Will Raap Of Earthkeep Farmcommon On The Future Of Modern American Farming
An Interview With Sean Freedman
Food is medicine, medicine is food. Once, all farming was local. We understood and shared Indigenous knowledge of plant medicine and we were not processing the nutritional value out of food to make it shelf stable. We are out of balance today and we need to remember when food and plants were a bigger part of health and wellness. That remembering will be new fuel for the relocalization of food production and wind in the sails for family farming.
Modern farming is actually very different from common conceptions. Farming today is dramatically different from the farming done a few decades ago. In this interview series called The Future Of Modern American Farming, we are exploring the modern technological changes that American farms have been making. We are also exploring how farmers are adjusting to the supply chain challenges, the challenges of climate change, and the challenges of sustainable farming.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Will Raap.
Will Raap has a long history of creating innovative enterprises. From Gardener’s Supply Company to the Intervale Center in Burlington, Vermont, he focuses on three pillars in his business ventures: People, planet and profit. Through Earthkeep Farmcommon, Raap and his partners are working to create a carbon-zero, regenerative agricultural hub where new technologies and centuries-old philosophies meet — a place where the soil is healthy, the food is good and the earth benefits.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I was born on a poultry farm (eggs) in California. My father was a high school agriculture teacher in the area, which became a major bedroom community in Silicon Valley and then home to many high-tech businesses including the Tesla Plant.
The tech economy boomed. The farming economy collapsed as houses, malls, manufacturing plants gobbled up some of the best, most productive farmland on the Planet. Overall, I think the human economy lost on this exchange — it’s hard to eat silicon chips — and I know the natural economy lost.
I studied economics and agricultural economics at UC Davis, but learned very little about the need to find a better balance between economic growth and ecological health. I went to UC Berkeley and got a master’s degree in business and urban planning, then went to work as a consultant helping rural California with long-term plans to manage growth and achieve sustainable economies.
During this time there was a California property tax revolution that resulted in a ballot initiative, Proposition 13, that undermined the ability of municipalities to plan and fund healthy growth. Cities needed to approve new commercial development to balance their budgets. The vision of maintaining farming as part of vibrant local economies was demolished.
I chose to leave California as I saw where land-use planning was headed. I went on a quest to find someplace that valued local food systems, family farms and sustainable agriculture as key components of a healthy local economy. That search took me to England and the Garden City movement, Scotland and the Green Communities movement, and then, after two years back to the U.S. where I chose Vermont.
I have been in Vermont for 40 years. During this time I founded and built Gardener’s Supply Company into the largest multi-channel gardening supply business in the country. We have served millions of organic gardening customers. I also founded and developed the non-profit Intervale Center to regenerate a 700-acre flood plain of abandoned farms in the middle of Burlington.
We developed the first organic farm incubator in the U.S., the first CSA and Food Hub and the largest municipal composting project and conservation nursery in Vermont.
Plus, we helped launch scores of new organic farms and fulfilled our 1990 goal of producing 10% of Burlington’s fresh food within the city’s borders.
I now operate Earthkeep Farmcommon, in nearby Charlotte, as a center for regenerative farming to demonstrate a new model of diversified agriculture on a large conserved dairy farm.
The Earthkeep family of businesses includes Earthkeep Farmcommon LLC, Earthkeep Farmers’ Collective LLC, the nonprofit Earthkeep Regenerative Agriculture Center and Vermont Malthouse LLC. At Earthkeep we work toward a “not-for-profit-only” goal by operating both nonprofit and for-profit businesses that define success by measuring multiple bottom lines: environmental and social impact as well as financial returns.
Our overall business mission says it all: “Strengthening the imperative bond between farming, economy and nature. From the ground up and for our common good.”
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?
Certainly the most noteworthy involved exploring how agriculture can return as a positive force in our economy.
Historically, local organic waste (leaves and yard waste, food waste, manure) was collected and used as fertilizer or compost inputs. This mostly stopped with ag chemicals replacing natural fertilizers after World War II, and organic wastes were added to landfills.
In 1985 I moved 2-year-old Gardener’s Supply to the Intervale, which was once a major source of local food. There was only one struggling dairy left in the Intervale operated by tenacious 90-year-old Rena Calkins. Burlington was running out of landfill space and, in 1987, I went to Bernie Sanders — the city’s mayor at that time — and asked for a $7,000 loan to buy a tractor and start a municipal yard and food waste composting project managed by Gardener’s Supply employees.
It worked and we began composting tens of thousands of tons of yard and food waste each year and using the compost to rebuild soil for new Intervale farms and other area farms and gardens. Successful composting needs carbon, nitrogen, moisture and oxygen.
One dry summer we did not have enough moisture and nitrogen, so our compost windrows were not heating up enough. I called the Ben & Jerry’s factory and asked if they had any excess manufacturing process wastewater.
They asked, “chocolate or vanilla?”
Turns out ice cream equipment needs to be thoroughly washed between flavor runs, and that wash water has high fats and oils content and is very challenging to dispose of. But, the bacteria in compost love high-sugar and high-fat foods (regardless of the flavor). Intervale Compost began getting regular pump-truck deliveries of “Vermont’s Finest” wash water to make even better compost.
Why do you care so much about the future of agriculture? What about it makes you passionate, and why?
As Wendell Berry said so well, “The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” And as Abraham Lincoln said, “When I am gone, I hope it can be said of me that I plucked a thistle and planted a flower wherever I thought a flower would grow.”
You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Enthusiasm/optimism
In 1985 Gardener’s Supply was two years old and it looked like it would survive. We decided to move the business across the Winooski River and build new offices and our warehouse on the site of an abandoned pig slaughterhouse which we couldn’t take down because the 90- year-old-dairy farmer mentioned above. She thought she may want it for heifers one day.
The slaughterhouse was at the entrance to the Intervale, was at one time home to Ethan Allen’s farm, and others that helped feed Burlington. But it had become the “wrong side of the tracks” with the city dump, wood-fired municipal utility plant, septic storage ponds, camps where unhoused people lived, an illegal junk car dump, drug activity, and the last dairy in Burlington.
I envisioned that this wonderful, neglected, expanse of potentially good farmland could be a “Mecca for the pleasures and rewards of cultivating the earth,” that we could help feed Burlington again with a thriving array of organic farms. And that was the vision we enthusiastically conveyed to anyone who would listen, including the current owners of the land, one of the largest of which was the city of Burlington.
At every opportunity, we optimistically pitched the potential of the Intervale to become “the breadbasket of Burlington”, the city’s Central Park and a place to run, bike and walk the dog — an incubator of new ecological and farming businesses creating hundreds of jobs.
Guess what? It all happened. Envision it, believe it with gusto, act to achieve it.
Win-win collaboration.
We owned zero land in the Intervale. But we had a vision for the future of this underutilized place, and we systematically worked with the half-dozen landowners to show them how their land could be better used, more valuable, a benefit to city residents. Only through working collaboratively and envisioning a new future for the Intervale that focused on goals and plans of the landowners could we make progress toward our vision. “Do unto others…” We always followed that golden rule.
With Rena Calkins, the ornery matriarch of the Intervale and owner of about 200 acres, Gardener’s Supply staff helped her milk her 30 or so cows, cleared the antique hemp plants that seniors from the University of Vermont sold every September as “cannabis” to unsuspecting freshman, mended fences and helped to clear 1,000 junk tires and dozens of abandoned cars from her land.
Rena has since passed, but the Intervale Center now owns or controls all her land and her farmstead serves as headquarters.
Mission with Resilience.
A few years after we started Gardener’s Supply we updated our mission to read: “Gardener’s Supply is in business to spread the joys and rewards of gardening, because gardening nourishes the body, elevates the spirit, builds community, and makes the world a better place.”
It was about our broader impact, not our business results. Plus, we renamed our parent corporation America’s Gardening Resource. This, when we had only a few dozen employees.
A bit presumptuous, but with every important decision we focused on our mission and the impact we could have. We asked, “what if?” not “what now?”
During the recession of 1991–92 a large seed company wanted to buy Gardener’s Supply and during the “dot com” recession 20 years ago Home Depot came knocking, asking about acquiring Gardener’s Supply.
Each time we looked at our mission and chose to tighten our belt and be creative to weather the slow times. This “True Grit” mindset included the ability to hang in there, tough it out, persevere, recover from setbacks — and ultimately stay committed to our mission.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.” — Goethe
It’s relevant because I’ve found it to be true. Its antithesis is fear of failure and commitment with enthusiasm is the elixir to fear of the future.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
I am an entrepreneur. When I learned of the process of “intrapreneurship” it made sense:
helping capable, motivated people to do their own thing in business, supported by the structure, framework and resources of a parent organization.
The first time I supported an intrapreneur was in 1987 with Alan Newman, the Gardener’s Supply vice president of operations and a founding employee. He wanted to shift from operations management to running and owning more of his own business. So, I supported him to go independent by starting Niche Marketing Services in the Gardener’s Supply warehouse and using our phone and computer system and warehouse operation.
One of his clients was the Solar Lobby, which had a small catalog of energy-saving devices to which Alan provided order processing and fulfillment services. When the Solar Lobby decided to get out of the catalog business, Alan took it over and renamed it Seventh Generation.
As Seventh Generation grew it needed more space so it moved into our greenhouse manufacturing building. Then it outgrew that space and moved into a much larger building.
Today, Seventh Generation is owned by Unilever and does $200 million in annual sales. I am still working with Alan on new and varied ventures.
What do you want your personal legacy to be?
He saw the big picture, added value whenever possible, helped create dozens of businesses and scores of farms, and made a positive difference by focusing on a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about Modern Farming. It seems that most industries have all converted to tech and modernized their old ways. Can you share with our readers a few of the ways that modern farming has modernized? Can you share how tech has improved your business model?
For thousands of years, farming was a family business serving local economies. People knew the land, the climate, the local needs and could adapt quickly to changes. The best farming was, is, and will be about understanding the correct balance between living systems, human ingenuity and innovative technology.
Soil health and biodiversity matter.
But after World War II, farming was driven to produce cheap food with aggressive, and often degenerating, technologies. Bigger tractors, more plowing, more chemical fertilizers/pesticides/herbicides, little consideration for healthy living systems.
Corporate-owned industrial scale factory farms replaced family farms. As Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz said in the 1970s, “get big or get out.”
Earl and his D.C. buddies during the past 50 years have made certain that USDA policies, incentives and subsidies favor factory farming. This has substantially degraded US farmland, freshwater resources, food quality and even human health. Yes, food has been abundant and cheap, but at what cost? The USDA should shift to policies and subsidies that serve regenerative farming and the true needs of consumers.
The difference between other industries and farming is that farming relies on living topsoil, biodiversity above and below the ground, pollination, replenishable aquifers, lakes and rivers.
Industrial processes don’t die.
Ecosystems can die, and industrial farming is killing many of them. Of course, new ag technology creates more productive farms, but at what cost? Between one-quarter and one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions result from farming and the food system. The main culprits are livestock factory farms (methane), chemical fertilizers (nitrous oxide), and unnecessary tillage (CO2), plus emissions from central, distant food systems that need refrigeration, packaging and trucking.
We are only beginning to understand soil chemistry. Without soil life organic matter can’t become plant food, rainwater can’t be ‘sponged up’ and stored for plant roots, CO2 in the atmosphere can’t be captured and sequestered through photosynthesis to improve soil health.
Many of our heavily-used farm chemicals kill soil life, not to mention pollinators.
Indigenous cultures have knowledge earned over millennia about sustainable farming, like the “three-sisters” growing method to boost fertility, nutrition, and pest control.
Sure, tech has improved practices at Earthkeep Farmcommon. We use tractors to efficiently prepare soil and plant hundreds of acres of barley and rye. We seek the best new seed varieties to grow fungus-resistant grain, but we also use antique varieties like warthog winter wheat, because over time old varieties have proven to be more disease-resistant with desirable characteristics like low gluten.
Our vegetable operation grows many hybrid varieties — but no GMOs — and some of our best sellers are heirloom vegetables.
Sweet Sound Aquaculture, a producer on site, needs advanced temperature controls and oxygenation, but there is no replacing the savvy, observant fish farmer. Solar energy powers much of our operation without GHG emissions, and we place panels only on unproductive crop land, with perennial berries planted between the rows of panels and pollinator habitat surrounding the arrays.
Do you think modernization for farming is a slower process than for other industries? Can you explain what you mean?
Farming works with living systems, not mechanical systems. Living systems are, well, alive. Good farming and farmers must be good stewards of healthy ecosystems. We have spent almost a century over-cultivating, over-fertilizing, losing topsoil and biodiversity, degrading aquifers, waterways and riparian zones, decimating the culture of farming communities in our rush to grow cheap food to “feed the world.”
But we are squandering our natural capital needed to achieve this goal and without that foundation, farming will get less productive and much more expensive. China already pays people to pollinate apples and other fruit, given the depletion of their pollinator populations.
The whole point of regenerative farming is to be economically and ecologically smart about the modernization of farming.
Farming is part art as much as science, part stewardship as much as technology. We lost this balance and now must rediscover it. It will take time, but smart USDA policies and demanding consumers can accelerate the needed regenerative agriculture revolution.
How would you define “regenerative agriculture” and why should people pay attention to it? Are there farms resisting the “tech bandwagon”? Why do you think this is so?
The question should not be, “Technology, or no technology?” It should be, “What is the right technology to achieve the outcome of producing the food, fiber and farm outputs we need, at a fair price, while not degrading the capacity to do that long-term?”
I offer two definitions for regenerative agriculture, both outcome-based.
One expansive answer was proposed on a website called RAIL (Regenerative Agriculture Is Local) by folks working on this question for a few years: “Regenerative agriculture builds healthy soils, reduces air and water pollution, maximizes efficiencies, and increases biodiversity while promoting equity and public health. By simultaneously storing carbon, building resilience to extreme weather, and eliminating chemical inputs, regenerative agriculture also empowers farmers and ranchers to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”
The other answer is simple (but hard to implement) from a friend who started The Carbon Underground: “Just tell me: does the farming system measurably achieve important ecological outcomes…. More and more I ask, “does X reverse the climate crisis?” Yes means thumbs-up, no means thumbs-down”
Our Earthkeep Regenerative Agriculture Center needs to embrace both the simple and expansive definitions and be outcomes, not inputs focused. We can’t let Big Ag own the term “regenerative.”
Monsanto, General Mills, Cargill, Danone, PepsiCo and more are jumping on the “regenerative” bandwagon, but are they guided by the above definitions? Are they measuring soil, air, and water health — and human health — as priority outcomes?
What makes it more than a buzzword? Give us examples
Nearly a century of industrial agriculture has yielded abundant, cheap food, plus a long list of ecological and social disasters: a “dead zone” lacking dissolved oxygen for aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico from midwest agricultural chemicals that are almost as big as New Jersey.
Most drinking water wells in Iowa are contaminated with pesticides, nitrates from fertilizer, and bacteria from livestock manure.
Up to 46 percent of topsoil in the U.S. corn belt (the best farmland in the world) has been lost to erosion and degradation leaving behind low-carbon, less productive subsoils.
Tens of thousands of family farms have failed, causing the collapse of local culture and economies in thousands of farm communities affecting millions of families. This is a main cause of the “crisis in Rural America.”
So, “regenerative agriculture” may be a buzzword. But the need to regenerate the losses from industrialization of farming is an existential imperative.
How much money will it take to save the world? By which I mean what is the cost of sustainability in ag?
The incremental cost of new, better agriculture may be very little. But it will require changing our priorities to healthy farming and healthy food and redirecting our policies and subsidies to regenerate depleted land.
Buffalo helped build the fertility of the midwest prairies over thousands of years, and industrial farming degraded some of this land by 50 percent in decades.
How does agriculture shift to have a regenerative impact? Start with government supporting and funding good, not bad, farming practices.
There may be no net cost increase for this and even lower costs by changing government programs.
Next, use solid science to develop investment vehicles that deliver regenerative benefits and agronomic success for invested capital. Support innovative investment vehicles that can provide new capital, like the carbon market and NACs being considered by the NYSE and like Iroquois Valley REIT.
In coming decades, the value of farming that improves soil life and carbon, biodiversity, pollination, water retention and other ecosystem services will be higher. I believe new USDA and state agriculture policy as well as private capital markets will find ways to reward farmers for this work.
Farmers will be compensated for good farming.
The idea of farming has a very romantic and idyllic character to it, especially to some people living in a busy cosmopolitan context. Do you think now would be a good time for younger people with no farming history to get involved in the farming industry? Can you explain what you mean?
It really does not matter what I think — we already see thousands of new, young farmers learning about farming and getting involved with food growing and rebuilding local food systems.
It’s been an increasingly strong trend for decades in Vermont and now Vermont, a cold state with a short growing season, is the top producer per capita of local food.
Vermont lost farms for decades until net farm formation surpassed farm losses this century, mostly with the addition of young farmers.
The Intervale Center incubates a dozen farms and consults with more than 100, and the Earthkeep Farmer’s Collective hosts 10 farms. The average age of these farmers is in their 30s.
Younger people are getting involved with farming, especially community-based, local agriculture because it offers self-employment and a mission-driven career linked to local economies. Plus, there are a growing number of colleges, farms and community programs offering farm apprenticeship and training programs.
How can the small family farm adapt? What will it take to survive in today’s ag economy and philosophy?
If farmers can make a fair living farming, there will be more farmers. For years I have pointed to the percent of income spent on food for the U.S. versus France.
France protects its small farmers and values high-quality local food. Plus, France values a healthy working landscape more than does the U.S. The cost of food as a percentage of household income in France is about double that in the U.S. — 16 percent versus 8 percent — .but the overall quality of food is better and the cost of diet-related diseases in France is less than the U.S.
It seems to me France has a better balance of food cost/human health/ecological health. So, what should food costs be as a share income? If it was higher in the U.S. but with commensurate improvement in human and environmental health would that be a good tradeoff? I think so.
Plus, while household food budgets may be higher, family farms would likely get a higher percentage of household income if they were on a level playing field with industrial farming which also will reduce health care and environmental costs.
We are beginning to measure and understand this tradeoff. Regenerative farming can lead the way to achieve a new balance with science-based quantification of ecosystem improvement. The Earthkeep Regenerative Agriculture Center is working with the Gund Institute of Environment at the University of Vermont to do such science. We are also working with the UVM Medical Center Culinary Medicine program to understand the health benefits of well-prepared local food.
The tide is turning for family farms as consumers and policy-makers understand the true cost of cheap food. But there is a very strong Big Ag lobby that will resist change. The ark of change is bending in the direction of family farming for the first time in 70 years.
Where should a young person start if they would like to “get into” farming?
How does inflation affect farms? What steps have you taken to keep costs down?
● For example, how will the Earthkeep Farmers Collective play a role?
Google “beginning farmers training programs.” The opportunities to learn and train are growing every day. The Intervale Center has helped new farmers get started for 35 years and now Earthkeep offers new farm incubation and acceleration.
Food inflation went wild during the pandemic with supply chain disruptions, and it will continue to increase as oil prices remain high and demand grows for quality local food. This is good news for local and regenerative farming as we begin to recognize the fair cost of good food.
Earthkeep Farmer’s Collective, and similar cooperative farming programs, will share the cost of farmland, equipment, processing space and other capital costs as well as the operating expenses to drive down farm start-up and operational costs. These programs will help farmers share best practices and teach how to access local and regional markets more efficiently. Earthkeep Regenerative Agriculture Center plans to renovate a 20,000-square-foot, 100-year-old barn to include a cooperative year-round indoor farmers’ market for Earthkeep and other local farmers.
There are of course different revenue streams that can be generated from a farm. What are your current avenues of profiting from your farm? What would you suggest to other farm owners to add to expand their revenue streams?
Earthkeep Farmcommon is a working farm that owns and operates farm businesses and hosts other agricultural businesses. Earthkeep staff grows the vegetables we sell at the farm and wholesale, plus, barley and rye for malting by the Vermont Malthouse.
Other businesses that are part of the Earthkeep Farmers’ Collective produce shrimp, hemp, cut flowers, honey, baked goods from our wheat, aged beer from our grain/malt with botanical inputs, whiskey from our grain/malt, maple syrup, cheese to make pizza, compost from food/yard waste and manure inputs.
In addition to revenue from retail and wholesale sales of farm products, Earthkeep expects to generate sales from agri-tourism and tastings, farm and food trainings, special dinners and on-farm entertainment.
Here is the main question of our interview. Can you please share your “5 Things That Are Needed To Create A Successful Career In the Modern Farming Industry”? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
- Get as close to the ultimate “eater” as possible. On average, farmers receive 14 percent of every food dollar spent in the U.S. Direct marketing to consumers boosts this substantially. Farmers get close to 100 percent of food dollars from CSAs and farmers markets. Food hubs, food coops, marketing directly to restaurants and institutions, etc provide the majority of food dollars to farmers. And when possible, build your own brand to strengthen the link to consumers.
Intervale Community Farm was the first, and grew to be the largest, CSA in Vermont — one of the largest in New England. The idea for this community farm grew out of a conference Gardener’s Supply convened in 1989. The CSA was launched in 1990 on 2 acres and with 20 members, most of whom were GS employees. These members got a great deal on local organic food plus they were given the opportunity to help weed carrots and harvest kale.
2. All good food happens locally; rebuild local food systems. Thirty-five years ago, the Intervale Center set out to help rebuild the Burlington local food system and we set the goal of producing 10 percent of Burlington’s fresh food in Burlington. We achieved that goal by incubating a dozen new private vegetable farms on hundreds of acres in the Intervale, building the largest CSA in VT, creating the Intervale Food Hub and Intervale Compost Project. Three decades ago, one restaurant promoted local, organic produce and no supermarkets did. Now dozens do. The collaborative spirit of winning together is contagious. As the saying goes, “a rising tide floats all boats.”
This is especially true for the new regenerative farming industry and reemergence of vibrant local food systems.
Over that time scores of farmers have moved out of the Intervale to own and staff other Vermont farms. David Zuckerman and Rachel Nevitt, owners of Full Moon Farm, began as part of the Intervale incubator program and after nine years they bought their own farm 20 miles away in Hinesburg., They grow 25 acres of diversified, organic vegetables and raise certified organic pigs, chickens, eggs, flowers and CBD. David has served as Vermont’s lieutenant governor and was a legislator, too.
3. Make producing healthy soil as important as producing a profit. Businesses exist to serve customers, create jobs and make a profit. Ideally, they also contribute positively to their communities and broader stakeholders. Many family farms are challenged to make a profit because of the “cheap food” and “get big, or get out” policies of the federal government. These policies are changing as we realize industrial farms are eating their natural capital by depleting topsoil, soil life, pollinators and water resources. This cannibalism of the ecosystem gets worse as profits evaporate.
Just like a strong business needs a strong balance sheet, farms need healthy natural assets to succeed and profit long term, starting with fertile soil.
The first big initiative we launched in the Intervale was the Intervale Compost Project. We had a goal of composting Burlington’s yard and food waste instead of land-filling it. In October 1987, we put a coupon in the Burlington Electric Department’s billing statement to all customers offering a free bushel of compost in the spring if you brought us fall leaves.
We got leaves! And we composted them. Over the next 20 years, we saved hundreds of thousands of tons of organic waste from the land fill, and we made tens of thousands of yards of compost that helped fund the non-profit Intervale Center.
We moved the compost windrows around the Intervale multiple times until the Project got too big to move. Each time thousands of yards of compost was deposited and gradually the Intervale soils shifted from good tilth but poor organic matter content to great tilth and great organic matter. “Feed the soil and it will feed us.”
4. Food is medicine, medicine is food. Once, all farming was local. We understood and shared Indigenous knowledge of plant medicine and we were not processing the nutritional value out of food to make it shelf stable. We are out of balance today and we need to remember when food and plants were a bigger part of health and wellness. That remembering will be new fuel for the relocalization of food production and wind in the sails for family farming.
The fact that I am over 70 years old and have had one common cold in the past two decades since we have been growing elderberries and making a tonic from our crop is a great example of this.
Before that I would have at least one cold every year.
5. Ecological design must replace industrial design; a farm economy should be a life-enhancing economy. The “Modern Farming Industry” needs to replace much of the mechanistic, industrial ag industry. This is needed to stop the degeneration and begin the regeneration of agricultural resources. Especially given the need for new food system resilience with the pace of climate change breakdown. Like a healthy forest, everything is connected and interdependent in a living economy. Farming and food systems can lead the way to a new living economy.
Earthkeep Farmcommon exists to prove the power of ecological design applied to modern farming. The story is just beginning.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Wendell Berry: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
How can our readers further follow your work online?
What comes next for you? What should people keep an eye on?
Earthkeep Farmcommon is being developed on a 600-acre former dairy farm that has a conservation easement — so it must always be a farm.
Our vision is to show the value-creation from an ecologically designed farm, powered by solar energy hosting many interdependent farming businesses that share costs and market access. If we are successful for the local community, environmentally and economically, we think there are hundreds of farms that may be interested in replicating some or all of our model. Maybe we become a training center and raise capital to help export our regenerative, cooperative model to other large farms in Vermont and beyond.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.
