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Earlier this month, I had the pleasure and privilege of attending the National Young Farmers Conference at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in New York. It was a three day whirlwind of learning, networking, and celebrating good food.Stone Barns is an amazing nonprofit farm just north of New York City. They work to make the farm as sustainable as possible through its diversified livestock and grazing management, as well as long term crop rotation plans. They have chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs, and more, that move through the acres of pasture throughout the warmer months.Everyone was settled into their winter shelters as I explored the grounds, but you could tell all the animals were happy and healthy.
The first day of the conference dealt with agriculture, climate change, and the need for more resilient farmers. Much time was spent discussing the logistics of no-till agriculture. This is a complicated issue as tilling is often relied on for weed suppression in organic production. However reducing tillage, while building soil organic matter, can lead to more productive farming in the long term.
During the next two days of the conference, I attended many workshops including ones on crop rotation, market gardening, reading your land, and a grounds tour. However, my favorite workshop had to be “Work songs for Small Farms.” A group of about 25 of us learned songs from various parts of the United States as well as around the world. Then, a surprise: they took us out to the veggie field where we sang as we pulled parsnips! It was cold and muddy but we all dug in eagerly with our bare hands that soon grew numb. If you want to listen to some of the songs I learned, check out www.worksongs.org.
During the conference, I had the opportunity to rub elbows with some amazing farmers including Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm and his wife and daughter, Fred Kirschenmann who is President of Stone Barns, and Dan Barber, the executive chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. My new group of young farmer friends and I were star struck by all these veteran farmers. But as Erik, my new Minnesotan farmer friend, said: These guys aren’t going to be the next leaders in agriculture – we are. We should be proud of what we are setting out to accomplish as young leaders in agriculture and be inspired by the veterans as well as the young innovators. Because it’s not going to be one of the old guard who will be the next head of the USDA. It could be someone sitting right next to you.
Go forward and grow in 2015!
