The Future of Farming Is Bright. And It Is Dismal.
I've had several conversations with area farmers during Agriculture Month. Some have left me energized. Others have left me deeply concerned.
And I've found myself holding two seemingly contradictory thoughts at the same time:
The future of agriculture is incredibly bright. And the future of agriculture is dismal.
Yesterday, I read Blackbird Cooperative's explanation of the problem they're trying to solve, and their words have stayed with me. I've followed Chris Newman and the work around Sylvanaqua for some time, so I'm familiar with the larger challenge they're raising. But something about reading it during this particular month—against the backdrop of conversations I've been having with farmers here at home—hit differently.
Blackbird argues that America doesn't simply have a farmer-retirement problem. We have a replacement problem.
As older farmers leave agriculture, who takes their place? Who can afford the land? Who can build a farm business capable of surviving long enough to become generational? And if heirs don't want to farm, who ultimately owns that land?
Those are uncomfortable questions.
We spend a lot of time encouraging people to become farmers. We offer workshops. Beginning-farmer programs. Grants. Technical assistance. Markets. Incubators. We celebrate young growers and encourage people to "grow local."
All of that has value.
But Blackbird is challenging us to ask a harder question:
Are we helping people start farms—or helping them build farms that can survive?
That's different.
A person can know how to grow beautiful tomatoes and still not have a viable business. A farmer can have customers and still lack enough volume or margin to make a living. A producer can receive a grant and still lack affordable land, processing, distribution, labor or reliable markets.
And eventually enthusiasm runs into economics.
That's part of what I'm hearing locally.
There is extraordinary creativity in agriculture right now. I'm meeting people interested in urban farming, specialty crops, livestock, value-added products, teaching farms and new market models. Young people are curious. Communities want locally grown food. Technology is opening new possibilities.
That's the bright part.
The dismal part is recognizing how difficult we've made it for those people to turn that interest into a livelihood that can sustain a family for 20, 30 or 40 years.
Blackbird's response is provocative: rethink the structure itself. Their model argues for communities having more integrated control over the production, processing and distribution of food rather than leaving individual farmers to navigate each piece largely on their own.
Whether their particular model ultimately proves to be the answer isn't what interests me most.
The question they're asking does.
From a Civic Architect perspective, this is fundamentally a systems-design problem.
If we want another generation of farmers, we have to think beyond recruiting farmers.
We have to think about land succession, affordable access to land, financing, aggregation, processing, distribution, institutional purchasing, labor, technical assistance and markets—and how those pieces connect.
Because perhaps the next generation doesn't need us simply to tell them farming has a future.
They need us to help design a system in which they can actually have one.
That's the challenge I'm carrying out of Agriculture Month.
And it's one I think our region needs to begin discussing much more seriously.