The original message of crop mobs has changed as the idea became a “thing” on its own.  The idea changes a bit in each new area, and, for better or worse, adds new pieces to the developing visage of a developing model. In Seattle, the focus is primarily on the creation of new community gardens. In Atlanta there is a cap on the number of folks who can participate. In Minneapolis there is a “no kids” policy.We set out with a few simple but necessary guidelines, and for the most part these ideas remain intact. As we work on some more specific guidelines for both attendees and the host farms, we must be conscious of more than just the ideals of the original nineteen farmers; we must be conscious of the needs of several thousand individuals.

To date there are active Crop Mob groups in 22 states in the US, 99% of which formed after the end of February of this year. At some point the originators of this new model of agrarian community building have to let go, get back to our work in the present – in our own community – and let evolution do its thing. And it is evolving; it is debatable how much leadership this idea needs on a national level. There is no doubt that a solid foundation and at least a minimum operational framework is needed. After that is established, all we can do is look on as the roof goes up and the furniture is moved in.

Crop Mob is a very sexy idea right now. As such it is subject to an intense scrutiny of its methods, its participants and its goals. “White, hipster slackers participate in a real life Farmville” might as well be the new media headlines. From what I have been reading lately, you would think that what started as a way to get young and landless farmers together has turned into just another urban fad for the fixed gear bike crowd. This is untrue and utterly ridiculous. Is there anything that a group of young people can do that can’t be turned into something that it is not?

Some recent comments on the online version of a story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (‘Crop Mobs’ thrive in farmville):

Hipster doofuses. Your parents play Farmville now, on to the next thing.

…there is more to experience than diggin’ in the dirt in a garden. I am just wondering why this hipster/feel-good activity is news.

Farmers do not get enough freebies from the government, they also get FREE Labor from the idiot taxpayers that subsidies them in the first place….WEIRD. People are stupid.

The best part is they do it once and they never come back. Instead, they run back to their homes in the city and wait for more government handouts. There is no such thing as hard work anymore.

Small farms are great, but do we really need a story about hipsters who have never done real work in their lives going on a feelgood, look-at-me fieldtrip? There are great stories of small produce farms (many of them owned Hmong, Mexican or Somali immigrants) who are providing much of our local produce…

Look at me! I’m “farming”. More hipster douchery.

…typical nonsense from the fringe that will disappear when the next fad is discovered.

WOW. I wish I had so much time on my hands that I was so bored I wanted to go work on a farm.

I honestly don’t know where the hate for this idea comes from. I wonder if the detractors tear apart every other volunteer activity that is discussed in the media? Are we really the only group that has to examine our privilege every time we set out to do a crop mob? Do we really have to take note of every participant’s motivation for showing up?

No, we don’t have to answer to anyone but the farmers we are working for and the community we have formed. The media eye will move on but we will not.

In mobs we trust…

February’s Crop Mob event at Edible Earthscapes was recently featured on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Now. I think this is one of the best presentations on the crop mob that exists – there are some great voices represented in the video and the visuals of a mob in action are great.  Check out the video on the UNC-TV site.

I got lucky.  Two Octobers ago I sat at my desk at ECO, barely one month into the new job, still adjusting to a living situation that had me alone most of the time.  One of the Piedmont Biofarm folks – Jack – came into the office and asked if I wanted to help pick some sweet potatoes after work.  A group of folks was on their way over to help out with the harvest.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Crop Mob was about to move a big piece of dirt.

That dirt was me.

One of the reasons Kristin and I moved out of the city was because we felt that we had exhausted what we could do in Wilmington. The city was and probably still is unreceptive to the kinds of things we were tying to do. Most of what we started got some traction early on, but once we set them out on their own, folks quickly lost interest and things folded.  We became babysitters when what we wanted to be were peers – peers empowering other people to step up and get things done.

Worst of all was becoming a disappointed babysitter, cleaning up the messes of people who knew better but continued to act as if anarchism meant you never had to be responsible.

So yeah, Crop Mob came and got me and shook the Wilmington right out of me.  I simply had to tag along, give it all that I knew how to do and watch as other strong people filled in the holes, making the project a fluid and replicable and respectable entity.

And with the strong people comes the strong growth and with that comes the growing pains and the discussions about how best to proceed with this entity that we have created.  For better or worse, all the media attention will fade.  When that happens, some of the sexy will wash off and we will be left with a few fronts to engage.

1 – The original work area of the original Crop Mob group.  Do we split into individual county groups or do we continue to function as we have as a three county group?  My take has always been that we stay together as a three county group.  The camaraderie of engaging with my peers from Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Pittsboro is enough to make me hold out and not want to dissolve into smaller groupings.  Crop Mob events are some of the only times I get to interact with this larger agrarian culture, and I feel like the benefit to the group of this mixing outweighs the slight possibility of the group becoming watered down with long distance commuters.

2 – The rapidly expanding Crop Mob universe.  We are looking at facilitating the creation of at least 20 new Crop Mob groups in the US.  As these groups get established, more will follow from their examples.  How do we best maintain the core principles of the idea and replicate it without micromanaging every aspect of each groups’ formation? Again, for better or worse, we have to let the idea evolve on its own and accept that sometimes it won’t work out in the ways we might want or expect. We have to trust that we, by our own boots-in-the-dirt examples, have created an idea that needs minimal governance and minimal tweaking in order to accomplish work and build a community.

innovation n 1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new method, idea or device

Crop Mob is simply an innovation in farm work and organizing.  Taking the old idea of community labor, a small group of farm interns created a new model, a model of organizing that takes experienced and novice farmers (and other interested folks) and puts them in a shared space at a particular farm at a particular time. Within this space, the group tackles a set of tasks using the directions given by the host farm and the experience each person brings to the space. At the end of a few hours of work they share a meal.  Along with the meal is the extended value of a shared experience, an experience unique for each farm and to each participant.

According to sociologists, there are five stages in the adoption or rejection of any innovation (called Diffusion of Innovation).  The first step is the exposure of an individual to the idea without them having any prior information about the idea. This was basically the mindset of the originators of Crop Mob and anyone who comes upon it without ever hearing about it beforehand.

The next step is the individual actively seeking out information about the innovation or idea.  This can be asking another participant, doing web searches, emailing. Through this information the individual proceeds to the next step, which is making a decision to accept or reject the idea.

This step is worth exploring, as I feel that misinformation about Crop Mob really affects this stage. With any innovation there is skepticism, there is doubt, there are wildly off-the-mark perceptions.  One of the most frequent is that Crop Mob is a magical free labor pool that simply appears at your farm or garden and runs through the to-do list.  The Crop Mob is sometimes also misconstrued as an idealistic gang of urban lefties, off to do their good deed in the country and shed some of that built up liberal guilt.

Yet another amazingly false idea is that Crop Mob is a group of inexperienced idiots who don’t know one end of a shovel from the other. They will wreck your years of careful farm planning and layout, damage all your equipment, let your chickens out to the swarming wolves and hawks, and destroy all your saved seed by mistaking it for lunch. I personally feel that this misconception is keeping the Crop Mob from interacting with some of the more established sustainable farms in our area.  I know there are many of these farms that would like to share their experience with young and new farmers but are afraid that we just don’t have what it takes to restrain ourselves in their space.

The fourth stage of the process is execution or use of the idea. Folks show up and work with the mob for the day, using their experience to further evaluate the idea for themselves. If they don’t like it, they won’t come back and do it again.  It is hard to evaluate how many people have chosen not to come back to Crop Mob.  There is no way to really measure their reaction since we are not setup to do exit interviews with every participant.  Reasons for not coming back are probably extremely variable – not feeling welcomed, the work was too hard or too easy, the weather was horrible, expectations were not met.

Again, many of these reasons should be explored.  How can we as a group be more hospitable? I think an easy way would be to ask mobbers who have been to several mobs to look for new faces and make sure they are properly introduced and welcomed. This does not mean to inundate them with hugs and handshakes, but rather make sure they are oriented and introduced, make sure they are comfortable with the task they are taking up, and, if they are inexperienced, make sure they are partnered with an experienced group or individual. Through this single task, I think we can get more returning mobbers.

The final stage is a confirmation. The users of the Crop Mob idea return to use it again or set off to start their own mob in another part of the state, country or world. The idea becomes known for its viability and ease of use.