Stone Barns Regenerative Farming Fellowship

The United States faces a farming crisis. More than half of our farmers are at retirement age. Farmers over the age of 65 outnumber those under 35 at a rate of more than 6:1. Farmers have been asked to produce more and more while facing a long and growing list of challenges, including low prices and tariffs, increasingly devastating and unpredictable weather events, decreased soil fertility, topsoil loss, and more.

Many next-generation farmers, including those working at medium scale, are looking for ways to secure their families’ future and ensure their land is productive for generations to come. But taking the first steps toward this goal requires answers to many challenging questions – what would it look like to implement regenerative practices? How much will it cost, and what are the economics? How can I engage others in my community to embrace similar practices, or convince federal or state leaders to update policies that are standing in the way? How do I stay on the right path?

As a nation we must empower a new generation of farmers to take the helm and embrace resilient practices that protect farmland and ecosystems while producing the food we rely upon. Rapid scaling of regenerative practices is critical to helping farmers improve their farm viability while caring for soils and farmland.

The Stone Barns Regenerative Farming Fellowship is geared specifically to meeting the needs of medium-scale farmers whose transition to regenerative practices would have significant impact on the health of farms and farmland. The Fellowship, which is being piloted in 2019, is developed and programmed by the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in partnership with the National Young Farmers Coalitionand Arizona State University, with generous support from the General Mills Foundation.