Thoughts From Your Farmer

I’ve been receiving many requests from the public for volunteers. Many of you have watched our YouTube videos on Rogue Rhino Gardens and want to come learn what we’re doing here. First, please let me say thank you.

Unfortunately, we have had some difficult experiences with volunteers in the past. The old saying is true: “One bad apple…”

Several seasons ago a young male volunteer climbed a ladder he was never asked or allowed to use, fell, and injured his leg. He went to the hospital and was found to have a broken bone.

Weeks later I received the hospital bill from his parents. When I asked why they were sending it to me, I said, “Your son was a volunteer, and he did not have permission to climb or work on a ladder.” They told me to just make a claim with my insurance company.

I told them no. Insurance companies already charge farmers extremely high rates no matter how carefully we operate. Yes, some of the larger “show farms” do allow volunteers and simply pay those higher premiums. We choose not to.

Anyone who thinks they can learn how to grow food in the desert in a short period of time by volunteering is far more optimistic than I am. I’ve been doing this for eighteen years and I’m still learning every single day.

Cyclospora is in the news again. This parasite is not new, not lab-created, not genetically engineered, and not deliberately released. It is a naturally occurring, water-borne organism that has been with us for a very long time.

Most outbreaks are tied to raw produce—lettuce leads the list, followed by berries, peas, Thai basil, herbs, and cilantro. When U.S. production is out of season, we import these foods to meet year-round demand. The contamination almost always happens the same way: the produce is washed in water that carries the parasite. Standard food-safety rules require a chlorine rinse, yet Cyclospora shrugs it off.

These outbreaks are neither rare nor surprising. In my view they are the predictable result of a food system built on cheapness. As a society we no longer eat with the seasons; we eat what advertising tells us to eat, whenever we want it. For decades government policy has subsidized farmers to grow certain crops at a loss and paid them not to grow others. Farmers have almost no control over next year’s price for a bushel or a pound. The only time a farmer truly sets the price is when he or she sells direct to the consumer. Corporations set the rest of the prices—and that is why thousands of farms disappear every year.

Cheap food carries enormous hidden costs: declining public health, heavier reliance on pharmaceuticals, soaring Medicaid and Medicare bills, and long-term care expenses—all ultimately paid by the same consumers. SNAP and food-stamp dollars should be restricted to nutrient-dense real food, not soda and snack foods. Imagine shifting the money we already spend on the true cost of cheap food into nutrient-dense production instead. Our collective health and immune resilience would improve dramatically. The human body is an extraordinary machine; “garbage in, garbage out” is simply the full price tag of the current system.

A strong, healthy population would barely notice pathogens like Cyclospora. If you want to lower your personal risk and raise your own vitality, the path is straightforward: buy from local farmers, learn to eat with the seasons, stop relying on imported produce, and walk away from fast-food restaurants.

For those who have followed my farming journey these past eighteen years in the Phoenix area, you already know my obsession with nutrient density. It begins in the soil. We feed the soil; the plants take care of themselves. When I became a full-time farmer my social life largely vanished—two simple reasons: the work and the hours. I still love to read. Reading fuels imagination and wonder in a way nothing else can. I still remember the jolt of watching the first movie made from a book I had already lived inside my own head; the filmmaker’s vision and mine were worlds apart.

The old-school agricultural writers remain some of the most valuable teachers I know. In today’s world every time-tested method seems to get a shiny new name. “Organic,” once a plain description of how my grandparents grew food without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, is now a patented, multi-billion-dollar brand complete with its own list of approved sprays. When that kind of money enters the picture, common sense often exits.

I once found a home in the idea of regenerative farming, but it too is rapidly becoming another regulated certification. Allan Savory, the true originator of the thinking many now call regenerative, used a better term: Holistic Management. That is the word I stand behind. It means seeing the farm as a complete living ecosystem—diversity, soil health, and the intricate, symbiotic relationships between plants, animals, microbes, water, and even the wider cosmos. Falling in love with your land, whether it is a backyard or a thousand acres, and learning to work with those relationships rather than against them, is one of the deepest satisfactions I know.