New Help Available for Veterans Seeking Entry into Agriculture

With his son, Matt celebrates his return home after serving in Iraq. Matt and his family look to begin a new chapter of their lives operating a farm, but a lack of access to land, financing, and support has made this journey difficult.

Matt recently returned from military service in Iraq. He works for a construction company that builds beachfront high rises in South Carolina. But this hard working, self-reliant veteran dreams of a greater future for himself and his family.

He spent his childhood on a horse farm and joined the National Guard in college. After graduation, Matt was posted to Iraq and served as a Cavalry Scout Platoon Leader, putting his leadership abilities and hands-on approach to life into action.

For the moment, Matt’s construction job pays the bills. But for a driven veteran coping with the upheaval of returning from combat to civilian life, it isn’t the right fit. Matt wants to create something he values, work for himself, and build a solid future for his young family.

These days, Matt, wife Kimberly, and their two sons are looking for a farm. Matt wants to run an environmentally conscious livestock operation producing pastured meats. Kimberly’s marketing background will help build a profitable operation.

USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has conducted a plant pest risk assessment and an environmental assessment on 2,4-D-resistant corn engineered by Dow. APHIS has proposed to deregulate the genetically modified, herbicide resistant crop. They will accept public comment through Feb. 27, 2012.

Increasingly, weeds resistant to glyphosate have created a perverse incentive for chemical companies to design new herbicide-resistant crops. Ironic, in that decreasing the use of 2,4-D and other herbicides was a common rationale for widespread use of glyphosate-resistant crops.

The Farm Service Agency recently finalized rules for the Land Contract Guarantee Program, making the program available nationwide.

The program provides federal loan guarantees to retiring farmers and landowners who self-finance the sale of their land to beginning or socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.

Rotationally Grazed Central Missouri Dairy

A central Missouri dairy seeks a beginning farmer to purchase their 79 acre rotational-grazed dairy operation. The farm features electric cross fencing and auto-watering to 12 paddocks and a partial line of machinery that could be used by a successor. The current landowner will serve as a mentor to a beginning farmer for the initial months of ownership and help ease the transition onto the new farm. Purchase of cattle to accompany the farm is negotiable.

Beginning Farmer Desires Small Plot to Grow Vegetables

A beginning vegetable farmer seeks 5-20 acres anywhere in the United States to start her own organic vegetable farm. The farmer will cultivate vegetables, berries, and possibly establish fruit trees. Organic practices including composting are planned, and she may use small animals in the operation to encourage on-farm nutrient cycling. This farmer plans to build a greenhouse and hoop houses on the property. Produce will be marketed through farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

Interested in the dairy farm? Know of land for the vegetable farm? Call or email Virginia Wolking, 402.687.2100 or virginiaw@cfra.org.

Land Link is our program to revitalize rural America by matching new farmers with landowners.

Fast Company | By Ariel Schwartz | January 30, 3012

The high-tech gadget is finding fans in an unlikely place: rural farms, where it can be used for everything from training to creating a connection between the farmers and customers in the developed world.

The iPad is a luxury toy. It’s also a powerful, adaptable tool. That much has become obvious over the past two years as the device has made its way into classrooms,cockpits, and hospitals.

The iPad’s fairly steep price, however, has kept it firmly entrenched in the developed world. That’s starting to change, as evidenced by efforts from Exprima Media and coffee importer Sustainable Harvest to bring the iPad to coffee co-ops and farmers in East Africa, Mexico, and South America.

The New York Times | By WIlliam Neuman | December 29, 2011

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times Tony Azevedo, an organic farmer, says pay for the milk has to increase or supply will remain low.

There is a shortage of organic milk across the country, and it has become so bad in areas like the Southeast that Publix stores from Florida to Tennessee have put up signs in dairy cases anticipating the shopper’s frustrated refrain: “Where’s my organic milk?”

The answer is that there is not enough to go around, and starting next month consumers can expect to see a sharp jump in price as well.

The main reason for the shortage is that the cost of organic grain and hay to feed cows has gone up sharply while the price that farmers receive for their milk has not. That means that farmers feed their cows less, resulting in lower milk production. At the same time, fewer farmers have been converting from conventional dairying to organic.

Through it all, the demand for organic milk has been growing.

“It’s a double whammy to have higher sales than you expect and less milk,” said George L. Siemon, chief executive of Cropp, the farmers co-op that produces Organic Valley milk and much of the milk sold as supermarket store brands. “We’re sweating bullets over it.”

Los Angeles Times | By David Zucchino | December 25, 2011 

Duke University helps a North Carolina farm turn tons of manure into electricity and fertilizer in what it says is one of the the cleanest waste-to-energy systems in existence.

Tatjana Vujic, director of Duke University's Carbon Offsets Initiative, visits Loyd Bryant on his hog farm near Yadkinville, N.C. (David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times / December 24, 2011)

Reporting from Yadkinville, N.C.

Loyd Bryant used to pump manure from his 8,640 hogs into a fetid lagoon, where it raised an unholy stink and released methane and ammonia into the air. The tons of manure excreted daily couldn't be used as fertilizer because of high nitrogen content.

The solution to Bryant's hog waste problem was right under his nose — in the manure itself.

Farmer and rancher linking programs connect new farmers with retiring landowners. When the new and retiring generation match up, they can work out mutually beneficial arrangements to transfer ownership while maintaining a small farm’s legacy and promoting good stewardship.

Find a Linking Program

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The New York Times | By Julia Moskin | December 27, 2011 

Kathryn Wagner for The New York Times Shawn Thackeray watches his heritage Berkshire pigs eat tomatoes on Wadmalaw Island, S.C. The island's farms supplied tomatoes for supermarkets and fast-food chains.

It's not hard to get Emile DeFelice riled up. Just mention Paula Deen, the so-called queen of Southern food, who cooks with canned fruit and Crisco. Or say something like “You don’t look like a Southern pig farmer.” He’ll practically hit the ceiling of his Prius.

Because there are a few things about Southern food that the man just can’t stand: its hayseed image, the insiders who feed that image and the ignorant outsiders who believe in it.

“Just because I’m a farmer doesn’t mean I spend all my time feeding pigs,” said Mr. DeFelice, a natty, voluble fellow who raises 200 pigs here at Caw Caw Creek Farm in the softly forested hills north of Charleston, S.C. “That’s an absurd proposition.”

Fast Company | By Michael J. Coren | December 20, 2011 

You might think that farmland means the death of biodiversity, but animals are quite adaptable, and they now need farms to survive. But farms are going extinct themselves, and endangered animals can’t survive industrial agriculture.

Over the last two millennia, as farms and pasture displaced forests and grasslands, agriculture has spread across more than 40% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Wildlife, when it didn’t go extinct, had to go somewhere. Some of it moved back to the farm, where it became semi-domesticated without anyone realizing it. Today, as the Earth undergoes yet another transition from subsistence growing to industrial mega-farms, there’s nowhere else for that wildlife to go. 

A study published this month in the journal Conservation Letters found that many threatened and endangered bird species in the developing world are dependent on human agriculture for their survival. At least 30 bird species, and it is theorized many more, came to rely almost completely on traditional farms for food, nesting, or resources as their original habitats have virtually disappeared.

"Conservation efforts in the developing world focus a lot of attention on forest species and pristine habitats--so people have usually been seen as a problem. But there are a number of threatened species--particularly birds but probably a whole range of wildlife--which heavily depend on the farmed environment," said lead author Hugh Wright of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences in a statement. "We need to identify valuable farmland landscapes and support local people so that they can continue their traditional farming methods and help maintain this unique biodiversity." 

Brownfield: Ag news for America | By Ken Anderson | December 19, 2011

More than two-thirds of Iowa farmers who responded to Iowa State University (ISU) Extension’s 2011 Farm Poll believe climate change is real.

Sixty-eight percent of the farmers who returned the survey agreed that climate change is occurring.  Twenty-eight percent said there is not enough evidence to know for sure, while five percent said climate change is not occurring.

BBC | By Dave Lee | November 28, 2011

As global population continues to soar, the United Nations estimates that by 2050, farmers will need to increase food production levels by around 70%.

Simultaneously, pressures from other industries will see of larger and larger portions of agricultural land swept away by urbanisation. 

It leaves the world's farmers with a momentous challenge on their hands: produce more food, for more people, from less.

They're going to need a lot of help - and it is likely to come from technology.

In our ancient history, farming has been the catalyst for some of humankind's greatest technological advances.

But while the modern day farm is the realm of huge, expensive, sophisticated machinery - it seems simpler, day-to-day tasks are left untouched by an industry that seems more intent on producing technology to run make-believe farms rather than real ones.

"I think the farming sector is one that high-tech organisations probably haven't spent as much time on as they could," admitted Martin Stiven, vice-president for business at UK mobile network T-Mobile.

"The technology is there, it's about applying it. And it's about thinking about the particular issues that farmers have and building those specific applications that will help them."

Reuters | November 23, 2011

Cash over corn? Iowa families are selling farms as land prices rise. AP View Enlarged Image

IOWA FALLS, Iowa — It took 31 minutes for Donald Ellingson's family to end a tradition of more than a half-century, by auctioning off 153 acres of rich Iowa farmland.

Five years after their father's death, his three children had grown weary of running a farm. Their tenant farmer had retired. And at age 60 and up, none wanted to return to a life of risky finances and long days.

Combines and corn were not part of the lives of Ellingson's eight grandchildren or 14 great-grandchildren. They live far away. And with today's land prices, the family agreed it was time to let the past go.

"I think dad would be fine with us selling the land," said Diane Guerrttman, 60, who lives in Wyoming and works with at-risk children.

Across the Midwest, the dizzying surge in rural land prices is boosting a reshaping of the farm sector in the world's top food exporter. Instead of digging in to benefit from booming grain prices, the next generation is cashing out of small family farms.

Bidding wars are now common in auctions and attorney offices. They led to a 25% land value jump in Q3.

As organizer of the Center for Rural Affairs Land Link program, which matches beginning farmers with landowners, I talk to beginning farmers every day. Their situations are diverse, but they all share a common dream of operating a farm or ranch.

While some veterans returning home have jobs waiting for them, many do not. Although traditional rural employment in farming, logging, mining, fishing and small manufacturing has been declining for decades, small farms have been on the rise due to consumer interest in locally grown, organic and specialty foods. This demand creates unique and exciting opportunities for beginners – and veterans who would become farmers and ranchers.