Foodstand

etsummer 8yr It's crazy how difficult it can be for young farmers to get started. There's a project starting up out in CA headed by California FarmLink that is working to pair elders and young farmers in a mentorship and succession program. Just getting started but I think they'll do good things!

annefood 8yr That's fantastic. I was just talking about apprenticeships and mentors the other day. We've lost that in our country and its an important element.

JenniferEmilson 8yr Hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago when pretty well every family farmed in some way!!

olivettefarm 8yr Very important stuff. There are a lot of great things going on to help young farmers get started now, but not nearly enough.

DietID_TeamDietitians 8yr Have you guys seen sharedearth.com? I love this idea I just don't know how practical it is and if it can really remove friction from the process of setting up

etsummer 8yr The Shared Earth model looks cool, at least to get small farmers started out, might have problems scaling up after that though. I'm always curious about land ownership issues with stuff like this, and how the farmers are protected against the owners up and kicking them out. There's an ag park out here near SF that houses a few small farms that's created through a partnership b/w the public utilities commission and a non-profit and the farmers were constantly worried because there was talk of the city giving it up and selling to a private owner. 😬

DietID_TeamDietitians 8yr Ahhhhhhh yes it's like the community garden issues in New York - such amazing impact but constant fear of getting pushed out. I agree probably a scaling problem but at least it's something! :)

olivettefarm 8yr I began farming by renting land through a local farm incubator program. I wish there were more people like the owners of that land across the country. One of the biggest hurdles to stating a farm is access to land. Unfortunately, there is a lot of unused farmland out there that young farmers are unable to access for various reasons.

DietID_TeamDietitians 8yr Ah interesting! I'd love to know if there is land anywhere in the northeast because there are so many young farmers getting training

olivettefarm 8yr @rachna the seed farm in PA is a great example - theseedfarm.org - there is something similar in NY, but the name escapes me at the moment.

DietID_TeamDietitians

DietID_TeamDietitians WOOHOO!!

shmoozii

shmoozii 👏👏👏👏👏

annefood

annefood Thank you!

garv

garv Well done !

garv

garv That's quite a read. I'm weaning myself off sugar after December debauchery, admittedly it's not easy.

annefood

annefood You can do it @garv !

garv

garv Thanks @annefood . Weaning myself off sugar , refined flour etc. Priming myself for the real food challenge. It's the first challenge that I gave up midway.

If there are no new farmers, who will grow our food?