There's a laundry list of statistics coming out of the USDA that sow the seeds of a rotten future for small farmers in the United States. 2 statistics in particular -- 1) the average age of a farmer in 2007 was 57; and 2) 50% of small farmers fail within the first 5 years of business -- critically threaten the future of our food system. As the “average” farmer begins to looks towards retirement, we risk losing generations of agricultural production knowledge and with that, the potential to build off of the successes that they have cultivated and continue working towards a sustainable food system. We need to support beginning farmers by increasing the success rate of their business and help them realize their vision of building a more sustainable food system.
The FEED Collaborative, which sits between the Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Institute of Design (commonly known as the d.School) is trying to understand how to better understand what factors might lead farmers (especially smaller, sustainable, diversified ones) to be successful. Early last year, FEED partnered with Kitchen Table Advisors (KTA), to create a tool we call “Journey Maps”, which capture inflection points and key stories that define “successful” farmers’ careers in the Bay Area. KTA has found these maps to be incredibly useful, showing them as examples of possible farm goals, guides for thinking about goal-making and decision-making and benchmarking among other things. Throughout the process of interviewing these farmers and capturing their stories, we’ve noticed that there seems to be a barrier of information exchange between new and established farmers. As seen by the low success rate, the lack of information sharing between these two populations is critically threatening not only the livelihood of individuals, but of the small, organic agricultural food system at large.
When we discovered that beginning farmers were not asking for advice from more experienced farmers, we wanted to know why. We uncovered a significant tension: despite the many overlaps in operation/production methods and challenges between farms, beginning farmers feel their situation is “too unique” to take advice from experienced farmers. Their values and the motivations—rather than location and production methods -- seem to be the primary way that beginning farmers determine whether or not advice is relevant to them. This is particularly interesting despite the fact that academic literature shows that getting advice from a community network (mostly other experienced farmers) is a major indicator of a small farm being able to survive in the long term, and that collaboration between farms increases overall farm success in a given geography. So - how might we overcome this perception barrier between beginning and established farmers to help beginning farmers stay in business? The urgency of the situation is amplified when you consider one of the solutions could lie in another question: how might we capture the knowledge and experience of established farmers so it doesn’t age-out of the system and get lost?
The FEED Collaborative, which sits between the Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Institute of Design (commonly known as the d.School) is trying to understand how to better understand what factors might lead farmers (especially smaller, sustainable, diversified ones) to be successful. Early last year, FEED partnered with Kitchen Table Advisors (KTA), to create a tool we call “Journey Maps”, which capture inflection points and key stories that define “successful” farmers’ careers in the Bay Area. KTA has found these maps to be incredibly useful, showing them as examples of possible farm goals, guides for thinking about goal-making and decision-making and benchmarking among other things. Throughout the process of interviewing these farmers and capturing their stories, we’ve noticed that there seems to be a barrier of information exchange between new and established farmers. As seen by the low success rate, the lack of information sharing between these two populations is critically threatening not only the livelihood of individuals, but of the small, organic agricultural food system at large.
When we discovered that beginning farmers were not asking for advice from more experienced farmers, we wanted to know why. We uncovered a significant tension: despite the many overlaps in operation/production methods and challenges between farms, beginning farmers feel their situation is “too unique” to take advice from experienced farmers. Their values and the motivations—rather than location and production methods -- seem to be the primary way that beginning farmers determine whether or not advice is relevant to them. This is particularly interesting despite the fact that academic literature shows that getting advice from a community network (mostly other experienced farmers) is a major indicator of a small farm being able to survive in the long term, and that collaboration between farms increases overall farm success in a given geography. So - how might we overcome this perception barrier between beginning and established farmers to help beginning farmers stay in business? The urgency of the situation is amplified when you consider one of the solutions could lie in another question: how might we capture the knowledge and experience of established farmers so it doesn’t age-out of the system and get lost?
| Drawing on data from the literature and our own experiences in the field, we developed 10 different priorities that represent motivations and mindsets of small, organic, and diversified farmers. We thought that if farmers had a way to talk about what they valued, then stories to help improve production and product could be more readily shared. At the Farmer’s Guild we asked each farmer to rank how critical different factors were to the success of their farm (see attached PDF). We then had each farmer walk to a part of the room that had a banner headlining each priority or factor (attached PDF). When the 40+ participants -- ranging in age and kinds of operation -- shuffled to their respective corners, interesting patterns emerged. |
Starting with participant’s top-ranked priority, the majority of young farmers congregated around “quality of lifestyle” and “land stewardship” (land stewardship was also most popular with non-farmer participants, like those from non-profit food related organizations) and the small pocket of more experienced farmers gathered around priorities like “operation production and efficiency” and “quality of product.”
One farmer told us that to her, lifestyle means being emotionally and physically fulfilled by her job. Another young woman that we spoke with remarked that she was training to be a farmer because she wanted to work outdoors and didn’t want to “deal with people”. Of the 23 respondents, there was only one farmer who described the priority “quality of life” to mean creating a sustainable and economically viable business. Experienced farmers, on the other hand, shared conversations around production strategies and new techniques that they were going to employ to their operation this year. One farmer even shared with us his surprise that despite his family farm operating for 116 years, he had yet to be approached for advice by a beginning farmer.
The demographic divide illustrated a salient point: beginning farmers are conflating their personal and professional goals, while successful farmers have clearly defined that their success depends on the viability of their business. While it is not altogether surprising that different demographics have different visions of success, our interviews with “successful” farmers helped us understand the reality of the paradigm that these beginning farmers are operating within and why it’s critical to change beginning farmers mindsets to value business as a critical component of their success. Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farms, for example, has been in business for over 20 years. When we interviewed him he reflected on his career from the standpoint of his financial history and decisions. To him, developing financial acumen was the key to help him create the change that he wanted to see in the world. Without developing financial and business acumen, he admittedly would not have been able to realize his greater vision of being the first organic farm to give his employees the opportunity to unionize.
What we gleaned from these interviews, the literature, and the data collected from the Farmers Guild is just how critical it is complement beginning farmers passion for sustainable living with a robust suite of professional skills, that those skills are as important a tool as a functional tractor or a strong back to realizing success of any kind. Though it is important to recognize why you go into farming -- lifestyle, quality of product, working outside-- it is equally, if not more important to be willing to develop all the skills needed to help you create a thriving and successful farm business.
We are working to understand how a collaborative farming network can help to build those skills and so, it would be really helpful if you, dear farmer, took our survey -- the more information that we have, the more that we can continue building towards a food system that we believe in.
Sarah McCurdy
FEED Collaborative
One farmer told us that to her, lifestyle means being emotionally and physically fulfilled by her job. Another young woman that we spoke with remarked that she was training to be a farmer because she wanted to work outdoors and didn’t want to “deal with people”. Of the 23 respondents, there was only one farmer who described the priority “quality of life” to mean creating a sustainable and economically viable business. Experienced farmers, on the other hand, shared conversations around production strategies and new techniques that they were going to employ to their operation this year. One farmer even shared with us his surprise that despite his family farm operating for 116 years, he had yet to be approached for advice by a beginning farmer.
The demographic divide illustrated a salient point: beginning farmers are conflating their personal and professional goals, while successful farmers have clearly defined that their success depends on the viability of their business. While it is not altogether surprising that different demographics have different visions of success, our interviews with “successful” farmers helped us understand the reality of the paradigm that these beginning farmers are operating within and why it’s critical to change beginning farmers mindsets to value business as a critical component of their success. Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farms, for example, has been in business for over 20 years. When we interviewed him he reflected on his career from the standpoint of his financial history and decisions. To him, developing financial acumen was the key to help him create the change that he wanted to see in the world. Without developing financial and business acumen, he admittedly would not have been able to realize his greater vision of being the first organic farm to give his employees the opportunity to unionize.
What we gleaned from these interviews, the literature, and the data collected from the Farmers Guild is just how critical it is complement beginning farmers passion for sustainable living with a robust suite of professional skills, that those skills are as important a tool as a functional tractor or a strong back to realizing success of any kind. Though it is important to recognize why you go into farming -- lifestyle, quality of product, working outside-- it is equally, if not more important to be willing to develop all the skills needed to help you create a thriving and successful farm business.
We are working to understand how a collaborative farming network can help to build those skills and so, it would be really helpful if you, dear farmer, took our survey -- the more information that we have, the more that we can continue building towards a food system that we believe in.
Sarah McCurdy
FEED Collaborative
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