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?

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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.

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Plantation Farming Farming Acre 144

Sustainable Food Trust

MARCH 27, 2024

Patrick Holden discusses how the centralisation of the food system has given rise to an atmosphere of paranoia about bacteria, which, in turn, is placing a disproportionate regulatory burden upon small producers and processors. After all, if something went wrong, thousands or even millions of people could get sick.

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Food Tank

APRIL 2, 2024

Across the city of Atlanta, Georgia, many organizations are working to build a food system that centers community wellbeing with the health of the planet. On April 14, Food Tank is heading to Atlanta to partner with Spelman College and Emory University for the Summit “ Empowering Eaters: Access, Affordability, and Healthy Choices.”

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Civil Eats

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The food systems advocate, land steward, and beekeeper came of age during the civil rights movement in Kentucky and has spent five decades working for social and racial justice. In 1972, he founded the Good Foods Co-op in Lexington. Jim Embry sees tending to land as a sacred and spiritual responsibility.

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Civil Eats

AUGUST 20, 2024

When Maximina Hernández Reyes emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico, to Oregon in 2001, she was still learning English, had no idea where the food pantries were, and knew very few people. Hernández Reyes was able to secure a small plot in the community garden and started growing food for her family. This was just the beginning.

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Food Tank

MARCH 31, 2025

. “The Brighter Future Funds Emergency Resilience Grant is not only meant to help ease immediate hardships but also provide stability for the future, says Ashley Brucker, Senior Manager of Grantmaking, Brighter Future Fund & Farm Viability tells Food Tank. The fund has distributed over US$4.5

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Farmland Distribution Food Acre 59

Modern Farmer

AUGUST 24, 2023

Two organizations want to put an end to the wild west of claims and prove, through certification, that food labeled regenerative is genuinely the gold standard of sustainability and not just another marketing buzzword. Her family farm has been organic certified since 2006, but it only adopted the ROC standards in June 2022.

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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.

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Ruralism Farming Farming Ranching 116

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

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Family Farming Farming Farming Ecology 52

Modern Farmer

AUGUST 29, 2023

On the back 16 acres of Walla Walla Community College, 30 Red Angus cows stand munching on hairy vetch, ryegrass and other cover crops that were planted to help restore the soil. million grant for its soon-to-come vertical farming, hydroponics and plant-based culinary arts programs. who will direct the new project. “As

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Food Farming Farming Agroecology 98

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. Become a member today by clicking here.

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Ranching Family Farming Farming Farming 105

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. From Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry by Austin Frerick.

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Family Farming Acre Farming Farming 98

Modern Farmer

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Small farms that made all their household income from the farm struggled the most, despite selling something we all need—food. Nevertheless, these farms were honorably scraped together from nothing, their growers much like passionate artists in the field; their art: beautiful, healthy local food.

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Farming Farming Family Farming Food 134

Caff

JUNE 29, 2021

Small farmers who scrambled to adapt and supply healthy, local food when the pandemic shuttered restaurants and dining halls are once again facing enormous challenges. Caiti Hachmyer of Red H Farm in South Sebastopol started a CSA in 2020 which helped her farm survive the pandemic but the heavy workload took its toll.

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Family Farming Farming Farming Water Rights 52

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. Crucial to food security, we’ll have to both protect and invest in rice within our food system as the population grows.

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Family Farming Acre Grain Greenhouse 131

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.

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Agriculture Agriculture Ruralism Farmland 137

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.

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Farmland Food Farming Farming 128

Sustainable Food Trust

APRIL 1, 2025

Our food & farming reviews of 2025 are here what’s been cropping up this past year and worth watching? China, in particular, is concerned with the future of their food and water having lived through the Great Chinese Famine three devastating years between 1959 and 1961.

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Modern Farmer

MARCH 12, 2024

America’s farmers, especially beginning and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers face insurmountable challenges, yet 87 percent of young farmers are dedicated to regenerative, climate-smart farming practices. Eaters and farmers alike depend on this bill to get food on the table. Photo courtesy of Carly Boyer.

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Farming Farming Farmland Real Estate 122

Food Tank

AUGUST 30, 2023

A version of this piece was featured in a special edition of Food Tank’s newsletter. I just returned from one of my favorite events, the Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation Celebration in Des Moines, Iowa, at which Food Tank is honored to co-host an Educational Summit. These are stories that are too often ignored and forgotten.

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Food Ranching Farming Farming 52

Sustainable Food Trust

SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

This community used to form the backbone of UK rural culture, however, during my lifetime of dairy farming, it has been decimated. Customers are increasingly suspicious that many of the foods they eat, and milk in particular, are coming from ever larger and more industrialised farms. Holden Farm Dairy is one such unit.

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Farming Farming Ruralism Supply Chain 128

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. In addition to piloting new equipment, recipes, and processing techniques, the universities facilitate worker training and certificate programs in cheesemaking, food safety, marketing, and other specialized areas.

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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. Grotegut Dairy Farm of Newton, Wisc.

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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.

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Ranching Farming Farming Acre 128

Sustainable Food Trust

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

This is because the subsidies have been unconditional and the market has been brutal; they have used, as the NFU likes to say, ‘all the tools in the toolbox’, i.e., nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides, to continuously increase their food production in order to stay in business. Of course, this is not the end of the story.

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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?

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Civil Eats

APRIL 29, 2024

He plants nitrogen-rich legumes and other perennial cover crops amongst his pear, apple, plum, peach, and cherry trees, but he buys a commercial compost product to keep his 100-acre, fourth-generation family farm thriving. Ela knows first-hand how central compost is to his organic farm—and all organic agriculture.

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Compost Manufacturing Food Production 141

Modern Farmer

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Today, new generations of innovative farmers see agroforestry as a solution to not just producing nutrient-dense food and specialty crops but to also mitigate the intensity of climate change-induced weather events. They farm on 130 acres of the land on which her father and grandfather had raised hogs. Johnson laughs.

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Acre Pasture Farming Farming 127

Farmbrite

DECEMBER 12, 2024

However, as the global population has surged (it is expected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050), weather fluctuations have intensified, and the demand for efficient farming has increased substantially. By analyzing aerial imagery, they were able to pinpoint areas suffering from nutrient deficiencies on their farm.

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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.

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Agriculture Agriculture Acre Farming 131

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.

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Ranching Acre Food Farming 144

Modern Farmer

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

French farmers, for instance, managed to persuade their nation’s leaders to ban food imports treated with the insecticide thiacloprid, dedicate €150 million (US$163 million) annually to support livestock producers and provide European-wide definitions for what constitutes lab-grown meat. Their public disruption has also produced results.

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Manure Farming Farming Production 109

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.

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Acre Farming Farming Pasture 98

Modern Farmer

OCTOBER 11, 2023

SweetRoot Farm is pitched squarely in the middle of a long and narrow mountain valley, framed by the Bitterroot Mountains on one side and the Sapphire Mountains on the other. The 10-acre farm outside Hamilton, Montana is run by Noah Jackson and Mary Bricker, who dedicate four irrigated acres of pasture to their laying hens.

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Pasture Food Production Farming 129

Modern Farmer

DECEMBER 20, 2024

full_link LEARN MORE How farmers are adapting to Phoenix’s rising temperatures to keep growing food. But it is no longer simply a proposal: This shift is already underway among many of the communities that catch, grow, and harvest the worlds food supply, from Brazil to India to the United States. It’s complicated.

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Agriculture Agriculture Food Harvester 77

Caff

JANUARY 27, 2021

Every year, we honor individuals, farms and local businesses making a positive impact on our food and agricultural communities throughout California. Big thanks to everyone who nominated their own local food and farm heroes. LEGACY FARMER Will Scott, Scott Family Farms Will Scott Jr.

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