryland. We’ve been grateful to have strong partnerships that open our eyes to new issues.

What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the U.S., and the economic engine of the region, providing up to $1 trillion value in fisheries, tourism, and other industries. One of the most significant pollutants, comes from excess nutrients from agricultural runoff. These nutrients cause algae blooms, dead zones, and fish kills. While government has made progress in regulating pollutants from other runoff, curbing agricultural pollution has proved more difficult. The “on the ground” operators for agriculture are often operating at low margins and may not be able to invest in technological changes. There has also been an unfortunate narrative of “environmentalist vs. farmer”, causing a divide in communities that could otherwise work to solve these problems collaboratively. Fair Farms recognizes the need to pull together visionary farmers, business, non-profits and consumers in order to diversify farming, not only to help the Bay, but to help rural communities and economies.

Describe the context in which you are operating

Fair Farms was born out of a recognition that the growth and influence of industrial-scale poultry production, particularly on the Eastern Shore, is unsustainable. The density of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOS) is changing the rural landscape. Communities are seeing not only more CAFOs on smaller parcels of land, but also “mega-CAFOS” that produce more chickens, use more antibiotics, and create more runoff because excess manure can’t be absorbed by the land.
Fair Farms recognized that market forces are one of the best tools to use in changing corporate behavior. Using storytelling, Fair Farms seeks to lift the voices of sustainable farmers. We know these tools work. We have seen industrial poultry modify their growing practices, including offering more organics and curbing the use of human antibiotics in livestock production.
Currently, we have about 100 partner farmers. We use a variety of communication tools to tell their stories to about 15,000 consumers. We use personal narrative in the form of written stories, videos and podcasts. We use these same tools in the arena of public policy. During the 2017 Maryland General Assembly session (Jan-April), we have brought partner farmers to Annapolis to testify on bills that: 1) give farmers credit for donating leftover food to food pantries, 2) provide state grants to match federal benefits at farm markets, 3) limit the use of human antibiotics in farm animals that are not sick, and 4) define healthy soils.

How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?

From a public policy standpoint, Fair Farms is poised to pass three, possibly four, of the four policy initiatives that we have advocated for in the 2017 session of the Maryland General Assembly. These laws would benefit biodiverse farming. Two would also provide direct economic benefits, through tax deductions, for farmers who engaged in more sustainable practices. In 2016/2017, Fair Farms advocated for, and helped to pass, county bills in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County (MD) to, respectively, help urban farmers receive tax credits for farming small parcels and to allow zoning exemptions for urban farmers. Fair Farms funded and released research highlighting the benefits of biodiversity. The report, “Diversifying the Agricultural Basket, Risks in Conventional Poultry Growing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Opportunities from Diversified Local Agriculture” showcased that a reliance on monoculture is not only an environmental hazard, but also an economic one.

Language(s)

Spanish and (some) English

Water

Fair Farms is committed to ensuring healthy waterways by pushing for transparency and accountability, including access to nutrient management plan information and the use of public money, such as cost share programs. We support policies to mitigate the agricultural sector’s impact on waterways. This year, the Fair Farms campaign supports the Maryland “Keep Antibiotics Effective Act” which, if passed, will reduce antibiotic pollution/runoff and help reduce the growth of drug-resistant bacteria.

Food Security/Nutrition

This legislative session, we supported a bill to launch a pilot program in Southern Maryland’s to support both the farming and hunger community. The bill will give tax credits to farmers to donate to food banks, helping farmers financially while increasing access to local, fresh food in the hunger community. The tax credit also provides a higher percentage return for farmers who donate certified organics, increasing the incentive for those who use more sustainable farming methods.

Economic/Sustainable Development

The campaign encourages consumers to not only support visionary farmers, but specifically those within the state of Maryland. One way we encourage consumers to support these farmers is by highlighting the economic impact of keeping one’s money in the local economy, a fact we often promote in our storytelling campaigns. We also hosted a town hall discussion to highlight the benefits of local procurement, particularly through schools — often the largest institutional buyer in a community.

Climate

We supported the Healthy Soils Bil, and were able to pull together a diverse group of stakeholders to ensure it enhances biological integrity of the soil without being overly prescriptive in the types of practices allowable. In our testimony, we explained that while healthy soils have the capacity to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon, conventional farm practices may substantially contribute to environmental degradation. The bill is an important step in addressing climate change.

Sustainability

Fair Farms’ work is funded by financial grants from the Town Creek Foundation, Farm Aid along with administrative support from Waterkeepers Chesapeake, our parent organization. Because of the success of the campaign, we will continue to diversify funding sources and seek expansion efforts in other states.

Return on investment

Finding a solution to the problem of agricultural pollution in our waterways has been a struggle in past years. Fighting with the industrial agribusiness and litigating for access to information has been a battle that has not always resulted in victory in the environmental community. The Fair Farms approach is different. It is positive, focuses on lifting up the voices of sustainable farmers, and engaging consumers in the effort. It has been our most successful approach to problem-solving in this issue area. The campaign costs about $250,000 per year, which supports campaign staff, outreach, legal initiatives, lobbying and advocacy efforts, and communications.

Entrant Image

How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?

The Fair Farms campaign is a new approach to an old problem. It encourages consumers to drive demand that results in changes in corporate behavior. We have already seen it at work. Perdue is moving to produce poultry without antibiotics and to expand organics. Subway, McDonalds and others are sourcing antibiotic-free. Our work with visionary farmers who are employing on-the-land agricultural practices that are restorative to the environment while producing a product that is accessible to consumers is also a key component to our work. This can be done in other places, and Fair Farms has had interest from other states to replicate the campaign as a way to not only lift up sustainability among consumers and existing farmers, but also as a way to push back against corporate agribusiness and the resulting pollution those practices cause. Because there are Waterkeepers in all parts of the United States, we have opportunities to grow the campaign beyond Maryland.

YouTube URL

Fair Farms

Overview