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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UnderstandingAg

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

By: Brian Dougherty Understanding Ag, LLC I recently attended a Ranching for Profit (RFP) school where one of the instructors asked a very simple but thought-provoking question: Do you control your business, or does your business control you? That got me ruminating about who is really in the drivers seat on a typical farm or ranch business.

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Food Tank

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Today, he’s a sixth-generation pig farmer partnering with Niman Ranch. By his senior year, Williams was trying to figure out how to return home and take over the family farm. The best thing about Niman Ranch is how transparent they are. Now, he enjoys a healthy balance of time between farming and his young family. “It’s

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Food Tank

OCTOBER 4, 2024

Or being able to go visit family or be there for every basketball game or holiday or wedding…there are a lot of sacrifices that must be taken to get food on everybody’s plate.” In 2016, they began working with Niman Ranch, a network of over 600 small to mid-sized, independent U.S. Today, the majority (75 percent) of U.S.

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Food Tank

JULY 19, 2024

Today, 22-year-old Roberts is enlisted with the Nebraska Army National Guard while working as a fifth-generation farmer with his parents at Roberts Family Farm in Southwest Iowa. The family’s farm serves as a model for how smaller-scale, humane hog farming can be both environmentally and economically sustainable.

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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 Driving the I-5 between LA and San Francisco, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what people think cattle ranching is.’” It seem[ed] so simple, 20 years ago,” she says. “‘We

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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

JANUARY 5, 2024

Eric and Mikala both knew that they could raise hogs outdoors, but it wasn’t until they started partnering with Niman Ranch that they could make it work financially and begin to grow their business. “I Niman Ranch is a network of more than 600 small and mid-size farmers and ranchers across the U.S.

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RR2CS

APRIL 18, 2022

Rod and Beth Vergouwen’s agricultural roots in Strathmore stem back to the early 1900s when Beth’s great-grandfather emigrated from Illinois with the vision to farm and ranch in southern Alberta. It’s truly a family business,” says Graydon. It increases nutrient transference and cuts back on our synthetic inputs.”

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Trimble Agriculture

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

It was in this role that her passion for supporting the agricultural community truly took root, as she realized how much was required of producers outside of their day-to-day farming and ranching responsibilities. Erin delivering beef purchased by AgAmerica from a Youth Fair Steer Project to a local food bank.

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Trimble Agriculture

OCTOBER 30, 2024

agriculture is a hot one, but it’s primarily discussed at the farm and processing level. Both are critical topics, as monopolies in the meatpacking industry or the disappearing American family farm have significant impacts on the present and future of our food system. The topic of consolidation in U.S.

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Food Tank

OCTOBER 6, 2023

The Wahls partner with Niman Ranch, a network of more than 600 small and mid-size farmers and ranchers across the United States. Niman Ranch farmers and ranchers adhere to high standards of sustainable and humane farming practices, and in exchange, they receive a guaranteed market for their product and access to a network of resources.

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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. But now, he says that he confidently plans for the future.

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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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Food Tank

JULY 14, 2023

Steven and Alaina Imhoff knew they wanted to expand their hog farming at Triple Creek Farms in southeast Iowa. In 2019, they connected with Niman Ranch, which is a network of more than 600 small and mid-size farmers and ranchers across the United States. Right now, Steven and Alaina both work off-farm jobs.

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Civil Eats

JANUARY 14, 2025

Farm advocates, often farmers themselves, help their neighbors navigate codes and regulationspertaining to things like zoning, food safety, and property rightsthat can save their operations. Bunting, now 79, runs a family farm with his son in Oak City, North Carolina, where he once raised poultry and hogs and now grows hemp and corn.

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Food Tank

JANUARY 24, 2024

agriculture, food systems, and rural communities.” This overuse of fertilizer and chemicals saps our food of nutrients and causes vast environmental damage — pumping carbon into the atmosphere, polluting waterways, and hampering farming and daily life. Now, Those Funds May Be in Jeopardy appeared first on Food Tank.

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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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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. The Small Farm Case Study A small family farm in the western U.S. What Kind of Data is Being Used?

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Daily Yonder

MARCH 4, 2024

Finding adequate, affordable health insurance can be a huge challenge for people who run small, family farms or ranches, said Alana Knudson, director of the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks farming and ranching as some of the nation’s most dangerous occupations.

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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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Modern Farmer

OCTOBER 11, 2023

The label describes their feed, which Jackson has recently started buying from a ranch a few miles north. Food labels tell a story through words, images and designs on the packaging and even the size of the font and shades of the colors used. There can be an economic incentive to add these words and phrases to food labels.

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Civil Eats

JULY 2, 2024

The initiative aims to “uplift the dairy sector” and strengthen local markets, says Susan Pheasant, director of California State University Fresno’s Institute for Food and Agriculture (IFA), which hosts the Pacific Coast Coalition DBII.

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UnderstandingAg

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Now let’s take a look at some of the economic costs and benefits of addressing erosion on farms and ranches. An example from our family farm is shown below. Benefits like cleaner air and water, less pollution, better food, and a healthier environment full of life-sustaining diversity are invaluable.

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Modern Farmer

JULY 10, 2023

For Joseph Goni, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Tulare County, California, the region’s historic floods were part of family lore. But the epic flooding this past March was simply unprecedented, says the owner of Lerda-Goni Farms. Despite the resilience of family [farms], the mega-trend is undeniable,” says Raudabaugh.

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NASDA

JULY 25, 2024

We write to express our gratitude for your efforts to advance the 2024 farm bill within your jurisdictions and to seek your continued support for passing this critical legislation before the end of the year. We look forward to working with you to bring a bipartisan 2024 farm bill to fruition. Thank you for considering our request.

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UnderstandingAg

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

By: Brian Dougherty Understanding Ag, LLC I recently attended a Ranching for Profit (RFP) school where one of the instructors asked a very simple but thought-provoking question: Do you control your business, or does your business control you? That got me ruminating about who is really in the drivers seat on a typical farm or ranch business.

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Civil Eats

DECEMBER 3, 2024

Our editors, staff writers, and freelance contributors have a wide selection of food and agriculture books to recommend, both for gift-giving purposes and for the quiet moments you carve out for yourself. Tilde Herrera The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos By Mark J.

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UnderstandingAg

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Our family farm in Northeast Iowa with 3% SOM in the top six inches has about 67,000 lbs. The microbes use carbon (organic matter) as a food source. In the long run, we also need to do a much better job of returning carbon and other nutrients to the soil through composting of food waste and humanure to complete the cycle.

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Agritecture Blog

MARCH 10, 2023

Initially, the plan was to rotate other responsibilities such as marketing and social media among the participating farms. There was some news coverage when four participating farms—Dalew Farms, Kipling Ridge Farms , Field Good Farms and Three Forks Farms —announced their online local food initiative called Click Fork. “We

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Agritecture Blog

MAY 12, 2023

Visitors to the rural area will notice that cattle ranches dominate the landscape, once covered by Amazonian forests. A typical farm in the foothills of the Amazon in southern Caquetá. As one gets closer to the Quimbayo Gutiérrez family farm, the landscape begins to change. Image by Antonio Paz. Image by Antonio Paz.

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Caff

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

We believe farmers of color, and other historically oppressed people, should have the opportunity to create and participate in a food and agriculture system that aligns with their needs, values, identities, knowledge systems, and communities.

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Caff

JULY 27, 2021

Thank you for helping spread the word about the 2021 California Family Farmer Emergency Fund. The first section is aimed at farmers and ranches who might apply for the fund. Despite being the heart of our local food systems, these entrepreneurs too often fall between the cracks of traditional safety nets and government aid.

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National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

AUGUST 28, 2024

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 second post explores the FFNSA’s impacts on local and regional food systems. 2501, 2502).

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Caff

MARCH 17, 2023

These small-scale and often biologically diverse farming operations require a greater variety of costly equipment, some of which is only used a few times a year. Cooperatively managed equipment sharing can help increase farm viability and local food economies, while supporting implementation of climate smart practices.

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RR2CS

APRIL 18, 2022

Rotational Grazing, Keyline Design for Maximizing Water, and Food Forests for the Future By Trina Moyles While Ian Griebel grew up on his family’s mixed farm south of Castor, Alberta, he never thought he’d one day become a farmer. Local food, or grass fed beef was not really heard of at that time,” explains Griebel.

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Agwired

NOVEMBER 25, 2024

The American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) will be hosting an educational program tackling hot topics facing the animal food industry at the upcoming International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) , happening Jan. This contribution reinforces Keystone Cooperative’s commitment to strengthening food security.

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