“If we don't make enough money, we can't be here next year. But if we make lots of money and we sacrifice the planet in the process, then that's, that's a loss that we can't sustain. And if we, even if we make the planet beautiful but then the people can't tolerate the life that we've built, and that's not okay either, right?”
Curtis Millsap is co-owner and operator of Millsap Farms. He gave KSMU and OPT a tour of the farm this past spring and shared his vision for their work.
“We have to find a balance," he said. "It feels like every time we think we've found a balance, something shifts and we go, whoa. Okay, well, okay, how's this feel now? And that's probably just the nature of life. My hope is that the next generation that comes after me, you know, won't have to say, oh, we don't have any farming background. They'll be able to say, oh yeah, I apprenticed at Millsap Farms, and I learned a ton there, and now I've taken that knowledge and turned it into my own in my context, you know, whatever that looks like. I have hope that that that's where we're headed.”
The Millsaps have 25 acres in northern Greene County where they do intensive market farming of flowers and produce on just three acres of plots and green houses. Curtis Millsap believes in a future for small farms like his.
“Historically, we were a countryside of small farms, 10 acres, 20 acres, maybe 40 acres, and each family had their farm, and they were growing food. You know, that was pork, corn, whatever else on that farm. A lot of strawberries and a lot of tomatoes historically. And that's mostly gone. There's, there's still a lot of cow/calf operations out there, but there are very few people producing vegetables, flowers or fruit. And so, one of the things that I've said for years, and I still say, is we need 100 farms like Millsap Farms scattered around the perimeter of Springfield, Missouri.
I serve a couple thousand people, you know, and that's really all we can do. It's all we want to do space-wise and capacity and so on, and even at that, I employ 20 people in the peak of the summer. I have a big crew that's doing that work. And I think rather than me try and get big enough to feed another 2,000 people or 10,000 people or whatever that would look like, it would be a much more elegant and appropriate and resilient solution to say, let's have another farm a mile that way or half a mile that way because now we're starting to create resiliency that actually resides in neighborhoods and communities.”
According to USDA data, large family farms account for almost 50% of farm production value across the country but represent just 4% of farms total. Almost 90% of farms in the U.S. are labeled small family farms, like the Millsap’s. While Millsap said national policy has encouraged bigger and bigger farms, large plots of land have become less attainable for new farmers, and residential and industrial growth continues to eat away at farmable land in places like the Ozarks. Millsap sees value in keeping things small and working in what’s called a peri-urban space, just far enough away from the city, but just close enough, too. The farm’s focus on local food resonates. Diversified income streams reflect that.
His farm is a fixture of the Farmers Market of the Ozarks. The Millsaps offer shares of produce on a weekly basis via a subscription model known as “Community Supported Agriculture” and they’ve built agritourism into their business model, with an Airbnb on their farm and a regular and locally beloved pizza night.
And as importantly for Millsap’s vision, they don’t just have customers interested, they have potential young farmers interested, too, which is a blessing and a curse for a farming operation that requires such hands-on work.
“To learn to trellis tomatoes takes about a season,” Millsap explained. “So, that first year there's a lot of instruction. There's a lot of coaching, there's a lot of oops, that's not what we wanted to do. Let's try this differently. And then that second year, you're starting to get it. You think, oh, I think I've about got this figured out. And then the third, you'll probably make a big mistake, and you'll pay a high price. So, just to say that, you know, the, the old adage is, I think 10,000 hours to mastery, right? It takes a while to learn to do what we're doing.”
Millsap said there is a misconception that farming is unskilled labor. Newcomers eager to learn often don’t have the skills and knowledge to work efficiently or the experience that prepares them for long farm days. He said our region has few people ready for that work. He wishes he could take on more apprentices, but the economics make the learning process a costly prospect for the business. And staffing challenges overall, make scaling up a daunting prospect.
“When we farm intensively like this,” he said, “the limiting factor tends to be more labor than land.”
A tomato plant, for instance, will get touched every week during the season for trellising and twice a week for harvesting. Flower harvesting can be trickier with different flowers needing a different touch to get the perfect bloom. Still, Millsap recognizes that growing a community of small farmers means embracing the curious with open arms.
“In the 19 years we've been here, we've hosted over 100 interns and apprentices. About half of those interns and apprentices have gone on to be involved in more agriculture, and another half have said that was enough for me. And I consider both of those successes.
Those people that are coming in and learning from us. You know, one of the things they're learning is how to do this work. But the other thing they're learning is the food landscape. So, whether they end up being farmers or not, when they go back into our community or even move to other communities, they now have a much more real sense of what's going on in food. Where's our food coming from? Where do we have resilience? Where do we have risk?”
Nick Burasco and Dax Bedell provided production support for this story.
Find more in our Sense of Community series at this link, and view companion documentaries from Ozarks Public Television at OPTV.org.