Urban Farm Flourishes in Silver Spring, Maryland

Urban Farm Flourishes in Downtown Area

Ninety-year-old keeps farming as development springs up around him

VOA - June Soh | Silver Spring, Maryland

July 01, 2011

Photo: VOA - J. Soh

For 30 years, Charlie Koiner, 90, has continued to farm, even as development springs up around him.

On a warm day, Charlie Koiner tends to the fruits and vegetables growing on his patchwork farm, which is made up of a collection of small plots. A few blocks - and a world - away is downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, an urban area just outside Washington, D.C.

Koiner, 90, has grown a wide variety of produce on the lot next to his home since he bought the land 30 years ago. He calls it the best investment he ever made, but not in terms of money.

“I have an acre (4,000 square meters) of ground here and that gives me plenty of room and plenty of ground to work," he says. "So it keeps me busy just raising all this stuff. I enjoy it.”

Born and raised on a family farm that is now a shopping mall in a fast-growing Washington suburb, Koiner has gardened all his life.

"That was my grandfather’s place, and we had some 30 acres (12 hectares) right there, that was all country and everything.  And we had horses and cows and chickens and always raised a big garden.”

He takes pride in what he grows in his plots and customers drop by frequently to pick up produce. Many of them are regulars, like Martha Grundmann, who came across Koiner's farm by chance seven years ago.

US Farm Exports May Set Record

US Farm Exports May Set Record in 2011

  December 2010

Two thousand ten was a good year for American farmers. They earned an estimated eighty-two billion dollars. That is almost one-third more than they earned last year. And it is twenty-six percent higher than the ten-year average.

The numbers are from the Economic Research Service at the Department of Agriculture. They represent net farm income, a measure of profitability of farm operations.

Values for grain and oilseed crops are up about three percent from last year. The value of animal production is up by almost seven percent.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack points out that agriculture is one of the few major areas of the economy with a trade surplus. A surplus of forty-one billion dollars is predicted in twenty-eleven. That would be an increase of almost eighteen billion dollars from this year.

At the same time, farm exports are expected to break the all-time high set in two thousand eight. The Agriculture Department says exports in this coming year could top one hundred twenty-six billion dollars.

The largest buyer of agricultural products is expected to be Canada. But farm exports to China are predicted to come within five hundred million dollars of Canadian purchases.

Secretary Vilsack says countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East are also buying more from American farmers.

Poor growing conditions overseas played an important part in higher prices for American crops this year.

Charlotte Hebebrand is chief executive of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council in Washington. She says drought conditions had a big effect over the summer.

CHARLOTTE HEBEBRAND: "There were severe weather problems, not just in Russia but also in some of the other former Soviet Union countries."

Wheat prices rose after Russia halted wheat exports, although Russia later eased the ban.

Wheat used to be America's top crop, says economist Charlotte Hebebrand.

CHARLOTTE HEBEBRAND: "What's interesting, though, is that wheat production has actually declined over the past few years because corn has become the most popular crop."

Corn, or maize, is mostly fed to animals or made into ethanol fuel and high-fructose corn syrup. But Ms. Hebebrand says with the recent increase in wheat prices, American farmers might plant more wheat again.

Corn and wheat are the two largest crops supported by the government through subsidy payments.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. You can find transcripts and MP3s of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Jim Tedder