The Deep Bed Farming Society: Breaking New Ground

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According to DBFS president Steve White-hill, the group's three specific goals are [1] to promote, encourage, and support small, family-run farming operations; [2] to protect the ecological integrity of rural areas; and [3] to help assure that worldwide there would be sufficient quantities of locally produced food.

And how does DBFS hope to achieve these goals? Quite simply, by developing ways to make small-scale, organic farming not just solvent, but lucrative. This, they hope—through the workings of supply and demand—will draw more people (and the right sort of people) back onto America's farmlands as owner-operators (Jefersonian freeholders).

To date, DBFS members have conducted extensive comparative studies using test plots consisting of experimental biodynamic deep beds planted alongside conventional rows of corn, soybeans, and milo. The results indicate that DBFS is onto something good, with peracre deep-bed yields doubling and occasionally even quadrupling those of the neighboring conventional rows.

We'll try to keep you posted on the organization's progress (they'll soon be setting up a working model of an organic deep-bed farm somewhere in the Midwest). But for now, if you'd like to get more information on this group of doers, write to the Deep Bed Farming Society, 939 6th St., Las Animas, CO 81054. (As a nonprofit organization, DBFS depends on contributions and member support to survive, and welcomes queries from prospective members or donors.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: For a report on another "organic alternative" designed to alleviate the crisis facing America's family farmers, turn back to the Plowboy Interview on page 16.

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