Small farms do away with the middleman

NEW YORK — For 27-year-old Ben Sippel a steady push for greater efficiency on his Ohio farm has meant tossing freshly washed batches of lettuce into the washing machine's spin cycle and tracking expenses with painstaking precision.

While such steps — sterilizing an old washing machine to run loads of bagged lettuce — aren't so unusual on small farms, Sippel's bid to hold down costs and make it as a full-time farmer began with a more prosaic gambit: Do away with the middleman.

Rather than selling to distributors or grocery stores, Sippel is among a growing number of farmers who enlist fresh-food devotees to pay in advance for their own slice of a farm's bounty.

"It was easier to go to the bank and say, 'We have these people who want to buy our produce,"' said Sippel, who, like his wife, grew up in the suburbs. It was during college that he developed an interest in agriculture, and he tries to do right by the environment by largely hewing to organic principles.

Referred to in shorthand as CSA, for community supported agriculture, these arrangements require consumers pay up-front, or at least make an early down payment, in exchange for a share of what the farm produces. Though exact figures are harder to come by than the lettuce, tomatoes and peppers the Sippels grow on their land, the number of farmers forging direct financial ties with those who consume their food has increased in recent years, observers say.

Estimates put the number of CSAs at 1,500 or so nationwide; in many cases, existing CSAs also appear to be growing more food for more people, some who follow such farms say.

For the Sippels and others like them, forming a CSA seemed to be the best way to carve out a living from farming.

Typically, farmers retain about 19 cents of every dollar in food they sell. The rest goes to things like processing, transportation and marketing. With CSAs, farmers aren't forced to spend as much, helping boost their earnings in many cases.

"Costs are pretty out of control right now," Sippel said, referring to demand for land and rising prices for supplies that he faces in running his 77-acre farm with his wife, Lisa.

Sippel said getting a predictable amount of money early in the season makes it easier to balance expenses. Efficiency and sustainability have become watchwords of his efforts and have allowed him some of the sure-footedness he displays in overseeing his farm in Mount Gilead, a village of about 3,300 people in central Ohio.