This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. 

Graeme Foers

Farm Name: Lost Meadows Apiaries & Meadery
Location: Essa Township, Ontario, Canada
Age: 33
Years Farming: 13

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
My farming season begins early February with the maple syrup season. I make maple syrup more traditionally with buckets and flat pans over fires outside. The season then turns to bees with my first queen graft right at the beginning of May. I produce around 100 queens per week for 12 weeks which are sold to beekeepers across Ontario. My queens are bred for a number of traits, but the most important being hygienic, mite resistant and overwintering ability. Aside from the queens my 200 hives make honey from around mid may to September. I keep the honey separate from each meadow and each month. This makes a huge range of different tasting honeys based on what was blooming and in what quantities when the bees collected it. I try and keep my bees away from commercial agriculture to help minimize the impact it has on my bees and also on influencing the flavor of the honey. I also own a small meadery on the farm with my sister, we use the honey from my hives to make the mead and have won several awards for it at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
I want to work at something that I find meaningful in life and that I feel I can leave behind as my contribution to society. For me that is through beekeeping and specifically breeding queen bees. My first beehive I had died and I was devastated. I decided that if I was going to have bees again I never wanted another hive to die, so I would have to be the best beekeeper I possibly could be. This lead me to queen rearing and eventually queen breeding and finding bees that are resistant to varroa mites, and other brood diseases, that are gentle and can thrive in this changing climate.

What advice or insight do you have for young people interested in farming?
Don’t stop believing in yourself, and try and be around people who believing you. Don’t be afraid to be part of the change even if a more experienced farmer tells you that’s not how to do it or its not the conventional way of doing it. Doing it your way may be the small difference you need to have customers buy your product and gain market share.

What are the barriers to being a young farmer, and how are you dealing with or overcoming them?
The biggest barrier for me is the extreme cost of everything from equipment to land and anything else involved like fuel and gas. I have had family members lend me some money for equipment purchases and I try not to expand too much at one time so I don’t stretch my resources too thin.

Greg & Amber Pollock

Farm Name: Sunfox Farm
Location: Concord, NH & Deerfield, NH
Years Farming: 5 years at Sunfox and total of 17 years of experience farming

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
Sunfox Farm is a small family operation in Central New Hampshire with a focus on sustainable and environmentally responsible agricultural practices. We specialize in growing sunflowers for oilseed production. A huge part of our business is agritourism, with our Annual Sunflower Bloom Festival being a quintessential summer event in the capital city of New Hampshire. We love reuniting people with the land and encouraging them to bring the whole family out to the farm! We grow using organic practices, and we’re currently working towards organic certification. We believe that by taking care of the earth, we can produce delicious and nutritious food that nourishes both the body and the soul. 

Our 2024 Sunflower Festival is August 10-18th. We have live music, local food trucks, and an artisan craft fair, with over 20 acres of sunflowers! In addition to the festival, Amber is a professionally trained chef and orchestrates seven-course, fine dining, farm-to-table meals in the sunflowers.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
There’s something truly magical about working outside and growing nutritious food for our community and family. It’s rewarding to see something through from start to finish—watching someone taste our sunflower oil for the first time and seeing their eyes light up makes us so proud. The work is hard, the days are long, our hands and feet are callused, and we wear our farmer tans with pride. We’re drawn to farming because it’s honest work, and it feels good to do it.

What advice or insight do you have for young people interested in farming?
You learn so much by doing. If you’ve never grown pumpkins, try it. If you’ve never set up an irrigation system, try it. If you’ve never changed the oil on a tractor, try it (with a little help from the owner’s manual). Farmers are jacks and jills of all trades, masters of none. It’s a perfect career for the curious mind. If you have even the slightest interest in farming, try it. The things you can learn are endless and it will always keep you on your toes. Farming isn’t ever perfect, but you can always find joy in the life of a farmer.

What are the barriers to being a young farmer, and how are you dealing with or overcoming them?
The biggest barrier we face as young farmers is land accessibility. Our dream is to someday own our own property, however, as of now we’ve only be able to secure leased or rented land. Finding a place to farm can make the adventure nearly impossible for many young farmers.

Another barrier is funding for equipment and infrastructure. Something that helped us was having a solid business plan. Within a year or two of starting our farm, we were able to provide well thought out projections and accounting documents. Being confident while discussing these items was integral in helping us acquire a loan to purchase our own equipment.

Sean Pessarra

Farm Name: Mindful Farmer
Location: Conway, Arkansas
Age: 36
Years Farming: 15

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
Mindful Farmer emerged from my desire to empower, educate, and equip the next generation of growers with appropriate technologies and tools tailored to small-scale farmers and gardeners, as well as sustainable and productive techniques. This inspiration struck when I worked at Heifer International and witnessed the challenges faced by small and mid-scale farms in the Southern US. Many struggled to find regional supplies and resorted to expensive shipping for products from distant sources. I also noticed that existing tools were often unsuitable for small-scale and beginning farmers, including many female farmers who make up a majority of newcomers to the field. In response, I designed multifunctional, scalable, high-quality tools with inclusivity in mind, setting the foundation for Mindful Farmer. I also set out to design high tunnels that were more affordable and approachable for beginning farmers.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
I’ve been in the farming industry for over a decade, starting my journey with part-time beekeeping while working as an environmental scientist in Texas. My passion for sustainable land stewardship led me to transition into sustainable agriculture in Central Arkansas. During this time, I managed organic vegetable production, conducted research, and hosted workshops. Farming, for me, represents a way to positively impact our environment, communities, and health. Witnessing the challenges conventional farming practices posed to our world’s health and the growing emotional and physical disconnect between people, their food, and the natural world, I felt a deep calling to be a part of the solution by promoting sustainable, regenerative agriculture. Farming as a whole is a dying trade, with the average age of farmers increasing and many farms consolidating under corporations and foreign entities. I believe that when farms are owned and operated locally, they are more motivated to steward the land well. This not only benefits the land and the farmer but also the local economy, public health, and the community as a whole.

What are the barriers to being a young farmer, and how are you dealing with or overcoming them?
Just as with the housing market, inflated prices, high-interest rates, and corporate competition have put farms and raw land out of reach for most young and beginning farmers. My wife and I dreamed early on in our marriage of raising our future kids on a farm of our own. Our oldest is 10 now, and we still have a ways to go. Without starting with a large sum of money or family land, the path is extremely steep. There is also a bit of a Catch-22 in that the jobs that give you the most agricultural knowledge often offer little in the way of disposable income to save up for a farm of your own.

Agriculture, especially small-scale sustainable agriculture, is a high-risk and low-margin industry. Most young farmers bootstrap the best they can as financial resources are hard to come by, often growing on leased land or going the route of small and intensive production.

Keaton Sinclair & Alanna Carlson

Farm Name: AKreGeneration
Location: Treaty Six Territory at Fiske, Saskatchewan, Canada
Age: 32 and 33
Years farming:  5 years (20+ years experience as a 3rd generation farmer)

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
We are connected to our family farm and do grain cropping and custom grazing using regenerative agriculture practices that prioritize plant and soil health. AKreGeneration is committed to restoring the land for generations to come, acre by AKre. Using the seven generations principle, we remember whose who came before us, and our decisions are guided by the seven generations that will come after us. Some of the different practices we use include: diverse crop rotation, cover crops, intercropping, low chemical use, biological fertilizer and seed treatment, soil amendments, and livestock incorporation.

After managing a 5-acre organic market garden for five years and selling wholesale, I saw the need and opportunity for a mid-scale diversified specialty crop operation in Arkansas. I am working toward my dream of cultivating 20 to 40 acres of organic vegetables for retail and wholesale markets. This type and size of farm, uncommon in the Southern US, could not only serve major production gaps in our area but also train apprentices and demonstrate a replicable model for organic mid-scale production.

Until our dream of a larger farm of our own becomes a reality, we are growing a small selection of vegetables and cut flowers in our backyard garden and at an urban farm we are leasing in Little Rock at the St. Joseph Center, a nonprofit focused on saving a historic urban farm, promoting agricultural education, and assisting in food security projects in the area. We sell vegetables and flowers to the farm stand on the property and to Bell Urban Farm in Conway.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
We grew up farming with our families and thrived working on the land and being connected to and learning from the plants and animals and other farmers. We see the regenerative farm as a good way to listen to the land, improve the soil health, natural ecosystem, nutrient integrity of the plants, improve profitability and enhance our lifestyle. We both got educations and live in the city, but are drawn back to the land, and want to farm in a way that is sustainable for us and the ecosystem.

What advice or insight do you have for young people interested in farming?
Go get your hands dirty and get experience working on the land, any land. You might not get much for clear answers if you directly ask for advice. Build relationships. Join groups and unions. Find farmers that will spend time talking or working with you so you can learn different practices and principles; everyone does things different. Listen to their stories and wisdom and follow what you think is aligned with your plan. Nothing happens in a hurry.

Nick DiDomenico & Marissa Pulaski (DAR) || Azuraye Wycoff (Yellow Barn Farm)

Nick DiDomenico & Marissa Pulaski

Farm Name: Elk Run Farm | Yellow Barn Farm
Location: Longmont Colorado
Age: All are 33
Time Farming: Elk Run since 2015, over 9 years; Yellow Barn since 2020. 
 

In 2015, Nick DiDomenico set out to farm 14 deeply degraded acres in the foothills near Lyons, Colorado. There was only enough well water to irrigate less than an acre of de-vegetated property. When Nick reached out to the NRCS for advice on how to restore the land to a farmable state, they advised him to find another piece of land; without irrigation potential, there was no documented way to revitalize the land. From that moment, Elk Run Farm became a living experiment in how to restore deeply degraded land in a semi-arid climate without irrigation.
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Today, Elk Run Farm is a thriving oasis in the high desert. Using passive water harvesting contour swales, 1000 trees and shrubs have been planted without irrigation, demonstrating a 79% survival rate across four years. What was a compact gravel parking lot is now five inches of rich topsoil that supports bioregional staple crops including blue corn, dry beans, amaranth, and grain sorghum. An average of 10 interns and residents eat 90% of a complete diet year round from the integrated forest garden, staple grain, and silvopasture systems on site.

In 2015, Drylands Agroecology Research (DAR) took over management of 14 deeply degraded acres on the Front Range of Colorado. The unprecedented regeneration of this land set the stage for our organization to grow.

Azuraye Wycoff and family

Established in 1865, Yellow Barn Farms was originally Allen’s Farm– an international equestrian center operating as a large-scale event and boarding facility with over 50 horses and 100 riders. Yellow Barn revitalized the land for low-scale, high-quality food production, community-supported agriculture, and sustainability education. In partnership with Drylands Agroecology Research (DAR), Yellow Barn researches, implements, and practices regenerative farming, animal management, carbon sequestration, soil health, and dynamic/adaptable organizational structures.

For too long modern agriculture has ignored the call of the land, exploiting its gifts and decimating thousands of species — species integral to the health of our ecosystem — to serve a single one.

Now, it’s time to make amends with the land, its inhabitants, and its original stewards. By implementing circular, regenerative, closed-loop systems, we’re engaging in a reciprocal relationship with the land, offering services like composting, workshops, farm-to-tables, indigenous-led celebrations.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
This work is for the future. This work is so that our children can have a future. Not just any future, but a future worth getting up in the morning for. A future to take pride in, to savor, to relish, to enjoy the sweet victory of laughter that glows on late into a summer night. The taste of fruit off the vine. Together with music and the smell of warm food and smiles. That’s what we want our children to remember us by.

In the last 4 years, it has become even more clear to us the distress that so many are facing in this time. It has become even more clear what is at stake. It has become even more clear what we have to gain. But throughout, the original instructions continue to anchor us: take care of our home, this Earth; take care of each other.

The post Young Farmers Cultivating Change appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Virginia Ortiz with the GoFarm team on their farm in Colorado. Photo courtesy GoFarm

“Our vision is a strong, resilient, environmentally sustainable and equitable local food system,” says Virginia Ortiz, GoFarms executive director.

Ortiz sees GoFarm’s role as a hub that takes care of the logistics of supporting small farms and feeding the community. 

Building community partnerships is a crucial element, and GoFarm works with other food access organizations such as Hunger Free Golden and JeffCo Food Policy Council to reach more people and create a broader base of resources.

Founded in 2014, GoFarm started with its local food share program (essentially a CSA curated from multiple farms). More than a decade later, it has become an organization that trains and develops beginning farmers and creatively tackles the problem of how to get affordable, fresh food to the community. As a nonprofit, it is able to fundraise for grants and donations to support its programming and supplement that with revenue generated through produce sales. 

GoFarm’s incubator farmer program gives beginning farmers access to a quarter acre of land for the two-year duration of the program. The farmers receive all the training they need to plan, plant and manage a farm—regardless of their background. 

“The average age of current farmers is 55 to 59, and we know that, over the next 10 years, half of current farmers are going to retire, which means that we need to develop a new base,” says Ortiz. But she points out that there is a “tremendous need” for agricultural education.

Incubator farmers in an irrigation workshop. Photo courtesy of Lindsey Beatrice 

“Part of our goal is to change the paradigm of farm ownership. Currently, in Colorado, there are approximately 34,000 farms and only one percent are owned by people of color. Yet, 95 to 98 percent of farm workers are people of color, primarily Latinos,” says Ortiz, who shares that she comes from a long line of farmers and farm workers. She says she is proud that, in the farmer development program, 50 percent of participants are people of color, 65 percent are women and 40 percent self-identify as LGBTQ+.

Moses Smith of Full Fillment Farms was an engineer who had gardened before taking GoFarm’s 20-week course and joining the incubator program. “The important thing was the Whole Farm Planning course that really focused on what it takes to actually grow food,” says Smith.

“One of the biggest benefits is that they not only provide us with land access, which is very hard as a starting farmer, but they also give us a market avenue,” says Ann Poteet of Three Owls Farm. As incubator farmers are establishing their businesses and learning how to generate their own markets, they sell produce back to GoFarm. 

Ann Poteet of Three Owls Farm and Moses Smith of Full Fillment Farms.    Photo courtesy of GoFarm

GoFarm’s local food share program feeds anywhere from 500 to 800 members each summer. Members come every week to pick up their share from a few different locations where GoFarm has refrigerated shipping containers to store food after it’s delivered by farmers. Plus, GoFarm takes Chuck out and about in Denver and Jefferson counties every week to ensure they can reach underserved populations that are challenged with food insecurity, disability, transportation and other barriers, such as the communities living in designated food deserts in south Golden. 

“I have an interest in nutritional insecurity,” says Poteet, who was a nurse practitioner before starting her farm. 

“It’s been really inspiring,” says Smith about being able to see his food nourish the community through GoFarm. 

But farmer’s market prices can be high, as producers need to be fairly compensated for their labor and costs. “Customers were clear to us that having access to healthy food was critical to them and affordability was a barrier,” says Ortiz. So, in 2022, GoFarm found the funding it needed to implement a new solution that goes even further to improve accessibility for the 2,600+ households it reaches. 

Customers at its mobile markets can choose from one of three price tiers to shop that day, depending on their needs. For example, bags of mixed greens have three prices listed: $2 (purple), $3 (green) and $4 (orange). And the microgreens are even cheaper, at $1, $2 or $3 for a box. Pasture-raised eggs can be $3, $5 or $7 a carton. 

Flexible pricing sign with Chuck, the mobile market truck. Photo courtesy of Lindsey Beatrice

“You are what you eat,” says Kaylee Clinton, a first-time GoFarm mobile market shopper. “I just feel better about myself when I eat fresher.” As inflation has hit grocery stores, she says that SNAP has helped make food more affordable and she appreciates that GoFarm lets shoppers pick their price point. “I really love it. I think it’s great for everybody.” 

“Typically, I either buy green or orange. I like buying orange when I can. It’s good to have the flexible pricing,” says Ed Gazvoda, who has been shopping at GoFarm for years. “I want to live a good, long, healthy life, so it’s a personal thing, but I just love the food.”

Jess Soulis, director of the Community Food Access program, highlights that accepting SNAP’s DoubleUp Food Bucks—where shoppers essentially get a 50-percent discount—is just one way to make food more affordable. The group also partners with WIC’s Farmers Market Nutrition Program, where participants get a credit to shop. Through its market locations at Littleton Advent Hospital and Juanita Nolasco Senior Residences, the program offers shoppers $10 worth of produce for free. SNAP/DUFB account for 13 percent of its mobile market sales, but all of these incentives combined are closer to two-thirds.

“We’re building this beautiful, vibrant, local food system and we don’t want to replicate the injustices and inequities that are so prevalent in the existing food system,” says Soulis.

The vision continues to grow. The only limitation? “Infrastructure,” says Ortiz. GoFarm is currently seeking out refrigerated warehouse space along the I-70 corridor between Golden and Montbello. 

“That area is important because we need to make it accessible to farmers along the Front Range,” says Ortiz. “With that refrigerated warehouse space, we could easily source from more farmers, distribute more food and serve more communities.”

The post A Vibrant Local Food System Grows in Colorado appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There are also huge benefits to supporting new farmers. Aside from bolstering our food supply, new and young farmers tend to bring unique new perspectives to the field, including a dedication to sustainable farming methods. According to the National Young Farmers Coalition’s (NYFC’s) 2022 National Young Farmer Survey, 86 percent of young farmers practice regenerative farming—growing in harmony with nature—while 97 percent use other sustainable practices.

However, for young people interested in a career in agriculture, there can be many roadblocks in their path. The price of land continues to rise, grants and educational opportunities can be hard to come by and there’s a steep learning curve for folks who didn’t grow up in a farming family. 

With these stories, we spoke to young farmers directly about how they see farming as a viable future and what they need to succeed.

What Are the Big Issues for Young Farmers? We Asked Them

By Emily Baron Cadloff

Modern Farmer sat down with the co-founder of Young Agrarians, a farmer-to-farmer resource for young people, to find out what might hamper young folks looking to enter the agriculture industry.

Where to Get Started: A Guide For Young Farmers

By Emily Baron Cadloff

If you’re a young person looking to start a career in farming, check out these organizations.

Meet the Farmer Training Indigenous Youth and Revitalizing a Culture of Food Sovereignty

By Jennifer Cole

An Indigenous-led training hub, Tea Creek, in northern B.C. may be an answer to Canada’s looming farmer shortage.

Young Farmers Dig Into Land

By Claire Duncomb 

These new farmers get by with a little help from their friends—a co-housing community, a food co-op, and lots of trail and error.

Young People Need to Find Farming. 4-H is the Answer.

By Sara Bailey

The average age of farmers in the US is close to 60, and young farmers have trouble finding a way into the field. Programs like 4-H are the best option.

Coming soon….

Five Young Farmers Cultivating Change

From the Modern Farmer Community

We asked our community to share their favorite young farmers and we’ve profiled a few of these inspiring individuals.

The post The Future is Farmers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sam Rudman, one of the first-year farmers of Friends Farm in Lafayette, Colorado, says covering a field with fertilizer shortly before 60-miles-per-hour winds started up was definitely one of his many “rookie mistakes” as a new farmer. He clearly remembers the day in February 2024 when winds threatened to blow away hundreds of dollars in supplies and hours of hard work as a big wakeup call. 

“We got lucky,” he laughs. “And that is going to be our strategy for the rest of the year going forward, to remain lucky in regards to Mother Nature.”

Rudman and Clifford work on trellising tomato plants. Photography by Claire Duncombe.

But the Friends Farm team isn’t counting on luck alone. The three team members—Rudman, Oliver Aurand and Kevin Reiss, who met in 2023 on a nearby farm—bring backgrounds in soil science, anthropology and just over a decade of combined field hand experience. They have also tapped into an innovative community network to find land and mentorship. “Land access is the top challenge cited by current farmers, aspiring farmers and those who have stopped farming,” writes the National Young Farmers Coalition in a 2022 report.

Friends Farm is not technically located on agricultural land. The two-acre vegetable operation is owned by Nyland Cohousing Community, a 42-house community established with the aim of creating connection and supporting sustainable ideals. A former member started the farm a decade ago but became disillusioned by the inability to make a profit. In 2023, Waves of Grain Food Coop leased the land to continue the organic farm in support of its mission to provide fresh and affordable produce to communities along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. 

“Solo full-time farming two acres is an insane thing to do,” says Waves of Grain co-owner Red Clifford , especially while also running a coop. Around that time, Clifford learned of the Friend Farm crew, who were looking for land to farm at the same time Clifford was trying to find help.

It was a serendipitous moment that helped inspire Waves of Grain to use its resources to establish an incubator farm. The coop continued to lease the acreage from the cohousing community and subsidized rent for Friends Farm. It would also help sell a portion of the farm’s produce at regional farmers markets.

Waves of Grain also started mentoring the new farmers, sharing insights about the particularities of the land, preparing the produce for market and helping build the relationship with Nyland residents. The farmers appreciate the practical knowledge Clifford shares from their own mistakes the previous season.

Waves of Grain also hopes to supplement some of the supply chain aspects of a farmer’s job, so the farmers can focus more on farming. During the growing season, a farmer is often focused on the small space of ground before them. Their “view is a 36-inch bubble,” says Clifford. “It’s like basically where they’re looking on the ground to weed.” So far this season, Friends Farm has had particular success selling its salad greens and hakurei turnips.

Friends Farm is located in Lafayette, CO, along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Photography by Claire Duncombe.

But Friends Farm was also founded on the idea that farming is about more than cultivating vegetables. Aurand’s background in anthropology helped create a focus on nurturing community. So far this season, the farm has hosted nine classes covering topics such as edible landscaping and native gardening as well as community farm days, during which Nyland residents and others help work the farm and learn about growing food. In addition, the farm provides a CSA program to 20 of the Nyland residents.

Friends Farm has thrived because of help from its community, but even with support, it has learned that farming always comes with challenges. The farmers were spreading fertilizer on that windy day in February to amend a clay soil that had been compacted by years of heavy machinery use. A large weed seed bank caused problems in past years, such as the bindweed that consistently outcompetes crops. And the farm relies on municipal water for much of the season, resulting in water bills in the thousands of dollars, says Rudman.

“The concerns are not that you’re going to do a bad job and you’re going to run a bad farm,” he says. “It’s that things can go wrong. The weather can screw you over. Small mistakes can be very costly.”

Clifford and Aurand load up stakes to trellis tomato plants. Photography by Claire Duncombe.

The learning curve remains a challenge, the farmers agree. So far this year, they’ve explored more efficient ways to run the farm and fine-tuned their use of tools such as the Jang seeder, which helps speed up and space out seeds. They’ve also tried relay cropping experiments such as planting tomatoes and peppers before the other was finished growing to help optimize their planting space. Their efforts have yielded varying degrees of success. They consider the support from Waves of Grain and Nyland a leg up. Just having the buildings and irrigation set up was helpful, says Rudman. And Nyland residents have often helped fix problems with the water system.

The relationship between Nyland, Waves of Grain and Friends Farm works because of its reciprocal model, says Clifford. Nyland exchanges its land for a secure food source, and Waves of Grain provides its resources for a supply of food today and an investment to support the farming community and the food they will grow into the future.

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post Young Farmers Dig Into Land appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Dzap’l Gye’a̱win Skiik translates to busy eagle or an eagle who gets things done. A perfect name for Jacob Beaton. As an Indigenous businessman from the Tsimshian First Nation, he never imagined himself farming or teaching others. He lived a quintessentially suburban life with his wife and two sons before devastating wildfires and floods in B.C. inspired him to start thinking about climate change and food security for his family. 

In 2018, they bought Tea Creek, a 140-acre farm outside the village of Kitwanga in northern B.C. With the intent of keeping most of the property forested and only farming a few acres, they settled into farm life. But Beaton had to learn from scratch. He turned to YouTube videos and started visiting other small organic farms throughout the Pacific Northwest and as far away as Europe. 

Jacob Beaton stands in his field on Tea Creek.

“Farming, ranching, field base food production were a big part of Indigenous culture in this region that got wiped out by the Indian Act,” says Beaton. When the act was enacted in 1876, it took control over land rights and access away from Indigenous populations, which blocked most agricultural opportunities. “Immediately, from day one, our First Nations friends local to the area started dropping by, really excited that we were farming,” he says. Some remembered stories their grandparents and great-grandparents had told about farming in the area and asked Beaton to come to their communities and teach them.

But he was busy learning himself and, as he put it, there’s only one of me to go around. In 2020, the pandemic struck, and with food sovereignty top of mind for Indigenous communities in the region, it quickly became clear to the Beatons that they could do more to help their community and it was time to expand. Developing the Food Sovereignty Training Program, they invited Indigenous people interested in learning how to grow their own food to Tea Creek. 

Providing skills training in a culturally appropriate and empowering way is not an easy thing to do, but Beaton is “the eagle who gets things done.” 

Realizing that whatever was taught at Tea Creek had to translate into marketable skills and employment opportunities, Beaton enlisted support from SkilledTrade BC. Working with  employers, industry and government, Skills Trade BC approves non-public training providers, such as Tea Creek, to train and certify individuals who meet industry and government accreditation standards in their trade of choice. Tea Creek is able to offer apprenticeship programs and train an individual all the way to Red Seal certification. Recognized as the interprovincial standard of excellence in the skilled trades, it is the highest level of training in the country. 

Programs run from January to November, and they are open to Indigenous peoples 16 and up at no cost. Meals are provided and bunkhouse accommodation is available. All programs have Indigenous instructors and include carpentry, safety training, first aid, drone mapping, heavy equipment operation, cooking, horticultural training and administration. 

An aerial view of the farm. Photo courtesy of Tea Creek

Tea Creek is not a school with desks and classrooms. The land is the classroom. All courses are held outside as much as possible. Instructional cohorts are small, ranging from three to six people. This creates better opportunities for instructors and mentors to connect with trainees who in turn receive more hands-on learning experiences. 

Arriving at Tea Creek in 2020, Sheldon Good was 23 years old when he learned to repair and operate tractors. He says the experience at Tea Creek motivated him to get up during the day and do things. “The environment is really welcoming and there are really nice people taking care of everything,” he says. Acquiring skills he otherwise wouldn’t have learned, he now works at a sawmill.

Tea Creek though is more than learning to operate a backhoe or tractor. The farming methods taught here include best practices from regenerative and conventional farming. This includes learning how to make fertilizer from compost and using a tractor to till the soil. Beaton’s business savvy has him insisting that trainees leave Tea Creek with a range of economically viable farming skills. With food sovereignty top of mind, traditional Indigenous crops such as corn are grown alongside kale, broccoli and lettuce. In 2022, the first crop of Ozette potatoes was harvested. These fingerling potatoes, renowned for their nutty flavor, were brought to the Pacific Northwest from South America by Spanish settlers 200 years ago. Grown primarily by First Nations peoples, they were rarely known outside of Indigenous communities until the late 20th century.

Tea Creek in B.C. Photo courtesy of Tea Creek

In 2023, Tea Creek hosted Farmstand Fridays where 20,000 pounds of fresh mixed vegetables were distributed to Indigenous families and communities. Tea Creek also prepares and serves 100 hot meals per day to trainees and staff using vegetables from the farm. 

In 2021, Tea Creek’s first year of accredited training, 33 people graduated from Food Sovereignty Training programs. Last year, 292 Indigenous people enrolled in training programs and more than 140 graduated from at least one course. 

“Tea Creek, can solve Canada’s farmer shortage. If funded and supported in a real way, Tea Creek could be scaled with multiple training centers across the country.” Jacob Beaton

It’s estimated that, by 2033, 40 percent of all farm operators in Canada will retire. Two-thirds don’t have succession plans in place. 

“Tea Creek, I’ve been told,” says Beaton, “in the area of agriculture, outputs more people in a year than any other agricultural training program in the province.” With a waiting list of 75 First Nations from the east to west coasts eager to learn, there is no shortage of enthusiasm. 

The legacies of Canada’s Indian Act, though, are far reaching. Canada’s residential school system stripped Indigenous children of their cultural identity and language. This has caused intergenerational harm that continues to be experienced through ongoing marginalization and systemic racism.

In 2023, 93 percent of Indigenous youth attending programs at Tea Creek identified this historical trauma as a factor in their mental health challenges. Through the peer-to-peer counseling Tea Creek offers, the sense of belonging and the purpose it provides through its training, 100 percent of trainees 30 and under, in 2023, reported improvements in their mental well-being. This is Tea Creek’s real success. 

“Before I got here, I was really in a dark place,” says Justice Moore, who is featured in the film Tea Creek, part of CBC’s Absolutely Canadian documentary series. “I was getting to the point of, just, no return. That’s the only way I can put it. I wouldn’t be here if Tea Creek weren’t here. That’s a fact.”

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post Meet the Farmer Training Indigenous Youth and Revitalizing a Culture of Food Sovereignty appeared first on Modern Farmer.

There are many organizations out there, from large national groups to regional and community efforts, all working to help young farmers start their careers. Whether you’re looking for advice on organic farming or you want to try an apprenticeship or you want to understand federal policy, there’s a group for you. 

This is a (definitely non-exhaustive!) list of just a few of the organizations that can help get you started on the right path. 

Young Agrarians – This Canadian group has resources and mentorship for farmers across the country and apprenticeship programs for people in western Canada. 

National Young Farmers Coalition – This national group has 24 chapters across the US, and it has a goal of remaking the food system to be more equitable. 

Future Farmers of America  – This national student organization prioritizes agricultural education as a path to success in many fields, including farming, biology, chemistry, engineering, and more.

4H – This is a huge youth program, with more than 500,000 volunteers and six million participants. Kids complete hands-on projects, such as raising livestock.

Canadian Young Farmers Forum – This organization prioritizes education and training, with farmer-to-farmer networking. Its annual conference brings farmers from across the country together. 

Greenhorns – Based in Maine but running nationally, this organization works to reform the agriculture industry with a focus on regenerative ranching, ecological restoration and food justice. 

Junior Farmers Association of Ontario – Like many regional organizations, the JFAO works with farmers between the ages of 15 and 29 from all over Ontario, hosting monthly meetings and even an international exchange program.

Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program from the USDA – This program provides grants for education, mentorship and technical assistance. 

Young Farmers and Ranchers program from the American Farm Bureau Federation – This leadership program for young Farm Bureau members helps develop and advocate for public policies that strengthen agriculture and rural communities. 

National Farmers Union Youth Advisory Committee – This arm of the NFU represents young farmers across Canada. The group has two seats on the NFU Board of Directors, and holds events like an annual retreat.

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post Where to Get Started: A Guide For Young Farmers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For young people interested in a career in agriculture, there can be many roadblocks in their path. The price of land continues to rise, grants and educational opportunities can be hard to come by and there’s a steep learning curve for folks who didn’t grow up in a farming family.  

As we kick off our coverage of Future Farmers, we wanted to hear directly from the people facing these impediments: the young farmers themselves. What issues are they really grappling with? Is our perception of the agricultural landscape accurate or do they see a different future playing out? 

Sara Dent. Photography courtesy of @youngagrarians/Instagram.

Modern Farmer sat down with Sara Dent, co-founder of the Young Agrarians, to talk about issues young farmers face and some surprising ways we can start to solve them. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Modern Farmer: It seems that there are a lot of issues that young farmers face when starting out: cost, a knowledge gap, land access and more. Do you see a common thread that ties these issues together or does it seem like we’ll have to tackle things individually?

Sara Dent: Well, just to start, I’d like to note that I’m on Tla’amin, Klahoose and Homalco Nation land. And I think this conversation is really fascinating, because if you look before colonization, and see how the land was stewarded and the abundance of systems, you look at how colonization came in that it used up a lot of the natural resources. It broke up the people and the ecology of the landscape and parceled it into the British land title system. And now we’re in 2024, we have market failure conditions for agriculture. And there’s a low tolerance at the institutional level for recognizing those market failure conditions. 

When I first started Young Agrarians, it was really driven by enabling coordination in the sector and addressing three main barriers, which is access to land, access to capital and access to knowledge.

The piece that we could start with was access to knowledge and facilitating that through farmer-to-farmer conversations. Farmers are the ones that train new farmers and support new people to get their feet underneath them. We started working on the land access piece in 2016, and now we’re trying to increase influence around the access to capital piece, advancing policy at a municipal, federal and provincial level. But policy is really like a living body. It’s composed of everybody. It’s composed of the eaters, it’s composed of the people growing the food, it’s composed of the banks [that] are lending it to the agricultural space, governments that are regulating agricultural space and creating the eligibility criteria that evaluates the whole sector.

And we are seeing a major decline in agriculture; the farming population in Canada is very low. Indeed, the last census showed that [of the 262,455 farm operators] fewer than 23,000 were under the age of 35.  

MF: So, if policy is the most, let’s say, unwieldy of the areas of influence you mentioned, what are the policy challenges?

SD: One of the big policy challenges for new farmers in the country is that, for a lot of governments, their norm is bigger industry, the policy is really driven by bigger industry, bigger farms. But when you look at new-generation people coming in, they have to start somewhere. So, we often talk about “scale-appropriate” policy.

For young people entering the sector, people that are actually accessing land, how do we support them? And then the people who are in that startup window of your one, two, year five? And they’re all starting at different scales. But we really try to focus with government on talking about scale appropriate. The old market analysis says “the bigger the better.” But a lot of big farms have huge debt margins, and if they have a bad year, it can be really damaging for them. However, what they have going for them is if they own the land, at least they have that equity in the land. 

You can see that smaller-scale models might actually be more effective financially than larger-scale models. New farms today have to figure out what their value proposition is, they have to be really super focused to figure out how they’re going to survive and what their niches are. So, in my mind, one of these big policy shifts is understanding that bigger isn’t always better. 

Ardeo, the farmer at Rake & Radish Farm in Saanich, BC. Ardeo was matched to farmland through the B.C. Land Matching Program in 2020. Photography via @youngagrarians/Instagram

MF: You mentioned that there are three main areas that new farmers can struggle with: access to capital, knowledge and land. Let’s start with capital. Why is it more difficult for young people to get access to capital or loans?

SD: So, traditional lending is based on leveraging asset as collateral in order to get approved for a loan. If you look at new-gen farmers that are coming in, that don’t necessarily own the land, so they have nothing to offer up as collateral, and they aren’t able to access traditional lending. They can’t afford to buy the property, they can’t qualify for that mortgage and they can’t access the lending. 

What we’re working towards is getting the Canadian Agricultural Loans Act updated so that it allows character-based lending and working capital for farmers, so that they don’t have to own the land in order to access the lending program. There’s a really interesting loan program out of Quebec called FIRA, the originator of which, Paul, has done incredible work. It’s a land acquisition fund, and then they sell it back to the farmer as they get their business underneath them.

Kailli from Dancing Dandelion Farms (left) mentors Lolo from Buttercup Sandwich Florals. Photography via @youngagrarians/Instagram

But there’s a big lending gap in the country today. For example, there’s no provincial lender in British Columbia that does character-based lending. In Ontario, the Fair Finance Fund has a national fund for BIPOC candidates, because those candidates weren’t able to get their loans from the traditional lenders. For example, First Nations farmers on reserve land, they aren’t the title holder of the land, so accessing that loan capital is just not possible. 

MF: Access to land feels tied into the access to capital issue, as well. Many people just can’t afford to purchase land. 

SD: Yeah, absolutely. Every year, farmland values are published across the country, looking at the per-acre rates, and I always find the per-acre rates a little disingenuous, because you might have a per acre average rate for an entire province, but if you’re trying to buy something in northern BC versus southern BC, it’s going to be completely different per acre. 

But for people who can’t acquire the land, leasing becomes an important option for new farmers who are just getting their feet underneath them—and, you know, making sure that farming is really for them, that they have a value proposition in the business that they’re operating, that they’re working at the right scale. So, we’re running our BC Land Matching Program, putting out resource guides for farmers across the country to help them navigate that leasing space. Because when you’re leasing, you’re at risk of losing the property if the owner sells. Or what if the owner dies, what if the kids inherit the land? How do you negotiate a lease that has all the right terms in it for your agricultural operation? That’s part of the educational resource work that Young Agrarians has been doing over the last decade, to try and prepare new entrants better for leasing properties. We learned a lot from looking at the US models, like Land for Good and California FarmLink. 

MF: And then lastly, there’s access to knowledge. Young Agrarians has an apprenticeship program to pair up new farmers with working mentors to help bridge that gap. 

SD: Yeah, we work with farmers who are doing agri-ecology, who want to do education and train. I think we’ve had something like 70 farms work in the program and a little over 80 young people go through the apprenticeship program, but in the big picture, we actually need about 500 of apprenticeships and farms per province. Right now, we’re running that program in Western Canada, British Columbia to Manitoba. And the question is, will that program work at a national offering? The complexity there is finding the right farms and then also having things like housing and being well suited to being educational. 

It’s really beautiful when somebody comes in and they have this life-changing experience and the light is turned on and they’re in love with farming and that’s their pathway forward. 

MF: It must be so gratifying when it feels like a match between apprentice and farm really clicks. 

SD: That’s why I still do this work. We get notes from people regularly, like someone who took a business boot camp course, and then you talk to them two years later, and they’re operating their business. And there’s a lot of beautiful stories that have come out of the network that definitely keeps the staff going. 

Steve and Julian of Milpa Naturals are growing their farm and business with the help of the Business Mentorship Network. Photography via @youngagrarians/Instagram

MF: We’ve talked about some community-level and grassroots solutions, like your apprenticeship program. But what might solve some of these issues at a federal or policy level? 

SD: I started doing some national policy writing stuff on behalf of the organization in 2021. And I started to understand that there were a lot of people at the institutional level who were interested in these issues, but the knowledge gap (from the policy makers) was significant. 

One thing I talk a lot about is eligibility criteria for new entrants. I think that’s really important, because new farmers are totally under invested in Canada and arguably also in the United States, in North America in general, perhaps even globally. They’re extremely under invested, so getting people to think about their eligibility criteria is really key.

I could be in a meeting with somebody working on eligibility criteria for a financial loan program and I’ll say ‘could you put a $50,000 greenhouse on your credit card and then wait to get reimbursed months later?’ And many people realize, ‘oh, yeah, that’s right. I can’t do that. I can’t just go out and buy all this equipment on my credit card and wait to get repaid for it.’

So, I’ve been addressing the elephant in the room by going directly for the eligibility criteria. Because without it, the farmers that look at this application form are just never going to be able to access your programs. 

MF: That sounds like a great entry point into this conversation. 

SD: Exactly. And some of the legislation needs to change, and a lot of it is just getting the right people at the table over and over to change the cultural conversation. 

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. You can read more of this series here. 

The post What Are the Big Issues for Young Farmers? We Asked Them appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Tree shaking during late October at Sorrells Farms in Comanche, Texas. Photography courtesy of the Texas Pecan Growers Association.

Plant-based milks have proliferated in the marketplace over the past 15 years; a 2020 study notes that they accounted for 15 percent of all milk sales and 35 percent of the plant-based food category, totaling $2.6 billion in sales.

And there are a lot of milk alternatives out there. Almond, pistachio, macadamia, hazelnut, walnut, cashew, peanut, soy, pea, potato, oat and hemp are just some of the options for anyone forgoing traditional dairy. Yet, pecan milk has been largely absent from the plant milk space. 

“I feel like pecans haven’t had a place in the market because no one grower or conglomerate had a significant supply of nuts to make the milk into a national or global product,” says Kortney Chase. Growing up in southeastern New Mexico, her family would harvest pecans from their farm and make creamy milk from the buttery-tasting nuts. The family would add it to cereal or drink it straight. Years later, Chase wanted to share her love of pecan milk with the world, so she launched Pecana, in late 2023. 

Kortney Chase. Photography by Samantha Marie.

People have tried to introduce pecan milk into the plant-based space before, with varying degrees of success. In 2014, Houston’s MALK Organics became the first brand to make pecan milk, although it was later discontinued; the company now makes almond and oat milk. In 2015 and 2016, Atlanta became home to Treehouse Naturals and Pecan Milk Co-op, respectively. The former is now the only brand manufacturing canned pecan milk.

Pecana sources its pecans directly from its own farms—those same orchards in which Chase grew up. A third-generation pecan farmer, Chase’s family started Chase Pecan in Artesia, New Mexico, in 1986. In 2003, Chase Pecan relocated from New Mexico to San Saba, Texas, the self-proclaimed “Pecan Capital of the World.” The Hill Country town is home to what may be the oldest fossilized pecans on record; the remnants discovered on the banks of the Colorado River in San Saba are estimated to be at least 65 million years old.

But, the pecan holds a special place for Texans in particular; in 1919, it was declared the state tree because of its role in Texas heritage, economy and culture. Pecans were also a crucial food source for the indigenous peoples of the region, whose upriver trade routes expanded the nut’s habitat and eventual agricultural terrain. But pecan growers in Texas have faced hardship in recent years due to climate change, crop input costs, water expenses and lack of labor.

Pecan trees in Brownwood, TX. Photography via Texas Pecan Growers Association.

Chase Pecan is now the leading grower of pecans, with 13,000 cultivated acres comprised of tenant farmer-occupied estate orchards and small family farms in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, with roughly 3,000 acres of that land dedicated to organic farming. The company specializes in the Pawnee (a large, buttery variety popularized in the western states by Kortney Chase’s father, Richard) and Western Schley (a small, crunchy variety) pecans. It’s also one of the largest manufacturers of pecans, harvesting an average of 20 million pounds of nuts annually, which ensures Pecana gets a consistent supply.

 After graduating college in 2011, Chase set out to learn the manufacturing side of her family’s business, as well as doing sales and market research. “I would look at certain products like nut milk and wonder why they weren’t made with pecans,” she says.

It wasn’t until the pandemic, however, that Chase began formulating a “commercial nut milk that I wanted to drink.” While higher in fat and calories than almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and cashews, pecans make an indisputably creamy milk and, unlike oats, they don’t require the addition of canola or sunflower oil to yield a product with an equivalent consistency. 

Pecan production. Photography via Chase Pecan.

Because pecan milk is so new to the marketplace, there’s little data comparing it to other plant milks, but its lower environmental imprint and the crop’s long production cycle bode well for the future of the industry. Pecan trees take five to seven years to bear fruit, but they produce for up to 300 years. By contrast, almond trees don’t bear fruit for three years and have an average production span of 25 years, while English walnuts bear fruit in four to seven years and have a 30-year production period. 

Pecans are also wind-pollinated, which means the trees can reproduce without human or insect intervention. These cross-pollinated trees yield larger, higher-quality orchard nuts (commercial pecan varieties are hybrids developed through controlled pollination). 

Almonds, by contrast, require pollinators for reproduction. California produces 80 percent of the global almond crop, which is aided by the importation of European honeybees, which then compete with and displace native species. Imported bees also die in large numbers due to pesticide exposure, parasites and disease. 

Nuts litter the ground after tree shaking at Sorrells Farms in Comanche, Texas. The workers at Sorrells Farms will now come through with harvesting equipment to collect the fresh crop. Photography via Texas Pecan Growers Association.

Regardless of the type of plant milk you consume, “all tree nuts and legumes are, generally speaking, far more sustainable from orchard to manufacture than any milk from an animal,” says Dana Ellis Hunnes, a dietitian and assistant professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. “However, the degree of sustainability for one nut or legume to another varies as some are more water intensive than others, but tree nuts are a carbon sink because trees pull carbon out of the atmosphere and into their roots. Plant milks also require 50-percent less water and up to 10-percent less land than cow’s milk and produce minimal greenhouse gasses.”

While dairy milk shouldn’t be demonized, it does come with a more significant environmental footprint. “The primary reason is that you have to feed a pregnant or lactating animal more food, and this is inefficient,” says Hunnes. “When you consider the water use, emissions produced by the animals themselves and land use, plant milks will always win.”

The post Meet the Pecan Farmer Who Wants to Change the Plant-Based Milk Scene appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As a host to the larvae of the endangered Fender’s Blue Butterfly, Kincaid’s lupine was declared a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2000. Only found in small areas of prairie grassland west of the Cascade Mountains, Mallonee Farms is the northernmost epicenter for the lupine in the US. 

Kincaid’s Lupine (Photo courtesy of Washington Natural Heritage Program)

All across North America, endangered plant species and wildlife are struggling to survive on agricultural land. The United Nations Environment Programme has pegged the global food system and its encroachment on wildlife habitats, along with its use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, as directly threatening 86 percent of species at risk of extinction worldwide. In the United States, more than 50 percent of threatened or endangered species are vital pollinators such as the Fender’s Blue Butterfly. Without pollinators to fertilize berry crops, orchards or field crops such as squash, all of us eaters are also endangered. But, it’s not always easy for growers to identify those species at risk on their properties.

Until its discovery in 2004 by an eagleeyed employee of Washington State’s Department of Natural Resources cycling past one of the farm’s pastures, Maynard Mallonee had no idea the lupine on the family property was endangered.

NatureServe is a US-based not-for-profit organization that acts as a clearinghouse for biodiversity data. Through remote sensing such as wildlife cameras, collaring of wildlife, satellite imagery, drones, geographic information systems (GIS) and on-the-ground eyewitness observations, analysts can predict where wildlife and plant species at risk might be on agricultural land. 

Compiled into maps, the information is used by government agencies such as state departments of natural heritage, fish and wildlife services, conservation organizations and individuals across North America to tailor responses that support at-risk species. These might include, as in the case of the Mallonee Farm, adopting rotational grazing practices or, in other instances, altering haying schedules. But nothing is full-proof and the surveying of private land is, after all, voluntary. 

“We can’t survey everywhere,” says Regan Smyth, vice-president of conservation and science for NatureServe, “which makes a lot of things hard to know.” 

A still image of the NatureServe Explorer Pro interactive map that allows users to explore documented at-risk species by area and by species. The dark red hexagons represent an area with greater than 2,000 species and lightest hexagons representing an area with less than 25 species. (Image courtesy of NatureServe)

She also admits that when it comes time to do on-the-ground surveys to verify the predictive data, growers can get a little ornery about sharing information. They worry about the inconveniences it might cause to production. After the lupine was discovered on the Mallonee family farm, the Department of Fish and Wildlife told Maynard Mallonee to come up with a rotational grazing plan for his cattle that protected the lupine.

“It’s big government telling you what to do,” says Mallonee, “and if you don’t do what they want, they can make life difficult.” 

For the most part, Smythe says people managing land care about it and want to do the right thing. “Once people understand working lands need to be part of the picture of how we keep a diversity of life on the planet, then those who might in other circumstances not want people traipsing around their property become collaborators with Natural Heritage programs,” she says.

In Utah, the Wildlands Network uses mapping data to predict the migration corridors of wildlife. Hunter Warren is engagement coordinator for the organization and concurs with Smythe that there can be a mixed reaction from landowners when they learn that a migrating herd of mule deer, for example, will be stomping through their property. But once they learn that any adjustments needed to support the wildlife, such as replacing barbed wire fencing with fencing that won’t snag and harm an animal, will be paid for by the organization, they become more receptive.

Migrating herds of deer or elk, for example, can, through their grazing and trampling of the ground, break down organic matter into the soil, releasing nutrients that benefit crop production. Plants such as Kincaid’s lupine through their root systems create pathways in the soil that allows for enhanced water filtration and carbon sequester. 

Bryan Gilvesy is CEO of the Alternative Land Use Services Program (ALUS), a non-profit organization working to help fund grower’s initiatives in six Canadian provinces and in Iowa that protect species at risk. He relates how in Southern Ontario a farmer discovered his hay field was home to 250 bobolinks, a bird assessed as being of special concern in Canada by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and listed under the Species at Risk Act. A ground nesting bird, the bobolink prefers grasslands and prairies to lay its eggs. As more land is converted for agricultural use, the bobolink’s traditional nesting areas have become endangered. Combine or tractor harvesting destroys eggs and can even result in the deaths of birds. ALUS worked with the farmer to alter the haying schedule so that the fledgling bobolinks had time to grow. 

“The farmer got a more mature hay crop and was rewarded financially,” says Gilvesy.

A report by The American Farmland Trust has concluded that managed agricultural land can support both food production and wildlife. It advocates for a broader approach to mapping biodiversity on agricultural land and enlisting the help of farmers and ranchers to do it with policies that embrace the USDA’s legacy of voluntary, incentive-based and locally led conservation. 

On the Mallonee farm, the latest mapping shows a 33-percent increase in the lupine’s population. And although the farm’s grazing plan is having to be constantly updated and re-filed with the Department of Fish and Wildlife to accommodate the spread, Mallonee is happy he took the time and effort to protect the plant. 

 “In the beginning, maybe I might not have,” he says. But, without question, Mallonee is happy he did. The benefits of taking action to protect the lupine have been worth it. “The dairy farm is better managed through the rotational grazing methods we’ve developed,” he says.

The post A Win for Growers Who Protect Biodiversity on Agricultural Land appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In 1992, Jeff Ditzenberger walked into an abandoned building near his farm in Monroe, Wisconsin and lit it on fire. His intent was that he wanted to die in there, but as the building continued to go up in flames, he changed his mind and escaped the blaze. 

Later charged with arson, he was able to get help in a psychiatric ward, where he was able to talk without judgment. However, with those he knew, Ditzenberger found it less embarrassing to have a felony on his record than to admit that he was attempting suicide, and he kept it a secret for years. 

In 2014, Ditzenberger, wrote a blog post about those moments for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau to bring awareness to his and others’ struggles. It went viral. A year later, he started an informal support group called TUG.S, which stands for Talking, Understanding, Growing, Supporting. The name was inspired by his time in the Navy on a large displacement ship, where, when things went awry, they would call in a small tugboat for help. He thought: “Why can’t life be like that?”

Now a community nonprofit with a bricks-and-mortar location in Monroe, TUGS works directly with individuals and community groups that emphasize peer connection and support, letting them know that “it’s OK not to be OK.” Due to media attention over the years, the nonprofit receives calls for peer support not just from Wisconsin but from all over the world. 

“Farmers have always been stoic, prideful people that don’t want to talk about stuff,” says Ditzenberger. “The stigma around mental health is what is causing us to not have the conversation. We all need that tugboat that we can call, that can throw a life preserver and pull us to shore safely.”

Part of the work of TUGS is also mental health training to better understand how to handle situations where someone might be struggling. “You don’t have to have a BS behind your name to help people in need; you just need to be able to ask questions.”

Photography via Shutterstock.

At risk

According to the National Rural Health Association, farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population. A recent CDC study of occupational suicide risk also found that male farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers had a suicide rate more than 50 percent higher than the overall suicide rate of men in all surveyed occupations.

Farming and ranching are physically and emotionally demanding jobs with high risks of chronic stress, anxiety and depression due to a number of challenging factors—many out of their control—including extreme weather, outbreaks of pests and diseases and market volatility. Many deal with the stresses of potentially losing farms that have been in their family for generations. 

With all of these pressures, there are also several barriers to getting help, including stigma and many producers feeling like they should be able to handle the situation themselves. Along with a lack of anonymity in small towns, there’s also often a lack of access to proper providers or support in rural areas. According to a survey from the American Farm Bureau Federation, 46 percent of farmers and farmworkers surveyed said it was difficult to access a therapist or counselor in their local communities. The rest of the survey also revealed barriers due to cost prohibitiveness of treatment and embarrassment. 

As a response, Ditzenberger’s organization is one of many across the US that has emerged to provide mental health training and peer-to-peer support in person and online.

Seeds of Wellbeing at the 2023 AgrAbility conference.

Prioritizing peer-to-peer

In January, the Farm Family Wellness Alliance, a coalition of organizations including the American Farm Bureau, announced the availability of Togetherall, an anonymous, clinically moderated online peer-to-peer community with a special section for farmers and ranchers. Typically expensive, the alliance came together to make Togetherall free for farm country.

“In a peer-to-peer community, you seek that sense of belonging and that sense of being able to express yourself without judgment,” says Jessica Cabrera, staff lead for the American Farm Bureau’s Farm State of Mind campaign. 

Clinicians monitor posts 24-7 and are available to talk privately if necessary. If support needs to be escalated, they will be referred to someone who specializes in agricultural support. 

There are also courses for self-assessment, as well as access to services outside the platform, including consultants that handle legal, financial, childcare and many other concerns. “It’s important to keep working to break the stigma around mental health challenges and just encourage people to reach out for help,” says Cabrera, who adds that the American Farm Bureau has already seen a 22-percent shift in farmers being more comfortable talking about mental health. 

Learning to speak the language

Learning to take on the mental health challenges of farmers is a specialized and intricate process. In 2003, a group of rural nurses formed AgriSafe to offer that training to health-care providers. 

“People in ag tell us that they don’t want to have to explain their work,” says Tara Haskins, who oversees Agrisafe’s Total Farm Health initiative and mental health programming. “They don’t need to get advice to take a couple [of] weeks off, which is self-defeating.” The organization created training that gives health-care professionals a peek into the agriculture field and the challenges that come with it. They can then better understand what drives the mental health crisis.

The nonprofit has since partnered with the University of Kentucky to develop agriculture-centric training in QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer), a suicide prevention training program. AgriSafe has done the training on webinars with more than 2,000 people all over the US and Canada. 

Haskins says anyone who is connected with somebody in agriculture could benefit from the program. People are often afraid they might say the wrong thing to someone who is suicidal, but training helps develop those skills. She also says farmers they’ve interviewed who either attempted suicide or thought about it wished for someone to reach out. 

A workshop held by Seeds of Wellbeing.

Cultivating community

“Ultimately, it’s about preventing suicide, but we don’t want to wait until that happens. We want to go all the way upstream, and that takes both skill and effort,” says Dr. Thao Le.

Le is the project director for Seeds of Wellbeing (SOW), a farmer wellness initiative through the University of Hawai’i Manoa, which provides peer-to-peer support through a growing Ag Mentor training program. 

The program, which started more than two years ago, began with a survey of more than 400 farmers across the archipelago to study the state of mental health in Hawai’i’s agriculture scene. The results that came back showed that many were under a lot of pressure, with one third suffering from depression. 

Le wanted to start a project that builds relationships and creates safe spaces for that to unfold.

The program has 62 mentors across the Hawaiian Islands. The mentors can be reached individually, but they also hold regular meetings on their respective islands for community workdays and potlucks. There is also an additional Ag Navigators program that requires navigators to visit two farms monthly for six months to build relationships.

Le says the program allows the mentors to become role models with their willingness to be open and vulnerable. “[This] is the crisis of our time,” says Le. “We really do need a solution to help build community and leaders to help us navigate.”

“Everybody struggles with basic needs, the frustration to navigate the bureaucracy, policy and legislation, the crazy financial restraints,” says Le.

Le is waiting to hear about a $2.5-million federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to fund the next three years, which involves not just training for farmers but also first responders.

“We need to have more innovative ways to do this, because we will never have enough mental health professionals; there [are] never going to be enough first responders. Each of us needs to cultivate being a place of refuge for other people.”

The post Farmers Face a Mental Health Crisis. Talking to Others in the Industry Can Help appeared first on Modern Farmer.