Farmers of the Future: An Interview with Taylor Reid of BeginningFarmers.org
Posted by Nelson Harvey on June 22, 2011 on Turnstyle News: http://turnstylenews.com/2011/06/22/farmers-of-the-future-an-interview-with-taylor-reid-of-beginningfarmers-org/
In the United States, the “family farmer” is one of our most worn and cherished archetypes. On milk cartons and cereal boxes, in ads for health insurance and pickup trucks, we honor the valiant
Greenhouse Photo By Nelson Harvey
farmers who continue the legacy of their parents and grandparents, struggling to eke out a living in the face of fluxuating commodity prices and soaring costs for seed, fertilizer and equipment. But what about those who weren’t born into the food business, who stumbled onto farming out of college, or developed an interest in it despite their urban or suburban backgrounds? A growing number of young farmers today are coming at the profession from roots like these, and although they have a much steeper learning curve than their farm-bred counterparts, they are often the ones developing original and innovative approaches to farming, constructing farms from the ground up, and taking advantage of new markets for organic and local food that are sprouting up across the country.
For these greenhorns, who lack the lifelong education of people reared in farm families, access to reliable information and guidance is a major obstacle. Enter Beginningfarmers.org, an online resource for new farmers that offers reams of technical information, job postings, and instruction on acquiring a farm, financing, and the myriad other challenges associated with making a living growing food. The site’s founder is Taylor Reid, a Doctoral Candidate in Community, Food and Agriculture at Michigan State University whose dissertation focuses on “the values and learning processes of first generation farmers.”
Recently, I got on the phone with Reid to talk about the barriers to entering farming, and why so many young people are scrambling to start growing food.
Turnstyle: What do you think are the forces driving people who are getting into agriculture today? What are they reacting to when they decide to start farming?
Taylor Reid: I think they’re typically looking for a more “genuine” lifestyle/livlihood – one that isn’t boxed off – either in the literal sense where your job takes place in a cubicle in a building, or in the broader sense – where family, work, relationships, exercise, creativity, recreation, etc. aren’t separate endeavors that have to be pursued independent of one another.
They are also looking for meaning and independence. There are lots of good paying jobs that offer little fulfillment for many because they are so specialized and so sequestered – many of the things people do for a living are a small part of a larger process in which one never really gets the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of their labor. Farming is somewhere where you are very close to the end product – especially local farming where products are marketed directly to consumers, which is what a lot of beginning farmers are attracted to. Plus, you’re working for yourself, not for some company or person.
There are also opportunities emerging that never existed before. With the growth of farmers markets, urban agriculture, CSA, organics, natural foods, there are markets that people can fill that simply weren’t there 20 years ago – at least not to the extent they are today. For many farmers there is also an environmental motive – and for some it is related to a sort of neo-survivalist notion that the social structures we have counted on for many years are not permanent. Read more »
