Left: April and Brad Thatcher with sow, Rosie, the matriarch of the farm. Right: Matriarch of the farm, Rosie.
By Lauren Turner
April Joy Farm is also the first Clark County farm to be approved by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries to offer an apprenticeship program to train aspiring farmers.
The aptly named, 24-acre April Joy Farm, near Ridgefield, Washington, has its bases covered when it comes to bringing joy to the art of farming. Farmers April and Brad Thatcher's motto is "Good food grown with love."
April grew up in Ridgefield, near Annie and Pete Peterson, the owners of what would later become April Joy Farm. In fact, April spent many happy childhood days helping with chores there, and she fell in love with their land. Even though April earned her college degree in engineering and worked for several years in that field, she never imagined that she would become a farmer. But in 2003, the Peterson farm became available and, with her parents' help, April was able to purchase the farm and become its steward.
When April started, established markets for producers were lacking, so she connected with chefs, grocers and families. She designed and built infrastructure. There were two existing barns, but no fencing, irrigation, packing shed, greenhouses or appropriately sized machinery and equipment. "I had to develop a viable business model from scratch and convince my community that farming is a professional career," she said. April produced her first crops in 2008.
April met Brad in 2011, they were married in 2012, and he joined her in the farming venture. "I'm the nuts-and-bolts project manager who can pull many ideas together to create a process or strategy," she said. "Brad takes those raw systems and applies controls and refinements to make things flow. His expertise has significantly improved the profitability of the farm."
The produce at April Joy Farm is 100 percent certified organic by the Washington State Department of Agriculture. The farm runs a community-supported agriculture program for about 60 families, and members sometimes donate their shares to needy families. Additionally, the farm partners with its school family resources center to distribute produce when there are abundant harvests.
April and Brad also take humane farming to a whole new level, claiming to have a deep and reverential partnership with their livestock. April Joy Farm is the first farm in the Pacific Northwest to become Animal Welfare Approved (AWA), and their farm animals have names and specific roles on the farm. For instance, their pig, Rosie, is considered the matriarch on the farm. She has been the consummate mother to many piglets over the years.
April Joy Farm is the first Clark County farm to be approved by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries to offer an apprenticeship program to train aspiring farmers. Its first intern will launch her farm business next spring, and a second intern is working on a business plan. "It's a joy to see these 'seeds' germinating," said April.
April Joy Farm boasts a long list of community partnerships and continually seeks grants to help improve the health and sustainability of the farm. The farm was awarded a National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Salmon-Safe grant to install a four-bay Aerated Static Pile composting facility that uses forced air to control the heat of the compost piles to process organic materials more efficiently. A solar array installed with a Rural Energy for America Program grant produces 50 to 60 percent of energy needs on the farm. The farm has done numerous cost-sharing projects with the NRCS's Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), planting native plant buffers of bird-sheltering trees and water-filtering shrubs. You can hear the passion in April's voice when she speaks about projects that improve and protect the soil—"the most vital component of farming," she said—as well as those that provide diverse pollinator habitats dispersed among their crops, advocate for animal welfare, and educate others on the perils of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The farm is also planting orchards adjacent to their pigs' pastures so that they can forage through the pastures.
April and Brad Thatcher are committed to the ecological health of their soil, animals and community. With their unique model, they hope to spread the joy of the art of farming.
Reposted with permission from our media associate Modern Farmer.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.