Caff

MAY 1, 2023

(Photo by Nolan Kirby) The Community Alliance with Family Farms (CAFF) held a Biologically Integrated Orchard System (BIOS) field day at Chinchiolo Farms on April 20th. After a very wet winter, attendees enjoyed the nice weather as they gathered in the orchard to discuss a novel mower prototype, pruning, and nematode management.

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Orchard Farming Farming Ecology 52

Civil Eats

MARCH 5, 2024

However, based on current air quality monitoring data, much of California—and notably all of the most intensively farmed counties including San Joaquin Valley—will likely not meet the newly updated standard anytime soon. Mountain ranges trap emissions from highway traffic, locomotives, municipal composting facilities, tractors, and burning.

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Farming Farming Tractor Agriculture 138

Caff

OCTOBER 22, 2024

On September 19th, Community Alliance with Family Farmers held a field day at Vitis and Ovis farm in Capay Valley, CA. Gisèle Herren of Vitis and Ovis Farm alongside their flock of grazing ducks. Hans Herren showing attendees an on-farm device as he discussed their experience in making compost tea.

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Orchard Farming Farming Construction 52

Civil Eats

MARCH 11, 2024

This is called shadow microscopy,” says Robb, the co-owner of Compostella Farm in southern Mississippi, bringing the microorganisms into focus. This growing interest in fungal networks on farms quietly challenges the underpinnings of U.S. But working to both protect and encourage fungi on farms is a way to reverse course.

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Farming Farming Crop Agriculture 144

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

DECEMBER 15, 2023

As negotiations around the next farm bill continue, farmers and hundreds of stakeholders want to make sure that funding for climate-friendly practices is protected and remains in conservation programs with a climate focus. Conservation buffer in bloom at Vilicus Farms. Joseph Fischer, of Fischer Farms in St.

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Pasture Crop Orchard Farming 117

Modern Farmer

MARCH 6, 2025

They are destined for greatness in the form of chocolate bars, dried beans and tea at Lavaloha Chocolate Farm in Hilo. Here, growers are making fresh kokoleka, or chocolate in lelo Hawaii (Hawaiian language), through mindful agricultural practices: creating their own soil and compost, contracting with locals, and using organic fertilizer.

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Compost Marketing Fertilizer Farming 75

Caff

JANUARY 26, 2022

Introducing… the 2022 Farm Champion awardees! To make it as a small farm and to affect real, lasting change in our food system, it requires unwavering determination, hard work, ingenuity, and a deeply rooted sense of purpose with a view extending a thousand growing seasons. We look forward to watching this farm grow!

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Farming Farming Orchard Food 52

Food Tank

OCTOBER 11, 2023

The brand’s Star Hill Farm is the first distillery farm to receive certification from Regenified for its commitment to soil, water, and ecosystem longevity. The company composts all fruit scraps, tea, herbs, cultures, and paper towels while also saving over 1,100 gallons of water per day through their recapture system.

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Beverage Ecology Compost Cultivation 125

Modern Farmer

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Agroforestry—the integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems—has been used since ancient times to produce fruits, nuts, coffee, cocoa and medicinal herbs. Wendy Johnson’s ‘natural savannah’ Wendy Johnson and her husband, Johnny Rafkin, own Jóia Food & Fiber Farm, in Charles City, Iowa. Johnson laughs.

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Acre Pasture Farming Farming 125

Modern Farmer

JANUARY 15, 2024

Armed with little more than ingenuity and entrepreneurial drive, microgreen growers are transforming the unused corners of their dwellings into profitable farming operations. After finishing college seven years ago, the “video gam- playing, beer-drinking kid” dusted off a section of his parents’ Long Island cellar to launch his micro farm.

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Cultivation Crop Real Estate Food 118

Modern Farmer

JULY 14, 2023

It’a not just because it’s cheaper and not just because Capay Hills Orchard , his farm just north of Sacramento, is in an area of California that is increasingly drought-prone. 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.

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Orchard Crop Family Farming Farming 93

Food Tank

APRIL 2, 2024

Food Well Alliance Food Well Alliance brings together leaders of the local food movement to support more than 300 community gardens, urban farms, and orchards in metro Atlanta. And in their Farm to School initiatives, they engage children with local, healthy food in cafeterias and classrooms.

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Cultivation Food Marketing Distribution 105

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Photo credit: Matt Ryan/Sandra Wayman Editor’s Note: This blog post is a guest post authored by Gordon Merrick, Senior Policy and Programs Manager at the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) and Mark Schonbeck, Research Associate, also at OFRF, which is an NSAC member.

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Food Seeding Crop Poultry 111

CalCAN

JUNE 21, 2023

Nate Gonzalez-Siemens of Fat Uncle Farms and Melissa Sorongon of Piedrasassi are somewhat unusual in the Central Coast and south San Joaquin Valley: they are both small-scale farmers who grow grain as part of their diversified operations. Nate farms almonds, rye, wheat, and cotton, and Melissa grows wine grapes, wheat and rye.

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Compost Grain Harvest Harvesting 52

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

Modern Farmer

JULY 10, 2023

But the epic flooding this past March was simply unprecedented, says the owner of Lerda-Goni Farms. The torrent overwhelmed dams, swelled rivers and crumbled levees, inundating entire farming communities, including Lerda-Goni and a dozen other ranches, and reawakening a long-dormant lake lying beneath the vast agricultural region.

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Farming Farming Manure Agriculture 97

ATTRA

JANUARY 15, 2025

I thought about my farm and how the barn I built had likely collapsed on top of my goat herd. In the aftermath, farmers lost hundreds of animals, feed, and related infrastructure, leading to substantial economic losses (estimates of over 3 billion dollars) for the farming community. Submit applications online at disasterassistance.gov.

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Farmland Orchard Compost Livestock 52

CalCAN

AUGUST 10, 2023

Christine Gemperle, almond farmer and CalCAN advisor recently drove to Sacramento from her orchard in Ceres to testify in support of equipment sharing and sustainable agriculture investments alongside CalCAN staff. She also spent time speaking to representatives about issues impacting her farm.

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Orchard Farming Farming Harvester 52

Civil Eats

DECEMBER 5, 2023

But it wasn’t until he became the beverage director at Farm and Fisherman Tavern in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, that he fully combined his passions for ethnobotany and mixology. Even monarch butterflies have lost habitat due to the prevalence of monocrop avocado orchards, along the once lush, biodiverse hillsides of Michoacán in Mexico.

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Food Farming Farming Seeding 145

Sustainable Food Trust

MAY 1, 2024

The impact of the Israel-Gaza war on food and farming is one aspect of a complex situation that we seek to reveal in this piece by our Head of Policy and Campaigns, Megan Perry. A young farmer called Yousef, whose farm was destroyed in recent bombings, has already begun distributing heirloom seedlings. Photos courtesy of Megan Perry.

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Farming Farming Livestock Food 127

Modern Farmer

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

At the apple orchard where I used to work, autumn’s encroaching frenzy had the most unassuming harbinger. That lonely tree stood apart from the rest of the orchard—its companions had long since died—as a sentinel from a bygone era. full_link READ MORE Learn how the resurgence of hard cider is restoring old apple orchards.

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Orchard Food Compost Farming 87