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 107

Sustainable Food Trust

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Careful observation is at the root of the empathetic approach to animal husbandry at Kite’s Nest Farm. One of the most important things any livestock farmer can do is to watch and learn – in fact, this is a skill that would benefit the general population. For a livestock farmer there is much that is familiar.

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Food Tank

JUNE 28, 2024

It changes what your vision of a family farm is and how you have to go about getting there.” Between 1935 and 2023, the number of farms in the U.S. decreased by 72 percent, while the average farm size nearly tripled. Independent family farms are the bedrock of healthy rural economies,” says Treakle.

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Ruralism Farming Farming Family Farming 123

Caff

JUNE 29, 2021

Caiti attended a town hall where the discussion focused on relief for farmers who raise livestock or grow perennial crops not annual crops. The funds being offered are to encourage farmers to adopt water conservation practices that she already uses on her farm. This severe drought is going to have detrimental effects.”

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Family Farming Farming Farming Water Rights 52

Food Tank

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

Trisha says niche markets like this are critical to keeping small family farms like theirs alive. “If If we didn’t have Niman Ranch, we wouldn’t be raising pigs…we are a small farm and 225 pigs is just tiny on the scale of the large conventional operations.

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Farming Farming Ranching Pasture 115

Food Tank

OCTOBER 4, 2024

“Pig farmers, they’re there 365 days a year taking care of those animals,” says McCleary, a fourth-generation farmer at McCleary Farms in West-Central Illinois. Going to Florida on vacation isn’t always an option for a livestock farmer. Most people wake up, eat, and eat.

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Farming Farming Ranching Family Farming 105

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. Luckily, his father was just about to retire. “To

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Ranching Family Farming Farming Farming 106

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. What class of livestock are they?

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Pasture Forage Livestock Manure 95

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.

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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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Ranching Farming Farming Family Farming 102

Caff

DECEMBER 15, 2023

Kendra Altnow shares the history of the LangeTwins Family Winery & Vineyards. On December 5th, the Community Alliance with Family Farms (CAFF) held a field day at the LangeTwins Family Winery & Vineyard in Acampo, CA.

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Caff

JANUARY 7, 2025

Photo by Joan Cusick ECOLOGICAL FARMER OF THE YEAR: Rancho Las Palmas Nestled along the coast in Davenport, California, Rancho Las Palmas exemplifies ecological stewardship through its holistic and innovative farming practices.

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Farming Farming Ecology Orchard 105

Organic Farming Research

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

For farmer John Bell, a key to Elmwood’s success has been an ongoing fertility program based on crop-livestock integration and long crop rotations.

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Crop Rotation Farming Farming Livestock 52

Sustainable Food Trust

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Grasslands – and the grazing livestock they support – have been fundamentally important to Scotland’s people for millennia. Look at the OS map for the area surrounding our farm in Highland Perthshire, and it is littered with Gaelic placenames related to the keeping of cattle and goats.

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Livestock Pasture Cattle Arable Land 82

Food Tank

MAY 29, 2024

Record rainfall in May 2024 in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, has caused destructive flooding that is wreaking havoc on the country’s agricultural and livestock sectors. Destroyed or obstructed infrastructure is also limiting food transportation and farm operations. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports.

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Agriculture Agriculture Livestock Poultry 69

Food Tank

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Remember that family farms continue to feed 70 percent of the worlds population. There is a strong market demand for local products from agroecological farms and producers, including green leafy vegetables, fruits, grains, small livestock, and native seeds. These markets are large and important to local producers.

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Agroecology Marketing Food Finance 105

Food Tank

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Hola runs a four-week training program called Groundwork to Grow, which offers veterans and aspiring farmers hands-on workshops in areas including agribusiness, beekeeping, greenhouse management, livestock care, and agroforestry.

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Food Agriculture Agriculture Farming 102

Modern Farmer

AUGUST 24, 2023

The certification, funded by the Rodale Institute, Patagonia and Dr Bronner’s, insists on five practices to improve soil health: integrating livestock, keeping the soil covered, minimizing soil disturbance, incorporating diversity and zero chemicals, as well as a soil test every three years. Photography courtesy of Cabriejo Ranch.

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Food Ranching Ecology Fertilizer 94

Food Tank

OCTOBER 6, 2023

This means that many farmers aren’t able to sell their livestock, losing income when the animals grow too large. When packers own animals, they are able to pull from their own supply when prices go up, instead of buying from farmers on the open market. With Niman Ranch, you know what you’re going to get,” says Wahl.

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Ranching Science Soil Science Marketing 112

Modern Farmer

DECEMBER 13, 2023

An agrihood’s investment in farmland can help save a family farm and keep more farmland in production. In an agrihood, access to the land is guaranteed and does not come with the risks of beginning a new family farm. “A But farming can be a lonely, overwhelming task.

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Farmland Food Farming Farming 127

Civil Eats

OCTOBER 12, 2023

While these programs haven’t always been used to make farms climate resilient, they all have the potential to do so—and more funding and specific guardrails specified within the IRA would make that even more likely. Seth Watkins, a farmer from Clarinda, Iowa, was able to save his family farm with the help of conservation funding.

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Farming Farming Family Farming Agriculture 144

NASDA

SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Failing to reauthorize a farm bill without meaningful investments in commodity programs and crop insurance, or settling for a simple extension of current law, would leave thousands of family farms with no options to continue producing for this nation in 2025 and beyond.

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Farming Farming Grain Supply Chain 130

Todays Farmer Magazine

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

MFA Incorporated sponsors the low-stress livestock-handling demonstration, which will be held at 10:30 a.m. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension specialist, who has been providing technical expertise to livestock producers in beef cattle nutrition, management and livestock handling techniques for over 25 years.

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Farming Farming Livestock Agricultural equipment 52

Modern Farmer

JUNE 28, 2024

I named my business Diamond B Show Stock, a nod to my family farm, Diamond B farms. The family business started in the 1970s and is still running strong today. I’m proud to be the next link in the chain for my family’s agricultural business, and I hope to keep it going for the generations that come after me.

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Farming Farming Agriculture Agriculture 109

Agwired

DECEMBER 26, 2023

In a year marked by significant challenges for small family farms and rural communities, Organic Valley , the largest cooperative of organic farmers in the nation, is not just seeking more milk but actively welcoming more farmers. DiLorenzo’s grant is for $5 million and focuses on reducing the amount of methane cows produce.

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Poultry Family Farming Livestock Distribution 45

Modern Farmer

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

Given the challenges in an industry dominated by factory farms, such as slim profit margins and little control over pricing and markets, between 52 percent and 79 percent of small family farms are at high financial risk. We only have 45 acres, which is a really small farm around here,” says Larson.

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Farming Farming Acre Marketing 103

Civil Eats

JULY 2, 2024

Some regions have expanded their focus to include climate-smart ranching practices, including managed grazing and resilient cropping systems , which can mitigate the environmental and climate impacts of industrial livestock production. But that hasn’t been the PCC’s focus, Pheasant says.

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Pasture Production Marketing Supply Chain 140

Trimble Agriculture

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

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. Farm production expenses totaled $424 billion in 2022, a 17.8

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Farming Farming Farmland Acre 59

Sustainable Food Trust

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Each arrangement is different, based on the land, the infrastructure, the livestock and the labour input from each party, so it’s a flexible model that can be adapted to a multitude of situations. One new entrant who has been able to find a share farming arrangement through Farming Connect is Dafydd Owen.

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Farming Farming Livestock Acre 105

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.

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Manure Farming Farming Production 86

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

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Those include multi-generation family farms or beginning farmers that are adopting agroforestry or farmers transitioning from annual production to perennial production. Agroforestry is a sustainable land management approach that can be integrated into existing traditional crop and livestock systems.

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Farming Farming Crop Production 87

ATTRA

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

US Solar has about 80 solar gardens in Minnesota, reports Minnesota Public Radio , as part of a pilot project encouraging farmers to grow crops or graze livestock under the panels at solar installations. The company often plants native grasses and wildflowers at solar farm sites, providing pollinator habitat.

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Crop Family Farming Livestock Farming 40

Agwired

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

. “You’ve got to remember that the farm bill today is 81 percent food and nutrition, 19 percent everything else,” said Mann, who is fifth-generation Kansan, born and raised on the family farm. “I went to a livestock auction. .” “I went to a livestock auction.

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Caff

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

But wanting to pass on her legacy, she worked with 3 of her mentees, assisting them in raising capital from the community that she helped build to purchase the farm, launching the first worker-owned cooperative CSA on the north coast. We look forward to watching that farm and his impact grow!

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Farming Farming Marketing Food 98

Agwired

AUGUST 13, 2024

Poultry & Egg Association (USPOULTRY) announced that nominations are now being accepted for the 2025 Family Farm Environmental Excellence Award. This prestigious award recognizes family farmers who demonstrate exceptional environmental stewardship in poultry and egg production. western rangelands.

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Poultry Animal Agriculture Livestock Ecology 45

Farmbrite

DECEMBER 12, 2024

Monitor Livestock: Many ranches utilize livestock RFID tags to track their herd movements and easily scan and understand their health and wellness. The Small Farm Case Study A small family farm in the western U.S.

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Farming Farming Technology Yield 75