How Family Farmers Are Preparing for Climate Change

CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farmers) advocates for millions in immediate disaster relief, while cultivating long-term resilience to climate change.

Farmers From Two Dog Farm Holding Tomatoes Harvested After Wildfires Resulted From Climate Change

Mark & Nibby Bartle | Two Dog Farm

By Becky Duffett

At the peak of tomato season in August 2020, Nibby Bartle of Two Dog Farm says it started to rain fire. “It was pretty wild,” Bartle describes. “There were chunks of burning trees just falling. The sky was red.” From her tiny family farm of about a dozen acres in Santa Cruz County, they braced for the oncoming CZU Lightning Complex fires. Bartle was messaging neighbors, packing up belongings and animals, and organizing to get out. Her husband Mark Bartle was moving tractors into the center of fields in the hope that they’d weather the blaze. The Bartles fled at 7 p.m. that evening. They believe their home burned at 7:30 p.m. 

Looking Across A Tomato Field, The Bartles Watched A Ridge Burn. Two Dog Farm Returning A Week Later, Trees Were Still Burning By The Road. Two Dog Farm

Looking across a tomato field, the Bartles watched a ridge burn. Returning a week later, trees were still burning by the road. | Two Dog Farm

How Wildfire Impacted One Small Family Farm 

They spent the next few days cooped up in a hotel room in Sunnyvale with a farm dog who was not a fan of the accommodations. “It was stressful as heck.” When they returned a week later, wearing masks to go back into the smoke, they stopped at emergency checkpoints and passed trees still dripping with flames. Incredibly, their fields, crops, and tractors had not burned. They lost a few grapes to smoke damage, but those thick-skinned Early Girl tomatoes made it to market a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately, they completely lost their family home, which Mark had built by himself, and where they raised their two kids.  

Bartle says they received insurance, but not nearly enough. “The house is costing us a fortune to rebuild. It’s costing twice what we got from our insurance. It’s wiping out most of our savings.” They’ve been living in an Airstream trailer for three years, and will retire later than hoped — Mark is 68 and Nibby is 65 years old, and they’ll be farming into their 70s. Because they received insurance, Bartle says they did not qualify for FEMA federal assistance. The tomato fans launched a GoFundMe and raised more than $35,000. And the nonprofit CAFF (Community Alliance with Family Farmers) kicked in another $1,000.

When Two Dog Farm gratefully accepted a thousand dollars, that all came from private donations at that time. CAFF launched a Wildfire Resilience Program and Emergency Fund following the wildfires in 2017, when Bi-Rite was honored to be a founding partner. Since then CAFF has worked to get more money from the government in the millions of dollars, and most recipients of the fund now receive $5,000 or $10,000. But even though it might seem like a small sum, keep in mind that these micro grants mean a lot to small farmers. Bartle says their check was enough to feel significant. “That was great. That helped a lot. We bought a new trailer, buckets, and boxes … we spent it all.”

A Final Photo Of The Bartles’ Home Under A Red Sky. Two Dog Farm The Site Of The Bartles’ Home After The Fire. Two Dog Farm

A final photo of the Bartles’ home under a red sky. The site of the Bartles’ home after the fire. | Two Dog Farm

Meet the Nonprofit that Champions Family Farmers   

CAFF is a deep-rooted organization that’s been around since the 70s, dedicated to helping family farms with any challenges. The overwhelming majority (96 percent) of farms in the United States are family owned and operated, according to the USDA. They define a small family farm as grossing less than $250,000 per year, in contrast to big corporations. CAFFThey does a wide range of amazing work, including helping family farmers get into markets, learn ecological practices, connect at an annual conference, and advocate for resources in our state government. “Our role is essentially to be the voice of California family farmers in Sacramento,” says policy director Jamie Fanous.  

Increasingly, CAFF has been hearing from family farmers like the Bartles, who are experiencing the effects of climate change through drought, wildfires, floods, extreme heat, untimely frosts, and more.  

And they tackle climate change on two levels — both in terms of immediate disaster relief and also cultivating long-term resilience.  

The Bartles After Recovering From The Fire

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Nibby & Mark Bartle | Two Dog Farm 

The Policy Work: Fighting for Family Farmers in Sacramento 

In terms of immediate relief, you might not even realize that the California Underserved and Small Producer Program (CUSP) just almost lost nearly $18 million. That’s a state program that launched during the pandemic, which originally provided grants to small farms struggling with drought, and recently expanded to include floods. “It’s a really great program to get funding directly to farmers when they’re suffering a crisis,” Fanous says. CAFF and other nonprofits help hand out that money, and to date CAFF has helped small farmers get $2.5 million, including Spanish speakers without access to services. It was a rough budget year for California, and the governor proposed a $17.9 million cut to the program. But CAFF lobbied hard with our senators and assembly members, and in July they did restore that budget.  

Looking forward to the long term, the big news is that the Climate Bond Measure for $10 billion officially made the ballot for this November, only days before deadline. Within that massive proposal, sustainable farms would be allocated $300 million, going toward programs for healthy soil, farmers markets, urban agriculture, and more. “It’s a big deal for sustainable agriculture to be included as the solution,” Fanous explains. “And this bond is a testament to the legislation and administration agreeing with that.” So if you’d like to help family farmers implement better practices, make sure to consider Proposition 4 when you cast your vote.  

Lettuce & Early Girl Tomatoes Two Dog Farm

Lettuce & Early Girl tomatoes | Two Dog Farm

The Ecology Work: Digging into Deeper Farming Practices 

All of this supports the work family farmers are already doing to prepare for climate change. CAFF launched a Climate Smart Farming Program in 2017, which they later broadened into an Ecological Farming Program. They work on the ground with farmers to help them offset greenhouse gas emissions by sinking carbon back into the soil. They connect farmers with scientists to experiment with cover crops, composting, planting hedgerows, livestock grazing, and more. “Most farmers aren’t sitting at home reading scientific journals,” says Sara Tiffany, director of ecological farming at CAFF. “We’re trying to bridge a scientific understanding of these climate-smart farming practices with the experience and knowledge of the farmers that we’re meeting.”

Take for example Two Dog Farm, which has always been organic since the 80s, and more specifically has dug into dry farming. Dry farming means they grow all of their tomatoes without any irrigation during the season, and it can definitely be a climate-smart strategy, as farms adapt to drought and have to work with less water. In order to do that successfully, Two Dog has spent decades cultivating healthy soil that will soak up and hang onto every last raindrop. Bartle says they only need one good spring rain to recharge their soil and retain that moisture across many months. Of course, the results can also be delicious — if you’ve ever bitten into a dry-farmed Early Girl in late season, you already know that super concentrated and intense tomato flavor.   

The interesting and important connection is that cultivating healthy soil not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, it also helps make farms more resilient to disasters. Healthy soil may be able to soak up more water in a flood, potentially retain more water in a drought, and moisture might help protect a field from wildfire, Tiffany explains.

CAFF firmly believes family farms can be part of the solution to climate change, while also protecting themselves from disasters. “The original approach of the program was to build long-term resilience to climate change,” Tiffany says. “That’s still happening. That’s still important. But at the same time, it’s not like climate change is a future thing. We know that farmers are on the front lines.”  

Two Dog Farm says the Early Girl tomatoes will be available in August for their tantalizingly short season of about two months. Most will go to the Heart of the City and Alemany Farmers Markets, but Bi-Rite will eagerly take any extras.  

If you’d like to support CAFF and more family farmers, you can donate to the Emergency Fund and sign up for their newsletter. They’ll occasionally share when and how it would make a real difference to pick up the phone and call your local representatives.  

Farm Dog Resting After The Fires Resulted From Climate Change

Fiona the farm dog has recovered from the indignity of having to stay in a hotel room. | Two Dog Farm

Becky Duffett is a food writer living and eating in San Francisco. Follow her on Instagram at @beckyduffettopens a new window.