More than Corn in Indiana?

If any of my readers are still here, I hope you had a safe and happy holiday season. I have been resting and relaxing the past several days, gearing up for a big push at work in the New Year.

Anyway, talk of the New Year always leads to articles of trends and resolutions. I don't have a worthy list like some others, but I was reading an article on one of my favorite local wine blogs, Michigan Grapevine (written by an actual professional journalist, Cari Noga, and not some hack like me) , and her article called to mind some discussions I have been having with others.

Cari recalled her 2008 predictions to see how accurate she was (always a brave, and often humbling, thing to do), and talked of her prediction of more farmland currently devoted to cherries (Michigan's star crop) being turned over to vines. She was correct, vine plantings are increasing at a rapid rate and cherry plantings are at best flat. She also points to an article that says much of the same.

In Indiana, there's not a huge orchard industry. Sure, you find small pockets of non-traditional crops (by traditional, I mean corn, beans, and wheat). The melon fields around Knox and Gibson Counties come to mind. But there is nothing that compares to the huge patches of land devoted to tree crops like apples and cherries so prevalent in Michigan. I almost ran off the road this summer when I passed by a field of sorghum, which I hadn't seen in Indiana in at least five years. The statistics are pretty clear, as well (but who knew we planted so much peppermint and spearmint?).

But is that changing? Slowly, yes. Wine grape production requires a large cash investment that takes several years to break even, which is not tempting when corn prices are going through the roof. Furthermore, farmers tend to be a conservative lot. You have to be when your livelihood depends on what you can bring forth from the ground, not to mention seasoned farmers know a new "next big crop" comes around every five years or so. Corn may not be glamorous, but it usually pays the bills, and driving a combine to harvest corn is a lot less backbreaking than harvesting a field of grapes. On the other hand, grapes can yield more money per acre than corn or beans, and let's be real, there's a certain something about growing wine grapes. Or is that just me?

Recently, I was talking to my boss about his farm. The usual crops, rotated as economics and agricultural practices call for. He does a lot of the work himself, but needs to hire out a lot of it also since he works full-time off the farm. I asked him why he didn't consider turning over five acres or so of his farmland to grapes for wine. He farms in a good microclimate that might produce some interesting results. He quickly batted away the idea. The usual suspects, too much investment, too long for a return, uncertainty. But then he leaned back in his chair, and said, "but you know, when I pass the farm on, I wouldn't be surprised or upset if that happened. Something has gotta give, and I think grapes would be an excellent crop in the right hands."

That sums it up. Wine will never come close to upstaging the current leaders in Indiana agricultural acres. But the acreage is and will continue to increase.

As a final note, I would note my sadness that probably the best wine grape growing land in Indiana, along the Southern Lake Michigan shore, is now and probably forevermore in the hands of vast, polluting, oil companies.