Sustainable Food Trust

MARCH 27, 2024

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.

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Food Processing Farming Farming 135

Trimble Agriculture

AUGUST 2, 2023

This poses a serious threat to the future of American family farms and ultimately compromises our domestic food security. Almost 14 percent of farmers cited “tensions created within the family” as a top concern when transitioning the business. Creating a farm succession plan is a complicated process.

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Farming Farming Family Farming Processing 98

American Farmland

AUGUST 21, 2023

This region is one of the top producers of blueberries nationwide, as Michigan blueberries are grown, harvested, packed, and processed by 575 family farms annually. This year was the 60th anniversary of the National Blueberry Festival​ in South Haven, Michigan!

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Family Farming Harvester Harvesting Harvest 52

Trimble Agriculture

APRIL 23, 2024

As much as 78 percent of all their produce comes from family farms and cooperatives. Sell Directly to Consumers Roadside produce stands and farmers markets help some farms, particularly smaller operations, reduce food waste by cutting out transportation issues and overbearing grocer requirements.

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Food Farming Farming Supply Chain 105

Caff

DECEMBER 18, 2024

CAFFs mission is to build sustainable food and farming systems through policy advocacy and on-the-ground programs that create more resilient family farms, communities and ecosystems. As a farmer-serving organization, we recognize the historic and lasting inequities in the California food and farming system.

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Marketing Food Farming Farming 98

Wisconsin Farmers Union

AUGUST 10, 2023

Farmers in Wisconsin and beyond have faced challenges due to the consolidation of suppliers of everything from seeds to inputs to processing. With just a few powerful buyers dominating several facets of the industry— be it inputs or processing — farmers find themselves with little influence over the prices they receive.

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Marketing Agriculture Agriculture Processing 98

Modern Farmer

MAY 7, 2024

Murphy Family Farms (later bought by Smithfield Foods) helped out with the loan needed to get started. When Tanner Faaborg came back to the farm as an adult, the family began thinking about ways to transition out of hog farming. “We We started to see all these family farms just disappearing,” he says.

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Civil Eats

JULY 2, 2024

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. With family dairies drying up in droves—the U.S. But that hasn’t been the PCC’s focus, Pheasant says.

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Pasture Production Marketing Supply Chain 142

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. 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.

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Family Farming Acre Grain Greenhouse 128

Wisconsin Farmers Union

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

On-Farm Peer Education Event: Sullivan Family Farm Tuesday, September 17, 2024 (1pm - 5:30pm) Sullivan Family Farm (7725 County Road R, Manitowoc, WI 54220) Register: wilocalfood.org/events/sullivan-family-farm-event On-Farm Peer Education Event: Yowela Farms Friday, September 20, 2024 (1pm - 5:30pm) Yowela Farms (2625 Oak Lawn Rd.,

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Supply Chain Family Farming Food Farming 52

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Joshua Cave, Cave Family Farm in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. LFPP supports broader infrastructure for regional food systems such as facilities for aggregating, storage, or processing. FMPP supports activities such as establishing or expanding farmers markets or developing consumer outreach and marketing materials.

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Food Agriculture Agriculture Marketing 105

Wisconsin Farmers Union

JULY 23, 2024

Participants were chosen through a rigorous application process that evaluated their involvement in their national farm organization, among other criteria. We look forward to seeing the impact he will make on his community, his organization and family farming here at home and abroad,” said Rob Larew, NFU President.

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Civil Eats

JANUARY 14, 2025

Their business had been booming in Florida, where they farmed citrus and vegetables. But after a family member died, they decided to pack up and head to land they owned just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina, to process their loss in a new place. The USDA reports that the number of farms in the U.S.

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Farming Farming Crop Ruralism 137

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

347.563.6408 RELEASE: The Strengthening Local Meat Economies Act Addresses Competition in Procurement National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) applauds the introduction of this comprehensive bill to support independent, small processing plants and the farmers they serve. 2972 , (SLMEA).

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Ruralism Agriculture Agriculture Poultry 75

Modern Farmer

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Farms must provide proof to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service of free-range conditions. The process to be certified “USDA Organic” can be cumbersome for farmers, so the “ Certified Naturally Grown ” label uses the same requirements but is verified by a team of CNG farmers, not the USDA.

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Food Free Range Pasture Poultry 121

Modern Farmer

JUNE 30, 2023

But Black farm ownership has dropped dramatically over the years, with just 1,500 estimated to remain in Arkansas today. Among those is the Williams family farm, a fourth-generation operation that has been able to beat the odds and find inspiration in an unlikely place: its own fields. But the process hasn’t always come easily.

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Acre Sharecropping Processing Farming 98

The Lunatic Farmer

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

A few days ago I had the distinct pleasure of spending time with Andy Caygeon Junkin, author of Stubborn and guru of succession and restorative farm family harmony. His main mission is to save family farms by helping them work together better. This post is not about that primarily, as big a problem as it might be.

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Family Farming Farming Farming Compost 64

Civil Eats

MARCH 4, 2025

But just around the corner from NASDA, Kaitlyn Kimball was one of a group of farmers who traveled to Capitol Hill with the National Family Farm Coalition who said she cant access $30,000 in funding she already signed a contract for, to implement conservation practices that will make her Connecticut fruit and vegetable farm more self-sufficient.

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Farming Farming Food Family Farming 74

Modern Farmer

MAY 7, 2024

In part one and part two of our series on transitioning out of factory farming, we heard from both farmers who have made or are making the transition, as well as the organizations that support producers through this process. Connect with Craig, or learn more about SRAP, here. Tyler Whitley.

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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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Plantation Farming Acre Farming 144

UnderstandingAg

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Plants welcome me in their leafy grace, As part of a process, essential to embrace. I confess to being a recovering engineer, but this is a useful way to conceptualize an invisible process that’s happening in crop fields and in pastures. Our family farm in Northeast Iowa with 3% SOM in the top six inches has about 67,000 lbs.

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Compost Acre Processing Crop 91

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 Cattle 145

Food Tank

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Remember that family farms continue to feed 70 percent of the worlds population. are requesting: low interest, long-term patient capital to engage in both transition to agroecology as well as building up aggregation, processing and marketing of their products.

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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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Finance Ruralism Family Farming Ranching 59

Caff

MARCH 11, 2025

In the case of Farms Together, the two-week forced hiatus resulted in nearly one million dollars in lost sales for farmers, while program operators faced potential layoffs. Not only [was] the lack of income devastating to our farm, it brings a massive uncertainty to the future of farming for our family.

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Food Farming Farming Family Farming 59

Civil Eats

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

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 familys farm-to-table restaurant in Kailua-Kona, on the Big Island. And in the U.S.,

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Food Plantation Acre Production 130

Modern Farmer

APRIL 4, 2024

Oddwood is also sourcing its malt from TexMalt, a locally based supplier that works with nearby farms to reduce the carbon footprint of malt supply. For startups and minority-owned breweries, sponsor Arryved, which specializes in point-of-sale technology, has provided a stipend so cost doesn’t prohibit participation.

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Family Farming Marketing Farming Farming 129

ATTRA

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

Heaven’s Hollow Farm: A Soil for Water Case Study Jacob Gilley Madison County, Virginia Heaven’s Hollow Farm is a fourth-generation family farm that has been in operation since 1951. Jacob, his wife Jennifer, and their children operate the farm in Orange, Virginia.

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Farming Farming Poultry Pasture 52

ATTRA

JANUARY 23, 2024

By Hakeem Holmes, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Farming—one of the world’s oldest professions—encompasses enterprises that individuals start for multitude of different purposes, whether for desire for self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship, family tradition, or entrepreneurial ventures.

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Modern Farmer

AUGUST 24, 2023

Nut farmer Benina Montes of Burroughs Family Farms 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 family farm has been organic certified since 2006, but it only adopted the ROC standards in June 2022.

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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 125

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

JULY 14, 2023

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. The farm has changed a lot since his grandfather ran it and grew tomatoes and potatoes. Photography courtesy of Burroughs Family Farms. Sheep grazing in almond groves.

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Orchard Crop Family Farming Farming 93

Caff

MARCH 11, 2025

In the case of Farms Together, the two-week forced hiatus resulted in nearly one million dollars in lost sales for farmers, while program operators faced potential layoffs. Not only [was] the lack of income devastating to our farm, it brings a massive uncertainty to the future of farming for our family.

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Food Farming Farming Family Farming 52

Caff

AUGUST 22, 2022

” At Anderson Almonds, a small 20 acre family farm 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 family farms is a key element of our business.”

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Marketing Family Farming Farming Farming 52

Modern Farmer

AUGUST 23, 2024

Farm Hounds Family farms often struggle to stay profitable as agriculture becomes more concentrated. There were 141,733 fewer farms in the US in 2022 than in 2017, according to the Census of Agriculture. .” Is there a way to make healthier dog food that won’t burden the planet so much?

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Food Farming Farming Compost 109

Caff

JUNE 6, 2023

WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO On-Farm Research While CAFF’s preliminary on-farm research trials have wrapped up, we’ve continued to visit no-till farms in Northern California in partnership with UC Berkeley’s Agroecology Lab.

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Farming Farming Family Farming Agroecology 52