America’s young farmers break ground in return to the soil
‘They thought I was choosing cows and countryside over people’
Faith Gilbert’s friends thought she was mad. Five years ago, the history and anthropology graduate told her San Francisco university classmates that she was leaving the lucrative life around Silicon Valley, and returning to the East Coast to grow vegetables.
“They thought I was choosing cows and countryside over people,” she said, with a laugh. “It was seen as a really solitary lifestyle.”
And yet Miss Gilbert, 29, has instead found herself at the centre of a growing community of young farmers. Indeed, for only the second time in the last 100 years, the number of farmers under 35 years old is increasing – and the Hudson Valley, in upstate New York where she runs her 64-acre farm, is at the very heart of this revival.
The latest census by the US department of agriculture shows that the number of farmers aged 25-34 grew 2.2 per cent between 2007 and 2012: the next census, which is published next year, is expected to show an even more pronounced growth.
New York, along with California and South Dakota, saw the numbers of young farmers increase by more than 20 per cent. “This is the second ‘back to the land’ movement, where people are looking for something different,” Ms Gilbert said.
The National Young Farmer’s Coalition (NYFC), which aims to help 25,000 young people enter viable farming careers by 2022, is celebrating this significant milestone in their efforts. “We are absolutely seeing more young people going into farming,” said Lindsey Lusher Shute, the executive director of NYFC.
She and her husband Ben have pigs, vegetables and 1,200 laying hens at Hearty Roots Farm, in Germantown, upstate New York. “It’s fantastic. Of course, it’s not enough to replace the farmers who are leaving. But it’s an encouraging start.”
The reasons behind this societal shift are varied. For some, it is an escape from the rat race and an increasingly fast urban existence. For others, it’s about reconnecting with nature and producing healthy, sustainable food.
A survey conducted by NYFC shows that the majority of young farmers did not grow up in agricultural families, and they are significantly better educated than the general population – 69 per cent, according to the survey, held higher education certificates or university degrees. They are also far more likely than the general farming population to grow organically, limit pesticide and fertiliser use, diversify their crops or animals, and be deeply involved in their local food systems via community supported agriculture (CSA) programs and farmers markets.
For Miss Gilbert and her friends, it is also about community – she says that in the 20 mile radius of the town of Hudson, where her farm sits, 17 youth-run “start-up” farms have sprung up in the last decade.
“I think it’s best understood as public service,” she said. “Of course there are lifestyle rewards, and being part of a community, and working outside, doing something physical, being healthy. But the financial fragility is the biggest drawback.”
She began five years ago, ploughing in $7,000 (£5,000) of her savings to run Letterbox Farm – an estate vacated by a retiring farmer. Set in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains, on the outskirts of the town of Hudson 125 miles north of New York, it is an idyllic, woodland-dotted site, with ravines and mountains.
From cultivating half an acre of vegetables, she has expanded to now growing over 45 different types, plus herbs and flowers. Nichki Carangelo, her childhood friend joined a year later alongside Laszlo Lazar, who spent six years as a park ranger for the Army Corps of Engineers before he returned to farming for good.
Mr Lazar and Miss Carangelo brought their livestock to the farm, which is jointly owned by the three of them, and they now raise pigs, chickens and rabbits – sold, like the vegetables and herbs, to local restaurants and at farmers’ markets.
“We very much keep on top of food trends,” said Miss Gilbert, who worked as a prep chef in San Francisco, which she says made her think deeply about food and where it came from.
Miss Gilbert speaks eloquently about America’s troubled relationship with food: why, unlike in France or Italy, there is no cultural heritage of fine fresh produce, and how vast subsidies go in to corn and soy, resulting in cheap food, an unhealthy diet and degraded soil structure.
If she could make one plea to President Donald Trump regarding agriculture, it’d be asking him to divert subsidies from the big grain farms to small, sustainable farms.
Miss Gilbert and her friends are in for the long haul. In another two years, she says, they expect to be able to make a genuine living – so far the farm is covering its costs, but paying off their loans and awarding themselves a decent wage is a struggle.
“When we started five years ago, we were one of maybe five estates in the area,” she said. “And since then we’ve all grown, streamlined and evolved. It’s not easy. But it’s genuinely exciting.”