Loved this story in the Tennessean about a new era of family farming: “from weathered and windblown to young and fresh-faced.”
It’s a hopeful piece about how young farmers are embracing the CSAs and small, diversified farming models, even while traditional family farms continue to wane.
Farmgirl Nancy VanWinkle put it best: “The reality of the situation is we need local food sources and a new generation of farmers. A lot of people want to farm, and it’s a very real desire.”
Here’s an interesting stat, but not one that surprises me: “about two-thirds of the world population works on farms, but only about 1 percent to 2 percent farms in the United States – a number smaller than our prison population.”
Not unrelated, one of the sources in the story relates how he works for an enrichment program that teaches boys without fathers how to grow their own food. The boys get plots scaled down for backyards and are taught how to grow enough food for two people for a year on 1,000 sq. feet.
Cool. The story was from April, but the Tennessean has regular coverage of sustainability movements and environmental issues at TennesseeGreen.com. One of the latest articles is a tutorial on growing organic.
Virtual Farmgirl 