Farmers walking away from their leases in the Midwest
A report from Reuters News Service: Across the U.S. Midwest, the plunge in grain prices to near four-year lows is pitting landowners determined to sustain rental incomes against farmer tenants worried about making rent payments because their revenues are squeezed. Some grain farmers already see the burden as too big. They are taking an extreme […]
Cooperative Farms in Upstate New York
By Kathryn Shattuck from The New York Times It was time for the running of the bulls. As Ron Cieri watched from his ATV this summer, his farm manager, Jim Ingram, unleashed five hulking males into a verdant Catskills pasture, where 80 brood cows — a patchwork of red, black and white — grazed with […]
Organic Dairy Training Program in Maine
Wolfe’s Neck Farm Secures Major Grant from Stonyfield to launch an Organic Dairy Farmer Training and Research Program For many years, the story of dairy farming in New England was a story of decline. But, a new program being launched by Wolfe’s Neck Farm in partnership with organic yogurt maker, Stonyfield, hopes to change that […]
Featured Resource: Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems
Heroic Endeavors: Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) by Leslie Hatfield | from EcoCentric The movement toward simpler food can be complicated. Entrepreneurs looking to start farms, farmers’ markets and food hubs quickly learn that when it comes to starting and running one – on top of the day-to-day work involved […]
Virginia Farm Needs Farmer, and a Plan
by Courtney Langley from the Virginia Gazette JAMES CITY – The county is looking for a good realtor to help assess, market and sell a 100-acre farm and a residential lot, both in the upper county. The request for proposals issued Thursday afternoon outlines interest in selling the Crawford house the county acquired last year, […]
Too Local?
The Poland and Polachek families have been stewards of the land in Loudoun County, VA for generations. In an article published by the Washington Business Journal, one farmer says the Poland Farm “sticks out like a sore thumb” in a sea of sub-divisions west of Washington, D.C. The article describes the farm as the hole […]
FarmStart for the Next Generation
FarmStart from Sustain Ontario on Vimeo. FarmStart is a charitable organization that provides training to a new generation of farmers. FarmStart provides someone with an interest in farming with a small test piece of land to see if farming is for them. But a piece of land alone doesn’t make the farmer. In the second […]
Experience Speaks: Alternatives to Farm Ownership
Alternatives to Ownership: Land Trusts as Land Reform by Robert Swann In those countries where traditional land reform (redistribution of land to private owners as initiated by the central state – examples in Japan, Taiwan, Iran some South American countries, etc) has taken place, redistribution of land has resulted in some cases (Taiwan for instance) […]
Wood Colony Feels Urban Pressure
From The New York Times by Patricia Lee Brown MODESTO, Calif. — Farmers and other residents of the rural district known as Wood Colony refer to the 110-year-old arboreal landmark in their midst — a gigantic walnut tree of Grimm’s fairy-tale proportions — as, simply, the Tree. To many people in this unincorporated community, settled […]
Town of Amherst, MA Proposes Incubator Program
By Diane Lederman from MassLive AMHERST – Town Meeting has supported spending Community Preservation Act money to help buy a nearly 20-acre parcel of land of Belchertown Road that the town plans to use for myriad agricultural and resource protection projects. Last November, the meeting rejected the request to spend $41,785 in Community Preservation Act […]