featured
Dec 6th 2011
Like bees traveling from flower to flower, innovation often starts with cross-pollination among people. And at the 2011 Stone Barns Young Farmers Conference, you could see the buds of ideas coming up all over the place.
Farmers came together to share concepts, business models, tools and experiences that can help them meet the challenges of small-scale farming. Many of their innovations, bred of necessity and opportunity, are catching fire among young farmers practicing sustainable agriculture techniques and are poised to transform a movement.
Selected from dozens of innovations discussed at the conference, here is a run-down of a few:
The “Slow Tools” Project. Small-scale farmers need tools that are scaled to the size of their operations—whether that be a 2-acre plot of land or a rooftop garden—and that are ergonomic, lightweight and affordable. But many of these tools simply do not exist in the marketplace. Enter Eliot Coleman, who for more than 40 years has been farming organically at his renowned Four Season Farm in Maine—with a heavy dose of inventing on the side. Frustrated by the lack of farming tools to suit his needs, this celebrated farmer-inventor has designed and built some amazing pieces of equipment, from a seeder with rollers fore and aft, to a co-lineal hoe (with the blade in line with the handle), to a modular greenhouse whose independent units can be easily broken down and reassembled. Now Eliot wants to see these and other tools brought to the swelling ranks of young farmers. With Stone Barns Center, Eliot is working to launch a project that will develop new designs of appropriately scaled, open-source tool systems that will propel small-scale producers into the 21st century. First up on the slate are an electric tractor and a hand-held baby greens harvester.
FarmHack. An offshoot of the newly formed National Young Farmers Coalition, FarmHack is a community for “those who embrace the long-standing farm traditions of tinkering, inventing, fabricating, tweaking and improving things that break.” Modeled after the computer open-source programmer community, FarmHack is a web forum where ideas and innovations can be shared among farmers living hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Need know-how for a paddlewheel-powered irrigation pump? A precision tine cultivator? A self-contained biodiesel processing plant built in a retrofitted Coca-Cola trailor? www.farmhack.net (Both FarmHack and the National Young Farmers Coalition are the brainchildren of the husband-and-wife team Ben Shute and Lindsey Lusher Shute, themselves farmers and soon-to-be parents.)
AgSquared. They met as Cornell graduate students, where their agriculture research in Africa and the United States convinced them that small-scale farms can become more vibrant and resilient if they embrace sustainability. And so Jeff Gordon and Giulia Stellari started AgSquared, an online software toolkit to help small farmers improve their operations and build their businesses. Their company’s simple premise: better plans, streamlined management and more complete records can help make farms more productive, more profitable and more sustainable. AgSquared is currently being beta tested on 50 farms, including Stone Barns Center. www.agsquared.com
Farm-to-Table Business Innovation. From humble farm beginnings, big things can grow. The conference showcased the work of two sustainable farming enterprises—one in Denmark, one in Georgia—that have grown from small CSAs with a handful of subscribers to multifaceted business ventures that now reach a broad swath of the public with their message of sustainable agriculture.
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After 11 years in operation,
Aarstiderne (“the seasons” in Danish) today delivers boxes of organic produce and recipes to more than 45,000 homes and businesses in Denmark and Sweden. Its network of farms host onsite restaurants and education programs, and its farmers and chefs offer their services to some of Denmark’s largest commercial kitchens to help transform them into organic ones. CEO Annette Hartvig Larsen delivered the conference’s keynote address. www.aarstiderne.com
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Near Athens, Georgia,
Full Moon Farm has grown from a CSA serving biodynamic vegetables and fruit to 160 families into a business enterprise that includes a livestock operation and two restaurants and that has spawned grass-fed beef and farm cooperatives among dozens of farmers across the region. The farmers and entrepreneurs behind Full Moon Cooperative/Farm 255/Moonshine Meats are serving as consultants to others trying to break into the farm-to-table business. www.fullmooncoop.org/
For a look as the YFC 2011 slideshow, click here!
After 11 years in operation, Aarstiderne (“the seasons” in Danish) today delivers boxes of organic produce and recipes to more than 45,000 homes and businesses in Denmark and Sweden. Its network of farms host onsite restaurants and education programs, and its farmers and chefs offer their services to some of Denmark’s largest commercial kitchens to help transform them into organic ones. CEO Annette Hartvig Larsen delivered the conference’s keynote address. www.aarstiderne.com
Near Athens, Georgia, Full Moon Farm has grown from a CSA serving biodynamic vegetables and fruit to 160 families into a business enterprise that includes a livestock operation and two restaurants and that has spawned grass-fed beef and farm cooperatives among dozens of farmers across the region. The farmers and entrepreneurs behind Full Moon Cooperative/Farm 255/Moonshine Meats are serving as consultants to others trying to break into the farm-to-table business. www.fullmooncoop.org/