at a Glance
Costilla, New Mexico
Summary of Operation
• Spring and winter
wheat and alfalfa on 150-180 rented acres
• Helped establish a cooperative
that markets organic wheat to bakeries, groceries and
Depressed community. Lonnie
Roybal wanted to help reverse the deterioration of the
economy and the community in his hometown, as well as
make a living as a farmer after years spent working
in mines and as an itinerant carpenter. For generations,
farming had been at the subsistence level in the Costilla
River Valley in north central New Mexico. There wasn’t
enough forage for sizable herds of cattle or sheep,
and even with a federally financed irrigation system,
the soil was too poor to promise great success with
Low commodity prices.
No row crops in Roybal’s area were selling at
high enough prices to justify the cost of the inputs
it would take to grow them. That was true even for wheat,
a plant that generally doesn’t require much in
the way of inputs except for water. Roybal’s grandfather
and others had grown wheat in the valley in the early
part of the 1900s, but Roybal realized he wasn’t
likely to get a high enough price on the current market
to pay for even minimal inputs. That, in addition to
the cost of leasing irrigated acreage and water rights,
made the prospect dim.
The New American Farmer: Profiles of Agricultural
By the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
© 2003, Beltsville MD. Used by permission. Pp.
149 to 151
For complete text or to order: www.sare.org/newfarmer
To contact SARE:
Phone (301) 504-6425
Fax (301) 504-5207
owns only the four acres on which he and his family live outside Costilla,
a parcel of the larger farm his father left to Roybal and his siblings.
The farm provided a subsistence living for Roybal’s grandparents,
but like many in his generation, his father had worked off the farm
to make a living, while tending small herds of cattle and sheep on
That gave son Lonnie a taste for farming, but few ideas about how
to make it pay in a semi-arid climate with scrub soil leached of much
of its fertility by over-farming and extensive grazing. After settling
down with his own family — wife, Deborah, and children, Nina,
Luis and Francisco — Lonnie began asking himself how he could
farm and make a living in Costilla. At the same time, he pondered
how he might encourage others to help reverse the decline of Costilla’s
economy that started when long-time residents began leaving the area
to find work.
With some lifelong friends in the valley who shared the same urge
to return to farming, Roybal began to explore the feasibility of raising
row crops again in the valley. The fledgling cooperative effort soon
discovered that organic wheat could command prices high enough to
pay the costs of raising it — and then some.
Focal Point of Operation —
Organic wheat marketing
Roybal leases 180 acres, sowing 40 in spring and winter wheat. He
works in conjunction with other members of the Sangre De Cristo
Growers Cooperative, which he helped establish in 1995. Membership
fluctuates from year to year; there have been as many as 20 farmers
involved in a year, while six participated in 2000.
A lingering drought in New Mexico that first hit in 1998 and lasted
through 2000 accounts for the reduced numbers, Roybal says. Some
of the six members were forced to forego planting winter wheat due
to the reduced amount of Costilla River water available for irrigation.
Under more favorable weather conditions, however, cooperative members
plant and harvest twice each year. They fertilize their crops with
manure taken from horse corrals and cattle and sheep paddocks around
the Costilla Valley.
The cooperative supplies its flour — milled in Colorado —
to a busy, upscale bakery with several storefront sites around Santa
Fe. The bakery uses the flour for most of its bread and pastries,
and in addition has trademarked a special recipe for a loaf of bread
made from the cooperative’s wheat, called “Nativo.”
It, in turn, is marketed to dozens of groceries and markets in the
Santa Fe area. A pizza chain and several coffee shop/bakeries in
nearby Taos also have standing orders for the cooperative’s
Selling flour is not the cooperative’s only function. Its
members are interested in revitalizing the area economy by keeping
profits local and “adding value” to their efforts. For
example, it has used grant money to purchase land and equipment
to build its own mill, planned to go on line in early 2001. The
co-op purchased used equipment from a decommissioned mill in North
“We have paid as much as three cents a pound for the mill
in Colorado to grind our wheat, and that’s money that can
stay right here,” Roybal says.
Economics and Profitability
Willem Malten, the Santa Fe baker who established the original contracts
with Roybal and others and who still buys nearly 90 percent of the
cooperative’s flour, pays 30 cents a pound for it. That’s
double the 15 cents or less per pound currently paid on the commodities
market for conventional wheat. Other buyers of the co-op’s
organic wheat pay the same.
Roybal, whose production is typical of other cooperative members,
has planted 40 acres of spring and winter wheat each of the past
two years to comply with a state agriculture assistance program.
The program awards farmers up to $100 per acre for up to 40 acres
to buy seed and equipment.
Current yields, at least for Roybal, aren’t very encouraging
— an average of only 12.5 bushels per acre — but he
explains that the whole region has suffered from prolonged drought,
and that his fields in particular are among the least fertile in
“I got yields twice that size three years ago when I was on
different fields, but there was more rain then, too, and we could
irrigate more often,” he says.
Roybal’s 60 bushels per crop translates to about 30,000 pounds
of wheat. Sold at 30 cents a pound, that means Roybal has taken
in, on average, $9,000 per crop for the past two years. Even with
state assistance in up-front costs, Roybal allows that isn’t
a lot of money, “but it’s a start in the right direction.
It shows that we can grow a good product even on neglected fields
in the middle of a drought.”
Well aware that the played-out condition of their soils hampers
their yields and costs them potential profits, cooperative growers
are demonstrating more interest in revitalizing them, Roybal says.
Alfalfa is the cover crop of choice now, because it can be used
and sold so readily for livestock, but some also are testing black
medic, a legume that fixes nitrogen and is valued as feed because
it appears to be an antidote to bloating in cattle.
Roybal believes yields could be boosted too, and irrigation water
better conserved, if they could level many of the fields in the
valley. “The soil’s very rocky and very pitched right
now, and that makes it hard to hold water — especially when
the summers are so hot,” he says. “If we can get them
more level and remove a lot of the rocks, plus keep adding manure
and using cover crops, we can really improve everything.”
Community and Quality of Life Benefits
Roybal reports a feeling of cohesiveness and hope in the Costilla
Valley for the first time in a very long while. The members of the
cooperative aren’t getting rich, but they are reclaiming the
tradition of farming, and proving that it can lead to small enterprise
and an improved local economy.
“I still have to do the odd carpentry job to keep my family
going,” Roybal says, “but I can see all kinds of opportunity
that wasn’t here before.”
The cooperative and its members need to get better at marketing
and learning about other cash crops that may work in combination
with wheat, Roybal says. They also want to get the local milling
operation under way. Optimism about those opportunities has replaced
doubt and lack of interest, and that’s good for everyone in
“We’ve already established a greenhouse that grows and
sells cut flowers and chiles, and that employs two people right
in Costilla,” he says, “so people can see we’re
serious, that farming can make things happen.”
The new mill will bring employment opportunities to the job-starved
area. “It means that a few people here are going to be trained
in the proper ways to grind flour, and that’s a skill they
can use to make a living,” Roybal says. “Things like
that can make a difference.”
“You’ve got to pay as much attention to establishing
markets for your product as you do to growing it well,” Roybal
Through grants received by the cooperative, such as a SARE producer
grant, Roybal was able to serve as its marketing director. The experience
showed him both the promising potential for Costilla Valley wheat
and the need for constant effort to introduce a wider circle of
commercial bakers, groceries and individual customers to their product.
And that brings up another wise move: forming the cooperative. As
an official limited liability corporation, Roybal noted, the organization
can qualify for grants unavailable to individual farmers. “It
kind of puts us on the same level as conventional farmers who get
subsidies,” he says.
Roybal recently won a grant that will help him purchase center-pivot
irrigation equipment. He sees that as a key to reducing both the
amounts of work needed to control the flood irrigation he and other
cooperative members now use, and the amounts of water lost because
flood irrigation systems are so much less efficient.
He also hopes to open more markets for the cooperative’s wheat
— something he admits is a full-time job in addition to farming.
The praise his cooperative’s wheat has earned, as well as
the money, has convinced him their future lies in letting more and
more consumers know about the Costilla wheat growers.
Roybal and others in the cooperative regularly exhibit their wheat
at venues such as the New Mexico state fair and at farmers markets
in Santa Fe and Taos. They plan to expand marketing to events and
markets in Colorado and Texas, and hope that the mill itself, once
it is built in early 2001, will attract more business.