Ghiorse had stopped cooking professionally by the time she had moved back to her hometown of Greenwich in 2014; years of cooking at scale had been physically demanding and stressful, and she was ready to expand her knowledge and skills. But she felt she had lost her platform to connect with the food system in an impactful way.

She began learning about the area’s food system and volunteering with local endeavors like the town’s sustainability committee. The committee helps guide Greenwich in advancing sustainable policies and practices that impact its natural environment, economy, and community. As chair of the committee’s food systems sector, she noticed “a gap,” she says, “in general awareness of the deeply ingrained, harmful impacts of our industrial food system.”

So, in 2020, she founded The Foodshed Network (TFN), an educational and convening platform to encourage residents in her hometown of Greenwich, CT, and surrounding Fairfield County to become food system changemakers.

“Our food system is so complicated,” says Ghiorse. “It’s very important to know and understand the impacts of our industrial system and then to understand the huge amounts of creativity, connectivity, and community that happens around food.”

Living in the activist hotbed of San Francisco’s Mission District helped her realize the connection between systemic racism and food access. “It’s fraught with deeply rooted practices of exploitation,” says Ghiorse, “beginning with the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and extraction of soil watersheds, and natural and social ecosystems.

“I learned about the importance of bridge building, network weaving, cross pollinating between initiatives, and convening people around food, and,” she emphasizes, “using the power of gathering as a lever for social change and healing.”

To address all of these distinct yet intersecting issues, TFN is made up of several sub-organizations, including the Greenwich Food Alliance (GFA), The Foodshed Forum, and a resource library. The GFA is a community of practice, assembling business leaders and government officials in an informal group bound by shared interests and expertise. Members network, share ideas, and learn about issues and advocate for policy surrounding food, such as making SNAP benefits available at nearby farmers markets. The Foodshed Forum is the educational arm, partnering with organizations to host events such as a current three-part lecture series entitled “Heritage Foodways: Seed, Hearth & Taste” at local libraries.

The resource library, available on the website, offers a wealth of information including Thirty Ways to be a Food System Changemaker, concrete suggestions people can take to be changemakers. There’s also a monthly newsletter.

Ghiorse runs TFN full-time; it’s self-funded on a shoestring budget, but she is working towards non-profit status and finding a fiscal sponsor so she can begin fundraising.

Myra Klockenbrick, land and water Sector chair of the Greenwich Sustainability Committee and co-director of Greenwich Pollinator Pathway, credits Ghiorse with bringing up a conversation that is not natural to Greenwich. Although Greenwich is particularly affluent, the town has initiatives such as community gardens and a food pantry, as 29 percent of the community experiences financial hardship.

“She’s really deepened our awareness of the diversity in our population,” says Klockenbrick. “She has this knack and grace of not being on her high horse, but educating us deeply about our food system, both good and bad in ways that aren’t scolding but always uplifting.”

“Ali’s brought this food system conversation to Greenwich,” says Sarah Coccaro, the Town of Greenwich’s assistant director of environmental affairs. “There was conversation around food systems,” she adds, “but there wasn’t any framing or awareness of the food system with a sort of equitable racial justice lens on it.”

Coccaro says food systems topics are being integrated into conversations within the town’s Conservation committee, and that she sees the context that TFN offers helping residents understand the industrial food system’s impact. She mentions a new Grow A Row effort in which community members grow an extra row of food in their gardens to donate. “People are starting to connect dots around food systems and how it needs to change and what they can do on a local level or regional level,” she says, “and I’m proud to see that change happening.”

Ghiorse aspires to create a culture shift where food, land, and seed sovereignty are the norm. That’s “the North Star for me, where people and community reclaim our collective commons,” she sas. “That’s fertile soil, clean waterways, and nutrient-rich woodlands that are accessible and available to everyone as a human right. That’s foundational.”

The post Spotlight On a Network Aiming to Make Everyone a Food Changemaker appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sherman is no stranger himself to the environmental and economic challenges of running an aquaculture business. Island Creek is a vertically integrated oyster operation, meaning it both farms and distributes its own oysters. But he’s still intent on turning the tides of the canning industry. In July, Sherman announced the launch of his latest venture, the Island Creek Cannery, the first ever single-origin canning facility of its kind in the US.

Long before the pandemic sent American appetites seaward, stoking our interest in convenient, high-end canned fish, Island Creek—a primarily fresh seafood business—had its eye on the tin. “We’ve always been interested in democratizing oysters and shellfish in general,” says Sherman. In 2016, Island Creek opened The Portland Oyster Shop—the company’s first full-service restaurant—in downtown Portland, Maine. But the raw bar-only concept was running lean, and Sherman quickly realized he needed another food option to bulk out the menu that wouldn’t require a setup to make hot food. Taking cues from already-established tin-centric restaurants such as NYC’s Maiden Lane and Boston’s haley.henry, Sherman opted for serving conservas, a culinary delicacy popular across the Mediterranean, whereby seafood is preserved in brines, olive oils, and other flavorful sauces. Conservas store indefinitely and require little back-of-house labor, an operational boon. But would the market find them satisfying? “I was convinced at that point that it was just not going to work, but people really responded to [the conservas],” says Sherman. “That gave us a pretty good indicator that this thing has some legs.”

To meet the newfound customer demand for tinned fish, Island Creek began importing, distributing, and co-branding its own line of conservas for Conservas Mariscadora, a collective of independent female shellfish harvesters—or mariscadoras—in Galicia, Spain who harvest fully traceable seafood from the waters of the Cantabrian Sea. While relatively new to the US market, in Spain, conservas are ubiquitous. “The Spanish eat a ton of seafood,” says Sherman, who began traveling the country researching sustainable fish farms on an Eisenhower Fellowship in 2018. “When we eat french fries, they’re eating shellfish.” Thus, canning became a necessary innovation, entrenching itself into Spanish culture. Sherman noticed this most starkly while shopping at El Corte Inglés, where tin after tin of conservas stocked four full aisles’ worth of grocery store shelves. “The octopus section was bigger than the soup section at most American grocery stores,” says Sherman.

That’s when things began to gel for Sherman. For Island Creek, a company familiar with the challenges of manufacturing a seasonal product, packing seafood in tins presented a shiny solution. By canning stateside, they could pack their seasonal product at peak quality while creating inventory that could be sold year-round at a good value. Additionally, the growing popularity of conservas in the US meant the demand for high-quality fish aligned with the company’s own standards.

Located in the historic fishing community of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the Island Creek Oyster Cannery is a small operation with big ambitions. Blending Island Creek Oysters’ already established brand of sustainable aquaculture with the American market’s newfound hunger for high-quality, shelf-stable seafood, Island Creek is resurrecting a dormant US tradition that’s existed since the 1800s—albeit repurposing it with Mediterranean ideals to meet the needs of the contemporary market.

While Island Creek has built an entire business out of fresh oysters, it hasn’t yet canned any. “Oyster supply has been pretty tight,” says Sherman, which drives the prices up. “They’re also the most difficult shellfish to can well.” Instead, the company is focused on farming clams, as well as sourcing from other New England seafood producers it’s met and vetted, such as Cherrystone Aqua-Farms in Virginia. “We’re definitely branching out, but we’re trying to keep everything single-origin, single-producer, and we’re trying to keep everything working with responsible harvesters and farmers that meet our standards,” says Sherman. The term “single-origin” is used broadly across the specialty food and beverage space (think chocolate, coffee, and whiskey) and refers to foods from a specific farm, location, or source. The same is true in aquaculture. It’s a strong marker of fish and seafood traceability—and thus, quality.

Having a cannery in the US that sources seafood exclusively from American shores presents a significant opportunity for American seafood producers. Island Creek is confident that this venture will support coastal communities across the United States by providing a stable, year-round supply of seafood. This steady inventory will benefit the numerous seafood-related businesses that are a major part of the East Coast’s fishing economy.

“Since we’ve publicized the cannery, I’ve had half the medium- to small-scale seafood producers in the Northeast reach out to me about handling their product,” says Sherman. “We just now need to connect the dots and make the demand there as well. I think we’re doing that, but it’s brick by brick.” To boost the lowbrow reputation of canned fish that still dominates much of the US market, Island Creek is choosing to can in European format tins—generally wider and shallower than a typical tuna or cat food tin—which he hopes will telegraph the quality of the product and justify the premium price point.

With little in the way of tradition in the United States, the tinned fish market is still finding its sea legs; Sherman notes there is “some chaos in the market” with tinned fish prices ranging anywhere from $4 to $30, but the company is making strides towards its goal of democratizing shellfish. “I didn’t think we would sell to 800 chefs around the country every week…but honestly, we sell a ton of tin fish to chefs and restaurants that aren’t tinned fish restaurants. They’re using them as an ingredient in a pasta dish, or on rice. And they’re using it because they don’t have the labor and the shucking and the steaming and the sauce making,” says Sherman. He is confident that other canneries like his will follow suit, especially along the East Coast where fish stocks and shellfish farms are abundant.

However, Sherman is candid about the challenges that lie ahead: In countries such as Spain and Portugal, where most canneries are run by generations of families, labor costs are a fraction of those in the United States. Nevertheless, canning has long been, and continues to be, a revolutionary process with a significant impact on ensuring sustainable aquaculture practices and preserving local fishing communities that rely on canning during the off-season. It also benefits consumers, who can enjoy high-quality seafood at a more reasonable price point than fresh seafood. Says Sherman, “We’re blazing the trail—for better or worse.”

The post Spotlight On a Cannery Trying to Revive A Dormant Fishing Tradition appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The selection has not only introduced Martinez to new ingredients, such as eggplant, but she’s learned to cook with them thanks to her children, who receive free classes through their school. “They make broccoli soup. They like cauliflower,” she says. “You don’t think of kids liking Brussels sprouts and these kids love them now.”

The pantry is just one location in Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County’s network of nearly 300 distribution sites; the 41-year-old organization serves an average of 430,000 people per month who are experiencing food insecurity.

About three years ago, the southern California food bank added something novel to its system: a 40-acre farm. 

At Harvest Solutions Farm in Irvine, fresh produce is grown specifically to be distributed to Second Harvest’s partners such as the school pantry. Since its inception in August 2021, the property has produced more than five million pounds of nutritious food for the surrounding community.

“There is a symbolism in the fact that we are growing [locally] , that we are growing food right here that is going from farm to food bank to table in 48 to 72 hours,” says Second Harvest CEO Claudia Bonilla Keller. “Those that need the most help are getting some of the best food that we could ever hope to procure.”

Most food banks operate by gathering unwanted and donated food and distributing them to food pantries and other programs so the people who need the sustenance are able to access it. But those donations can be tenuous. Recently, inflation and supply chain issues have made it even more difficult to maintain operations—particularly at a level that addresses the rising need. 

Seventeen million US households experienced food insecurity at some point in 2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture, a number that grew as a result of the pandemic. 

Harvest Solutions Farm, which operates on University of California South Coast Research and Extension Center (REC) land, grows various crops throughout the year—from cabbage and broccoli to zucchini and watermelon—that is then harvested and driven two miles to the food bank’s warehouse, allowing the organization to quickly distribute the perishable goods throughout the county. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship. Second Harvest gains access to free land (the organization pays for water use and some equipment), and the soil health of UC’s otherwise unused plots is supported. Because the farm relies primarily on volunteers—an average of 170 per week—there’s also an educational component: The community has the chance to connect with farming and food in a way that shopping at a grocery store can’t offer. “People are losing touch with agriculture,” says Darren Haver, director of the REC system and interim director of South Coast REC. “This partnership allows a lot of volunteers that would have never set foot in an agricultural field to actually experience it and learn about it and have a greater understanding of that.” 

Volunteers, in turn, help make the project economically feasible. “The most innovative thing about it is the produce is affordable to a food bank, to us, because the labor is done by volunteers and that allows us to take [the food] in at prices that are competitive with the state co-op, (under 30 cents per pound on average, on par with the California Association of Food Banks),” says Keller. “It’s a relatively small part of our supply chain in all honesty, but it is one that we 100 percent control.”

The farm also reinforces Second Harvest’s mission to provide dignified access to food and nutritional security, which is not only making sure people like Martinez and her family have consistent access to food but ensuring that the fare is truly healthy. “It’s something that is not only going to feed your family but nourish your family,” says Keller.

Although Harvest Solutions isn’t the first of its kind (other farm-to-food-bank programs exist across the country, including at Seeds of Hope in Los Angeles, South Plains Food Bank in Texas and Golden Harvest Food Bank in Georgia), the scale of the farm is unique. And it’s something those involved think can be replicated elsewhere, particularly with strong partnerships in place.

“The model that we’ve had around the country and almost around the world is that our expired, rejected, quality-impacted foods are made available to food banks at discounted prices or for free and we pat ourselves on the back thinking that we’re addressing waste,” says A.G. Kawamura, the former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture and chairman of the nonprofit Solutions for Urban Agriculture. Kawamura, a farmer himself, started other, smaller versions of Harvest Solutions and was integral in getting the project up and running. Within a season, he says, efforts like this one can “really attack the problem of hunger head-on and make such a big dent in it immediately.”

This matters to community members such as Martinez, who was homeless with her five kids for about two years. Some of the food banks she visited would give her canned food, for which she didn’t have the ability to open, eat or cook. She would return to the places that had fresh produce.

The family has been settled in an apartment for two years, and the school-based pantry has been incredibly beneficial to her, both for the convenience (it’s accessible year-round) and the quality and variety of the produce. Her kids sometimes walk straight to the kitchen to show her their latest cooking skills. The weekly box also allows her to stretch her budget to other necessities, such as proteins beyond chicken, which is what her budget limited her to before. “This program,” she says, “has helped me tremendously in a lot of ways.”

The post Spotlight On the Community Fridge and Pantry Growing Its Own Produce appeared first on Modern Farmer.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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? 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

What if these food-insecure households—more than 13 percent of the county’s population—could access the abundant provision literally dropping from trees in their neighbors’ backyards?

“Food deserts—places like Phoenix, particularly—need to be more proactive about our own generation and capture of resources,” says Jérémy Chevallier, Phoenix resident and founder of Homegrown, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making local food more accessible to the surrounding community. Through a network of volunteers, farmers markets, food banks and grocery stores, Homegrown is channeling excess fruit from homeowners’ trees to food-insecure residents in and around Phoenix.

As a 31-year-old serial entrepreneur with a background in tech and marketing, Chevallier is an unlikely candidate to propose such an earthly solution. But unpredictable food availability during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns prompted him to consider how he could gain more control over his food supply.

“I recognized that many people were starting to pay attention to not only where their food was coming from but specifically getting it from as local of a source as possible… ideally their garden or their neighbor’s garden,” he says. “And I started wondering: How close is my neighborhood to operating as a self-sustaining village?”

It’s a critical question given the state of food access in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located. The county contains 55 food deserts—areas in which residents have limited opportunities to purchase healthy, affordable food—and 43 are in Phoenix.

But despite the area’s issues with drought, the city has access to a canal system that provides a ready source of irrigation. Combined with copious sunlight and compostable waste, this system creates a “goldmine of opportunity” that Chevallier believes Homegrown can leverage to transform the area into a hub of local food production.

When properly maintained, fruit trees can maintain plentiful production for decades—production that exceeds the needs of a single household. And Chevallier quickly discovered that homeowners are more than happy to let someone take the surplus off their hands, especially when they know it’s being distributed to local residents in need.

His efforts are already paying off. During the 2023 citrus season, Homegrown’s core team of six harvested thousands of pounds of excess citrus, raised more than $5,000 for the nonprofit and sold more than $2,600 worth of fruit, juice and homemade marmalades at farmers markets. Wholesale orders from local grocers netted another $1,346.

Money from sales and donations goes directly back into the nonprofit to pay the team and purchase supplies and equipment. As its capacity expands, Homegrown will be able to deliver even more food to underserved residents in the Phoenix area. Currently, the nonprofit donates harvested citrus to partners such as Feed Phoenix, which serves 500 to 700 people every week through free community events, and the Arizona Food Bank Network, a system of food banks and pantries that feed more than 450,000 food-insecure residents across the state.

And fruit is just the beginning: Chevallier also has his eye on the Phoenix Valley’s bountiful pecan trees, olive trees and date palms. But despite the plentiful supply, he’s concerned the area isn’t ready to sustain itself solely on locally grown food—a goal he sees as essential to long-term food security.

Part of the problem lies in the city’s construction. Pavement and buildings create an urban heat island that raises local temperatures and contributes to drought conditions, making the area unsuitable for consistent food production.

Chevallier says permaculture can address the problem. Short for “permanent agriculture,” permaculture replaces traditional landscaping and gardens with “a diverse, integrated system that doesn’t look like rows of trees over here and crops over here,” he says. “It looks like a forest.” The greenery in these food forests mitigates the heat island effect and creates milder microclimates where food crops can flourish. By combining permaculture with food harvest and distribution, Chevallier hopes to usher in a future where neighborhoods can sustain themselves without the need for commercial food production.

To help the movement toward complete food security blossom in the Phoenix area, Chevallier launched Permascaping.com and started a “Grants for Gardeners” program. Interested hobby farmers and animal keepers can apply for resources to establish and support self-sustaining permaculture installations in their backyards.

“The reason Homegrown exists is to make homegrown food accessible to anybody who wants it,” says Chevallier. “[And] a lot of times, what’s holding people back from doing more [with gardening] is simply the resources.” He wants to use Homegrown’s grants to provide the money and space for local growers to feed themselves and their communities.

Chevallier recognizes that expanding his self-described “idealistic hippie vision” will take time, and Homegrown needs additional support to make it happen. He’s currently on the hunt for more distribution partners to help channel the “absurdly huge” fruit supply into the wider community. Fellow advocates of homegrown food can also make tax-deductible donations to fund the nonprofit’s efforts.

But ideally, Chevallier wants to connect with people with the resources and enthusiasm to bring Homegrown’s vision to life in communities nationwide. “What I would love to do is for Homegrown to … be a chapter-based organization,” he says. “If we can set an example of what’s possible in Phoenix, in one of one of the harder places to do this, then we know that we can inspire people and … expand that model.”

And he’s more than happy to share the processes he’s established over the last year to enable new chapters to take root and spread. “I want people to realize that this food is homegrown, that it didn’t come from a commercially managed and owned grove or orchard, but that it came from someone’s backyard,” he says. “That, to me, is the biggest impact we have the opportunity to make, to bring people together over that shared store of value.”

The post Spotlight On the Arizona Nonprofit Working to Transform Urban Food Deserts appeared first on Modern Farmer.

On this particular afternoon, Cameron Rentsch is pedaling an e-bike through Missoula’s University District. Hitched to the back of the bike is a narrow trailer, holding three tall receptacles for collecting food scraps. They won’t all get filled today as this route is quick—only eight stops. Rentsch follows a map marked with the addresses and, at each house, picks up a small white bucket filled with organic waste—apple cores, coffee grounds, wilted roses—and dumps the bucket into one of the receptacles on the back of the trailer. 

Rentsch does this work for Soil Cycle, a compost-based nonprofit. Monday through Friday, Soil Cycle sends its cyclists out on the road, picking up food scraps from houses and businesses and taking them back to its facility. Not only do Soil Cycle’s staff pick up the food scraps, but a few times a year, its customers can pick up the end result: compost for their home gardens. What’s more, they do it all on bicycles, keeping the transportation sustainable. In 2023, Soil Cycle diverted more than 49,680 pounds of food scraps from the landfill. It’s a circular, closed-loop system. 

Meeting a need

When Caitlyn Lewis was in graduate school at the University of Montana, there was no municipal food waste collection system in Missoula. So, after graduation, she decided that’s where she wanted to focus her energy. As a result, she founded Soil Cycle.

“I was sick of throwing my veggies away when I was cooking, and I was adulting a little bit more and cooking with more fresh produce and thinking about my waste stream a little bit more than maybe I did when I was in high school. And there was nowhere to put it.”

Missoula is far from the only city to have a community compost program, but Soil Cycle stands out for its focus on sustainable transportation. There are a handful of other communities that also have bike-powered food scraps collection, such as BK Rot in New York City and Peels & Wheels in New Haven, Connecticut. Soil Cycle has gone through several different mission shifts since its founding, but the bicycle transport has remained one of the core values, says Lewis. 

“We figured we can meet as many issues in our city with one organization…soil health, food waste, carbon sequestration and sustainable transportation,” says Lewis. “It really is an example of how to do business in a different way.”

A few times a year, Soil Cycle is able to give the actual compost back to the customers.

“We’re creating this fertilizer that you can use on your houseplants and in your garden, and they can see firsthand how they’re making a difference,” says Elisabeth Davidson, executive director of Soil Cycle. “And I think that’s probably the biggest part in closing that loop. It’s people seeing the product that’s created by the food waste.”

Even a few years ago, the mindset around composting felt different in Missoula, says Lewis. When she started Soil Cycle, there were about 10 people who signed up right away. But others took some convincing.

“The rest were like, well, why do I need to compost? Why should I pay a service a fee to collect it? Why do you make compost?” says Lewis.

While limiting food waste is best for the environment, redirecting wasted food away from landfills is the next best option. Research from the EPA in 2023 found that 58 percent of landfill-produced methane came from wasted food. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Composting integrates oxygen into the equation, minimizing the methane produced when done correctly.

As more municipalities have created food scrap pick-ups and compost services, the directionality is often one-way. People let their food scraps be collected at the curb, says Davidson, and then their involvement ends. She hopes more people will start to wonder where those food scraps end up. 

“I wish folks just knew more about where their food was going after they threw it in the compost bin,” says Davidson. “It gets sent off and then [people are] like, ‘OK, I did my part.’ And that’s true, they did do their part. But looking throughout the system, you need to think down the line of OK, where’s my food waste going after this? How is it being processed? And how is it being distributed?”

Beyond Soil Cycle and Missoula, many cities have programs where you can purchase or get compost for free, making the process more full circle. In Bozeman, Montana, Happy Trash Can Compost collects food scraps and sells the finished compost back to the community. In Los Angeles, LA Compost provides several options for obtaining free compost, through farmers markets, co-ops or community hubs. Even some of the food scraps collected through the municipal program in Portland, Oregon are processed by Recology Organics, which will sell its compost products retail.

What’s next

A little before 4 pm, Rentsch finishes the route and pulls the e-bike to a stop in front of the gate surrounding Soil Cycle’s headquarters. Dropping off the food scraps and cleaning out the receptacles is the only thing left to do today.

“We can’t save every piece of fruit—organic materials are organic and they will decompose,” says Lewis. “But we should honor them and we should make the best-quality fertilizer we can.” 

Meanwhile, Lewis, who in recent years has also started a flower farm called Blue Mountain Flowers, has realized that there are some additional challenges to composting at the farm level—for example, an abundance of organic material can be hard to “turn,” a critical part of composting, if you don’t have heavy equipment. One of her goals for the coming year is to design a composting system that is easy to manage for farmers and is replicable across small farms.

“It’s a passion project of mine to create a composting system that can be replicated for small farmers,” she says. “And there’s ways to do it, without putting [in] a ton of time. You just have to be creative.”

Since Soil Cycle is hyperlocal, there’s no competition with nearby municipalities. A company or initiative doing the same thing in the next town over is a collaborator, not a rival. 

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be bicycle-powered and identical to what we’re doing,” says Davidson. “But I’d say a lot of local communities are interested in creating some sort of composting service.”

And Soil Cycle’s connections stretch far beyond Montana, as more communities try to pick up the idea.

“I have a meeting with someone tomorrow, who I believe is from Ireland, [who says] ‘I want to do what you’re doing, here,’” says Davidson. “OK, let’s talk about it.”

The post Spotlight On the Modern Composters on Wheels appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Suffering from severe post-traumatic stress, Archipley was ready to retire after his four-year enlistment. “You don’t come back without damage from that,” says Karen. Yet checking out of the armed forces, the couple came to find, was a shockingly abrupt procedure with scant support. At that time, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Transition Assistance Program, which was developed in 1991 to smooth the shift from active duty to civilian life, extended just four days. “It was harsh,” she says. They were left to navigate a lot on their own, including finding doctors familiar with combat-related conditions while trying to secure appointments at the Veterans Administration—on top of figuring out Archipley’s next career step.

Fortunately, the couple had invested in a 2.5-acre farm in Escondido, near Camp Pendleton, in between tours. “Farming turned out to be really healing,” says Karen, allowing her husband to decompress outdoors through physically demanding but rewarding challenges. After ending his service in 2006, Archipley and his wife established Archi’s Acres, an organic hydroponic farm that supplies basil and other specialty crops to local restaurants and stores.

With the successful launch of the business and a renewed sense of purpose, the couple looked to extend their reach. In 2007, they established the Veteran’s Sustainable Agriculture Training program, since renamed as Archi’s Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (AiSA), an agricultural training program designed to transition active and former armed force members into growers. Like a boot camp of sorts, the six-week intensive program immerses students in all aspects of sustainable farming and entrepreneurship and ushers them into viable, agriculture-based careers.

Along the way, it’s also become a platform—one that the Archipleys have leveraged to advocate for stronger government support in transitioning troops out of uniform.

A mission-driven attitude

In recent years, the unemployment rate among veterans has dipped dramatically, generally falling below the national rate. But, according to a study commissioned by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), historically, vets under the age of 24 have faced higher rates, which hit 29 percent in 2011. The gap closes quickly, however, with age and time out of uniform, the report suggests, and with proper education and training, former service members are quick to overcome skill deficits.

“[Those] leaving the military need a new purpose,” says Jeanette Lombardo, executive director of Farmer Veteran Coalition. The non-profit organization supports veterans in their transition to agricultural careers and provides tuition grants to several training programs, including AiSA. The armed forces instill “grit and a mission-driven attitude,” she says, so the challenging nature of farming—the weather, pests and disease, the market—is often a good fit. 

Service members also tend to be well versed in technology, Lombardo notes, making skills such as piloting drones readily transferable to the climate-smart and precision ag sectors. And disabled veterans are just as capable, she adds, particularly in marketing, logistics, distribution and compliance. “It’s a huge talent pool.”

The armed force’s emphasis on leadership training also helps stoke an entrepreneurial spirit. With a full military career under their belt, “many vets want to be their own boss,” says Tony Lattner, AiSA’s director of education and a retired Marine, “or [move on to] some type of supervisory role.” He notes that of the 600 or so program graduates, more than two-thirds either own their own farm or business or manage an operation.

Along with teaching agronomics, soil health and sustainable farming practices, AiSA places a big emphasis on developing an agriculture-related enterprise. Over six weeks, the curriculum covers the full seed-to-market process including access to financing, food safety and building a business plan around a farming operation. The program, which is also open to civilians, moved completely online in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to better accommodate service members spread throughout the world. (Local students still have the option of additional, on-site training.)

The class culminates in a final exam and a Shark Tank-style pitch to a jury of food professionals, industry leaders and investors. In addition to farming, graduates have gone on to launch successful ventures such as a chain of empanada stores in San Diego and a custom meat-processing facility serving small-scale ranchers in Lancaster, Kentucky.

The fast pace translates to three hours of classes twice a week and around five hours of daily reading and assignments. “It’s like a full-time job,” says Arlet Galindo, a current student. A human resources specialist in the Air Force, she’d been stationed in Turkey for her final assignment and has been juggling her studies while settling into life back home in Los Angeles. But organization, structure and time management come with the territory, she says. “That’s the military mentality—you just have to get it done. Failure is not an option,” she adds with a laugh.

Galindo is one of a number of students in the 15-person class attending the course through SkillBridge, a DoD career transition program. Established in 2011, it allows service members to acquire civilian work experience through training, internships and apprenticeships during the final 180 days of their enlistment. Although the positions are unpaid, troops are relieved of their military duties and receive pay and benefits throughout the transition period.

The scaffolding is essential to post-service success, says Karen Archipley. Before SkillBridge, troops were being pushed out of the military with little civilian experience and a lot of vulnerability. “People often took any job they could get because they had families to support or medical needs to cover,” she says, recalling an early AiSA graduate who attended the class while homeless. In 2013, in a plea to bolster career transition support for veterans, the Archipleys presented his story and other similar cases to then-OSD director Frank DiGiovanni—leading the White House to later recognize their efforts.

A new call to service

In 2016, AiSA became a college credit program through Cal Poly Extended Extension, a move that allowed service members to tap their GI Bill benefits for tuition. But as of last year, a new partnership with the University of Minnesota Crookston gives program graduates a fully accredited agricultural certificate—a credential that equates to a year’s worth of working experience when applying for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Beginning Farmer loan.

Along with helping students leverage their military background to access capital, the program also emphasizes market viability. As a course requirement, students submit a comprehensive business plan at the end of the term—one that can be handed over to a loan officer or used to attract investors. “The whole idea is that their [venture] is sustainable, both financially and resource-wise,” says Lattner, the educational director. “If you have to get a second job to run the farm, it defeats the purpose.”

Samantha Stephens, a recent AiSA graduate winding down a decade-long career in the Marines, was startled to find out what it would take to run her husband’s family ranch in Georgia. While the mother of two—with a third on the way—will concentrate on parenting for the next few years, the couple’s long-term plan is to expand the two-acre llama, goat and sheep farm to include cows, chickens and a greenhouse. Understanding the breadth of compliance, taxes and regulations “opened my eyes to how much we’ll need to produce to justify doing the business,” she says.

Still, students see their service background as an apt segue to farming. There are obvious parallels in decision-making and prioritization, says Grant Taute. The current student and Osprey pilot is hanging up his wings after 20 years in the Marine Corps to become an avocado and specialty crop farmer outside of San Diego. Despite a very different professional pace, he says, the process is similar. “Whether it’s water, time or money, you constantly have to decide, ‘how am I going to best expend this resource?’”

And, ultimately, many service members see farming as yet another calling. Erick Raymundo-Vidrio, an aircraft technician retiring from a seven-year career in the Air Force, is planning to start a container farm. By bolstering food security for his community, he says, “I still feel like I’m answering a call to serve. Just at a smaller scale.”

The post Troops Leaving Service Find New Purpose on the Farm appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As California almond growers ready their groves for the incoming blossoms, a deluge of honey bees converges on the state—nearly two million hives worth. With roughly 1.5 million acres of almonds to pollinate, it takes a lot of bees to get those almonds ready to grow. After spending about two weeks in California, the bees pack up and hit the road again, ready for their next destination. This is just the first stop in an annual cross-country work trip. 

They’ll hit blueberries in North Carolina and apples in Michigan, watermelon in Florida and pumpkins in New York. It’s a busy schedule and not for the faint of heart—especially when traveling in late winter to make it for those first spring blooms. “There were times when we had icy roads, and you’re trying to move equipment and materials around, and they’re shutting down roads,” says Glenn Card, vice president of Merrimack Valley Apiaries in Massachusetts. “One time it took us all day just to travel 100 miles between road closures and everything else.” Life on the road isn’t easy, no matter how small your traveling companions might be. 

“These are livestock. They need water every couple of days,” says Dan Winter, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. “If you’re driving across the country and you don’t get rain, the driver has to get the hose out and actually water the bees down.” Winter says drivers hauling bees have to be experienced with handling livestock, and bees aren’t any different. “If a hive gets overheated on the truck, then, obviously, the bees aren’t really going to be up to shape to pollinate when they get where they’re going. It takes some practice and some time to get good at it.”    

The bees travel in their hives on flatbed trucks, under layers of netting, in an effort to keep as many bees together as possible. A healthy colony has between 30,000 and 50,000 bees in it, with a queen able to lay up to 3,000 eggs a day. By the time the hive returns to its winter destination, nearly half of the original hive will have died off and been replaced. So, beekeepers will split hives to cover more ground as the season progresses. 

“When we go to California, I kind of consider that to be the end of the year for the bees, because you’re taking last year’s bees, the ones that made it through the winter,” says Card. After California, the strongest bees get split between new hives. Some go to Louisiana for honey production, others go to New Jersey or New York for pollination and then on to Massachusetts. But the timing all depends on the weather. “This year, for example, we were in New York, which came on really fast and we had that hot spell of 80 degrees. And then it was another week and a half before Massachusetts really started going. Apples are a fast bloom. So, we have to do a lot of manipulation in the timing.”

Nearly 90 percent of all plants require pollinators to reproduce. Honey bees alone pollinate 80 percent of all flowering plants, more than 130 fruits and vegetables. As bees (and other pollinators) travel from flower to flower, pollen from one flower will stick to their little bodies and get transported to another flower. That new flower is now fertilized, which is how it produces fruit and seeds. But disease, loss of habitat for native pollinators and a warming climate have led bee species to plummet, with the number of managed bee colonies declining steadily since 1960. That means there is more demand on the bees–and beekeepers–that are available today.  

Card is a third-generation beekeeper, and he now runs the apiary with his brother. In addition to the apples in the northeast, Card’s bees also travel to Maine to pollinate blueberries and then head up and down the East Coast to cranberry bogs. After all of that is done, the bees are off duty and overwinter in Louisiana. 

Bees don’t hibernate, per se, but they do have a dormant period. They’ll still fly most days, but when there’s very little forage in the dead of winter, they will stay clustered together to conserve energy and keep their temperatures consistent. “They’ll send out scout bees, and if there’s nothing there, they just get to hunker down,” says Card. 

There are about 125,000 beekeepers in the US, but the majority of those are backyard keepers, with fewer than 25 hives each. For those folks who want the benefits of bees without the work, there are rent-a-hive services, where the bees will come to you. 

Mike James, owner and head beekeeper of Kinnikinnick Bees in Wisconsin, does what he calls “micro-disbursement.” Rather than sending his bees thousands of miles each year, they have a much shorter commute. “People pay lawn care companies to come in and manage their property,” says Jamess, and this is the same idea but with bees. “Our customers range from people that have 40-acre hobby farms to…people right in downtown Minneapolis.” 

James and his bees service most of Wisconsin and Minnesota at the moment, but he is looking at a possible expansion to surrounding states. However, with most customers getting only a hive or two at a time, there are a lot of little details to look after, especially in urban centers. “They require flyway barriers, and to make sure there’s water, make sure they’re being provided a scope of work and management practices for the hive itself. Sometimes, there are fees and permits involved. I would say probably the most frustrating part of our job is all of the different regulations. There are still some townships and cities that don’t allow urban beekeeping.”

However, there are definite benefits to a smaller delivery and travel area with James’s bees. “We’re moving maybe 100, 200 miles at most. Because there are single hives in place, the concern for disease spread to other areas isn’t quite as great as it is with commercial beekeeping. That said, we still keep tight control on the health of each hive and won’t move anything if it’s unhealthy,” says James. There are limits to how many hives people can host in certain locations for both safety and density. Each spot needs at least 20 feet of clearance and an area with low traffic. 

Plus, prospective hive owners or renters need to be prepared for possible hive thefts. In California last year, more than 1000 hives were reported stolen within a few weeks of early spring, prompting owners to install GPS and tracking devices on their hives. Fewer bees globally means a higher demand and lower supply, which could be contributing to a higher risk of theft.

But the benefit of bringing in pollinators is obvious from the first taste, says Card. A mono-floral honey, meaning a honey made from a single nectar source in a geographic region, has a distinct taste. “We have 10 different varieties that we sell currently,” says Card, “to establish that honey is more than just a sweetener.” For Card, distinct honeys are like spices, to be deployed in different dishes and in different amounts to get unique tastes. 

It makes all the travel, pollination and planning worth it, says Winter. “Beekeeping is agriculture. We’re in the back; we’re not in the forefront of agriculture. But we’re a crucial part of agriculture.”

The post Six Months on the Road: Inside the World of Migratory Beekeeping appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Not only do Millennials and Gen Z-ers widely support marijuana legalization, but they also engage more with issues surrounding the climate crisis. With sales of legal cannabis expected to more than double by 2030, producers of the nation’s sixth-most valuable crop have a problem: Cannabis has a substantial environmental footprint. 

Research on the sustainability of cannabis cultivation, although nascent because of its illegal federal status, indicates an array of environmental impacts. Growing cannabis requires massive water and energy resources while contributing to air, land and water pollution and soil damage. Corwin is part of a small but growing group of farmers working to transform the least green parts of the industry into more sustainable and profitable practices.

Turning grass blue

Cannabis is a water-intensive crop. Grown indoors or in the wild, each plant requires between five and six gallons of water per day—nearly twice that of other commodity crops. In California, irrigated agriculture already accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of all water consumption. 

Inside Stone Road’s half-acre of greenhouses, says Corwin, the plants require much less than five gallons of water per week because they’re small, thanks to their two- to three-month lifecycle. The outdoor plants grown on his 57-acre outdoor farm, however, grow for four to six months and require much more water “because they’re massive.”

Unlike most cannabis operations, Stone Road doesn’t use municipal or stream water, instead irrigating its indoor and outdoor plants from two wells that draw from an underground aquifer. This geologically unique system preserves nearby aquatic ecosystems and ensures that Stone Road has ample supplies, even during droughts. 

Stone Road’s sustainable infrastructure stands in stark contrast to the water stolen by unlicensed cannabis operations across the Golden State. In San Bernadino County alone, a reported 4,000 acre-feet of water was stolen in 2021—enough to submerge 4,000 football stadiums in a foot of water.

Water woes aren’t just an issue for California farmers; Colorado cannabis growers face an even drier future. Home to the worst conditions in the West, more than half of the state is in some level of drought, with 86 percent of the water supply already dedicated to agriculture. 

Those numbers don’t concern Andrew Mahon, head of cultivation at Veritas in Denver. “We built our own irrigation system to fit the style of growing we do,” he says. Seasoned cultivation staff, not a digital sensor, determine the precise amount of moisture the plants need. 

Consequently, the 20,000 square feet of grow space at Veritas uses significantly less water than the average indoor cannabis farm—half to one gallon a day during flowering and just 100 to 200 millilitres a day during the vegetation stage, says Mahon. 

Water-conscious techniques like these don’t just prevent overwatering. They can also stem the flow of runoff, which can tax local water treatment systems. That’s because many cannabis operations apply insecticides, acaricides, fungicides and plant growth regulators that can disrupt habitats of fish, amphibians and rare carnivores. 

While Mahon could use EPA-registered pesticides, he says he primarily chooses minimum-risk pesticides “typically composed of essential oils like rosemary oil [and] thyme oil.” Corwin eschews chemicals altogether, instead opting for “an army of predator mites, ladybugs and beneficial fungi” to deter other pests, stave off mold and keep the farm’s water supply clean.

Cooling down energy use

Indoor grow houses allow farmers to govern the lifecycle of cannabis using artificial lighting and climate control, which enables rapid turnaround for sometimes dozens of harvests each year. But with that speed comes massive greenhouse gas emissions from lighting, heating, cooling and dehumidification—powered mostly by petrochemicals. 

“The elephant in the room,” says Mahon, “is LED lighting.” For years, the industry has relied on high-intensity discharge lamps such as metal halides and high-pressure sodium lights (HSPs), fixtures considered efficient by 1960s and 1970s standards. Compared to HSPs, light-emitting diodes provide more light, require very little energy to run and emit far less heat, substantially reducing the demand for cooling and the energy in general required to produce cannabis.

Dion Foley, chief of operations at Koala Green Development in Adelanto, California, prefers the new tech. “LEDs are insanely more energy efficient,” he says. Koala Green Development has been growing with LEDs since 2018, and its 15,000 square feet of grow space costs $20,000 per month to power. Similarly sized facilities not growing with LEDs, says Foley, spend between $50,000 and $60,000.

For some growers, the cutting edge of sustainability in cannabis has moved toward energy generation. At Stone Road, on-site solar panels provide enough power to run the supplemental LED lighting in the greenhouses. Because the sides can be opened manually to cool the plants and prevent mold, there’s no need for HVAC or dehumidifying, says Corwin. 

Growing under LEDs also allows for much higher yields each harvest, “meaning that grows will not have to be as large in the future and, therefore, the footprint of the industry will decrease over time,” says Mahon.

While Veritas has not fully switched to LEDs, Mahon says the company has plans to upgrade in the near future. In the meantime, more than a quarter of Colorado’s energy currently comes from wind and solar, and 2022 was the first year that renewables generated more energy than coal and nuclear power. As the grid continues to decarbonize and LEDs become the industry standard, the emissions of indoor cannabis cultivation will continue to shrink. 

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Pot’s pernicious plastics

Zipper bags, rigid “doob tubes,” spent vape cartridges and other plastic pollution generated by marijuana packaging also contribute to the global plastic crisis, although it’s unclear how much of an impact cannabis packaging has on an already massive problem . A jaw-dropping 363 billion pounds of plastics choke the world’s oceans, eventually finding their way into the human food chain. Single-use plastics also take hundreds of years to decompose, releasing harmful methane and ethylene gasses as they do. 

A daily surfer, Corwin says he can’t imagine swimming into a piece of plastic packaging that his company had created, which is why Stone Road’s current packaging is made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled materials and will soon be 100 percent plastic-free.

Yet plastic remains the most popular packaging material in the industry. Of the limited number of options that meet the child safety regulations, plastic is the most economically priced, says Foley. A glass jar, for example, can cost $1.50, whereas a Mylar bag can cost as little as $0.20.

When opting for plastic over glass, Foley says an established company could save between $10,000 and $75,000 a year, depending on the number of accounts. That might not seem like a lot of money in the context of a $37-billion industry; but, he says, “cannabis companies are operating on extremely tight margins in the current struggling cannabis market. 

“You’d charge a dispensary somewhere between $2.50 and $5 more per eighth (3.5 grams) for jarred cannabis,” he continues, with the cost of sustainable packaging passed on to consumers. That poses a problem for producers in a market increasingly flooded with product, driving down prices for both legal and illegal cannabis. Corwin says this has led consumers to prioritize “value over everything.”

Foley swore up and down he’d never sell cannabis in plastic until the price of doing business pushed his hand. Many farmers simply “can’t justify doing something that’s good for the environment when it costs more,” he says. 

Without financial incentives to encourage more eco-friendly practices, Foley fears many smaller-scale operations won’t have the working capital to make the sustainable switch. To survive the second decade of recreational legalization, cannabis farmers will have to be as resilient as the plants they cultivate.

The post Growing Green: Cannabis Farmers Tackle Sustainability appeared first on Modern Farmer.