Local food is hip — I’ve said it many times before. It’s good for the environment, the economy and is more nutritious than food produced by conventional agriculture. That’s great, but really, farming is pretty sexy.

This past weekend I attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York’s winter conference. This is probably the biggest event in organic agriculture in the state, and a record-breaking 1,376 people attended this year. This is impressive in a year where a lot of the state was devastated by tropical storms Irene and Lee.

Sustainable agriculture is about breaking the rules. For the last 50-plus years, agriculture has become more centralized, chemical intensive and closed to the outside. These farmers are choosing to buck the system and be independent of genetically modified seeds, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides. They’re putting their faith in manure, sunshine and muscle.

Farmers are inherently entrepreneurs. They’re reinventing the way business is done. By directly marketing to customers through farmers’ markets or community-supported agriculture subscriptions called CSAs, they are cutting out the middlemen. This means more of each dollar paid for food goes to the farmer instead of to shipping, packaging and distribution.

They’re also sharing information instead of viewing each other as competitors — this year’s theme was the collaborative economy. It’s heartening to see farmers trading strategies on farmers’ markets (flirting is encouraged), data about heavy metals in food grown in urban soils (they probably won’t kill you) and leadership tactics (make standards for your employees clear).

Farming is something physical in which you need to touch, grope and get dirty. Pulling tenacious weeds out of the asparagus, tenderly picking squash blossoms and wolfing down ripe peaches with juice running down your chin feels authentic.

The food doesn’t suck either. Farmers eat like kings even in January. Dozens of farms donated product to be served at the meals provided during the conference. There were greens grown in greenhouses, roasted carrots and beets harvested this past fall, beef, chicken, beans, bulgur wheat — proof that eating locally year-round is possible.

Farmers party well, too. The Sylvestor Manor farm crew held impromptu jam sessions, sing-alongs and was just dreamy in general. The contra dance had families, couples and packs of young interns sweating and smiling on the dance floor. They were in work boots, bare feet, chunky wool sweaters and twirling skirts. The floor was thumping with dozens of feet, and the band was reacting to the dancers pushing one another to a giddy frenzy.

These are the bodies that make the food that comes out of the ground. These are the people braving the weather, backbreaking labor and the recession to make good food. It was beautiful to see this many people together who also squish potato bugs and perpetually have dirt underneath their fingernails.

Leanna Mulvihill is a senior forest engineering major and environmental writing and rhetoric minor. Her column appears every Tuesday. She can be reached at lpmulvih@syr.edu.  

Published on January 23, 2012 at 12:00 pm