For farmers: You’re not alone.

Connect with other farmers:

Craig Watts stands in front of the mushrooms he grows. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Craig Watts of Socially Responsible Agriculture Project says: “First and foremost, reach out to me directly and let me hear what is happening and see if there is something as it is a case-by-case process.”
Connect with Craig, or learn more about SRAP, here.

Tyler Whitley. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Tyler Whitley of The Transfarmation Project says: “Just know that there are possibilities, even if they’re tough, and spend your time looking into those. Reach out to some organizations. It doesn’t have to be just us—there are a lot of organizations that are out there; their purpose is to help farmers outside of a ‘Big Ag’ system. Quality of life is what a lot of the farmers bring up to us. And if you’re unhappy with your quality of life, the best thing that I can say is to look into making a change. I think that’s something that resonates with all readers, not just farmers. Change is possible, even if it’s tough. But you can definitely do it.”
Learn more about the possibilities available to you with The Transfarmation Project.

Explore information resources:

Tanner Faaborg. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Tanner Faaborg of 1100 Farm says: “I think they should at least just have an open mind. Have an open mind and do a little bit of research to see what’s out there because people are farming differently. There are some really interesting things happening right now. And then just start to write it down. You don’t need to do everything all at once. You don’t need to make a decision overnight. But I think I would recommend them to just start making a plan. And then just continue to look for resources like Transfarmation or talk to the USDA…There are a lot of resources out there that will help you at least get started. It doesn’t have to be a massive project. You could start out with one small change.”
The Faaborgs went from hog farming to selling value-added mushroom products. See how they reimagined their farm. 

Angela De Freitas. (Photo from Animal Outlook)

Angela de Freitas of Animal Outlook says: “I think knowledge is power. And I know that with a couple of the farmers that we’ve worked with, the first thing they did, which is eventually what led them to us, is they simply went online and started reading, because it helped them to understand that it wasn’t them. They were able to see that there are plenty of other nightmare stories out there of things that have happened to farmers, particularly in these contract situations. Start calling organizations—call Tyler, call me, call whoever you find, because there are resources out there to help and there are organizations out there to help. And there is no need to have to try and figure it out yourself because, at this point, there are a couple of us out there who have done it and had successes.”
Contact Angela at Animal Outlook.

Paula and Dale Boles. (Photo credit: Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Paula Boles of JB Farms and Grace Chapel Greenhouses says: “The first thing that I would advise them to do is just do research. There are so many places that you can reach out [to] and talk to other people. And just see what options are out there. Even writing down ideas or visions, missions, whatever you think that aren’t possible—write them down anyway. And, sometimes, it’s almost like, once you write it down, it almost becomes a real thing. And then you can start looking at other ways to get there.”
Read about how contract farming affects mental health, from Paula’s perspective.

Contact your representatives:

Kara Shannon. (Photo from ASPCA)

Kara Shannon of the ASPCA says: “One of the first things that [farmers] should do is to talk to their representatives, both in their state legislature and in Congress, and just tell their story, because this is not the story that those lawmakers are hearing, especially in Congress. [They hear] from Big Ag that these contracts and these growers, they’re building strong rural economies and creating jobs and feeding the world, etc. And they are not often hearing from people who have these stories of getting into contract farming because they wanted to be their own bosses and keep the family farm and maintain this way of life and then find themselves in something so far from what they thought. So, I think sharing those stories [is] really important, because that is what is going to get those policymakers motivated to make changes to fund programs to help get those farmers out of it, to improve the accountability for these big producers that are getting the farmers in these incredibly unfair contracts.”
Support farm system reform here.

For interested consumers: You can help.

Ask questions:

The ASPCA has a guide for buyers called “Shop with Your Heart.” It helps consumers navigate grocery store aisles and determine whether the language or certifications on animal product packaging is legitimate or greenwashing. They also have a list of questions you can ask producers if you have the opportunity, such as at the farmers market. Often, smaller producers will qualify for legitimate certifications, but actually becoming certified is a financial obstacle, so it’s helpful to know what to ask them if you have the chance to speak to them directly. 

The ASPCA’s Kara Shannon shares a question she likes that implies transparency: “My go-to would be, ‘Hey, do you allow people to come out to the farm? Do you allow visits?’ And if the answer is yes, that’s kind of all you need to know.”

Become a farmer ally:

Additionally, Angela de Freitas of Animal Outlook says: “Something that’s really important to us organizationally is that farmers are our allies and that we don’t engage in shaming farmers or making them feel bad for what they have done or chose to do. And we recognize that farmers are part of the solution. That is, I think, a really important way to think about this—supporting the farmer to get out, celebrating the farmer getting out, offering the farmer options to get out, as opposed to trying to create change through shaming.”

We love to connect with our Modern Farmer community. If you have a farm and are considering transitioning to a more sustainable model, we would love to hear from you. Comment below or send us a note at lena@modfarmer.com.

The post Advice and Resources for Getting Out of Factory Farming appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But soon, other expenses started getting tacked on. Tyson required a new computer system to control the temperature in the barns. This was another $70,000. Their propane bill averaged around $25,000 per year. Not making the updates wasn’t really an option—no matter how much time and money you invested to be a farmer for the company, they could cut your contract at any time.

And the income wasn’t quite what they expected. Companies like Tyson pay their farmers in what’s called a tournament system. There’s a base pay, but whoever raises the best flock and has the best “feed conversion”—the biggest birds for the least feed— makes the most money, and payment decreases the further you go down the ladder. This essentially pits all the regional farmers against each other. 

Challenging company representatives, even on small things, resulted in retribution. Paula Boles says sometimes they’d intentionally bring you a “bad flock,” keeping your yields low and locking you into the bottom rung of the tournament system.

“If you complain too much, they just start sending you bad flocks of chickens,” she says. 

The Boles’ situation with Tyson was far from unique. While contract farming, or “factory farming,” has been exposed in the media for being exploitative of animals, the farmers who sign contracts with companies like Tyson, Perdue or other big players in animal agriculture also find themselves backed into a financial corner. But, over the last several years, there has been a wave of efforts to find ways to support farmers transitioning out of factory farming. The Boles, who raised their last flock for Tyson about nine years ago, are proof that getting out is possible.

“Now to have come through it, it’s been a long process,” says Boles. “It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve lived to tell about it, so to speak.”

Creating pathways

Tyler Whitley is the director of transfarmation for The Transfarmation Project, an initiative of Mercy for Animals. He has helped work with 12 farms to get them out of the industrial system—a system, he says, that is designed to exploit them.

 “The way that the current structure of factory farming is designed is that…the steps that carry with it the most risk and the most debt and the most liability are transitioned to the farmers,” he says. “And so what you have is you have farmers building these extremely expensive facilities at the very specific direction [and] design of the company that they’re working for. But they don’t own the animals.” 

The Transfarmation Project was founded by Leah Garcés. Whitley says that Garcés realized that ending factory farming would necessitate support systems for the farmers.

“She thought that if we’re going to be able to end factory farming, it’s not just about creating a different system that runs parallel, like you might see a lot of organizations doing when they talk about agroecology or regenerative farming [and] things of that nature,” says Whitley. “But you have to actually create transition paths for farmers to exit out of factory farming.”

And these pathways can be difficult to find and establish. Debt is one of the biggest hurdles to transitioning out of contract farming, says Whitley. And it’s not simply that the farmers have debt but a specific type of debt that requires lender authorization before farmers can make a change. 

Two of the other big challenges relate to the question: If not contract farming, then what? If you’re choosing to grow a different crop, a big obstacle is the learning curve—all forms of farming require specialized knowledge that makes changing lanes difficult. The other hurdle is marketing. When you have a contract, you don’t need to market your product, because you only have one buyer. This is also part of what makes factory farming inherently risky for the farmer.

“They don’t market the animals directly, so they have one customer,” says Whitley. “If you’re a business that has only one customer, you have a very high amount of risk for your business if you should lose that customer.”

When transitioning out of factory farming, farmers can try to use what they already have for a new purpose. This former chicken barn is now a greenhouse. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Before The Transfarmation Project can help farmers find specific buyers for new crops, it needs to have a pretty good idea of what would feasibly bring in an income for the farmer. For this, it  turns to Highland Economics for market analyses. Highland Economics has composed reports on a handful of specialty crops of The Transfarmation Project’s choosing, such as hemp, edible flowers, strawberries and microgreens.

The assessments are twofold—it looks at the regional market drivers for a crop, including what types of investments are being made in the sector and important trends—and it also considers what the projected costs and returns of growing that crop are in an indoor setting. Looking at the data that emerges in these analyses, such as consumer demand and the debt service coverage ratio (the ability of a producer to pay their debts with the income they earn) helps farmers decide if a certain crop is right for them.

Travis Greenwalt of Highland Economics also encourages producers to do their own research. “I think this is a great preliminary or a starting point for starting that conversation,” says Greenwalt. “But the specific costs and specific returns are going to be all dependent on the location and the producer.”

‘Steady treadmill of debt’

Garcés started The Transfarmation Project after meeting Craig Watts, a then-poultry farmer for Perdue who let her come to his farm and film inside his chicken barns. This view into what factory farming was really like made national headlines. Watts found himself as a whistleblower after feeling deeply disturbed by the disconnect between how this scale of poultry farming was portrayed versus the reality of the situation. But when he was starting out, his goal was to get back to farming on his family’s land, and contracting with Perdue seemed like the way to do it.

“It just sounded like a good deal,” says Watts. “You build the houses, they supply the birds, they supply all the technical advice. It’s a steady cash income. Supposedly, you could have positive cash flow the first year in business, which was unheard of.”

Craig Watts. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

But Perdue exercised control over how Watts farmed. It could move the goalposts as it desired, requesting upgrades to his equipment for which he had to pay.

“They’re always coming back to you when you get your houses close to being paid for to make these additions or renovations,” says Watts. “There’s always this new thing, ‘it’s gonna save the industry and you have to have it, but we’re not going to make you get it but we’re not gonna bring you any more birds until you do it.’ It’s kind of making it mandatory without actually saying ‘mandatory.’” 

Instead of making good money, Watts found himself on a “steady treadmill of debt.”

Additionally, the way that the birds were being treated was misrepresented to the public, which eventually tipped Watts over the edge.

“I guess everybody has their breaking point,” says Watts. “And I had mine sitting in a motel room in Brookings, South Dakota.”

A commercial had come on the television for the company. As Watts watched the commercial, he saw Jim Perdue driving down the road and then stepping into a chicken barn. Inside the barn were big, beautiful, clean birds, walking around on floors covered in pine shavings.

The reality that Watts had witnessed day in and day out for 20 years was quite different: chickens packed into small spaces, often injured or physically unable to stand or walk, panting due to overheating and sitting on a cake of fecal matter.

“I had a contract with Perdue Farms, but at the end of the day, the customer was my boss,” says Watts. “And I just felt like they needed to know.”

And that was how he ended up letting Garcés inside his barns to film. The resulting video made national news in 2014.  

Craig Watts and Leah Garcés inside a former chicken barn. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Now, Watts works with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP), heading up its Contract Grower Transition Program. At the same time, he is learning how to effectively grow mushrooms on his farm in the old poultry barns. Growing mushrooms requires a very different set of skills, and as he learns best practices, he helps other farmers find a place to land.

Most people who come to SRAP are in crisis mitigation mode; they just had their contracts cut, many are strapped with debt and they’re trying to figure out how to proceed without losing their land and their livelihoods. Every farm is different, so there is not one uniform approach. But SRAP provides guidance through the financial and legal obstacles.

“We are an air traffic controller, so to speak,” he says. “We are looking for that pilot to help them land as soft as possible.”

It’s not without loss, Watts cautions. Changing the way you farm or remaining in farming after a contract is cut isn’t always possible. “People still lose their farms,” says Watts. “There’s no magic wand here. We flip rocks until we can’t flip anymore.”

For Watts, the bigger changes have to be systemic.

“We hear about how the food system is broken,” says Watts. “The consolidation has given farmers less options to sell to and less options to buy from. But the reality is, the food system is working as it was designed to work. It’s working perfectly. What has got to happen is there has to be a major shift in policy.”

Ripple effect

The video Garcés made with Watts made waves in the media, but it also resonated deeply with other farmers who were in the same position and had felt completely isolated. In December 2014, the video made its way to Paula and Dale Boles.

That day, the Boles came home from a difficult day at their barns with a bad flock.

“We went back to the house and watched that, and just sat there in tears,” says Paula Boles. “Because we knew when we saw that, that we weren’t the dumb hillbillies like Tyson had told us that we were. We knew that there was somebody else out there. And everything that [Watts] said in that video was the life that we were living.”

They looked at their calendar and decided that May 2015 would be their last flock. Boles wrote a letter to Tyson requesting to terminate their contract, and four weeks later, they received notice that their cancellation had been accepted.

“Even driving to the post office to pick it up, I was a nervous wreck,” says Boles.

Farms contracting with Tyson have a sign on their property that says “Tyson” and the name of the farm. About a week after their cancellation was confirmed, someone from Tyson drove out to the farm and picked up their sign.

“We were just standing there, we thought, wow—we invested $400,000, we almost lost everything that we have, and all they had invested in us was a $20 sign.”

To learn about what the Boles did next to create a second life for their farm and hear about more organizations that offer support to producers transitioning out of factory farming, read part two.

The post They Once Worked in Factory Farming. Not Anymore. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“The path they were on, they wouldn’t be able to do that,” says Faaborg. “And that’s when Wendell Murphy started moving into Iowa.”

Murphy Family Farms (later bought by Smithfield Foods) helped out with the loan needed to get started. The idea was that after about 10 years, it would be completely paid off.

“It sounded like a pretty good deal,” says Faaborg. “And it turned out a little differently.”

To maintain their contract, the company required the Faaborgs to take on additional expenses, such as upgrades to their barns. 

The Faaborgs farmed hogs for 30 years. When Tanner Faaborg came back to the farm as an adult, the family began thinking about ways to transition out of hog farming. 

“We started to see all these family farms just disappearing,” he says. “And then it became this kind of existential thought process for us on, you know, what is the future of this farm?”

This question would end up guiding the Faaborgs’ transition out of hog farming and into a business model that Faaborg hopes will sustain his family and their community for years to come. For farmers like Faaborg and Paula and Dale Boles, whom you met in part one, this transition has proven to be difficult but not impossible.

“It doesn’t have to be a massive project,” says Faaborg. “You could start out with one small change.”

Tanner Faaborg. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Risk tolerance

While many contract farmers find themselves in parallel positions—burdened with debt and lacking independence in making decisions on their farm—the path out of factory farming looks a little different for everyone. Animal Outlook, an organization that helps farmers transition out of contract farming, has a general blueprint it uses to help farms transition, but the actual steps vary, because each farmer has different circumstances. According to Angela de Freitas, director of farm transitions for Animal Outlook, these are conditions such as varying amounts of debt, regional positioning, knowledge of how to do other things, whether or not there is off-farm income, what kind of regional collaborators or partners exist and a farmer’s risk tolerance for trying something new. Animal Outlook works with poultry farmers who have had their contracts cut, which can happen at any time.

“They find themselves in a bit of a crisis, because it’s unexpected,” says De Freitas. “It’s not as if they have notice, they don’t have notice—it’s just like from one day to the next they don’t have a job, basically. Yet, they still have a tremendous debt load.”

One of the first things that some of the farmers she’s worked with have done is to start accumulating knowledge by going online and reading about others in similar positions. This early step helps them to realize that it’s not just them, says De Freitas. From there, farmers can begin reaching out to organizations such as Animal Outlook for support.

Animal Outlook is an animal advocacy organization, but De Freitas says any alternative to factory farming also has to be financially viable for producers. It’s important, she says, to see farmers as allies in building a different food system.

“We also approach it with the absolute understanding that if it doesn’t work for the farmer, if the transition cannot be financially successful and offer them a good quality of life, then it doesn’t work.”

The future of the farm

Finding others who share your vision for something different is an important early step. When Faaborg wanted to start changing the way his family farmed, he was met with some skepticism and felt overwhelmed with the process, he says, until he linked up with The Transfarmation Project. Tyler Whitley and the team there brought not only the can-do optimism for a big change like this but also came equipped with some of the technical knowledge and resources.

The Faaborgs began a pilot project to grow mushrooms, all while working with an outside team to retrofit the hog barn and convert it into a growing space. After eight months of learning the ropes, they now make and sell value-added products, such as tinctures and coffee blends. Finding the market for a new product was one of the most difficult parts, says Faaborg. But their website is now live for pre-orders under the name 1100 Farm. The “1100” is a nod to the fact that company barns were called “Murphy 1100 buildings,” in reference to the number of hogs that were housed in each barn. Faaborg included it in the name as a reminder of where they’ve been.

“It will always be a reminder of the change that’s possible and the change that happened on this farm,” says Faaborg.

The Faaborgs’ former hog barns. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

Faaborg has also applied for funding from multiple USDA programs supporting projects geared toward things such as energy efficiency and oxbow wetland restoration. Faaborg’s goal is to showcase that it is possible to convert hog barns to do a different kind of farming, and in doing so create jobs and revitalize the local rural economy. A couple of years into this process, Faaborg now has an answer for the existential question he and his parents were asking at the beginning of the transition—what will be the future of this farm?

“I think this will be a family farm and stay in the family for generations to come. I think this will be a public space where people can come and tour the facilities,” he says. “I want people to be able to come out in the country and be in nature and actually see where their food comes from.”

The role of policy

One of the biggest obstacles that Kara Shannon, director of farm animal welfare policy for the ASPCA, has observed for farmers wanting to transition out of industrial animal agriculture and into specialty crops or something more humane is the lack of funding and resources available to overcome financial hurdles.

“The resources just aren’t there, which I think is particularly jarring for farmers who entered into the industrial model,” says Shannon, “because agricultural lenders are incredibly quick to give out enormous loans for farmers who want to build a CAFO [concentrated animal feeding operation]. And [they’re] not nearly as happy to loan to them for these types of projects.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way forward.

State and federal policy have a big role to play, says Shannon. At the federal level, the Farm Bill is a big piece of legislation that pours a lot of money into US agriculture, and, unfortunately, says Shannon, a lot of conservation funding through the Farm Bill goes to CAFOs.

“I think federal and state policy play a really huge role in shaping our farm system, which is evidenced by the decades of regulatory and policy choices that have gotten us to where we currently are with this consolidated industrial system,” says Shannon. “We really need policy now to support farmers who are trying to build both more humane but also more resilient regional food systems.”

Federal legislation moves slowly, but Shannon has observed that more and more states seem to be providing farmers with grants to diversify their operations. And it can make a big difference—Shannon points to Vermont, which recently launched a grant program for small farm diversification and transitions. An added bonus of this program is that, unlike some other grants such as the Value-Added Producer Grant Program, it doesn’t require matching funds from the producer, something that can be hard to pull off if you’re saddled with debt from contract farming.

“Vermont’s a big dairy state and a lot of the dairies are struggling,” says Shannon. “So, there’s been a lot of focus on helping them, and this grant program was one of the first major steps towards doing that.”

The ASPCA also helps fund some grants for farmers looking to make their operations more humane. Paula and Dale Boles, former Tyson poultry farmers, received one of these ASPCA-funded grants during their transition.

Thanks in part to Dale’s experience in construction, the Boles were able to adapt their poultry barns into greenhouses. During the transition, they have both held off-farm jobs, but at JB Farms, they grow things such as microgreens and vegetables. It’s important for farmers to experiment with different crops or ideas, says Paula Boles, to figure out what works for them. She has leaned into growing flowers under the name Grace Chapel Greenhouses. Two years ago, the Boles were able to pay off the lingering debt from their years in poultry farming.

Left: Paula Boles. Right: The Boles’ former chicken barn was converted into a greenhouse. (Photography credit to Transfarmation / Mercy For Animals)

“I walked into Carolina Farm Credit and handed them a check for $5,000 and paid off the loan from the business that we exited seven years prior,” says Boles. “But we live to tell about it.”

And their farm has found some new life as a community-centered space. They frequently have people coming out to the farm to visit or volunteer. The connection to the community has been rewarding for Boles—it’s the complete opposite of the Tyson tournament system, which pitted her farm against other farmers. Her goal is to one day be able to work in the greenhouse full-time. 

“I have a vision, I have a long-term goal, something that I think will sustain us, something that will keep me healthy and keep me active,” says Boles. “You know, the whole thing that I thought was going to kill me I think is now going to sustain me.”

Catch the first part of this series here to read about what drove the Boles family to make their farming transition.  

The post Exiting the Factory Farm appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Across the country, farmers growing apples and other tree fruits are intensifying their efforts to mitigate the challenges posed by increasingly erratic weather patterns driven by climate change, from spring frosts to drought. Tactics include frost fans, misting and mulching. Plus, in some cases, growers are planting new trees that they believe will help them to prepare for a more resilient farming future. With these strategies, farmers hope to keep their precious fruits from being destroyed by the elements, protecting their livelihoods—and the quality of the fresh and local produce that consumers can enjoy.

Behrens, who is also president of the Michigan Cider Association, has recently embarked on a new challenge: taking over a tree fruit farm close to his cidery in the Grand Rapids area. The farm—which had previously been with one family since 1907—grows apples, peaches, pears, plums and cherries. There is also a market and bakery onsite. Being a cidery and a grower has some advantages: The fruit has a clear path to production even when packing houses are overrun, and using hail-damaged fruits is easier. 

But although residents of the snowy Mitten State might have enjoyed the warmer winter weather, farmers had other concerns. Behren’s orchard has been running about five weeks ahead of last year, in terms of the activity that the team has been seeing in the trees. For tree fruit farmers in the area, he says that late-season frost is the biggest single risk. “You increase your odds of that exponentially as you get into warmer winters and earlier springs.” 

A cold wave with a frost and freeze after bud break can mean no crop. Tree fruit in Michigan, including the apple crop, was severely impacted by late frosts in 2012. And in both 2020 and 2021, tart cherry production was slashed by more than half. This instability, combined with low prices for crops due to imports from Turkey, means a risk of losing a strong farming tradition in the nation’s top cherry state.

Long before fruits reach stores and customers, protecting a crop from a late cold snap can be a knife edge. “A three-degree difference for an hour or two can be the difference between a 10-percent crop loss and a 90-percent crop loss,” he says. Many orchards use frost fans to mitigate the issues of cold weather that comes too late in the year. But, in some cases, the weather gets so cold it doesn’t matter whether the farm has frost fans or not. Although some apple varieties can withstand cooler temperatures, when frost hits trees that are well into bloom, deploying mitigating measures can be a waste of energy for farmers. In these extreme cases, “it’s a whole bunch of money down the drain for nothing,” says Behrens.

Farmhaus Farms grows apples, peaches, pears, plums and cherries. (Photo credit: Alyssa McElheny)

Across the country, in the Pacific Northwest, spring frosts also pose risks for growers. At Finnriver Farm and Cidery on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, operations director Andrew Byers has been using misting as a strategy to keep pear trees cool in the spring. The team has set up overhead misters with a thermostat when it reaches 40F or so during the day in February. “By evaporative cooling, we can keep the pear trees wet, and that keeps them a little bit cooler,” says Byers. This can “trick” the trees to avoid early blooming. “We can slow the buds despite a warm spell early on.” Naturally, this is an easier method to use with plenty of access to water. “It would be a difficult proposition in the Central Valley of California,” says Byers. 

Finnriver focuses on antique apple varieties from the UK, France and Spain, and he is working on breaking up the orchard’s monoculture. “When we feel vulnerable to the climactic changes that we’re seeing—like increased heat, less dormant period in the winter and erratic springs and erratic summers—the answer to me seems to be diversification,” says Byers. He explains that some of the diseases that live in soils and plant root tissue impact apples more so than other tree fruits. 

The team is planting other kinds of trees, including fruits with which the cidery already ferments, such as plums and elderberries. “Pollinator resilience is also a pretty big issue in this idea of erratic climate,” says Byers. This is another benefit of diversity, as plums bloom earlier than apples, whereas elderberries bloom later.

Byers has also ramped up efforts with mulch and compost additions in the orchard since the 2021 heat dome. “We just watched the trees sizzle,” he says. Now, he’s putting wood chips at the base of the trees. “That is creating this fungal network, as the wood chips break down,” he explains. Like a giant sponge, this helps to improve water resilience in the root zone of the trees. It’s a tactic that avid home gardeners can also employ, to help with conserving moisture and moderating soil temperature.

The farm has previously operated with a dwarf orchard, but Byers says that he is now four years into an initiative to plant larger trees, as part of a goal to look at longer-term climate resilience strategies. In a dwarf orchard, trees can be planted more densely, and they produce on a faster timeline than larger trees, with the first harvest ready just four years after planting. But these small trees only have around 20 years of productivity. The new semi-standard trees will require more space and take between seven and 10 years until the first crop is ready. But the change may be worth it: The larger and taller trees will remain productive for up to 100 years, and crucially, these larger trees will provide additional shade and have better water retention.

After looking at climate modeling provided by the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, Byers decided that preparing for hotter, drier summers in the future should be a priority at the orchard. The new trees with deeper root systems will be an important part of that. With these measures, he is hoping to play his part in ensuring that fruit production continues in the face of climate threats. “We are standing on the shoulders of centuries of apple growing and trying to figure out the best fit pathway for the conditions that we have now.”

The post How are Tree Fruit Farmers Adapting to a Changing Climate? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

By literally wiping out tons of pests every night, bats save US farmers an estimated $3.7 billion annually. Besides the bug carnage, bats also pollinate crops such as coconuts, agave, guava and bananas, disperse seeds and create fertilizer. 

However, these little mammals are under attack—more than half of North American bats risk severe population declines over the next 15 years. And agriculture, which destroys foraging and roosting habitat, is one of the greatest threats to bats. 

Yet farmers can be important allies for wildlife by using innovative practices to conserve bats. In turn, this mammalian air crew protects and pollinates their fields.

Pests and heirloom produce

“I know a lot of people are kind of freaked out by the bats but they are invaluable in sustainable agriculture—absolutely invaluable,” says Stephanie Miller, owner of Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia, which specializes in organic heirloom crops from the African diaspora.

Her farm is bustling with bat activity for several reasons.

“We don’t obviously use any chemicals because that’s also a main deterrent and that will definitely get rid of your bat population very quickly,” says Miller. 

Besides directly poisoning bats, pesticides and insect-resistant crops reduce the abundance of their prey. 

A wooded area on Mystic Pine Farm in Virginia. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Miller also maintains oaks on her property to provide roosts for the bats and intentionally supplies food for her winged guests. 

“I grow night-blooming plants that attract the bats and give them nectar and feed them,” says Miller. “Also, I grow species of native plants and what I would consider medicinal herbs that they also like to feed off of or attract the food that they eat—things like purple coneflower, yucca and sunflowers.” 

Research backs these observations up: Lower-intensity practices such as agroforestry and organic farming support higher bat activity levels and diversity compared to more intensive agriculture.

Factors at the landscape level also come into play.

“You should always leave as much natural habitat as possible around your farms,” says Merlin Tuttle, a bat researcher and founder of Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation. “Where pests do the worst damage is where you have huge monocultures, where for miles and miles you have nothing but corn or soybeans or wheat planted. And in those cases, bats and other natural predators can’t survive the off-season. After you harvest the corn or the wheat, there’s no pests out there to eat.” 

In turn, Miller benefits from having bats around.

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Miller. “And bats do a lot of work. They actually pollinate certain crops. They also eat pests that might be an issue and keep those populations under control.”

For instance, bats kill corn earworms, a major pest of popcorn and one of Miller’s main crops. 

“I’m using nature, including the bats, to control my pest population,” says Virginia farmer Stephanie Miller. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Miller)

Pecan protection 

While Miller exemplifies a bat-friendly farmer, she’s not alone. Through Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation and Bat Conservation International, pecan farmers are learning how to cut down on pests by installing bat houses.

One example is John Worth Byrd, owner of a sustainable pecan farm in central Texas.

“We have three moth-born pests here, the walnut caterpillar, the pecan nut casebearer and the hickory shuckworm,” says Byrd. “But the bats, their primary food is moths. So, I thought, well that’s great. Some people in Georgia had done it, put bat houses into their pecan orchards. So, I started putting up bat houses.” 

Byrd has five species of bats on his property. Some forage in wide open spaces away from their roosts, while others dine locally in the orchard canopy. While all the bats suppress pecan pests, the locavores kill the most. 

Byrd uses a couple of strategies to help his bats. Besides putting up bat boxes, he doesn’t spray any pesticides on his property. In addition, if a tree dies in his orchard, he leaves it up. 

“A lot of these bats roost in these old dead pecan trees…” says Byrd.

“The best bats were staying in these cavities, not as many numbers like the [Brazilian] free tails in my houses, but they were doing a lot. They were local feeders instead of feeding in the atmosphere.” 

Unsurprisingly, all this pest-munching is valuable.

“If people could actually see what bats are doing, they’d be lined up to protect them,” says Tuttle. “It’s estimated by our Parks and Wildlife Department here in Texas that consumption of insect pests is saving Texas farmers approximately $1.4 billion annually.”

Aiding agaves

One of Mexico’s most iconic products has also jumped on the bat conservation bandwagon.

Through the Tequila Interchange Project, tequila and mezcal producers are growing bat-friendly agaves. These spiky plants are normally cloned, but letting some of them flower has several advantages. Night-blooming flowers provide nectar for bats, including an endangered species, the Mexican long-nosed bat. By feeding on the flowers, bats also pollinate them.

Commercial farming of blue agave, used for tequila, has eroded its genetic diversity and increased its susceptibility to disease. For instance, in the 1990s, a combination of bacteria and fungus spread through agave fields, and nearly 25 percent of the crop was abandoned.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by agave farmers. 

“They understand that something is happening,” says Irene Zapata Moran, a doctoral student at the University of Wyoming. “They see that there are more diseases in the crops. And people who have been in this industry all their life, they have told me they remember before that the plants used to be bigger.”

A lesser long-nosed bat feeds on an agave blossom in Arizona. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Bat pollination is seen as a solution, because as opposed to cloning genetically identical plants, sexual reproduction brings in new genes. This could also increase the plant’s ability to adapt to climate change.

However, allowing for natural pollination of agaves involves a direct financial hit for farmers. 

Farmers normally cut the flower stalks on the agave to allow the sugar to be concentrated in the core. After harvesting, they use this core for tequila production. 

“They’re completely rivals—you cannot have agaves in bloom and tequila from the same plot,” says Zapata Moran.

One solution could be for tequila producers to charge a premium price for bat-friendly products. Offsetting just a portion of their sunken costs could be an effective way to incentivize farmers who may not be motivated to give up some of their crops in the name of biodiversity.

The vast swaths of cropland and pasture blanketing the globe present a golden opportunity for bat conservation. And, with more than 18 percent of species listed as threatened globally, bats need all the help they can get. While sustainable practices require funding, cost-sharing programs, such as those from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, can help farmers. Plus, the payoff is worth it—bats are an eco-friendly solution for many agricultural woes.

The post Agriculture Threatens Bats. These Farmers Want to be Part of a Solution. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In a landfill, food and organic materials are dumped into the landfill, with more waste continually piled on top, creating compacted, oxygen-deprived areas where bacteria flourishes to break down the organic matter. The decomposition process generates methane, a greenhouse gas. According to the EPA, “municipal solid waste landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US.” 

Put another way: The majority of things we casually toss into the trash can be composted, with big benefits for the planet. 

Composting is a pretty basic concept, although there are several ways to go about it. Essentially, composting speeds up the decomposition process by adding organic matter to an oxygen-rich environment and then letting the bugs and fungi that break down matter do their thing. There are small, backyard-scale composting setups with worms (known as vermicomposting), large, industrial-sized bins that rotate the matter consistently to ensure the right airflow and all sizes in between. Whatever method you use, eventually, the end result is compost—a nutrient-rich soil that can be used as a soil amendment. 

Roughly 15 million American households have access to a food-waste compost program, with about 400 programs spread across 25 states. That’s about 12 percent of households across the country. If composting is a big win for cities—taking waste out of landfills, producing fertilizer and engaging citizens in the recycling process—why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, like most public works initiatives, it’s not that simple. 

To learn more about which municipalities offer composting across the US and Canada—and to add your city to our list—check out our compost map here. 

The curbside pickup truck from Washington’s pilot program. Photography submitted by the City of Washington, DC.

‘One size doesn’t fit all’

So, what does it take to implement a new composting program? In 2017, Washington, DC’s Department of Public Works put together a survey to assess the feasibility of a compost program for local residents. There are a lot of considerations; in this case, it found that the main obstacle was processing capacity. For a city of about 700,000 people, where does all of that waste actually go? 

The city just did not have the space to divert waste from the landfill at that time. However, in the intervening years, industrial composting programs in DC-adjacent Prince George’s County have increased, and other cities such as Boston have started composting—a development that Rachel Manning, a program analyst within Washington’s Department of Public Works, and her team have watched with interest. Finally, in August of 2023, seven years after its initial study, Washington launched its pilot compost program. 

The city now has about 10,000 households participating in the pilot program, with regular curbside pickup of compost, along with trash and recycling. Manning says the team sends out regular surveys to participants to see how things are going throughout the program, which is scheduled to last for a year. “Something that’s interesting to us is understanding that one size doesn’t fit all,” Manning says of the issues that have popped up from resident responses. “Maybe not everyone fills up a five-gallon bin, maybe some people want more than five gallons…so there’s a little bit of thinking about what are the right sizes of these containers? What type of [truck] fleets do we need to serve all these homes? Right now, it’s not the same size as our trash packer trucks, because we’re not servicing as many people. But also, food has a lot of moisture in it, so you need a particular vehicle for that. Also, [the Department of Public Works] has a goal to electrify all of their fleet. So, we need to think about electric vehicles, and what the capacity is there.” 

So far, Manning says the program has been a success. It has about a 70-percent adoption rate among participants and has diverted more than 400 tons of waste from the landfill. The city also brings the compost back to residents (if they ask for it) to use in their gardens, so there’s even more incentive for residents to compost. This summer, when the program is scheduled to come to an end, Manning and the team will evaluate moving forward with composting on an even larger scale. 

Photography submitted by they city of Kansas City, MO.

‘We’re willing to pivot’

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” says Melissa Kozakiewicz, assistant city engineer in Kansas City, Missouri. “I always start with pilots, and using the word ‘pilot,’ I can pivot and be flexible when things are working and when they’re not….but we aren’t going to take it away.” 

Kozakiewicz, who has previously built up a compost program in Jersey City, New Jersey, is now spearheading the compost pilot program in Kansas City. She’s hoping to replicate some of her previous successes, particularly in how she makes the program available to residents. “You have to be really deliberate and careful with how you introduce [a compost program]. You don’t want anybody to feel like you’re jamming something down their throat, because then they’re out,” says Kozakiewicz. Instead, she works at a pace with which the community is comfortable and integrates demonstrations at big public events, such as a Fourth of July parade. That way, residents get comfortable with composting as part of their public life and might be more inclined to continue doing it at home. 

[RELATED: Map: Who Composts?]

Kansas City also doesn’t currently offer a curbside pickup of compost. Instead, its model is a drop-off program. The city has five current drop-off locations, with 10 more to come around the city this year. Kozakiewicz says that helps prevent contamination of waste, because compost bins aren’t lying around next to trash or recycling containers. If residents make a trip to a special, designated location, it helps to reinforce what that location is for. It also helps ward against another common concern for cities: vermin and pests. “We have one of our drop-off spots inside of City Hall’s garage. It’s a publicly accessible space that anybody can use,” says Kozakiewicz, and the regular foot traffic allows for a lot of feedback if something’s amiss. “If you call me and say ‘Hey, I was at the City Hall garage, and it looks terrible,’ I can call somebody right this minute to go check it out.” (Data on adoption rates for composting are harder to find, but studies suggest that in the case of recycling programs, residents are more likely to participate when the programs offer curbside pickup.)

Both Kansas City and Washington, DC, are experimenting with programs at the municipal level and with just a portion of their residents so far. But can these programs scale up? Recent state-wide legislation is trying to answer that question. 

In Vermont, a state-wide food scrap ban went into effect in 2020. Residents separate their food scraps and either compost them in their own homes, drop them off at a designated station or sign up for curb-side pick-up. The law also prioritizes reducing food waste upstream, ensuring more food goes to food banks or is turned into animal feed. At the time of implementation, Josh Kelly, materials management section chief at the state’s department of environmental conservation, told Vermont Public that state legislators had been working on reducing waste since 2012. “We have had a state goal to have 50 percent of the waste that we produce separated and recycled, reused or composted. And that goal has never been met in all the years that it’s been in place.” In the year following the ban’s implementation, sales of backyard composters in Vermont more than doubled, and a survey last year found that 61 percent of Vermont residents felt a “moral obligation” to keep food out of landfills (although the state is still not meeting that 50-percent goal).

California is hoping to see some of that success, after it implemented state-wide legislation in January of 2022. The goal of the law, says Lance Klug, with CalRecycle’s office of public affairs, is to reduce the amount of organic waste in landfills by 75 percent and reroute 20 percent of fresh, unsold food to Californians in need, both by 2025. The law requires all cities and counties in the state to implement programs to collect organic waste and increase food recovery from sites such as grocery stores. So far, says Klug, the program is chugging along, although it’s run into issues ranging from COVID-related supply chain slowdowns to a slower adoption rate than hoped for. Roughly 75 percent of jurisdictions in California now have a composting program in place, and in 2022, about 200,000 tons of unsold food was recovered and redistributed to folks who needed it. However, as reported by the Associated Press, it’s unlikely the state will meet its 2025 goals. 

Photography submitted by they city of Kansas City, MO.

‘Education can’t be understated’

Not everyone has a state or even a city supporting them in the effort to compost. But for some folks, that doesn’t matter—they just do it anyway. 

For Bob Ferretti, that was no small feat. He’s the associate director of administrative services at Yale University, which at any given time has about 25,000 students, staff and faculty on the campus. That’s a lot of waste. 

About 15 years ago, Ferretti and his team began the process of figuring out how to facilitate a composting program on campus—made more difficult by the fact that, at the time, the city of New Haven, Connecticut, where Yale is located, did not have a program in place municipally. (Currently, there’s still no residential program for would-be composters in New Haven. However, the city does mandate that if you are a large business, produce enough compost and are located within 20 miles of a compost facility, then you are required to use it.) “There’s really no composting infrastructure within the state at an industrial scale,” says Ferretti. “There were small organic operations within local farms and things like that, but nothing that could handle the volume we were producing.” 

[RELATED: He Wanted to Start Up a Composting Operation. Outdated Zoning Laws Stood in the Way.]

At first, Ferretti recalls, Yale had to hire trucks to cart the compost daily from campus to a facility on the New York State border, which was a few hours round-trip. It wasn’t the best environmental solution, Ferretti says, for an effort aiming to curb greenhouse emissions. “We did meet with the city to try and come up with something even more local,” says Ferretti. “I don’t think there was a ton of real estate available for it.” Plus, says Ferretti, there were questions about who would own that kind of project. Would it be a municipally run program that only serves Yale? A private program for the university but that utilizes local government? Ultimately, Ferretti and his team found an industrial composter within the state, only about 30 minutes from campus, and partnered with it. 

There were some initial wins for the Yale project. As students who lived on campus mostly lived in residence halls and ate at large dining facilities, much of the waste was already centralized, making it less difficult to collect than in a spread-out city. But this was more than a decade ago, and Ferretti says they had needed to do a lot of education to get everyone on board. “We did a lot of waste stream audits for visual awareness, you know, where we dumped out bags of trash across campus and had people in Tyvek suits sorting through and showing people what’s in our waste stream so that they became aware of how much could be diverted,” says Ferretti. “We would have the students actively weigh plates after every meal, to see how much food was scraped into this bucket, so that they know how much was being composted.” There were still challenges with cross contamination, as silverware, latex gloves or other generic trash was easily dropped into the wrong container. “Education can’t be understated,” says Ferretti. 

There’s a lot to consider when starting up a new compost program. Even if your municipality offers curbside trash and recycling collection, adding compost to the mix isn’t as simple as buying a few more trucks and hiring some new workers. But with each new program that gets introduced, there are more examples of how to make composting work for cities, towns and even private entities of any size. 

In Kansas City, Kozakiewicz says the important thing to remember is not to wait for things to be perfect—you’ll be waiting a long time. “You’ve got to kind of push a little, using the resources that you have,” she says. “Nobody’s interested here in building a new landfill.” 

The post Composting Makes Sense. Why Don’t More Cities Do It? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For decades, Cairo—wedged between the Missouri and Kentucky border at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers—has struggled to grow its local economy and population. One hundred years ago, Cairo boasted more than 15,000 citizens; today, its population has shrunk below 1,700. Median household income hovers just above $30,000, with about 24 percent of residents living in poverty—more than double the average in Illinois. Cairo doesn’t even have a gas station. Town residents have felt its lack of a grocery store more acutely, often having to cross state lines to get the most basic supplies.

But recently that trend has begun to change. Last summer, Rise Community Market opened its doors in Cairo, marking the first time in more than eight years town residents could go to a local grocery store. It was the result of more than two years of hard work and planning by community organizers, city officials and public service agencies. One reason behind their success: the grocery store’s model.

In 2021, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton connected Cairo Mayor Thomas Simpson with a team at Western Illinois University about opening a community-owned cooperative grocery store right off Cairo’s main street. Sean Park is the program manager of the Value-Added Sustainable Development Center (VASDC), a unit of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University in Macomb. “That particular area had been beat down so much,” says Park, who has more than a decade of experience owning and operating an independent grocery store, as well as a background in rural development. Working with the Institute, Park has found unlikely success in rejuvenating small town businesses like grocery stores in a time when they face persistent distress.

Cairo’s situation may be unique, but it’s not unusual in losing its grocery store. Limited or no access to food tends to be thought of as an urban phenomenon, but it affects rural communities just as much. Seventy-six counties nationwide don’t have a single grocery store—and 34 of those counties are in the Midwest and Great Plains. According to a 2021 Illinois Department of Public Health report and the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas, 3.3 million Illinois residents live in food deserts. (The USDA defines a rural food desert as any low-income community where the nearest grocery store is 10 or more miles away). To combat this growing reality, in August 2023, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed into law the Illinois Grocery Initiative, a first-of-its-kind $20 million program that will provide capital, technical assistance and a range of services to open or expand grocery stores in underserved and low-income neighborhoods across the state.

Even before Illinois’ new initiative, rural and small town communities in Illinois like Mount Pulaski, Farmer City and Carlinville have been working with VASDC, organizing their communities to pave the way for cooperatively owned, community-based grocers. Cooperative grocery stores were once perceived as the stuff of elite, granola-munching college towns and coastal enclaves. But today’s co-op advocates emphasize the power of cooperative ownership structures to provide local, democratic control of a community’s essential needs. While the economies of mass-scale production and logistics that sustain and supply traditional chain store or conglomerate grocers like Walmart and Dollar General are often deemed “efficient,” the Covid-19 pandemic revealed their underlying fragility and susceptibility to supply chain disruption.

It’s estimated that Walmart now sells just over a quarter of all groceries in the United States. In his forthcoming book Barons: Money, Power and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, antitrust expert Austin Frerick writes that the gutting of New Deal-era price floor regulations has allowed companies like Walmart to amass a level of dominance not seen in US history. To do so, he writes, Walmart “demands that a supplier decrease the price or improve the quality of an item each year,” in addition to giving Walmart delivery priority.

In contrast, local, cooperative ownership helps guarantee that decision making about how a store is run and what it stocks are based on the community benefit. The items on the shelves of co-ops like Cairo’s Rise Community Market aren’t the stuff of Whole Foods, but these stores help bring needed items close to the community, like fresh produce and meat, which tend to be sourced from farmers and producers nearby. Robert Edwards, Rise Community Market’s store manager, says that local stores may not be able to match the extensive inventory and cost a little more than the Walmarts of the world, but “what you get for those few extra cents you spend is the ability to help those in your community” by ensuring that  goods are available “for those in your community who lack the ability to travel for them.”

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, center, cuts the ribbon at Rise Community Market’s opening ceremony.

Interest in bringing community-owned stores to rural America isn’t limited to Illinois. Across the country, communities are experimenting with new ways to address the disappearance of rural and small town grocery stores. The Institute for Self-Reliance has detailed examples of innovative models in Pennsylvania and North Dakota, including self-service grocers, rural grocery delivery and nonprofit grocers. Food cooperative programs are now active at state universities in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and elsewhere, and in recent years rural cooperative development centers have been active in almost all 50 states.

“Cooperative development is once again ascendant,” says Stacey Sutton, director of the Solidarity Economy Research, Policy and Law Project and associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago. “And it’s rising in areas that have not seen sufficient support in the past.”

Even though agricultural cooperatives, or farmers’ co-ops, have long been a cornerstone in rural communities, Sutton explains that there has been a significant gap in cooperative development for other types of collectively owned, democratically managed enterprises. Part of this is due to the influence of institutions like the USDA and land grant universities in rural communities, which have traditionally invested their resources in agricultural cooperatives, pooling resources around commodity crop and livestock production. “What’s missing is exactly what’s happening at Western Illinois, in terms of supporting other types of cooperatives, such as food cooperatives, which are essential in disinvested communities,” says Sutton.

One of the major challenges facing cooperative development in rural communities is access to technical services, or the process of providing specialized know-how and business acumen to help communities plan and build capacity for creating models of collective ownership. This is where the VASDC team comes in.

Unlike chain grocers or corporate juggernauts that take a one-size-fits-all approach, VASDC’s methods are more artisanal, tailored to the specific needs of developing a sustainable community-owned grocer. “The financial calculations of a full business plan require everything down to the floor plan,” Park says. “If we change the floor plan and some of the refrigeration section, it’s going to change your utility bill and the amount that you sell in each department. From there it’s going to change the profit margin in both those departments.”

Facing stiff competition discount stores like Walmart means that a cooperative’s success is totally dependent on community buy-in and organizing. For many communities, there’s an educational component to VASDC’s consulting. The kind of ongoing, sustainable collective action and community organizing required to keep a cooperative vibrant, coupled with learning and navigating the practice of democratic ownership, can be taxing and messy. Cooperatives often require more than just showing up to vote. It can take anywhere from six months to seven years to build a cooperative grocery, and it may not always work the first time.

Park says it can also be a hurdle to inform residents that cooperative grocers are open to non-members for shopping and that member-ownership is more about investing in a store’s sustainability than earning Costco-like membership privileges. On the flip side, member-owners who are unfamiliar with cooperative concepts sometimes expect Gordon Gecko-like returns on their investment. That’s just not possible in an industry where profits can be razor thin or in a cooperative where profits are typically reinvested in the store. Yet, Park says that for the communities he serves, the process is often worth it. “When you can guide them from concept to that opening day, that’s really rewarding.”

In the 12 years that Park has led VASDC, he has helped countless rural communities throughout Illinois and the Midwest develop community ownership models for grocery stores. Edwards, the manager of the Cairo co-op, credits Park’s successes to his previous work owning and managing a grocery store. “I find solace in knowing that he understands the hurdles of managerial responsibilities and the stress this can bring.” Park’s advice, he says, has been “invaluable in helping me navigate challenges,” and was vital to him in making a smooth transition into the manager role when he started in January 2023, six months before the opening. “Sean is unafraid of telling you when you’re making a mistake or that an idea is ridiculous,” Edwards says, “Knowing that you have a partner like that instills trust and that makes it easier to turn to him when you find yourself in doubt.”

This coming year will be the first of what Park describes as the “2.0” version of the center, with the addition of new staff members timed to address the expected interest generated by the Illinois Grocery Initiative. The additional staff will increase the center’s capacity to provide holistic solutions to tackle the challenges that affect grocers, small producers and growers, and rural communities across the state.

Given the demands on their time, the center’s staff is pragmatic. Kristin Terry, one of the center’s recent hires, who previously worked in economic development for Macomb, Illinois, says that if you’re within 10 or 15 miles of a Walmart or the new iteration of dollar stores that sell groceries, a community cooperative will not be viable, because too many people will still opt for the superstore. In this respect, it’s a Walmart economy, Terry says, and residents are stuck living in it.

While the speed with which Rise Community Market developed is a testament to Park’s work and the efforts of community organizers, the cooperative has faced some setbacks. A set of brand-new cooler cases malfunctioned and a walk-in cooler broke down overnight, leading to product loss and a decline in revenue. However, a USDA grant in combination with community backing and a GoFundMe campaign have helped address such setbacks.

“Fortunately, we have a community that believes in this project and wants to support the store regardless of the struggles we’ve faced,” Edwards says. As volunteer and community-owner support continue to grow, Edwards and the co-op members are optimistic that their store will be able to meet its fundraising and revenue goals. “The most important part of building a community-owned store is getting long-term community buy-in. It doesn’t end with the grand opening,” Edwards says. “You have to be committed to a long-term project.”

That appears to be true on the consulting side, as well. Recently, Park and the VASDC team held a meeting in a community that Park had visited a few years ago and had only found one person interested in the idea of building a cooperative grocer. This time, they found 10.

The post How Illinois Is Bringing Grocery Stores Back to Main Street appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The human pressures on the river’s resources have come about through a combination of the valley as attractive farmland, significant urban growth and an influx of tourists wanting to hike, boat, bike and bird-watch. The population of Phoenix, which relies on water from a combination of the Verde and Colorado rivers, has grown to 4.75 million in 2024 from 221,000 in 1950, now the fifth largest city in the US, while climate change and agricultural demands have placed additional pressure on the river’s supply. 

Global environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy has been working on the Verde River for more than 50 years, and as the issue of low water flow became increasingly critical about 15 years ago, it began working with local communities to effect change and save water. This was the launch of Sinagua Malt, Arizona’s first malt house, a Certified B Corp public benefit corporation, which works by incentivizing farmers to transition from water-intensive summer crops such as corn and alfalfa to barley, by providing them with a stable market and offering local breweries and distilleries the opportunity to use locally sourced malt. This measure has saved more than 725 million gallons of Verde River water between 2016 and 2023, according to data from The Nature Conservancy—or more than 50 gallons per pint of beer.

Kim Schonek and Chip Norton inside the Singua Malt malt house. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Barley to the rescue

It was a 2015 meeting between The Nature Conservancy’s Kim Schonek and the Verde Conservation District’s Chip Norton that resulted in the game-changing plan to conserve the Verde River flow. The idea for Sinagua Malt came about through Schonek’s and Norton’s shared goals, approached from different perspectives. For Schonek, the key objective was elevating flows in the river, along with protecting farmland and ensuring its viability. Having tried fallowing agreements, where farmers were paid not to farm, and drip irrigation, which was hard for farmers to manage in large areas, they needed a new initiative. “We were also looking for a crop that would still be profitable while using significantly less water in the area—and barley was an obvious choice,” explains Schonek. 

Barley is planted in January and February, so it receives a lot of water from the winter rains as it irrigates. It dries out through May and is harvested in June, when the river is at its lowest. Conversely, alfalfa or corn need one foot of water per acre of irrigation during June, which places a significant burden on the river. 

Norton came to the issue of water flow through his work on habitat preservation in the Verde. During this time, Schonek and Norton had both built strong relationships with local farmers, and they were able to convince nearby Hauser Farms to take part. 

The initial test batch of 15 acres of Harrington two-row malt barley was planted and harvested in 2016, but it had to be sent to Austin for malting, as there were no malting houses in Arizona. When the returning malt was tested by local breweries, including Arizona Wilderness and Sedona Brewing, and found to be of saleable, usable quality, Norton and Schonek were left with a conundrum: The transportation costs and environmental impact of sending their barley all the way to Central Texas negated any savings for local farmers and brewers, as well as some of the benefit to the river. They needed to malt closer to the source, and the only way to do that was to build their own malt house.

Chip Norton with some of the barley now grown along the Verde River. Photography submitted. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Learn by doing

“It worked because Chip didn’t expect anyone else to do stuff—he just jumped in and did it. He was willing to be the guy to make it happen,” says Schonek. Norton came out of retirement to start the business. His background as a project manager in water and wastewater plant construction came in handy. “I had a great deal of experience with automated process equipment in my previous career, but I knew nothing about farming or grain processing,” he says. “My training as a maltster was essentially being thrown in the lake and learning to swim. It has been a steep learning curve.” 

After researching technique and recipes through various resources, including the equipment manufacturer and the Craft Maltsters Guild, Norton “just started doing it.” Although Norton says his first batch was “the easiest I’ve ever made,” it wasn’t long before the realities of running a malt house single-handedly set in. “Malting needs cool weather, and there was no air conditioning, which was very challenging in the summer as it was 95 degrees inside—I had to go and buy blocks of ice to throw in the steep water by hand to keep things cool,” he says. There was also a great deal to learn, and batches didn’t always go to plan. Norton says he “learned the correlation between fields that didn’t yield well by quality of barley, so good communication with farmers was crucial. I didn’t have a mentor so I had to self teach—so we learned which fields not to harvest, what techniques gave the best consistency of quality and, over time, we’re making good malt on a small pilot scale.”

Photography by Justin Brummer.

Communication is key

Schonek emphasizes the importance of Norton’s persistence but also of strong communication and integrated goals shared between herself and Norton, the farmers and the brewers. “The brewers’ willingness to try malt that maybe wasn’t the greatest was critical,” she says. Sinagua’s stable of three to four breweries kept them at full capacity, until additional investors funded a new malthouse, which has scaled up production to 1,700 tons from 150 tons per year. Sinagua is now operating at a capacity where it is looking for new farms and new breweries and distilleries to work with. 

The Nature Conservancy measures the change in the Verde River watershed by evaluating the change in crop and how much water each crop uses. It compares the volume of water used to grow barley to that which alfalfa and corn require per acre to see the savings. Measurements are taken during the summer months when the river is at its lowest ebb, and the pair estimates that its initiative has saved 725 million gallons of water. They’ve been able to grow to 610 acres this year from 95 acres of barley produced in 2016. Sinagua Malt now works with five farms, including Hauser, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s Cloverleaf Ranch and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Hatler Farm. They estimate they will be able to supply upwards of 25 local breweries and distilleries by the end of 2024.

Schonek says there has definitely been more water in the last few years. “You can go boating again now,” she says, “and we expect the impact on the river to at least triple with the new production facility.”

“It’s a dream come true to have such a meaningful impact on the river flow,” says Norton. However, the pair is keen to highlight that there were things they could have done differently along the way and things that have been essential to making the project work. 

“Looking back, one more year of assessment before launching would have been beneficial,” says Norton. They both emphasize that you can’t second-guess the future, but that thorough planning, communication and responsibility are essential when working with multiple partners. “It is critical to listen to agricultural partners and understand what their options are—and to have partners who are on board with shared goals and willing to take some level of risk but also help them manage that risk,” says Schonek. The Nature Conservancy initially helped farmers manage the risk by offering compensation for failed batches, although this has now ceased. It also played an integral role in getting investment from donors, a process by which both Norton and Schonek had to present the venture as practical and profitable. The pair emphasizes goal alignment with other complementary initiatives, such as Friends of the Verde River’s Verde River Exchange Water Offset Program, to which Sinagua contributes, and The Nature Conservancy’s work on eliminating waste in water conveyance and ground water management to ensure the best possible outcomes. 

When it comes to solving the kind of social and environmental issue that the Verde River flow raised, persistence is the key for Norton. “To achieve results, you have to keep plugging away and not quit—things don’t fall in your lap,” he says. Schonek puts creative problem-solving at the forefront. “We can’t just do what we did last year or what we did a decade ago. We must learn from what we’ve done, scale up and invest in better infrastructure,” she says, highlighting the need for greater funding and policy work across the board. 

The post How Two Committed Conservationists Revitalized a River With Beer appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A recent visit to the northern city of Montreal in February, when temperatures hovered around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, found restaurants and bars that still managed to serve locally grown and produced food and beverages. It drove home the point that, if they can make it work here—we can do it anywhere. 

Photography by Anne-Marie Pellerin – Tourisme Montréal

A long history 

Decades before cities began actively encouraging the growing and consumption of local food, Montreal was on it. In 1936, Montreal launched the first community garden initiative, alongside the Relief Gardens, and later, the Victory Gardens that sprang up as a result of the world wars. Community gardens continued to grow in popularity over the century, with new branches and chapters flourishing in the 1970s. That’s when the concept of “guerilla gardening” became popular in the city, as groups of Portuguese and Italian immigrants began gardening in unused spaces around the city. In 1973, the Victoria Community Garden was founded by the Jewish General Hospital and the Golden Age Foundation, which aimed to create a gardening space for residents over age 55. It’s now the second-largest garden on the island. 

Today, growing and consuming food feels like a cultural imperative.

“We have always valued culture and the arts, and to us, food and wine is part of that,” says Julie Martel, a longtime advocate for local produce and a project manager at the annual food-centric festival Montreal en Lumiere. “As we have all become increasingly aware of the impact of consuming food that is grown far away, Montreal’s institutions and its regular people have become more invested in supporting the local food movement.”

Today, there are 57 urban farming companies in Montreal, including the first urban rooftop greenhouse and the world’s largest urban farming project, Lufa Farms, at 300,000 square feet. 

A view inside one of Lufa Farms greenhouses. Photography submitted.

A culture of support

A proliferation of locally grown food won’t make an impact without a hungry and supportive culture. In Montreal specifically, and Quebec more broadly, that culture is specifically and purposefully fostered.

In 2020, Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonatan Julien earmarked $100 million to double the size of the province’s greenhouse operations by 2025. Already, the province is 50 percent self-sufficient, providing its citizens with locally grown produce year round, with the goal of reaching 80-percent sufficiency. 

In Montreal, the government-funded convention center—the Palais des congrés de Montreal—is carbon neutral and has invested in several innovative food and ecological initiatives. The Urban Agriculture Lab, which has Canada’s first urban rooftop vineyard, extensive rooftop gardens and pollinating beehives, is housed there. 

But perhaps more importantly, the citizens, event planners and chefs of Montreal actively support these institutions.

“Did you know that spinach grown in the winter is sweeter?” asks Martel. “It’s because it is struggling, and that process releases a chemical that makes it taste sweeter. You discover that, and so much more, as a food lover in Montreal as we all get more creative growing and eating local food year-round.”

Martel treats her robust CSA—which grows its own produce and brings in dairy, poultry and meat from nearby farms in Quebec—like many of us do our grocery store, shopping online and ordering for the week. But she also uses her position of power to ensure that Montreal en Lumiere, a festival that draws in 500,000 visitors and includes events with 52 restaurants in the city, is hyper-local focused. 

“We bring in Michelin-starred chefs and iconic winemakers from across the world to create meals and pairings for the event,” says Martel. “But they are all using locally produced ingredients. When the festival began 25 years ago, it was all about Italian truffles and lemons. Now it’s about Montreal-raised fish, locally grown produce.”

Indeed, there are several now-iconic Montreal food and drinks companies that are regionally beloved but largely unknown outside of the city, simply because most of their goods are consumed by local gourmands.

Lufa Farms, the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse, was founded in 2009, employs more than 600 people and grows 50+ types of produce (including 10 varieties of tomatoes and three varieties of eggplant) across 300,000 square feet on four rooftops. That bounty totals 25,000 pounds a week and goes to 20,000 customers who are able to order customized food baskets. Lufa offers more than 400 pick-up points around the city, and the farm also delivers straight to customers’ doors. 

Several restaurants in Montreal proudly showcase their connection to Lufa Farms and another new local-famous innovator: Opercule. 

Founded in 2017, Opercule farms arctic char sustainably, consuming, it says, 100 to 200 times less water than classic open-circuit fish farms. (It is also powered by hydropower, which is ample in Quebec and much cleaner than alternatives such as coal). The fish are raised without antibiotics or hormones and delivered to the dozens of grocery stores and restaurants with which it works, just hours after being harvested via electric vehicles. Opercule produces around 25 tons of fish per year and harvests fish only once an order is placed.

Other, less obvious locally produced food and drinks businesses are also thriving. Take Distillerie de Montreal. 

Founded by fifth-generation distiller Lilian Wolfelsberger and lawyer and entrepreneur Stéphane Dion, the Distillerie produces about 300,000 bottles across more than two dozen different products, many of them using all local ingredients, says production manager Alexandre Arpin. “We buy mash from our local brewery that sources grain locally, and in a few years, we’ll be using our own grains, which we plan to source from our friends nearby.”

The vast majority of the production is purchased locally, although it does have a cult following in certain pockets of Europe. 

Distillerie also creates several spirits and liqueurs from locally farmed or foraged fruit, including La Pomme Blanche Marie-Jo (made with locally grown apples) and Sureau Elderberry (made with locally harvested elderflowers and berries). 

“We’ve ended up with some of our more interesting products because of things our forager Guy has brought us,” says Arpin. “I have at least 74 plants and mushrooms in some stage of distillation from things he’s brought us.”

Chef Maxime Lizotte. Photography submitted.

Looking ahead

Montreal rides its fame for bagels, poutine and smoked meat hard. But it is also increasingly seeking to honor the traditions and cuisines from the 120 ethnicities that live and thrive there, especially that of its First Nations people. 

In addition to supporting museum collections and festivals highlighting First Peoples’ culture, a First Nations Garden has been opened in the city’s Botanical Garden, and the city’s large-scale festivals are working to bring in and highlight the work of First Nations producer chefs. 

“We have so much to learn from the history and culture of the Indigenous people,” says Martel. “We decided to spotlight Indigenous cuisine at the festival this year, because we recognize how much Indigenous people have to offer in terms of knowledge of the edible plants and spices we still have to discover all around us.”

Maxime Lizotte, an Indigenous chef who worked at some of the country’s top kitchens, agrees. 

“During the pandemic, I decided it was time to focus on my Indigenous roots,” he explains. “I want to not only honor the traditions and lands of my ancestors of the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation but also merge them with the cuisines that influenced me and made me fall in love with cooking and food.”

Much of the food that his ancestors cooked and ate was for survival, he explains. 

“The conditions were harsh,” he says. “A lot of our produce and meat was smoked or dried or both. It was an excellent way to preserve the food and sustain life, but maybe it’s not the way we want to eat today.” 

So, instead of serving up dried berries and simply smoked seal meat, he combines the best of both worlds. 

“I use Indigenous ingredients like seal and wild plants but also pork raised on my ancestral land,” he says. “To me, that’s more logical than serving deer flown in from New Zealand.”

Montreal’s spirit of using what you have on hand but prepared with inspiration from a wide swath of histories and cultures feels extraordinarily 22nd century. 

Hungry to find your own local, progressive, home-grown flavor? Check out the USDA’s CSA finder and LocalHarvest. Then write your local political representative and tell them to take a few pages out of our northern neighbor’s playbook and start funding local farming institutions.

The post If Montreal Can Feed Itself Year-Round, More Cities Can appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“We call ourselves an ‘experience farm,’” says Topaz. “But we could just as easily call ourselves an educational farm.” 

Topaz Farm grows vegetables, berries and more—but it also participates in something called agritourism, a broad term that includes activities and events that bring visitors to the farm. This relationship between the farm and the greater community has been critical to the farm’s survival over the past few years.

When Abeles and Topaz first acquired their land on Sauvie Island, it had been conventionally farmed for decades and had “virtually nothing good in the soil,” says Topaz. As they began to farm the land, they also endeavored to learn about regenerative techniques to foster healthier soil—supplementing with microbes, biochar and more. But these things don’t transform soil overnight, and in the meantime, it was difficult to make enough income through traditional farming alone. This was coupled with other mishaps that often befall small farms. The first year, deer ate two acres of strawberries while Topaz and Abeles were sleeping. This past year, squash bugs helped wipe out their pumpkin crop. Their forays into agritourism have kept the farm afloat.

“We think that for farmers to become sustainable financially and to remain in business and to keep farming, they have to have the flexibility to have diverse revenue sources,” says Abeles.

They aren’t the only ones who feel this way. When announcing the results from the 2022 Census of Agriculture this February, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said that many farmers rely on off-farm income to keep their production afloat, and he supports diversifying farmers’ income streams to keep farming economically feasible, although he didn’t mention agritourism specifically.

But despite many farms depending on extra revenue, which agritourism can provide, farmers such as Topaz and Abeles face challenges in navigating agritourism laws. According to Oregon’s legal code, farms can have “farm stands” as long as no more than 25 percent of the sales are attributable to “incidental items and fees from promotional activity.” This includes some but not all aspects of agritourism. But it doesn’t always make sense to Topaz and Abeles what fits into which category—it’s a problem, since there’s a hard cap on incidentals. For example, if they sell tickets to a farm dinner and prepare guests food made from the produce harvested on the farm, this can’t exceed 25 percent of their “farm stand” income. 

Left: At Topaz Farm, as with many agritourism farms, education is a key component. Right: A sign listing some agritourism activities visitors can participate in. (Photography by Topaz Farm)

Other issues emerged. They were told by a county official that if they host live music, it can’t be called a concert. But it is OK to call it a “harvest festival featuring a live music performance.” If a class of school children comes to the farm for an educational field trip and it’s raining (as it often does in northwest Oregon), Abeles and Topaz want to be able to utilize tents, but the county has flagged this as an issue as well, with the outcome yet to be decided.

“We used to say Mother Nature was the most challenging part of farming,” says Topaz. “We’ve replaced that with Multnomah County and the state being the most difficult thing that we deal with. And we’re not alone.”

The immense counterweight to all of these restrictions is that land use laws are in place for a reason: to protect the integrity of farmland. Across the country, millions of acres of farmland have been lost over the last 30 years, due to development and other forms of land conversion. What farmers, conservationists, lawmakers and residents of Oregon and the rest of the country are faced with is a delicate dilemma: How do you preserve the integrity of the country’s best farmland without sacrificing the livelihood of the farmer in the process? 

Agritourism on the farm

“Agritourism” is an umbrella term that encompasses so many different things. The National Agricultural Law Center defines agritourism as the “crossroads” of agriculture and tourism; it draws visitors to farms for educational, entertainment or recreational purposes, and it is intended to increase farm income. Examples vary widely; corn mazes, on-farm markets, farm stays and bed and breakfasts, U-pick opportunities, farm-to-table dinners, tours and classes are all examples of agritourism, and there are a lot more, too. 

This breadth is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there are a lot of different and customizable opportunities to bring in extra income on farms. But, at the same time, regulating all of these different activities as a monolith doesn’t make sense. As a result, the type of agritourism a farm can practice and how much of the business it can be isn’t consistent, not just state to state, but even county to county.

“There is not one nationally or internationally recognized definition,” says Audrey Comerford, an agritourism coordinator at Oregon State University Extension. “Which means it’s kind of an amoeba … [It] encompasses a lot of different things depending on the location.”

Comerford co-authored a new economic impact report on agritourism in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Of the 18,679 farms in the Willamette Valley, about 4,000 of them may be engaged in some kind of agritourism. For these farms, agritourism can account for as much as 50 percent of their business. 

Comerford says Oregon’s land use laws seem to be stricter than those in other places in general. A national survey from the University of Vermont echoes this point, finding that farmers on the West Coast listed legal regulations as one of their biggest hurdles to agritourism. 

Live music featuring Gregory Alan Isakov at Topaz Farm. (Photography by Sara Wright)

The idea of gathering on farms is not new, says Lisa Chase, director of the Vermont Tourism Research Center at the University of Vermont and lead author of this survey. That’s something that’s been around as long as we’ve had agriculture. The more recent development is the profound disconnect between most people and the farms that feed them—direct on-farm jobs accounted for less than 2 percent of US employment in 2022. 

“What’s new is this disconnect with agriculture, for almost all of the US population, and that provides an opportunity for farms to help the non-farming public learn about food production, and [it] also provide some additional income for the farms,” says Chase.

In this way, agritourism provides an opportunity to increase the “agricultural literacy” of the public. But agritourism is a term that should be only reserved for working farms, says Chase. Unfortunately, that’s a tough thing to quantify.

“The fact that it’s a working farm needs to be included, and then it becomes a question of how do you measure that,” says Chase.

In Oregon, farmers such as Abeles and Topaz of Topaz Farm have to carefully navigate the rule that only 25 percent of their farm stand income can come from “incidental items” and “fees from promotional activity.” Another approach would be to use time spent or labor percentage instead of income, says Chase—something she’s seen in Italy. The benefit of this method is that these incidentals, such as farm stays or farm dinners, earn more over less time. This approach limits the amount of time spent devoted to agritourism, instead of capping the portion of income that is derived from it.

“It became problematic for farms who could make so much money from their overnight farm stays and not as much money from the food they were producing, even though it was a legitimate working farm,” says Chase.

A farm to table dinner at Topaz Farm. (Photography by Topaz Farm)

Even though this is a hard thing to try to quantify, getting it right is paramount. Chase says that, not too long ago, she had a phone call from a developer who was talking about starting an agricultural theme park and was curious about agritourism. Chase advised them that they shouldn’t use that word if they weren’t going to be running a working farm. 

“This is exactly what people are worried about,” says Chase. “As agritourism grows in popularity, it is a real concern. And the core of agritourism is that you’re a working farm. And I think that is what needs to be maintained in the regulations.”

‘Exclusive farm use’

Protecting farmland from losing its working farms is a key concern for Greg Holmes, Working Lands Program Director/Southern Oregon Advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon, an organization that advocates for land-use planning.

Oregon passed Senate Bill 100 in 1973, creating the Department of Land Conservation and Development. This legislation and subsequent entity became the framework for land use protections in Oregon and, over the last 50 years, has protected much of Oregon’s fertile farmland (as well as forest land and conservation land) by labeling it as “exclusive farm use.”

While the state creates the regulations, it’s up to individual counties to zone the land. This can create some confusion, but the differentiation is essential. The land and the ecosystems it supports vary drastically throughout the state, from the damp, fertile Willamette Valley in the northwest corner of the state to the arid high desert of the eastern half of Oregon down to the piney shared border with California. Zoning all of these counties as though they are the same would come with its own problems. On top of this county-to-county variation, soil suitable for farmland is defined slightly differently for the west side of the Cascade Range versus the east side. 

“There [is] various room for interpretation and different counties apply the regulations, as they understand them, slightly differently,” says Holmes. “The result is that every county has something that fits the definition of exclusive farm use. And it’s protected and zoned for the purpose of protecting agriculture.”

Under Oregon’s legal code, if a farm on exclusive farm use land has a farmstand, income generated from the “incidental” items or “fee-based activity” sold there must be no more than 25 percent of the total farm stand revenue. Agritourism does not fall neatly into this split. For example, U-pick offerings don’t count toward the 25 percent, but tickets to a farm-to-table dinner do. The point is to prevent abuse of farmland—for example, selling things at a farmstand that don’t have anything to do with farming.

“The point of the limitation on the incidental sales is they want to make sure that it remains a farmstand and doesn’t have a store that happens to be located on agricultural land and is drawing people to it,” says Holmes.

A better definition of agritourism, says Holmes, would help draw a cleaner line between working farms making supplemental income and other types of businesses trying to use a farmscape as their setting. It has to address both the tourism aspect and the direct tie to working agriculture.

“The cleanest way to do this would be to start from the beginning,” says Holmes, to define what counts as acceptable agritourism and what should not take place on agricultural land. From there, the law can clarify the process of how to permit acceptable activities. “I don’t think you can ever get a list that’s all-encompassing, but we can do a lot better than what we’ve done now.”

Defining agritourism

Holmes isn’t the only one who has identified the need for a more concrete definition of agritourism. Suzi Spahr, executive director for NAFDMA, an organization that unites agritourism operators, says there’s significant diversity in what agritourism is. 

“You will have many local governments or state government officials who will think that they know what a particular farm will do and then will want to make regulations based on that style,” says Spahr. “But you’ll have a variety of different agritourism operations, and so a one-size-fits-all all very frequently does not fit the industry to its best.”

NAFDMA has created its own definition of agritourism: “Agritourism is an agricultural enterprise attracting visitors to a farm or ranch to experience a connection with agriculture production and/or processing through entertainment, education, and/or the purchase of farm products.”

“We are starting to use that as sort of the basis by which we ensure that the focus remains on agriculture as the main guiding force, the main purpose behind what’s occurring,” says Spahr. 

Sheep at Leaping Lamb Farm. (Photography by Nathan Fussell)

Scottie Jones of Leaping Lamb Farm in Alsea, Oregon practices a type of agritourism where guests can come stay on her farm. Jones found that having an overnight rental on her farm greatly increased the viability of her business. 

“It’s horrible to say this, but, you know, it takes the agritourism for me to be able to be a successful farmer,” she says.

She keeps the farm at the center of the farm stays—she loves the questions from guests that she gets to answer—what does a potato look like in the ground? What is a fertilized egg? Jones says it’s an opportunity for connection.

“We sell lamb—that’s our prime agricultural product that we sell,” says Jones. “But by adding the farm stay, immediately, we were starting to be able to pay for the tractor to break down, and we weren’t using our retirement to be farmers. So, I was wholly invested in what this could do for us; also what it could do for the people that came to visit.”

Jones is also the chair for North America at the Global Agritourism Network and the owner/operator of Farmstay, a network of small overnight rentals on farms across the country. It offers support and resources for farmers looking to diversify their business this way. Jones has also seen some of the abuses of this pathway—hotels or developers trying to create luxury agricultural stays on farmland.

The farm stay at Leaping Lamb Farm. (Photography by Leaping Lamb Farm)

“Farmstay is about working farms and ranches that offer lodging,” says Jones. “So, it’s about going onto a real farm. It’s not a fake farm, it’s not a beautiful piece of property; it’s a working farm.”

She sees these “fake farm” businesses as a detriment to trying to figure out how to proceed with legislation making agritourism easier on actual farms.

“I do understand the fear there,” says Jones. “I just need our regulators to know that there’s the rest of us. There’s the rest of us out there, just really trying to make a dollar and really wanting to make that connection and really wanting to provide a place for people to come to the country and learn something.”

***

Interested in figuring out if agritourism is right for your farm? Audrey Comerford co-teaches this online on-demand course for producers in Oregon. The OSU Extension Agricultural Tourism website can be found here, and you can sign up for its quarterly newsletter here. The Vermont Tourism Research Center has an extensive catalog of resources. Farmstay helps farmers looking to host guests figure out how to get started. And NAFDMA is a central resource hub for North American agritourism enterprises.

Want to learn more about land protections? Read more on the 1000 Friends of Oregon website. Here, you can learn more about Oregon’s land use planning system, read impact reports and brief yourself on important bills in Oregon’s 2024 legislative session.

The post The Business Behind the Farm Visit appeared first on Modern Farmer.