Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Doug Willhite <drwillhite@earthlink.net>]

Published Mar 24 2010 by Grist

Meet a young farmer leading a greenhorn ‘guerilla’ movement
by Erik Hoffner

Severine von Tscharner Fleming, farmer and director of the film The  
Greenhorns.
Severine von Tscharner Fleming is the director of the forthcoming  
film The Greenhorns and founder of the crucial new young farmer  
organization of the same name. Here's her no-nonsense, take-no- 
prisoners perspective on the young farmers movement. Make no mistake,  
this woman is dedicated and smart -- and she's recruiting.

Q. What is Greenhorns all about?

A. It's about the community of young farmers in this country. We are  
a nonprofit organization that works to promote, recruit, and support  
young farmers. Mostly what we do is produce media -- print resources,  
new media, and programming for young farmers. Recently, there has  
also been an emphasis on events.

Q. Did it come about before or after the film?

A. The whole thing started with the film, with the idea that we'd  
better document this glorious and burgeoning movement, and share the  
excitement with more young people who might be inclined to enter  
agriculture professionally. But soon we realized that making a movie  
takes a long time, and that we'd better start communicating in other  
ways as well. So we started a wiki for relevant resources, a blog for  
news and video ephemera, then we got a weekly radio show and podcast  
on Heritage Radio Network, we began to tweet, etc.

Q. What are you growing, and where? What got you going in ag?

A. Last season, my friends Michelle, Anya, and I, with help from my  
little brother Charlie, ran our own farm, smithereen farm, in the  
Hudson Valley of New York. We planted an orchard, raised pigs,  
rabbits, laying hens, a few fowl, and about three-quarters of an acre  
of vegetables, flowers, and herbs.

We sold to three fancy restaurants, an organic grocery store, and a  
farmers market. We also dried 2,000 marjoram plants and sold them to  
Formaggio Kitchen, a fancy food store in Cambridge, Mass.

Farming is pretty much the love of my life. Back in college I was  
part of a posse starting the Pomona College Organic Farm, a very  
guerilla project, a permaculture fruit orchard with permanent raised  
beds. We had such a wonderful time building that farm, hustling  
hoses, hauling mulch, hosting work/harvest parties -- but we had  
quite a trouble convincing the college of its merit. Goes to show the  
changing climate for agriculture within the groves of academe,  
because the farm is now on the college's admission tour!

This coming season I'll be working on my friend Dina Brewster's farm  
The Hickories in Connecticut. It's a 200-family member organic CSA  
with fruit, vegetables, and meat. Dina is a bad-ass young farmer, ex- 
poetry teacher, and sage greenhorn.

Q. I did several farm apprenticeships in the 1990s, but was unable to  
figure out how to get some land of my own that I could afford. Is  
access to land still an issue?

A. Access to land is a major issue!  In our guidebook, we have a list  
of 20 different pathways to tenure and some institutions that deal  
with the legal details. There is also a report put out by Farmlasts  
with relevant insight.

Q. Advice?

A. First step: manufacture some magic! You'll soon figure out the  
particular troubles accessing land in the community you want to farm  
-- but basically it's a lot easier to find land in smaller towns away  
from major cities. It's of course a lot easier if you have cousins or  
uncles who own some land, and it's also a lot easier if you are  
friendly, responsible, hardworking, and lucky!

Here in the Hudson Valley of New York where I live, many young  
farmers face "land drama." As a result, Greenhorns is partnering with  
our local County Extension to host a meeting and produce a series of  
papers about expectations and "best practices" in leasing between non- 
farming landowners and beginning farmers. In this valley and in many  
other metro-foodsheds, we've got to figure out how to navigate the  
relationship between real-estate value and farm business viability.

Q. Are the new young farmers you know thinking about the macro or  
micro? Do they want to feed the country, feed themselves, or is it both?

A. Think globally, farm locally. Dominated as our food system has  
become by the mega-consolidation of poultry, beef, dairy, and hogs,  
the government has got to crack the monopoly. Our role is to replace  
that monopoly with a mosaic of small and medium-sized farms and food  
businesses. That means more new processing plants, cheese makers,  
butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, more locally owned grocery  
stores, more entrepreneurship at all levels, and more protagonism  
within those businesses.

It took Monsanto 20 years to consolidate their hold on our seed  
supply, and it'll probably take us 20 years to shake that monkey, but  
that is only half a professional lifetime for my generation.

Q. Any highlights from the recent Drake Forum on Beginning Farmers in  
D.C. to share?

A. Thanks to Matt Russell and Drake University Law Center for  
providing such a resonant national venue for a conversation about  
beginning farmer issues. I presented about the National Young  
Farmers' Coalition and Greenhorns, and on Saturday night got to  
screen a sneak peek of our film.

As proud as I was to raise my voice on the same stage as Agriculture  
Secretary [Tom] Vilsack and Sen. [Tom] Harkin, I was prouder still of  
the strong community of young farmers, activists, and organizers that  
swirled the lobbies and corridors. The beginning farmer posse, the  
folks of my generation who have staked their lives on rebuilding our  
food system, seeing all of their twinkling eyes all together was my  
highlight.

Secretary Vilsack said, "It's not just that what we've been doing the  
last few years to support farmers and rural communities hasn't been  
working. It's that what we've been doing for the last few decades  
hasn't been working." He also said that 45 percent of the armed  
services are folks coming from rural America. Translated: Our  
agricultural system has become broken to the point where the  
opportunity to serve in uniform is more promising than the  
opportunity to serve your country food. My question for Vilsack: If  
people born in rural areas can't afford an education without joining  
the Army, how about the USDA providing educational debt forgiveness  
for farmers?

Q. You're a charter member of the newly forming Young Farmers'  
Coalition. What excites you about it?

A. Well, our first order of business was getting the legal framework  
set up. Our website is up and now we are recruiting young farmer  
leadership from all the states in the union to represent. I'm  
especially excited at the idea of getting a sponsor so we can hold a  
national congress with loud music.

Q. When I took a beginning farm business course in the late 90s, it  
was the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing. Now farm training  
programs are all over the place, and the USDA is stepping in with $17  
million in grants to 29 such programs as part of its Beginning Farmer  
and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP). So it seems like a great  
time to get into in ag! Have you plugged into these sorts of  
opportunities or programs?

A. Yes indeed. And Greenhorns is actually getting money from the  
BFRDP! Amazing that punky grassroots ninjas like us would qualify.  
But we do, because we provide services, communication, marketing, and  
training resources to beginning farmers and have become a snappy  
little node in the beginning farmer world. Here in the Northeast, our  
partnership with Cornell Small Farm Extension, Farmlink, Farmnet,  
Farm Viability, Heifer International, NOFA NY, Future Farmers of  
America, and a few others is designed to enhance regional training  
opportunities.

Q. What plans do you have for enhancing educational opportunities to  
help new farmers get going?

A. Our main task is to help with networking and producing a series of  
posters for classrooms about farming, generating web content for even  
younger aspiring farmers, bringing young farmers into classrooms,  
screening the film, brainstorming with partners about how to organize/ 
map beginning farmer service providers using a GIS framework, partner  
with relevant educational groups like Farm-Based Education  
Association and Grace Foundation to produce materials for K-12  
teachers, and just generally make a cultural ruckus about young  
farmer rockstars around the country.

Q. The map at the Greenhorns site is a nice way to see where new  
farms/farmers are popping up.

A. Our plan for the map is quite ambitious, but we're still  
fundraising for it so I don't want to spill the beans yet. Any ninja  
web designers with ideas, please be in touch, farmer@thegreenhorns.net.

Are you a young farmer?  Join the map!

Q. What's the connection between farming and empowerment?

A. Jefferson knew. Washington knew. The new agrarian movement knows.

Farmers make sugar from sunshine. Farmers work at the interface of  
the wildness in our landscape. Farmers are the foundation of our  
economy. Farmers are fiercely independent, self reliant, and  
accountable to their relationship with place. Farmers are good at  
identifying bullshit.

Q.Young farmers face big challenges as they plug into the food  
system, but what kinds of advantages do they have?

A. We have the advantage of youth. Brave muscles, a fierce passion,  
and probably pretty savvy marketing insights. We have the advantage  
of eager eaters, dilapidated (but standing!) barns, plus  
sophisticated e-networks to access seeds, nursery stock, rare  
livestock breeds, training opportunities, season extension  
technologies, etc. We also have the advantage of dozens of  
institutions founded by our elders like organic certification bodies,  
regional sustainable-ag groups and networks, and land trusts. We have  
a generation of wise, thoughtful, and experienced mentors willing to  
teach us.

We have a country that needs us to step to the plate, swing that  
pick, and plant the future -- now!

The Greenhorns site is where the young farming movement can be found,  
and its podcast is a great way to hear how new young farmers are  
making their way in the world. It's just one of many solid farm and  
slow-food podcasts available from
the Heritage Radio Network.

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Original article available here: http://www.grist.org/article/ 
greenhorn-guerilla/
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