Caff

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Earlier this year, CAFF kicked off a massive project in the San Joaquin Valley to help support family farms there and strengthen the local food economy, in partnership with UC Agriculture & Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the Central Valley Community Foundation (CVCF), among others. Why take on such a big project?

Family Farming 98

Family Farming Farming Farming Technology 98

Civil Eats

DECEMBER 10, 2024

In the months before Patrick Brown was born in November 1982, his father, Arthur, lay down on a road near the familys farm to prevent a caravan of yellow dump trucks from depositing toxic soil in his community. Patrick currently operates Brown Family Farms on the land that Byron worked as a sharecropper once he was freed.

Plantation 144

Plantation Farming Farming Acre 144

Food Tank

MARCH 7, 2025

Congressman Pete Sessions (TX-17); Cathy Strange , Whole Foods Market; Roy Steiner , Rockefeller Foundation; Rick Simington , Organic Valley; Josh Tickell , Common Ground Film; Josh Tranel , Tranel Family Farm; Jeff Travillion , Travis County Commissioner; Alyssa Vescio , Whole Foods Market; Melva K.

Food 98

Food Family Farming Ranching Acre 98

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

MARCH 20, 2025

Rachel Bouressa is a fifth-generation farmer and grazing specialist Rachel Bouressa is a fifth-generation farmer and grazing specialist who operates the Bouressa Family Farm in Waupaca County in central Wisconsin. At the briefing, Bouressa talked about the distress felt by many in the agricultural community.

Farming 101

Farming Farming Food Processing 101

Western FarmPress

MARCH 8, 2024

expanded their family farm to 2,000 acres and 1,800 cows. 2024 Master Agriculturists from Waunakee, Wis.,

Family Farming 98

Family Farming Farming Farming Acre 98

Caff

JULY 19, 2023

On June 29th, Lopes Family Farms hosted a field day with Community Alliance with Family Farms (CAFF) in Princeton, CA focused on rice and duck farming, a Biologically Integrated Farming System (BIFS). For more information on Lopes Family Farm follow them at Lopes Family Farms. *All

Family Farming 52

Family Farming Farming Farming Ecology 52

Civil Eats

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

Kava has endured a long history of adversity, said Lakea Trask, a Hawaiian farmer and local activist who cultivates kava and other Native crops for Kanaka Kava , his familys farm-to-table restaurant in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island. Hawaii is a state of small farms, he said, with more than 90 percent measuring less than 50 acres.

Food 121

Food Plantation Acre Production 121

Caff

JUNE 29, 2021

Rebecca was recently notified by the State Water Board that she may be prohibited from pumping water from a well on the three acres that she leases. Fines for violating the order are as high as $1,000 per day of violation and $2,500 for each acre-food of water diverted. She farms 1.5

Family Farming 52

Family Farming Farming Farming Water Rights 52

Food Tank

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

By his senior year, Williams was trying to figure out how to return home and take over the family farm. Williams, his wife Hannah, and their toddler Lyle now live on Williams Family Farms, sustainably and humanely raising pigs and farming about 400 acres of cropland.

Ranching 105

Ranching Family Farming Farming Farming 105

Food Tank

MAY 3, 2024

Iowa is the number-one pork producer in the United States, but it has relatively few hog farms. Large factory farm facilities have replaced smaller family farms. The state lost nearly 90 percent of its hog farms from 1982 to 2017, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census data.

Ruralism 116

Ruralism Farming Farming Ranching 116

Modern Farmer

JANUARY 2, 2024

In one of the greenhouses on the Lundberg Family Farms acreage in northern California, there sits a binder. Rice growing in one of the Lundberg Family Farms test greenhouses. Cross-breeding rice at Lundberg Family Farms. It can all get out of control very quickly without some organization and focus.

Family Farming 129

Family Farming Acre Grain Greenhouse 129

Food Tank

APRIL 29, 2024

The exhortation by Benson and Butz for farmers to “get big or get out” finally came to fruition, with the average size of a farm nearly doubling from 650 acres in 1987 to 1,201 acres twenty-five years later. Black farmers now represent just over 1 percen t of all American farmers.

Family Farming 90

Family Farming Acre Farming Farming 90

UnderstandingAg

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

An example from our family farm is shown below. To determine the cost of erosion, I used the NRCS tolerable soil loss or “T” value for our farm of 5 tons per acre. The Daily Erosion Project and other research has shown that this is roughly the average soil loss per acre in the Midwest. What’s the value of that?

Acre 95

Acre Fertilizer Crop Ranching 95

Modern Farmer

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

New research published in Nature Sustainability projects that, if trends continue, the number of farms across the world will be sliced in half by the end of the 21 st century as consolidation of land, wealth and power reshapes our farming and food landscape. The marginalization of smaller-scale farms has severe consequences.

Agriculture 137

Agriculture Agriculture Ruralism Farmland 137

Modern Farmer

DECEMBER 1, 2023

“We lost 10 percent of our saleable Christmas trees that year,” says Leanna Anderson, owner of Aldor Acres Family Farm in Langley, British Columbia and treasurer of the BC Christmas Tree Association. Photo courtesy of Aldor Acres Farm. Photography courtesy of Aldor Acres Farm.

Acre 122

Acre Harvest Harvester Harvesting 122

Modern Farmer

OCTOBER 3, 2023

“When I start my own farm, I will need to have off-farm income to live a balanced, happy life.” When I started Jupiter Ridge Farm in 2017, I did—and still do, like many traditional family farms. Why is running a small-scale farm more like an expensive hobby? But why is it like this?

Farming 134

Farming Farming Family Farming Food 134

Modern Farmer

MAY 28, 2024

“Of 400 farms in our county, only five are organic,” says Matt Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Organics in Hutchinson, Minnesota. His 2,500-acre family farm is patchwork across 40 miles of land the family owns and leases, and grows organic corn, soy, wheat and specialty crops such as beans and peas.

Agriculture 126

Agriculture Agriculture Acre Farming 126

Organic Farming Research

OCTOBER 10, 2024

Tiffany Stanley runs A Different Chick Farm, a Certified Organic family farm on just under 6 acres in Johnson City, Tennessee. She is participating in OFRF's Farmer Led Trials (FLT) Program to explore options for making on-farm compost to reduce input needs and increase fertility on her farm.

Compost 52

Compost Farming Farming Family Farming 52

Modern Farmer

MARCH 12, 2024

My Land Advocacy Fellowship with the National Young Farmer Coalition empowered me to share my experience of growing up on the family farm with my senators and representatives offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Across the country, farmland is being lost to development at a rate of more than 2,000 acres per day.

Farming 121

Farming Farming Farmland Real Estate 121

Wisconsin Farmers Union

OCTOBER 9, 2024

Her family farm is located in Waupaca County outside of Ogdensburg where she cares for a herd of nine dairy goats, two horses, hay fields, bees, a large kitchen garden, and more. Eventually the couple settled on a 80 acre farm, where they’ve been for the past 34 years. The field was very skewed towards men.

Acre 98

Acre Farming Farming Pasture 98

Civil Eats

JULY 2, 2024

The ice cream shop is an extension of the Nicholson family’s sixth-generation, 120-acre farm in nearby Ferndale. More Eyes Per Acre As one of California’s oldest cheesemakers, Rumiano Cheese has a storied presence in the North Coast’s dairy shed.

Pasture 141

Pasture Production Marketing Supply Chain 141

Modern Farmer

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Meet some Midwestern agrarians, some of whom come from conventional farming families, who are using their land to reestablish the connection between trees, animals, and food production. Wendy Johnson’s ‘natural savannah’ Wendy Johnson and her husband, Johnny Rafkin, own Jóia Food & Fiber Farm, in Charles City, Iowa.

Acre 125

Acre Pasture Farming Farming 125

Agwired

JANUARY 29, 2025

Recognizing the vital role that four-legged friends often play on family farms and ranches, Farm Bureau launched the Farm Dog of the Year contest several years ago now a popular feature of the American Farm Bureau Federations Convention.

Supply Chain 45

Supply Chain Livestock Farming Farming 45

Modern Farmer

JUNE 30, 2023

Prime farmland, it attracted countless farmers, including the Black farmers seeking to fulfill the promise of “40 acres and a mule” that followed the American Civil War. But Black farm ownership has dropped dramatically over the years, with just 1,500 estimated to remain in Arkansas today. But the process hasn’t always come easily.

Acre 98

Acre Sharecropping Processing Farming 98

Modern Farmer

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Outside of Charleston, South Carolina, in the picturesque marshes of the Kiawah River, sits more than 100 acres of working farmland. But unlike neighboring farms that focus on production for faraway markets or keep a single family afloat, the farm at Kiawah River is supporting 185 families who live in the surrounding homes.

Farmland 128

Farmland Food Farming Farming 128

Modern Farmer

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Upon leaving her family farm to study agriculture at Stanford, she took up a work-study program investigating the economic viability of grass-fed beef. “It The same year that Carman returned to her family farm, a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, was detected in the US.

Cattle 136

Cattle Ranching Supply Chain Forage 136

Civil Eats

MAY 1, 2024

When Jeff Broberg and his wife, Erica, moved to their 170-acre bean and grain farm in Winona, Minnesota in 1986, their well water measured at 8.6 Those tiles, which were first installed in the mid-1800s and have now largely been replaced with plastic pipes, ultimately allowed farmers to grow crops on land that was once too wet to farm.

Fertilizer 145

Fertilizer Farming Farming Acre 145

Food Tank

JANUARY 5, 2024

Eric Boor took over his great-grandfather’s nine-acre farm in southern Iowa four years ago. When they first started, many in their family and community doubted that they could successfully farm this way. Today, the Boors’ farm “looks completely different,” according to Mikala.

Ranching 128

Ranching Farming Farming Acre 128

Modern Farmer

AUGUST 24, 2023

Nut farmer Benina Montes of Burroughs Family Farms in California says she chose to certify her almonds with ROC because of the environmental and economic benefits of ROC’s practices and brand. “By Her family farm has been organic certified since 2006, but it only adopted the ROC standards in June 2022.

Food 98

Food Ranching Ecology Fertilizer 98

Daily Yonder

OCTOBER 24, 2024

In one interview, a farmer told me that he had been offered $40,000 an acre for his land, money that would make him an instant millionaire. The subdivision in Sugarland’s song is called “Shady Acres.” Jason Isbell’s “Last of My Kind” calls out a family farm becoming a Wal-Mart parking lot. Subdivide, give it a name.”

Farmland 109

Farmland Ruralism Acre Real Estate 109

Civil Eats

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Half the largest herd—which lives in a 2,900-acre reserve with a fence that protects nearby ranches—died mostly due to insufficient forage. The Park Service recently proposed removing the fence, allowing the elk to join the two smaller herds that can already roam the seashore’s more than 71,000 acres of beaches, forests, and ranchlands.

Ranching 143

Ranching Acre Food Farming 143

UnderstandingAg

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Below is a basic diagram showing how carbon cycles through a corn field yielding around 200 bu/acre. Our family farm in Northeast Iowa with 3% SOM in the top six inches has about 67,000 lbs. of carbon per acre in the top two feet of soil. of carbon per acre annually. That’s a big number! Where does it all go?

Compost 91

Compost Acre Processing Crop 91

UnderstandingAg

DECEMBER 31, 2024

In the following discussion, I would like to share some thoughts on how to add net profit into a grazing operation, as well as share my own experiences reducing hay inputs with the grass-finished beef herd that roams across our northern Michigan family farm.

Pasture 105

Pasture Forage Livestock Manure 105

Modern Farmer

JULY 14, 2023

As Brian Paddock walks through his 12-and-a-half acres of almond trees, he’s taking in everything. Treehouse Almonds sources nuts from roughly 50,000 acres in California’s Central Valley, and Gardiner’s family farm provides about 20,000 of them. Photography courtesy of Burroughs Family Farms.

Orchard 94

Orchard Crop Family Farming Farming 94

Sustainable Food Trust

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

In addition, they may have been told that the carbon emissions for each litre of milk produced by intensively managed ‘fully housed’ cows, is less than the emissions from lower-yielding, mainly grass-fed cows – in other words, the cows that I and thousands of other dairy farmers look after on our family farms.

Farming 128

Farming Farming Ruralism Supply Chain 128

UnderstandingAg

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

My paradigm assumed that I was helping to feed the world, and as a result I thought that academia, industry, and government were all invested in the survival of our family farm. Could you stack multiple enterprises on the same acre? Could this create opportunities for your kids or other young people to get started farming?

Ranching 95

Ranching Ruralism Farming Farming 95

Trimble Agriculture

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Between the years 2017 and 2022, America lost almost 20 million acres of farmland. Despite this rapid decline, the average farm size increased five percent to 463 acres. This ag census data highlights the trend toward farm consolidation as more and more family farm operations are feeling the pressure to go big or get out.

Farming 59

Farming Farming Farmland Acre 59