Articles
Picking up the Ploughshare
How young farmers can save America's food supply There are, right now, more Americans behind bars than there are working our nation's farms and fields. Farming-once the backbone of a Jeffersonian ideal for a self-sufficient society-has fallen so far as a typical profession that it's no longer even a..
01.23.09
How young farmers can save America's food supply
Severine von Tscharner Fleming is a 27-year old farmer and food activist based in New York's Hudson Valley who could be described as "proud, strong, tough, and a little bit nuts." Not so coincidentally, those are the very adjectives she chooses to define the subculture that she's capturing in her documentary about young farmers, The Greenhorns . The film's website -and accompanying blog -are perhaps the best living testaments to the vitality of this emerging movement, collecting stories from the field, offering advice and resources and inspiration to others interesting in picking up the ploughshare. Fleming has spent the better part of seven years exploring the world of sustainable agriculture, getting her hands dirty in small farms across the world. She writes that during that time she realized, "We young farmers are an emergent social movement. We exist. There are a lot of us from coast to coast, and all sorts of unexpected places between-all over the world. We are serious, and if there were about 20 million of us, we could probably feed the whole United States."To get that many young folks farming, a lot of things would have to happen: policies that target a new generation of farmers rather than conglomerate agribusiness interests, better school-based training programs, easier access to credit for small-scale food producers, the further expansion of marketplaces for local and regional growers, and so on. And a whole lot of grassroots organization. Like what the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture started doing last December, when they hosted an event that could well be remembered as a watershed moment in our nation's agrarian history. The Young Farmers Conference : Reviving the Culture of Agriculture offered young and new farmers the chance to connect with leaders in the field, to network with peers and learn the skills needed to start producing-and selling. From start to finish. Workshops dug into the buying and leasing of land, financing a greenhouse, beginning poultry, cultivating relationships with chefs and restaurants, and a whole bunch of other focused, and crucial, elements of raising and growing food.If we're ever going to meet the demand for good, safe food that isn't entirely dependent on a dwindling, carbon dioxide-laden fossil fuel, we need a new generation of producers, a strong, conscious and hardworking class of growers in both urban and rural settings. We need these young farmers. The Greenhorns trailer: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH7o3fxw6oE Photos of the Young Farmers Conference by Chelsea DeWitt/ EatWellGuide