The new nature movement comes in many forms. Courtney White is one of the leaders of the new agrarianism, which he says reflects the “growing interest in local, family-scale sustainable food, fiber, and fuel production — in, near, and beyond cities…” I asked Courtney to describe how young people are building this movement. He focused on a young, inspiring and natural leader. — Richard Louv

A few years ago, I traveled up New York’s Hudson Valley to visit a young leader of the emerging agrarian movement with the aristocratic-sounding name of Severine von Tscharner Fleming. I had met Severine a few times before and I knew her to be an astonishingly energetic and successful advocate for young farmers like herself. For starters, as a college student, in 2007, she founded The Greenhorns, a nonprofit which has become an influential grassroots network dedicated to recruiting and supporting young farmers and ranchers. Like its director, it is not a shy organization.

“America needs more young farmers and more young farmers want a piece of America,” is how the Greenhorns web site describes its mission. This didn’t simply mean access to a piece of land either, though that’s a huge issue for young farmers today.

Severine calls the methods of The Greenhorns “avant-garde programming.” The Greenhorns  include videos, podcasts, e-books, and web content, naturally enough, but it also includes workshops, social mixers, barn dances, art projects, and a full-length documentary, all done in a bouncy style that can only be described as “farm-hipster.”

 

The agrarian population among us is growing …. It includes urban gardeners, urban consumers who are buying food from local farmers, organizers of local food economies, consumers who have grown doubtful of the healthfulness, the trustworthiness, and the dependability of the corporate food system ….”

– Wendell Berry

“The young farmer movement looks and sounds romantic, and it is,” Severine said. “It also is ridiculously difficult to break into farming these days. And it is critical that we do so. People who take on this challenge are highly tenacious, ambitious, inventive, and also either stubborn or a little nuts.”

Severine also co-founded the National Young Farmers Coalition, manages a weekly radio show on Heritage Radio Network, writes a popular blog, speaks at countless conferences, and organizes endlessly via the Web. And she’s assisting the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, located just over the Massachusetts state line, with an initiative called The Agrarian Trust, which aims to help young farmers gain access to land. And she was editor-in-chief of the 2013 New Farmers Almanac, and she has built an 8,000-volume agricultural library.

The underlying theory of her advocacy work is that many more people would choose to farm if they knew how to get started. She also wants young farmers to understand that it’s possible to have a social life and a viable business at the same time, and once they’ve begun farming, to make sure there’s a network of support to help them get access to the resources and information they need to stay in business.

“Basically, if the young farmer makes it beyond the third year and still loves it,” she said, “they’ll likely stay a farmer for life. Which is of course what our country desperately needs. USDA says it wants to bring on 100,000 new farmers in the next five years. It’s a big project, and yes I think art, culture, free beer, delicious food, hot sexy farmer men, and sweaty dancing are appropriate recruitment tools, far more effective, in the long run, than government-issued propaganda.”

Severine says young people are inspired to get into farming for both political and environmental reasons. It starts typically with a journey through apprenticeships and internships as each young farmer discovers which aspects of the farming life he or she wishes to pursue, followed by a bunch of hard work to gain proficiency in, say, carpentry, horse wrangling, or irrigation system maintenance, without going into debt, and usually before starting a family.

Who are these young farmers? According to Severine, most are from cities and suburbs – thus the “greenhorn” moniker – and many come from the social justice or food poverty movements.

Another portal is the Food Corps, which is project of AmeriCorps and places young people in food-oriented jobs, often building school gardens. Many young farmers attended farm camps when they were kids or went on field trips to local farms through their elementary schools. A few participated in 4-H, though not as many as one might think, she said. The educational backgrounds of young farmers today varies widely, including engineering, public health, computer science, literature, anthropology and earth science, but the decision to go into farming after examining all the options is the same: to live a life with dignity and purpose and have a positive impact on the community.

“We’ll seize opportunities to buy inexpensive battered pastures and compacted soils,” she said, “and then heal those lands using good land stewardship techniques. We’ll reclaim territory from commodity crops, and try our best not to churn or ruin our own soils while we build up enough capital to stop roto-tilling. We’ll process our own darn chickens and build our own darn websites. We are just as stubborn and innovative as farmers have always been.”

According to the USDA Agricultural Census, the number of young people farming in the U.S. is on the rise. Though it is still a minority of the tiny minority of Americans who are farmers, it reinforces the argument that a movement is growing.

“Big things start small and those of us in this new farmers’ movement are still running small or medium-sized operations, gaining experience and knowledge and aching to scale up,” she said. “We could do more with just a little help, a special chance on a piece of land, a great deal on equipment, babysitting, help with accounting, a graphic design tip, or low cost advice from an attorney. We will continue to need mentorship and guidance, and the occasional kick in the pants. It will be hard, but it will not be boring. Don’t forget that we may need a pep talk every now and again.”

____________

Adapted from “Grass, Soil, Hope: a Journey Through Carbon Country” by Courtney White, with a forward by Michael Pollan (Chelsea Green, 2014).

Courtney White

     

A former archaeologist and Sierra Club activist, Courtney White dropped out of what he calls the “conflict industry” in 1997 to cofound the Quivira Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building bridges between ranchers and conservationists around practices that improve land health. In June, his book “Grass, Soil, Hope” was published by Chelsea Green, and he has a collection of essays due out next year by Counterpoint Press. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Check Out More News and Resources
Finding Nature News