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Because farming is so central to our nation’s identity—and its idea of itself—this future can feel fraught. In 2012, the USDA forecast that most (70 percent) familyfarms would transfer hands over the next 20 years. Will familyfarms as we know and love them survive, and how do the ones that are thriving now do it?
The American familyfarm is the cornerstone of our nation—but is its existence in jeopardy? As the land of the free and home of the brave, the American familyfarm has been a foundational part of this nation and the meaning of independence. According to the 2022 ag census, familyfarms still dominate U.S.
Earlier this year, CAFF kicked off a massive project in the San Joaquin Valley to help support familyfarms 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?
On June 29th, Lopes FamilyFarms hosted a field day with Community Alliance with FamilyFarms (CAFF) in Princeton, CA focused on rice and duck farming, a Biologically Integrated Farming System (BIFS). Additionally, being such a novel method of farming in the U.S., hosting school trips).
This was soon after the Zachmans founded Feathered Acres Learning Farm & Inn with substantial startup expenses. Now the Zachmans have some Certified Organic fields and are implementing regenerative farming practices wherever possible to build healthy soils and a resilient farm. But it’s a process of trial and error.
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
In one of the greenhouses on the Lundberg FamilyFarms acreage in northern California, there sits a binder. Rice growing in one of the Lundberg FamilyFarms test greenhouses. Each field test is also a multi-year process, as they let the rice adapt to the growing conditions. Hence, the binder. Photography by author.
The ice cream shop is an extension of the Nicholson family’s sixth-generation, 120-acrefarm in nearby Ferndale. The national program helps small and mid-sized dairy producers squeeze more value out of milk by diversifying their products and markets, reducing waste, and innovating packaging and processing.
More and more of us are now recognising that the ultra-processed products of the industrialised food system, which most of us eat to some degree, are making people sick. But it is also about the insidious process of centralisation and the corresponding fear of contamination placing huge pressure on smaller businesses within our food system.
In the months before Patrick Brown was born in November 1982, his father, Arthur, lay down on a road near the familysfarm to prevent a caravan of yellow dump trucks from depositing toxic soil in his community. Patrick currently operates Brown FamilyFarms on the land that Byron worked as a sharecropper once he was freed.
An example from our familyfarm 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?
“Of 400 farms in our county, only five are organic,” says Matt Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Organics in Hutchinson, Minnesota. His 2,500-acrefamilyfarm 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.
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.
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 familysfarm-to-table restaurant in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island. And in the U.S., For Trask, kava is also central to healing Hawaiis post-plantation scars.
Plants welcome me in their leafy grace, As part of a process, essential to embrace. Below is a basic diagram showing how carbon cycles through a corn field yielding around 200 bu/acre. Our familyfarm 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.
Nut farmer Benina Montes of Burroughs FamilyFarms 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 familyfarm has been organic certified since 2006, but it only adopted the ROC standards in June 2022.
Payne operates a 300-acre regenerative farm in Concordia, Missouri, an hour outside of Kansas City, where he raises sheep and cattle. Payne’s familyfarm is a microcosm of American agriculture’s monocrop past and its changing future. We’re rethinking the farmprocess based on climate predictions,” Payne said.
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 familyfarm provides about 20,000 of them. Photography courtesy of Burroughs FamilyFarms.
Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund The Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund is a multidisciplinary, cooperative nonprofit ecosystem that aims to regenerate custodial land ownership, ecological stewardship, and food and fiber economies in the American South.
The differences between plots were calculated to $18/acre for tillage (which is conservative considering the cost of diesel), $25/acre for rye cover crops and $40/acre for multi-species cover crops. pounds of phosphorous per acre. pounds per acre. In 2021 the corn was sold for $6.80/bu pounds of nitrogen and 1.78
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 familyfarm thriving. Ela knows first-hand how central compost is to his organic farm—and all organic agriculture.
The front bucket was half full as he drove the tractor forward on a gentle slope of his 10-acre produce and poultry farm in Greensboro, Georgia. It was on Janssen’s familyfarm in the state’s Ozark Mountains where her uncle rolled his tractor—which had no ROPS—into a ravine in the 1980s.
Further, they have added nearly five acres of prairie strips. Both practices reduce their climate risk while increasing the farm’s ability to absorb carbon. Rick Hartlieb, of Castanea Farms in Pennsylvania, has used local and state grant resources to help him plant acres of chestnuts and to shift his farm toward silvopasture.
But the epic flooding this past March was simply unprecedented, says the owner of Lerda-Goni Farms. After a winter of record snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a sudden warm spell melted the lower reaches, unleashing nearly 40,000 acre-feet of water —a volume equal to more than a tenth of Las Vegas’ annual supply—in 48 hours.
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-acrefarm outside Hamilton, Montana is run by Noah Jackson and Mary Bricker, who dedicate four irrigated acres of pasture to their laying hens.
” At Anderson Almonds, a small 20 acrefamilyfarm selling its own production directly from the farm, over the phone and through e-commerce, the decicison comes as a great relief.” Preserving that access to households who wish to eat almonds sourced directly from familyfarms is a key element of our business.”
She is now in her second season of managing a 1-acrefarm that Outgrowing Hunger leases in the nearby town of Boring, Oregon. While she named the operation MR. Farms after her initials, she has leaned into people misreading it as “Mister.” My dream is to grow my farm, to implement jobs for immigrants or anyone who wants to work.
At the same time, the number of farms and farmland in the U.S. lost nearly 142,000 farms from 2017 to 2022. During that same period, an estimated 20 million acres of farmland went out of production. Several nonprofit organizations also support farmers in navigating the lease-to-own process. has been in decline.
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 familyfarm. The acreage lasted 65 cows for almost two months of grazing in the spring.
Up until now, many small Colorado farms have been paying out of their own pockets to implement these practices due to the exclusion of small farms from the EQIP program.
According to official figures from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, the region lost 94,847 acres of forest in 2021 — almost 15,000 acres more than in 2020, the largest increase in the country. A typical farm in the foothills of the Amazon in southern Caquetá. Image by Antonio Paz.
What’s needed in California for small farms, sustainable agriculture and local food systems to truly thrive, find equity, and remain resilient in the face of adversity? In the fall 2021, CAFF went to the source to find out, conducting a statewide intensive listening process. WANNA GET MORE INVOLVED?
If Congress does not come together this year to enact a bipartisan farm bill, the legislative process will begin anew in the 119th Congress. Georgia Wildlife Federation Ginkgo Bioworks Golden Sands Resource Conservation & Development Council , Inc.
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 familyfarm. In the process it led to the decline of our rural communities. Could you stack multiple enterprises on the same acre?
“The Small Farm Conservation Act is an important step in supporting young farmers who are interested in both feeding their communities and taking care of our shared resources.
Today, Tim and Joanne manage WR Grazing in collaboration with Doug and other family members on 3000 acres of land. In 2019, they ran a series of crop trials on 20 acre paddocks to experiment with different crop mixes. C4 plants undergo photosynthetic process to fix carbon in the plants).
The Precision Farmer Case Study One inspiring case is a midwestern farmer who adopted drone technology and IoT sensors across their 500-acre corn farm. By analyzing aerial imagery, they were able to pinpoint areas suffering from nutrient deficiencies on their farm.
Approximately 80% of California farmers operate on less than 180 acres and/or have less than $100,000 in annual sales and 1 in 5 of California’s agricultural producers are socially disadvantaged. Unfortunately, we’re hostage to a food system that puts a premium on fatty, salty, sugary processed food. We really need to change that.”
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth post in a multi-part blog series analyzing the Farm Food and National Security Act of 2024 (FFNSA), which was reported out of the House Agriculture Committee on Friday, May 24. The first post details an overview of the markup process, the bill as a whole, and its likely (or unlikely) path to becoming law.
Awards will be bestowed during the conclusion of the California Small Farm Conference on February 28, a free event featuring keynote speaker, Nikki Silvestri. LEGACY FARMER Will Scott, Scott FamilyFarms Will Scott Jr. started farming as a form of self-transformation and restoration.
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 familyfarm. In the process it led to the decline of our rural communities. Could you stack multiple enterprises on the same acre?
Manske runs conventional crop operations in Iowa and Minnesota, including managing a 1,000-acrefamilyfarm in northern Iowa, and primarily plants a rotation of corn and soybeans. Environmental Protection Agency, nitrogen fertilizer sales increased from 17 pounds per acre in 1960 to 83.6 pounds per acre in 2013.
Worse still, many of them have invested large amounts of money in huge buildings to house factory farmed animals, and they are financially exposed with no alternative deployment for the infrastructure they have borrowed on. This is typical of quite a large number of farmers around here.
In the book, we meet Brandon Kaufman, a Kansas farmer who, after generations of familyfarming, plans “to get a divorce from wheat” to focus on perennials as a way to nurture the soil and the vital underground network of insects and microorganisms within it. Does the author ultimately take on the familyfarm?
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