According to last year’s report on agriculture from the U.S. Census, the American farmer is aging. The percentage of farmers and ranchers over the age of 75 grew by 15.1 percent between 2007 and 2012, while the number of farmers and ranchers under the age of 54 decreased by 16.1 percent during the same time period.
Several programs are trying to entice veterans into the agricultural field, while the AgrAbility Project, which helps older and disabled farmers gain various forms of assistance, is helping existing farmers to plant, shepherd and harvest longer.
In Colorado, the program enables Dean Wierth to tend to his herd of goats in Park County, despite his declining balance and vision. Using an electric cart, he is able to feed and tend to the livestock living on the 40 acres he owns, plus the additional 40 acres he leases.
“It’s been a godsend. My balance was just about gone,” he tells the Denver Post about the AgrAbility program.
For 16 years, Goodwill Industries and Colorado State University have run the AgrAbility program in Colorado, helping 538 farming and ranching families during that time. Recently, the federal government kicked in $720,000 to fund the program for four more years.
Wierth, a disabled Vietnam veteran himself, is now pitching in to start a facility that will teach veterans how to farm and ranch. South Park Heritage Association and the Wounded Warrior USA Outreach Program are currently raising funds to purchase land for the program.
Robert Fetsch, co-director of the Colorado AgrAbility Project says, “Most farmers and ranchers don’t retire; they just keep on keeping on as long as they can. Our best course for now is to help them stay active and working, so they can continue to thrive, remain independent and be loyal taxpayers in their communities.”
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Tag: farms
For New Americans, These Programs Help Them Live Off the Land
The classic image of the American immigrant involves a family arriving in a big city like New York or San Francisco and working to make their way in that urban environment. But statistics show that more immigrants to the U.S. head to the Midwest where they take jobs in agriculture.
In fact, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, between 2007 and 2011, 2.1 million foreign-born people lived in rural areas. Since 1990, the Midwest and South’s Latino population has grown significantly — particularly in towns with meat packing plants. Now, more children of immigrants are seeing farming as an attractive career path.
In a two-part series for Iowa Public Radio, Amy Mayer explored this shift. Five years ago, the Boelens sold their farm in the Netherlands because they weren’t able to expand it enough to sustain it and moved to Iowa. The family of seven came to America through a program called the Startup Visa for foreign entrepreneurs who plan to invest $100,000 or more in a U.S. business. Through it, five American jobs must be created in order for the visa to be renewed. Two of the Boelen’s five children tell Mayer that one day they plan to farm the family’s land.
A more typical immigrant farmer story is that of Pacifique Simon, who was born in Congo to Burundian parents in refugee camps. The Simons received asylum in the U.S. and came to Des Moines. They didn’t have enough money to buy a farm and make use of their agricultural experience, but a program sponsored by some Iowa churches has provided them with land to work.
Simon is majoring in agricultural systems technology at Iowa State University in the hopes of making farming his life. “I want to learn some skills here and then go teach people back there so they can produce enough food to feed their own family,” Simon tells Mayer.
The largest immigrant group in the Midwest, however, are Latinos, especially Mexican-Americans. Mayer found that some of the children of Mexican immigrants are turned off by the prospect of a career in agriculture since they’ve seen their parents worn down by backbreaking labor in meatpacking plants in exchange for low wages.
Still, with so many second-generation Latinos in the Midwest, some of them are turning to farming for a career. Mayer spoke to Brian Castro, who graduated from Iowa State this year. His parents are immigrants from Mexico, and he plans to make a career out of providing better agricultural jobs for Latinos.
“There’s a huge misrepresentation of the Latino population,” Castro says, “of Latino workers in the decision-making area for agriculture, even though they are the number one, the main population of the workers.”
Melissa Garcia, whose parents also immigrated from Mexico, earned a full-ride to Iowa State and plans to study to be a large animal veterinarian. “There’s a career and a job out there waiting for me,” she tells Mayer. “And then hopefully one day I’ll reach my goal of having my own farm.”
MORE: From Field Hands to Farmers: This Program Helps Latino Immigrants Become Land Owners
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post referred to Iowa State University by its old name, Iowa State College of Agriculture, and stated that Brian Castro and Melissa Garcia are cousins–they are not.
The Label You Should Look for at Your Supermarket
Farming runs in Robert Elliot’s family — but he never expected that he’d make a living off of the land.
Instead, he served in the Marines, completing five years of active duty service before returning to the U.S. and taking a job as a contractor for the Marine Corps. In 2011, he was abruptly laid off along with many others due to budget cuts, and he didn’t know what to do. “It was hard to make ends meet so I moved home,” he tells Shumurial Ratliff of WNCN News.
Back home in Louisburg, N.C., on the land his family used to farm, Elliot decided to try his hand at the old family profession, establishing Cypress Hall Farms with the help of the nonprofit Farmer Veteran Coalition.
The organization supports veterans looking to transition into farming with resource guides, training and funding opportunities. It partners with Homegrown by Heroes to help veteran farmers label their produce with a patriotic-looking sticker that informs consumers know that they’re buying food grown by vets.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 17 percent of the American population lives in rural areas, but 45 percent of those who serve in the military are from rural America. At the same time, American farmers are aging, averaging 55.9 years and returning veterans face higher unemployment than non-veterans. Many people think the perfect solution to these problems is to convince some veterans to return to their rural roots and take up farming.
Elliot, who specializes in pasture-raised meats and organic vegetables, agrees. “A lot of farmers now are getting up in age,” Elliot tells Ratliff. “They are retiring, they are getting out of farming. We are losing farms left and right. There is nobody better suited for the job to take over where America’s food is going to come from tomorrow than veterans. We are already adapted to the outside, we like to work hard, we know what we have to do. We will get the job done.”
Elliot, who also spends time teaching other veterans how to farm, told a group of people at the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) that he revamped his family’s farm from a traditional approach to a sustainable one because, “Being a veteran, I don’t mind putting in the manual labor required to farm sustainably.”
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When Food Is Left Unharvested, This Organization Gleans It and Feeds the Hungry
Dotting the Maine countryside are small plots growing more fruits and vegetables than the farmers who work the land could ever pick. But despite this bountifulness, some of the state’s residents forgo buying produce because of tight budgets.
This is where Hannah Semler, the coordinator of the gleaning initiative for the nonprofit Healthy Acadia, steps in. Semler leads a team of volunteers to pick whatever is left after farmers have harvested as much as they can.
In Blue Hill, Amanda Provencher and Paul Schultz of King Hill Farm welcome her regularly to their fields. “We just don’t have time to pick everything we grow, so we’d just till it right back into the soil or feed it to the animals, but it’s still totally good food,” Schultz tells Seth Freed Wessler of NBC News. “Hannah is identifying a resource that we have that otherwise we just would not be utilized because there are not enough hours in the day.”
At King Hill Farm and 18 other Maine farms, Semler and the volunteers for Healthy Acadia glean 30,000 pounds of food a year that would otherwise go to waste. They deliver it to food pantries for the needy and to the Magic Food Bus (sponsored by Healthy Peninsula), which delivers produce to schools and housing complexes for elderly people.
According to Wessler, about 40 percent of American crops are never harvested. Meanwhile, 15 percent of Americans are food insecure (i.e. they don’t have enough healthy food).
Rick Traub, the president of Tree of Life, a Maine food pantry that distributes food that Semler collects, tells Wessler, “Poverty here is everywhere. I go to the grocery store and the person who cashes me out, I see her the next day at the pantry. The problem of hunger in the U.S. has very little to do with a scarcity of food. There’s far more food available around here than people to eat it. The problem is really about access.”
With a team of volunteers using their time and muscle to harvest good produce that otherwise would go to waste, access to nutritious food is expanding in Maine. Let’s hope this practice spreads to other states, too.
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How Digging in the Dirt Improves the Health of Immigrants in America
As anyone who’s traveled to a foreign country can attest, food can vary greatly from land to land.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that when some immigrants move to America, their health declines because they don’t have access to the fresh produce that enriched their diets in their native country.
In rural western Colorado, a unique program is solving this problem by helping immigrants learn English while they grow healthy food for their families — and it’s giving the farmer who hosts them some new notions about what crops to grow, too.
In the town of Delta, immigrants from countries including Mexico and Myanmar who sign up for ESL classes learn about a program at the Thistle Whistle Farm, located near Hotchkiss, Colo., about 45 minutes away. The immigrants help out at the farm and in doing so, get tips on how to cultivate and grow their own food. Plus, they can practice their English writing skills while taking notes on gardening techniques.
Their ESL and farming teacher, Chrys Bailey, tells Laura Palmisano of KVNF, “A lot of what has brought them to the program is that they are noticing that their families and themselves are beginning to suffer from health issues that they had not suffered from before and they are making the connection that some of their food choices are not serving them.”
Some students bring their children to Thistle Whistle to help out, filling idle summer hours with a productive and fun activity. “My kids enjoy coming to the farm and they like it because they learn about plants and how to grow some vegetables,” Yadira Rivera tells Palmisano.
The participants then take their new found gardening skills back home, planting their own vegetables, even if the only space they have is a couple of pots.
The program, which has run for three years through a grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, needs funding to continue.
Meanwhile, Mark Waltermire, the owner of Thistle Whistle Farm, has benefitted from the program too. “They’ve suggested or requested I grow a lot of vegetables and herbs I haven’t heard or tried before and I’ve been introduced to all sorts of fun, new varieties and fun new vegetables that I would otherwise not have been exposed to. So it has changed my diet too. I eat all sorts of things that I previously never knew about.”
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A Nonprofit That Helps Vets Get Involved in Sustainable Agriculture
They’re heroes on the battlefield. But once they return home, our veterans face joblessness, depression, homelessness, and suicide.
In Washington state, Growing Veterans is trying to fight these grave problems through the simple act of bringing former service members together to farm. Chris Brown, the founder of the nonprofit, told Briana Gerdeman of The Woodinville Weekly that a veteran once told him, “It’s nice to be able to plant something in the ground that will explode into life rather than into destruction.”
Brown is a Marine Corps veteran born and raised in Woodinville, Washington. After finishing his service, he went to college and started volunteering with the Veterans Conservation Corps, a veteran training program that helps restore and protect Washington’s natural resources. During his time with the organization, he saw first hand how rocky veterans’ transition into civilian life can be. Many of those that Brown met were interested in sustainable agriculture, so after he graduated in 2012, Brown launched his nonprofit to help members of the armed forces and grow healthy produce at the same time.
Growing Veterans employs seven soldiers at its main farm and seven more at partner farms, relying on the help of more than a hundred volunteers total. The farm work gives veterans a chance to connect with fellow soldiers and other volunteers who may not have served in the military.
Of the veterans who participate, Brown told Gerdeman, “Some of them are really interested in becoming farmers. Others just want to get outside or get involved in their community.” He said they welcome the chance to be “a part of something bigger than themselves…it’s something we all kind of long for, but veterans especially, because you’ve been with this group for so long. So it can be really huge for them, and therapeutic.”
What happens with the food that Growing Veterans raises? It’s sold to the community through Growing Washington CSA, where people can sign up to purchase food boxes of local, chemical-free produce that comes with the added bonus of helping veterans.
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What’s That Strange Crop Growing in America’s Fields?
You’re familiar with corn and wheat and cotton. And maybe even soybeans. But you’re probably never heard of miscanthus.
This funny-sounding crop is already providing renewable energy in Europe, and now, it’s beginning to catch on with more farmers here in the United States. Currently, it’s sprouting in fields in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, among others — although still on a small-scale basis.
A relative of sugar cane, miscanthus yields 15 tons of biomass fiber per acre. It’s a perennial, so once planted, it returns every year for up to two decades. A relatively small amount of chemicals are required to keep this crop healthy, and once it’s established, many farmers use no pesticides at all. For all these reasons, miscanthus promises to outperform corn as a clean and efficient energy crop.
“Miscanthus is such a new crop that we are the first 16 acres to be planted in Iowa,” Steve Schomberg, the farmer with Iowa’s biggest miscanthus crop, told Rick Frederickson of Iowa Public Radio. “It gets gawkers, yes. People stop along the road and talk about it, (and ask) ‘What are you growing there?'”
Schomberg sends his miscanthus harvest to the University of Iowa, where it is mixed with coal and converted into steam and electricity at the University’s power plant. Iowa is currently recruiting more farmers to grow the crop. The state hopes to have 2,500 acres of it by 2016.
In Illinois, farmer Eric Rund is promoting miscanthus as a cheaper heating fuel alternative to liquid propane.
Iowa State University agronomist Emily Heaton is studying ways to mix miscanthus with existing fossil fuel sources so that less non-renewable energy is consumed. “When I look at a crop like this, I see a chance to make fossil fuels cleaner,” Heaton told Frederickson. “Because what we’re talking about is blending this clean grassy biomass with coal, so it just cleans up coal a little bit.”
And when you’re talking about an energy source as dirty as coal, even a little bit cleaner is a whole lot better.
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His Family Lost Its Farm. Now He’s Making Sure No One Else in His Community Suffers the Same Fate
Farmers can’t take sick leave, so when an emergency comes up, they’re sometimes in danger of losing a year’s crop, putting their entire livelihood in jeopardy. That’s when Farm Rescue steps in. Farm Rescue’s founder Bill Gross worked as a pilot before returning home to North Dakota, where his family had lost the farm he grew up on after a financial setback. In 2005 he started the nonprofit to provide help to farmer’s struggling with illness or natural disaster.
Farm Rescue has helped 250 families in North Dakota, South Dakota, eastern Montana, Minnesota and Iowa. The non-profit provides donated equipment and organizes its over 700 volunteers to make use of the seed, fertilizer, and fuel the families provide. Families can contact Farm Rescue for help, but half of the time concerned farmers hear about a neighbor’s troubles and anonymously recommend them for help. “We provide the equipment and manpower, and we get it done for them,” Goss told David Karas of the Christian Science Monitor. “We are basically a big, mobile farming operation.”
“We are helping to make it more likely for future generations of family farms to be able to continue,” Goss told Karas. “That is what I actually find the most satisfying.”
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How America Is Investing in Local Fruits and Veggies
America’s Midwest is still best known for its corn fields, but apple orchards are making a comeback. Across the plains states, farmers are tearing down fields of corn — the high-starch variety commonly used for ethanol and cattle feed — and instead planting fruits and vegetables. According to crop analysts, because of the surplus of corn in the country — a record 97 million acres of farmland were devoted to it in 2012 — an acre of this crop is projected to net farmers only $284 this year after expenses. Compare that to apples, which will net an average of about $2,000 or more per acre, and it’s no wonder that farmers are ready to trade in corn stalks for more profitable fruit trees. And unlike other times in American history, the market for local produce is ripe for the picking. The federal government has urged Americans to double the amount of fruits and vegetables they eat, even as farmland for these healthy foods has decreased over the last decade. About 1.8 million acres of farmland were devoted to the top 25 vegetables in 2012. For fruits, including citrus, that number has dropped from 3.2 to 2.8 million acres in 10 years.
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And it’s not just corn growers who are hopping on the fruit wagon. As dairy farmers continue to face financial hardships, nearly two dozen Organic Valley Co-op members are now growing fruits, veggie, or both on their land. In North Carolina, 200 to 300 tobacco growers are now planting produce, according to the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. In Iowa, the sons and daughters of corn farmers are returning and starting their own produce businesses. “The children of corn farmers are coming back to the farm, and carving out 5 or 10 acres to grow fruits and vegetables,” Craig A. Chase, food and farm coordinator at Iowa State University, told the New York Times. “They can easily make $30,000 to $40,000 a year.”
Of course, growing fruits and vegetables is a lot more work than raising corn, especially for those with no experience. With that in mind, Richard Weinzierl, a crop sciences professor at the University of Illinois, started a series of classes teaching the basics. The first class, which was held in three locations around the state, had about 90 students, all of whom were interested in growing a variety of crops. This is good news for grocers, especially in the Midwest, who are becoming more interested in stocking local produce, and of course, for consumers, who are looking for healthier options for their families. And in many cases, the local produce is just as cheap, if not cheaper. “It’s a good feeling,” Tim B. Slepicka, an Illinois farmer said. “Especially knowing that one in six people are using food stamps. They’re looking for the least expensive calorie possible, and why should a pound of tomatoes — which are basically seed, dirt and water — have to cost as much or more than a frozen meal?”
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