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Greenhorns: Building A Movement of Young Farmers
Almost two years after its founding in a basement in Berkeley, California, The Greenhorns has
matured from an idea for a recruitment film into a widespread national
community. We are now happily rooted on my first commercial farm,
Smithereen, on rented land in the Hudson Valley of New York.
In the autumn of 2007 we officially began seeking out mentors and characters for a film, traveling the country with a confident intuitive sense of an emerging movement of young farmers and a series of borrowed cameras and generous cinematographers. On the road for these 2 years we have found that the movement has emerged—scrappy, resourceful, adaptive young Americans have brought the products and the spirit of this movement into the sun, and we are proud to be the reporters of its successes and a hub for a much-needed centralized network.
This is America, and it takes all kinds. All over the country we have met enterprising, hopeful greenhorns: descendants of family dairies, punky inner-city gardeners, homesteaders, radical Christians, anarcho-activists, ex-suburbanites, graduates with biological science degrees, ex-teachers, ex-poets, ex-cowboys. The sons of traditional farmers, the daughters of migrant farm workers, the accidental agriculturalists and the deliberate career switchers all mark our maps. In foothills, warehouses, back valleys, and vacant lots they are popping up as we reclaim human spaces in the broad lazerland of monoculture that has engulfed rural America.
This Obama spring finds the young farmers as unlikely poster children of a new zeitgeist. Aptly so. Ranging around the country in my filmmaking, I have met hundreds of new and aspiring young farmers. I have found them a powerful, proud and wily sub-culture. I have found them to be charismatic icons of change, patriots of place, sensible and sensitive stewards of land and resources. They are the creators of a retrofit future, and just in time. We now have the political change.
We have reawakened our democratic will and discovered a dilation in the realms of possibility. We must take advantage of the moment. Yes! We are farming! We are hopeful.
The produce of local agriculture is in hot demand with the most loyal of customers. CSAs all have waiting lists, and healthy mothers determined to have healthy babies are fiercely devoted to nutrition and the farmers who provide it. Popular literature and sensibility is gravitating to our message of health for our selves, our soil, our social fabric. I have learned that it is possible for us to succeed, to prosper; meanwhile the market continues to grow!
Farming in America is simultaneously a privilege and a service. And no, it is not easy. Young farmers in America face tremendous structural obstacles. They seek access to land, capital, education, and business training. They seek cultural support and open minded consumers. They need reasonable paths to acquiring mechanical equipment and other infrastructures of medium-scale agriculture. These are missing components of our culture and our laws, and they are deeply missed by young farmers who are forced to improvise and invent new institutions to serve their new needs and new marketplace.
The movement is for real. Its practitioners are skilled, savvy and ferocious. They are assets to their community and guarantors of our future. They are shovel-ready, shovel-sharpened. Relishers of flavor, recipients of the generosity of photosynthesis. Hellbent on recovering from the age of convenience. They are young farmers with young muscles wisely applying their lives to the problems at hand. But it takes the applied passions of thousands, hundreds of thousands of courageous actions to repair a nation. It will take a radical shift in the structure of the Farm Bill, in the literacy of eaters, in the shape of commerce and land management. It will take the support of you all.
If you are thinking of farming, do!
If you cannot join us, connect with your stomachs and please buy and savor and share our products!
If your kid wants to farm, tell them it’s ok! Help them open a savings account or lend start-up capital to a young farmer in your town.
Please collaborate. Please facilitate. Please donate. Please join us or rally on your own to ensure the success of America’s young farmers.
*Editor’s note: The Greenhorns need a boost of funds in order to finish editing their film. A 15-minute preview was paid for using the deposit on their former office. I know these are hard economic times, but donate on their website if you are able!
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8 Comments so far
Show AllI do not know much of this coalition but one of the ways these young farmers can prosper is to pool labor and equipment and to work communaly.
You do not have to duplicate the same equipment farm to farm nor does each farmer have to hire their own labor or do all the work.
Way back in the 192os and 1930s farmers could not each afford a threshing machine. What would happen was a crew would go around with a single machine from farm to farm and get all the threshing done.
Farmers would work together in Barn raising ceremonies rather then have to pay some construction firm to build a barn.
If the goal is to build a community , then the people should work together as a community trying to ensure that ALL prosper. Set aside the mantra that you COMPETE with your neighbours. Work for the common good.
Right on!
GwNorth__I notice you have some knowledge of farming in the old days. I was a kid growing up on a family farm in the 1930`s and certainly remember the neighbors helping each other to get the job done. Those were hard years, but I have many fond memories of that experience. By the way, I am still on the same farm but one would hardly recognize it with all of the changes through the years.
I would encourage anyone to try their hand at farming, as it is a wonderful way to give your children a great start in life. However, it has been 80 years since 1930 and returning to that way of simple and co-operative life will take some time, so one needs to realize it will not be easy but maybe worthwhile.
Kernelz is describing the old localist ways lost to petromedia. Localism is the way, always has been. Localism drives the barn-raising party, and the implement-sharing. Localism keeps the political/economic power down home where it belongs. You have to have local solidarity to raise a pitchfork and torch army to greet the elites. It's peculiar how the conservatives of the latter 20th century USA would share farm implements cooperatively while simultaneously cheering the corporatist elites. Kind of like organized labor thethered to the corporatists while the industrial base was shifted overseas, while the recipients refused to reciprocate. US farmers want to remain in triangulation or break free/ Talk to your local community about keeping the local demand within the lcoal community. That's right. Boycott the far-flung elites. Maybe we should carve the message in the sidewalks.
I think every aspiring farmer, whether young or not so young should watch the movie: The Real Dirt On Farmer John.
It's an award winning documentary on how one farmer in America's heartland saved the family farm from being taken over by the banks.
Do check it out! Here's a website to tell you more:
http://www.angelicorganics.com/
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Hi Severine,
The Greenhorns, or anyone else for that matter, may wish to check out the Web Site and eStore I just started assembling for an eco-venture farm in Western Pennsylvania.
“Kananga Farm is an instructive working model
for cutting-edge holistic resource management,
sustainable process research, and on-farm education.
Along with raising and breeding registered
Devon cattle, Kananga Farm’s expansive vision
is to advance and promote the best practices
at the very forefront of holistic agriculture.
By actually living out the guiding principles
developed by the Pennsylvania Association
for Sustainable Agriculture, Kananga Farm’s
goal is to inspire, inform, and nurture innovative
venture opportunities for the next generation
of young farmers and eco-entrepreneurs.”
http://www.kanangafarm.com/index.html
___ ___ ___
The owners might be a good source for further contacts, but please be aware I am not an agricultural insider – my role is strictly design and promotion of their venture.
Note: this site is not yet open to the public, and only the first three pages are complete, but most written content has been added. Best of luck with your recruitment film and the Greenhorns Movement - Keith
.
As a FROG (farmer, rancher, organic gardener - my wife often refers to me as "Farmer Frog"), I am always looking to see what other FROG's like me are doing. I was very inspired by what I saw on the Big Island of Hawaii.
What was once old, worn-out commercial sugarcane fields has been bought up by "Trustafarians" (do I need to explain the meaning of that term? OK, for those who don't know, that refers to patchouli-drenched, raw garlic-eating, long-haired, rebellious off-spring of middle class, often mid-western parents who set up their hippie kids with large trust funds so they can live the hippie lifestyle while doctor dad makes the big bucks... comprehende?)
So, these kids got together and pooled their resources and bought the abandoned fields fairly cheep and turned them into lush, productive gardens of Eatin'. Every delightful tropical fruit and vegetable growing all around their houses. The more resourceful ones even grew their own houses. No, that's not a typo. They literally "grow" their own houses.
"Now wait a minute, what the hell do you mean by that?", you might ask. Well, I was just about to explain. They did this by making the entire house out of bamboo. Yeah, like Gilligan's Island-style. More like Mr and Mrs Howell. If you don't know, bamboo grows extremely fast, and is extremely strong. It's one of the most versatile plants on the planet (next to hemp, of course).
Now the Trustafarians are prosperous, self-reliant FROG's raising families on their own and sending their kids to some of the best schools in the country. All they did was follow their dreams and do what was considered impossible, or doomed to failure. I find this inspiring, and I hope you do too.
I don't have the links, but you can find some of these FROG's on the web if you do a little search. One good place to look is the Intentional Communities Directory. Peace.