by Bethany Goodrich | May 15, 2017 | Food Sustainability, Storytelling
Written for Alaska Business Monthly
The Southeastern community of Haines was once known as the strawberry capital of Alaska. In the 1900s, Charlie Anway’s prolific red berries were shipped throughout the state—his largest berry measuring seven inches in circumference. During the harvesting season for more than two decades, Anway hired up to twenty pickers and grossed more than $700 a day.
“Charlie Anway wasn’t alone. During this time there were at least eight operating farms in Haines producing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables for sale in the community, the state, and down south,” says Madeline Witek, who is the community coordinator of the Sheldon Museum in Haines.
Witek presented on the strength of Haines’ colorful agricultural history to a fascinated audience during the opening of the second biennial Southeast Farmers Summit in February. More than seventy-five fruit and vegetable growers and livestock farmers from across the region flocked to Haines to reinvigorate the entrepreneurial spirit of local agriculture.
Fresh Produce
Much has changed since the days of Charles Anway. When it comes to fresh produce in Southeast Alaska today, the Farmers Summit emphasized that there is ample opportunity for growth.
Southeast Alaskans spend $19 million each year importing roughly 96 percent of its fresh produce, according to the Current Potential Economic Impacts of Locally-Grown Produce in Southeast Alaska report published by the McDowell group and presented at the Summit. Consider potatoes, a crop that grows locally, as an example. According to the report, more than $3 million is spent on some 2 million pounds of imported spuds each year. Roughly 38 percent of Southeast households grew food last year, and about thirty commercial growers are cultivating in the region. While completely closing the import gap is unlikely, farmers are confident that improving local production is not only possible but important for our state’s food security and good for our wallets too.
The Farmers Summit was organized by the Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, Takshanuk Watershed Council, and the Sustainable Southeast Partnership to cultivate momentum in the industry. “While production in Southeast Alaska is currently limited, there are many individuals who are working hard to provide fresh food for our region and create livelihoods around local food production,” explains Lia Heifetz, the organizer of this year’s Farmers Summit. “This is a venue to nurture growth, to provide a space to share lessons learned between commercial farmers, connect farmers to resources, boost entrepreneurial know-how, and present research-based technologies pertaining to commercial agriculture.”
Maximizing Efficiency
Emily Garrity runs a successful farming business in Homer named Twitter Creek Gardens. She journeyed south to this year’s Farmers Summit to share her experiences with farmers in the Southeast.
“One of the key opportunities with farming in Alaska is that it is pretty much an untouched market,” says Garrity. “We have lots of room to grow with very little competition and that gives us a lot of leeway getting started, starting small, growing, and being successful.”
During peak growing season, every week Garrity and her crew move $4,000 worth of produce through their farm to thirty Community-Supported Agriculture members, eight restaurants, two farmers markets, and one food hub. Since 2003, she’s escalated her business from growing in a 1,000 foot garden on borrowed land to cultivating on her 1.5 acre property equipped with raised beds, high-tunnel greenhouses, and one innovative greenhouse built into a hillside.
It’s been a long process for Garrity—exploring markets, seeking out proper loans, building partnerships with Homer’s fishing industry to save on shipping costs for inputs, and experimenting with different produce. Her advice for Southeast farmers working to build careers in farming: treat your garden like a business.
“We need to take the business aspect very seriously, which I think is one of the major hurdles for people first getting into farming. Newcomers tend to feel like it is a lifestyle, which it is for sure, but treating it more like a business as opposed to a hobby is a really important piece to being sustainable,” says Garrity.
What does that look like?
“Coming up with a business plan, looking at budgets, putting dollar per square foot values on all of your garden space, growing crops that can make you enough money to make a living from. You need to look at the high value crops and the markets that are available and tap into all of them,” she says. Garrity focuses on high-succession crops like radishes and salad greens that can be harvested and replanted several times during a growing season.
Many of the commercial growers in the Southeast did begin as hobby growers, and many of their farms are large vegetable gardens that reflect personal taste more than profit. Serious farmers are reevaluating what they grow and in what percentage and are seeing returns. Marja Smets and Bo Varsano run Farragut Farms off-the-grid, thirty-five miles north of Petersburg. What began as a home garden Smets and Varsano have nurtured into a farm that provides more than forty different varieties of vegetables to Petersburg, Juneau, and other markets.
“On average, our sales have increased each year by approximately 30 percent, so we are definitely growing a lot more than we did during our first years in business,” says Smets. “We continue to figure out which crops have the highest demand, and which crops grow most productively. Each year, we then try to adjust our crop plan accordingly for the upcoming season.”
Local growers are also investing in equipment and infrastructure such as high-tunnel greenhouses and aquaponics to improve production and profitability in this difficult climate. Farragut Farms is installing their fifth high-tunnel greenhouse this year.
Creative Farmers
When it comes to being successful in agriculture in the Southeast, innovation and creativity are key. Colter Barnes, superintendent of the Southeast Island School District on Prince of Wales Island, is overcoming the high cost of labor and the limits of available land and soil by avoiding the two completely. Barnes and Damon Holtman, a student of Coffman Cove, traveled to the Summit to share the story of their island’s success. “I love working with dirt,” Barnes explained to a captivated audience of farmers. “But I challenge you to find soil on Prince of Wales Island.” The School District is managing a series of four biomass-heated aquaponic greenhouses that are providing hands-on entrepreneurial and agricultural experience to students while cultivating produce to feed students and sell in their communities year-round. The dynamic duo even brought twenty-five pounds of fresh lettuce (note this was held mid-February in Alaska) to share at the Summit and explained how this project is not only improving access to fresh produce on Prince of Wales, it is also creating new revenue streams for a financially struggling school district.
Tapping into tangential industries has also proven helpful for farmers. Ed Buyarski of Juneau is finding success by pairing produce with landscaping because the two require similar infrastructure and equipment. He also sells seeds and starts to growers, and this highlights another take-home from the McDowell report and Summit: home and commercial growers in the Southeast spend $1.8 million on growing inputs each year. Soil, seeds, fertilizer, supplements, lumber for greenhouses, and other inputs constitute a surprisingly sizable industry.
Nick Schlosstein and Leah Wagner founded Foundroot in Haines, a business selling open-pollination seeds that can withstand Alaska climates. Their station at the Summit was bustling non-stop with farmers eager to make purchases. Finding ways to tie agriculture into our booming tourism and fishing industries is important for maximizing regional benefits. For example, selling value-added products and fresh produce to cruise ships and restaurants during tourism season helps keep money in Alaska that was brought in from out of state.
Value-addition and more in-region processing were also discussed as opportunities for strengthening the vitality of agriculture in Southeast Alaska. According to the Southeast Alaska Commercial Rhubarb Feasibility Study, a report by the office of Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins which was simultaneously unveiled at the Summit, one acre of rhubarb could yield $170,000 in processed juice. While facilities and machinery would be required to master high-volume processing, the potential is lucrative. Others look to existing processing plants that are certified for value addition of commercial products. Fish processing plants are potential spaces that can be used for the commercial development of other goods during the off-season and churches and other community spaces often offer kitchen space that is certified for commercial processing.
Connections
While increasing agricultural production in Southeast Alaska is important, getting product in front of buyers is critical. Participants of the Farmers Summit explained that access to markets and the high cost of transport are notable obstacles. Participants were optimistic that Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) is a promising option for affordably accessing markets across the region. Southeast Conference is the region’s economic development organization. They are currently leading a statewide effort to refine the governance structure of the ferry system and are actively looking for options to make the ferry more profitable and sustainable with a dwindling state budget.
Robert Venables, the Energy Coordinator of Southeast Conference, is the chairman of the Marine Transportation Advisory Board leading the Alaska Marine Highway Reform Project. Venables agrees that the opportunity for the ferry system to ship more than just people and cars from rural community to community is key.
“The success of AMHS really is going to lie with the partnerships that it can make within the regions it serves. The state will always provide certain basic fund support, but there has to be other revenue streams. Partnering with businesses and communities is one component of a revenue stream that can be developed right now that is largely untapped, so there is a lot of opportunity to move goods, like produce, throughout the region using the AMHS,” says Venables.
A more dependable and consistent ferry service with options for shipping unmanned freight from community to community will not only be important for farmers in the region hoping to access new markets, it would help support the future of the ferry system and benefit intra-regional commerce more generally.
“Sometimes the ferry is the only mode for commerce in some of these more remote communities, because well, there are no roads. So, the ferry can play a very prominent role in the transport of agricultural products,” says Venables. “Maybe someone is producing something that they ship to a network in Juneau who is then adding produce that goes to Pelican, and then maybe they reload some seafood products that go back to Hoonah or Kake. There is a very multi-faceted opportunity for producers across the region to get together here,” says Venables.
Between active farmers’ markets across rural communities, Community Supported Agriculture memberships, and an upcoming food-hub called Salt & Soil Marketplace that aims to connect Southeast markets using an online marketplace and physical pick-up locations in Juneau and Haines, farmers are thinking critically about reaching consumers.
Growing Momentum
Growing a flourishing agriculture industry in Southeast Alaska is not simple. The hardy, enthusiastic, and inventive group that gathered in Haines in February indicates that the dedication and collaboration necessary to cultivate this industry is building.
“There are challenges like a wet and cool climate, scarcity of good agricultural land in our region, a distance between markets, and a lack of efficient and cheap transportation systems. But the opportunity is that our local food movement is in its infancy; it’s a real opportunity to step in on the ground floor and make a lasting impact on the future of small scale agriculture for our region,” says Smets, who hosted the first Farmers Summit in 2015 and was pleased by this year’s turnout. “There were over twice as many attendees at this year’s Summit! There’s a huge increase in interest and participation. I feel a groundswell arising.”
by Bethany Goodrich | Apr 27, 2017 | Economic Self-reliance, Food Sustainability, Hoonah, Hydaburg, Kake, Kasaan, Klawock, Natural Resource Stewardship, Sitka, Storytelling, Yakutat
Written and photographed by Bethany Goodrich for Alaska’s Capital City Weekly
Katlian Street in Sitka is a bustling cultural and fishing hub. Along this winding harbor-side road, tightly squeezed between fishing gear shops, processing plants, and docks crowded with scavenging gulls, is the Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s (STA) Resource Protection Department building.
While the building’s salt-worn front doors look unassuming, behind its modest exterior is a state of the art laboratory dedicated to harmful algae bloom monitoring and shellfish research. This year, the lab will add ocean acidification monitoring to its impressive coastal monitoring toolkit.
Happy harvesting
The Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research partnership (SEATOR) was formed by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska in 2013 as a network of tribal governments, universities, and nonprofits to monitor harmful algae blooms in the state.
“Alaska is the only state where people still die of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning,” explained Chris Whitehead who is the Environmental Program Manager at STA. “Alaska was the only state that didn’t have a monitoring program in place and we have such huge levels of toxins so it was very disconcerting.”
Before heading to Sitka to work with STA, Whitehead spent years working in Washington with tribes and researchers monitoring shellfish populations for toxins. So, when a group of community members and local elders inquired about setting up harmful algae testing in Sitka, Whitehead stepped in.
“It was just good timing. There was a need, and I was able to bring up experts I had met in Washington to help set something up locally. Then we went to work writing grants and securing funding,” Whitehead said.
Today, the lab monitors plankton samples under the microscope, tests for harmful toxins and sends out warnings when toxin levels are too high for safe foraging.
“We want to be as proactive as possible to catch a toxic event before anyone gets sick. That means every week, we collect plankton and water samples to make sure there are no active harmful blooms. In addition, we collect blue mussel samples every one to two weeks since they are the first species to pick up toxins and are not widely consumed. If we see any indication that toxins or harmful plankton are rising, we preemptively issue a community advisory, increase our sampling frequency, and start testing all shellfish species,” said Esther Kennedy.
Kennedy was born and bred in Alaska. She returned after receiving a BA in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University to work with Sitka Tribe and can often be found pulling plankton nets through Sitka’s shoreline.
Of course, Sitka is not the only community where avid shellfish harvesters punch rusty shovels into sand and grit in pursuit of delicious bivalves. Fifteen other tribes in Southeast Alaska also employ specialists who peer through microscopes for dangerous plankton and send water samples to STA for toxin tests every week.
Carrie Davis fills this role for the Organized Village of Kake. She shares updated information about shellfish safety for this community of 600.
That information has given Kake resident John Williams Sr. greater confidence when harvesting this important cultural resource. Williams, 65, has been setting out by boat or by foot to dig for clams and picnic with loved ones for as long as he can remember.
“I’m always talking to Carrie and she posts it on the community board there, to show us where it’s safe and it’s useful because we know where to go and where to stay away from,” said Williams who can now share his chowder and cockles with less worry.
Climate change’s under-recognized twin: ocean acidification
Since the lab began monitoring efforts in 2013, nobody has become ill or died from Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning on any of the studied beaches. Success, one might say, has spread like a sunlit plankton bloom.
“When it first started, it was just six to eight tribes and now it’s 15 tribes in Southeast, four sites in Kachemak Bay and a handful of tribes in Kodiak that are starting up,” Whitehead said.
And the network isn’t just growing geographically.
“When this all started, the tribes hadn’t worked together in this capacity regionally before. Once this began, it really opened the door for the tribes to ask, ‘What else do we have common concerns about, what else can we work together on?’ and climate change was at the very very top,” Whitehead said.
That comes as no surprise. Alaska is warming faster than any other state.
“Ocean acidification, global warming’s under-recognized twin, is also affecting Alaskan waters faster than any other state,” said Kennedy.
“As carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean, it becomes more acidic. It’s a global problem, but colder Arctic waters absorb more CO2 so it’s hitting us especially hard. Acidification makes it difficult or impossible for creatures like shellfish, crustaceans, and pteropods to make shells. This is bad news because it decimates the foundation of the marine food web,” Kennedy said. “We depend on the sea for everything in Southeast Alaska. It’s hard to imagine that we will be unaffected by ocean acidification.”
So the SEATOR team went to work figuring out how to tackle a challenge as far-reaching and daunting as ocean acidification. That’s where the “Burke-o-Lator,” a scientific instrument which Chris Whitehead called the global standard for measuring ocean acidification, comes in. Burke Hales, the scientist who created it, will be headed to the Sitka lab in mid-May to help install this new addition. He’s excited for what this data set and network will mean for ocean acidification research globally. With more than fifteen tribal governments across the region contributing to the monitoring efforts, SEATOR will paint a representative image of how ocean acidification is impacting a large geographic area.
Chris Whitehead and the entire SEATOR network are excited for what the data set will also mean locally.
“There is not a lot of ocean acidification work being done in the Southeast,” Whitehead said.
“We will have a good data set in Sitka and these other communities across the Southeast will submit their samples and it will all contribute to a robust local picture. And here, we have 15 tribes working together to provide this big data set and not a lot of people are doing that nationally.”
Geoducks and upcoming scientists
Climate Change monitoring is not the only new addition to SEATOR. The lab is working on getting FDA approval to administer PSP testing to Southeast Alaska’s commercial dive fisheries. For geoduck fishermen, this will mean more streamlined and local testing opportunities and a longer harvesting window.
The lab is also dedicated to building capacity among Southeast Alaska’s upcoming scientific leaders. On Thursdays this spring, several Mount Edgecumbe High School students filed into the lab, donned authoritative white lab coats, pulled mussel cages, homogenized tissue, ran genetic testing, peered through microscopes, and analyzed results. They were part of an internship program aimed at preparing the next generation of scientists for meaningful careers in applied research. Sienna Reid, who is both one of those students as well as a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, is heading to Western Washington University this fall to pursue a degree in science.
Energy is building for these programs, and not just among the tribal governments who are actively participating.
“Senator Lisa Murkowski, Sullivan and Don Young too have all been very supportive of ocean acidification work. It’s a bipartisan issue, regardless of your views on climate change, it is clear that the oceans are acidifying and that is going to affect Alaska’s fisheries, so when we have spoken to those offices they have been really excited about doing this work,” said Whitehead.
Of course, like all grant-funded efforts, there is uncertainty.
‘“We are in the same boat as everyone else, waiting to see what happens for Fiscal Year 2018. EPA dollars are the backbone for this. We have other funding in Sitka but the tribes across the region who are doing the consistent weekly work are almost 100 percent funded by EPA dollars,” said Whitehead. “So we are hoping that these programs don’t get targeted.”
SEATOR started as an idea four years ago. Today, it’s helping to not only provide safe access to an important subsistence resource, but is also leading the way in ocean acidification research. All the while, this humble beach-side laboratory is providing opportunities and building capacity for the future stewards of Alaska’s coastal health. In a state that depends on coastal resources for everything, that is certainly something to celebrate with a community clam-dig.
Visit http://www.seator.org/ for more
by Bethany Goodrich | Apr 27, 2017 | Economic Self-reliance, Food Sustainability, Uncategorized
The 2017 Path to Prosperity (P2P) sustainable business competition aims to identify and support innovative Southeast Alaska food businesses. Supporting local food businesses reduces Southeast Alaska’s dependence on imports, strengthens community resiliency, and promotes sustainable use of the region’s natural bounty.
Path To Prosperity is a collaboration between The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Spruce Root, Inc. Spruce Root and TNC are committed to strengthening local food systems by supporting food entrepreneurs from across the region. “We’re excited to try something a little different for the next round and connect with the growing local foods movement in Southeast Alaska,” says P2P competition administrator Paul Hackenmueller. “This year’s competition will provide resources to help local food entrepreneurs incorporate social, economic, and environmental sustainability techniques into their business models.”
Eligible businesses must operate primarily in Southeast Alaska and be involved in the growing, harvesting, processing, aggregation, preparation or distribution of food. “P2P applicants can be existing businesses or start-ups,” said Hackenmueller. “We want to encourage new entrepreneurs to apply, even if they haven’t started their business yet, so the Round 1 application doesn’t require a full business plan. We only ask for a basic description of the business concept.” P2P helps entrepreneurs identify ways to make their businesses profitable, while also having positive social and environmental impacts on their communities.
Twelve applicants will be selected as finalists to advance to Round 2 of the competition and attend P2P’s innovative Business Boot Camp weekend in Juneau. All twelve finalists receive one-on-one mentorship and consulting that they can use to help write their business plans and grow their businesses after they return to their communities. The Boot Camp experience is valuable for all finalists who attend, whether or not they win the competition. “Thanks to P2P, I have a clear vision of where I am headed and a solid business plan that I developed as the roadmap to the future of our company,” said Tina Steffen of Skya’ana Coffee Co. in Klawock, one of two winners of the 2016 competition.
Timeline for 2017 Path To Prosperity Competition
- April 1, 2017 – Application Period Opens
- May 9, 2017 – Webinar
- May 31, 2017 – Applications Due
- July 7, 2017 – Announce Finalists Advancing to Round 2
- September 29 – October 1, 2017 – Boot Camp Weekend in Juneau
- December 3, 2017 – Business Plan Submissions Deadline
- February 2018 –Two Winners Announced
The competition is open to all Southeast Alaska residents. This includes individuals, for-profit businesses and tribal entities.
by Bethany Goodrich | Apr 26, 2017 | Blog Reports, Economic Self-reliance, Energy Independence, Food Sustainability
Written by Shaina Kilcoyne, Renewable Energy Alaska Project
On a warm, bluebird day in April, Southeast Island School District and the Sustainable Southeast Partnership led a 25 person tour to Coffman Cove, Thorne Bay and Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island to see their biomass and greenhouse projects in person. Tour participants from Hoonah, Kake, Hydaburg, Klawock, Petersburg, Tenakee Springs, Ontario and the Yukon each had in hand a Biomass Heated Greenhouse Handbook. This comprehensive handbook outlines how to turn these inspiring greenhouses from dream to reality. It was unveiled a day prior at the Alaska Wood Energy Conference in Ketchikan and is a free resource available to schools and anybody who is interested in building a Biomass Heated Greenhouse locally. The USDA Forest Service and the Alaska Energy Authority commissioned the Handbook, in part to share successes and lessons learned from the Southeast Island School District and help streamline the process for future projects. Nobody wants to re-invent the wheel, and handbooks like these provide the tools so that interested local leaders don’t need to!
“We teach retention, other schools teach compliance” –Colter Barnes
Back on the tour on Prince of Wales Island, five to seven year old students confidently walked out to the chicken coop to do their morning chores – collecting and counting eggs, feeding chickens and ducks, refilling water. Two high schooler’s run outside to the biomass boiler shed to stoke the fire between classes. A middle school class weighs goldfish, calculates the amount of fish food to feed them (3% of their mass), and tests the water levels in the aquaponic greenhouse.
Of the 500 plus schools in Alaska, four on Prince of Wales Island are now displacing heating fuel and imported foods with local woody biomass and greenhouses. According to Principal Colter Barnes, the $200 earned from delivering a cord of wood can make a big difference for families in these high cost communities, and produces about the same amount of heat as $500 worth of diesel fuel. Students fund sports travel and even requested more duties stoking the boiler and hauling and cutting wood a couple of weeks ago to save up for prom.
These greenhouses are truly inspiring. They are creating jobs and economic development, generating clean, affordable, local energy, teaching nutrition and culinary arts, applied learning, and community engagement. This is a story of building healthy, culturally vibrant communities and a more resilient region and the newly published handbook will help take this fantastic island-wide project to the next level.
by Bethany Goodrich | Apr 26, 2017 | Communities, Focus Areas, Program Description, Reports & Media, Trip Reports
Partners and collaborators met in Juneau for a two day bi-annual SSP workshop in March. This workshop coincided with SE Conference’s Mid-Session Summit. The success and utility of the SSP network relies heavily on the commitment of partners to meet in-person twice a year. Spending time together to share information and ideas always leads to improved collaboration across the region. We saw over 50 people participate in the two day event, and many of them noted that it was a priority to attend because they see the value it brings to be tapped into the SSP network.
We used the two days to explore specific ideas including; ideas for improving the network in 2017, reflection on how we as individuals and organizations both provide and receive benefits through the partnership, and building an SSP story bank. Southeast Alaska has a rich history rooted in the use of storytelling for sharing knowledge, skills and inspiration. The SSP prioritizes sharing compelling and progressive stories to strengthening projects and connections between our rural villages across the region. We spent one afternoon brainstorming storytelling ideas based on our projects and work and started to discuss and map out strategies for sharing those stories to inspire positive change.
For the full version of the summary with answers to the workshop questions we worked on collaboratively click here.
