2024 ANNUAL REPORT

Dear Friends, 

Last year, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Stone Barns Center’s founding. Stone Barns Center and our partner restaurant Blue Hill opened in May of 2004, establishing a hub where farmers, ecologists, chefs, educators, students, and other stakeholders come together to address the most pressing challenges facing our food system. 

Today, we are pursuing the boldest projects in our organization’s history. From paving the way for the launch of Rhizome, our new company established to accelerate our research and its impact, to the expansion of our ecological monitoring and food access work, the advancements we made in 2024 demonstrate the potential of our work to transform the way we farm, cook, and eat. 

RHIZOME

In 2024, we laid the groundwork for the launch of Rhizome, a food research and incubation company co-owned by Stone Barns Center and Blue Hill to accelerate our collaborative agricultural and culinary research and better spread the methods and products that result. The advancement of our Waste Feeding research, Dairy Beef project, and several other projects spanning the farm, kitchen, and labs in 2024 propelled us into the official launch of Rhizome in 2025. 

WASTE FEEDING

Ten years ago, the farm began incorporating rescued food waste into the diets of our pigs and hens. Globally, an estimated 1.4 billion pounds of food is wasted each year and animal feed represents approximately 20% of a livestock farmer’s costs. The project began by supplementing their foraged diets with scraps from Blue Hill’s kitchen, and has expanded to include waste diverted from local grocery stores and breweries. This year, we were awarded a significant, multi-year grant by the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE) to develop a playbook for other Northeast farmers to adopt waste feeding practices for both pigs and laying hens. 

DAIRY BEEF

Over the last 20 years, two thirds of New York's small and midsize dairies have shuttered. In 2023, Stone Barns Center and Blue Hill began researching how to transform grass-fed dairy cows past their productive milking years into delicious beef, providing dairy farmers with a critical new revenue stream. Expanding upon nutritional testing and analysis conducted by Dr. Jill Clapperton and Edacious Labs, we conducted a follow-up analysis of the flavor, nutrition, and economic potential of Dairy Beef. In 2024, the farm brought on over 20 new dairy cows and has worked with Blue Hill chefs and butchers to improve the marketability of Dairy Beef. 

ROCKWOOD HALL GOAT PROJECT

Since 2019, Stone Barns Center has partnered with the Rockefeller State Park Preserve to explore how uniting agriculture with conservation efforts can improve our ecology. Data collected by our Ecological Monitoring team between 2023 and 2024 showed that grazing goats through the Preserve successfully increased the abundance of native plant species by 33% and helped manage invasives. In the coming years, we will expand our monitoring efforts by assessing vegetation height and biomass and introducing new conservation strategies in concert with the Park Preserve. 

LEADING AN ECOLOGICAL AND ACCESSIBLE FOOD SYSTEM (LEAF)

LEAF entered its second year with a 99% participant retention rate. Through our new partnership with the RHSM Life Center in Sleepy Hollow, the 2024 program served an additional 40 families in Westchester County. In collaboration with Columbia University’s Teachers College, we are collecting data to assess LEAF’s impact on participants’ food choices and health outcomes for a Food as Medicine study. The study will result in future scientific publications and hopefully encourage other communities to implement food security programs modeled after LEAF. 

As we enter our next twenty years, we are doubling down on our efforts to forge new partnerships, collect and disseminate impactful data, and innovate culinary products that incentivize farmers to adopt regenerative practices throughout our region. I am honored to reflect on the accomplishments of this organization as we deepen our commitment to data-driven, delicious solutions to improve our food system. We hope you continue to engage with our work for years to come. 

With warm regards, 

Peggy Dulany
Chair, Board of Directors
Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture