My long career in agriculture included subsistence farming in Canada, running a diversified family farm in Minnesota and 17 years on the road in international agriculture. Before I left my seven years as executive director the Farm Institute, with its dual mission of farming and farm education, provided a new way to immerse myself in this work that I love so much.

When I took over in 2010, TFI already had a solid and successful education program, including the camp, since 2003. I am confident this will continue.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission report of 2010 highlighted our risky situation where we bring 97 per cent of our food from off-Island (all those morning trucks!) and continued limits on developing productive agricultural land. Katama Farm’s unique flat, treeless and contiguous approximate 180 acres represents some 20 per cent of all the farmable land on the Island. Now in Iowa, you could misplace 180 acres and not notice for awhile, but not here. So Katama needs to be included in any efforts to expand food production on the Island. Given the soil and climate conditions at Katama, its role, to varying degrees of success, for the past several hundred years has been on ruminant animals — cattle (dairy and beef), goats and of course the long Vineyard tradition of sheep — because that was seen as the best use of that land. Vegetables and hay crops struggle in the Katama salt fog.

The pandemic and its impact on our food system has highlighted again the value of truly local food.

We have good farms here: Grey Barn, Mermaid, Slip Away, Slough, Morning Glory, Beetlebung, Good Farm — to name a few — and among them different bankrolls, different crops, different styles . . . but all trying to feed us. We need more.

Katama Farm is again in transition. A wide-ranging discussion about how to keep it productive is needed, and groups like the Ag Society and IGI along with community input can help.

Finally, let’s remember that nonprofits exist to do those things that for-profits either can’t or won’t, and their success is measured at least as much by social consequences as by a Quick Books printout.

Jon Previant

West Tisbury