When it comes to farming in a way that improves the land
instead of degrading it, my sense is that a new crossroads is appearing. A minor one rather, that pits capital and/or land-rich
would-be farmers against those who have-not.
Access to land and capital are not the only things that stand in the way
of starting a new farm. Time is a third
element that always seems to be forgotten.
With the average age of farmers pushing 60 it’s not as
though we have unlimited time to train a new generation to replace them – a
generation that is generally not even solvent enough to purchase bare land at
more than $5000 per acre (if they’re lucky enough to find it), not including
everything else required to farm. Then add
to these challenges the fact that it takes a minimum of 3-5 years experience to
begin to farm moderately well.
In the quest to develop Good Food markets that can offer an
alternative to industrial food markets it’s essential to incubate new farm
start-ups. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation
defines Good Food as food that is healthy, sustainable, fair and affordable. However, we should be careful to be realistic
in how we measure the success of our efforts to recreate a local food system
with an emphasis on the production of Good Food.
Are we consistently giving a younger generation the tools
and capital to start farming sooner, or are most of our perceived “new farms”
made up of old ones switching over to more natural methods of farming? Are the most successful farms actually
rebranded multi-generational farms originally started by forward-thinking
relatives? While there is no doubt they
are essential, they are not new
farms, and they tend to be managed by already aging farmers – not 20-and
30-somethings. Although this segment of
farms has tremendous value in their training capacity, no amount of training will
overcome a lack of access to the other half of farming – good land, capital and
the time to transform it.
Is it reasonable to expect a younger generation who wants to
farm to go into massive debt, or to spend the first 10-20 years of their careers
earning corporate wages so they might have the option retire on a farm? While we subsidize the creation of new troops
to overcome more immediate threats, we’re still reluctant to provide resources to
that same generation willing to improve our soil base and feed us later in
life. Putting our money where our mouths
are means that both creative finance and philanthropy will be needed to start
new farms. Without both we risk the continued
degradation of true farming success which depends on an unbroken
multi-generational transfer of the farming baton.
One fledgling organization trying to change this paradigm
while facilitating the education of new farmers is the Farmer EducationResource Network (FERN).
