A Farmer Profile - Narrated by Fred Koster of Entropy Farms

Interviewed by: Glyn Wilson-Charles, Fall 2025 GEOG-589 Qualitative Methods class Web Profile by: Lila Allen & Monic Robles, Spring 2026 SUST-364 Local Food Systems Practicum class

Podcast

Click the audio samples throughout the website to hear how Koster approached different aspects of farming

Background

Fred Koster is an expert in farming along the middle Rio Grande, with 45 years of experience farming in Albuquerque. After growing up on a 70-acre farm in rural Ohio, he moved to Albuquerque and began farming in his backyard until he started Entropy Farms. Entropy Farms was a small-scale 2-acre vegetable farm that operated for ten years until Koster’s retirement in late 2025. Although Koster did not have aspirations of becoming a farmer from a young age, he could not escape the “scattering of small-time farming in the family” that traces back through a long lineage to his “great, great grandfather [who] was a gardener to the King of Denmark at Kronborg Castle, known as Elsinore of [Hamlet] fame.”

Simply being born into farming wasn’t enough to foster a lifetime of work. Koster’s love for growing vegetables and supporting his community is the true fuel for his farming. “I love to put a seed in the ground and up it comes. To be able to do this over and over again, year after year, was a big factor,” he says. After following up to him with a phone call he shared that nothing was as rewarding as getting to educate kids who would come up to his stand asking where the lettuce and tomatoes in their hands came from.

Although Entropy Farms is no longer in operation and Fred Koster has moved on to other endeavors elsewhere, a lot can be learned from his decades of experience.

Community & Urban Farming

Farming within an urban community meant that Koster could directly connect with the restaurants and people purchasing his crops. He only sold produce at growers’ markets and to a handful of local restaurants at a time to keep up with the demand. “When people were standing in line in front of the table, I knew this was gonna be a good day”.

Koster reflects on the ways he learned methods and techniques for farming:

I would say that experimenting and getting tips from other farmers was the way. But you had to do it…The doing was the fun part.

Collaborative knowledge sharing is in the nature of farming. “Farmers generally like to talk and share.” Although it is important to gain insight from fellow local farmers who are working under very similar environmental conditions and economic environment, Koster has learned more from talking with farmers from neighboring states like Arizona, Texas, Colorado, and California.

Hear from Fred Koster how the war on social welfare programs effect farming

Experimentation

Koster was forced to get resourceful in order to overcome the multitude of challenges associated with farming in the arid Southwest. Koster’s creative and scientific approach led to some brilliant discoveries. For example, he used the concept of biomimicry to pollinate plants inside his hoophouse that were sheltered from the wind, hindering natural pollination. He accomplished this by “[using] an electric toothbrush, which vibrates at the frequency of a bumblebee, the natural pollinator of tomatoes.” Koster would do this every other day to the tomato blossoms in his greenhouse. Although quite tedious it proved to be a success, producing gorgeous tomatoes.

Reading books and getting information from other farmers can only get you so far. Koster had to try things out for himself, and a lot of them didn’t work.

One of his major successes came by accident. After planting a tomato crop in compost that randomly had nasturtium seeds mixed in, he noticed that spider mites were deterred from these tomatoes! Comparing them to a separate plot that had no nasturtiums growing side by side, he found those tomatoes to be totally infested with spider mites.

Techniques like companion plants and hand pollination are just a few of the genius practices Koster shares. Through trial and error, he discovered that flood irrigation produced hotter peppers than drip irrigation, early planting was effective in reducing squash bugs, and achieving 7% carbon content made for the healthiest soil.

Ecological Factors

Settled in the Albuquerque urban area, Koster faced many challenges cultivating in the arid, high desert.

Most of the labor on Koster’s farm was centered around transplanting crops, fixing leaks, and managing summer pests. The timing of all the maintenance is crucial to the crops’ success, especially when it comes to the amount of water the plants receive. “There was a lot of work to maintain the water at just the right level. If it’s too wet, the roots can’t breathe. Roots need oxygen, not just leaves. Too dry and you start getting dieback and loss of productivity.” Dealing with infestations of summer insects was another hurdle to get past. Squash bugs and spider mites populating branches would push him to chop, spray, or compost a lot of his plants. An additional limitation Koster faced was the mineral composition of the soil he worked on. A good farmer knows that the soil needs the right combination of nutrients, minerals, and moisture to foster strong and healthy plants. Though the nutrient and mineral composition of soil in Albuquerque is very different from that of other areas. One farmer may succeed in growing a certain crop, while another farmer may struggle to get that same crop past germination. Koster’s solution to this is to simply grow other crops that do well with the soil you have.

Fred Koster on soil moisture

Climate Change

One of the biggest challenges Fred has faced when it comes to farming is the increasing effects of climate change. With limited access to water and uncertain temperature changes, it’s not easy to consistently meet demands for crops.

Climate change has exacerbated that uncertainty. Along with that uncertainty goes necessary labor.

Rising temperatures mean having to risk the failure of certain crops, such as when 95-degree weather sterilizes the pollen on tomato blossoms. Unexpected freezes can also sabotage a crop’s success. The solution? Fred has been working around these temperature issues using hoop houses and cover crops to keep the soil viable and get ahead of the winter months. However, the heat is a much bigger problem, to which Fred recommends finding a heat-tolerant variety of your crop or abandoning it for the summer altogether.
In Fred’s last year of farming, he admitted that the heat was one of the main factors driving him out of farming.

Why Farming is Rewarding