Join us for a special series of The Farm Report in collaboration with Heritage Radio Network that's all about The Farm Bill. Tune in to hear from farmers, policymakers, organizers, and food advocates about all the ways the farm bill directly impacts our lives - whether we realize it or not. We’ll break down farm policy and talk to young farmers about what hangs in the balance for them as another Farm Bill gets made. Join our coalition to shift power and change policy for the next generation of growers and land stewards. The future of good food depends on it.

The Farm Report is Powered by Simplecast.

Find episodes of the special series of The Farm Report as they air here.

This is the third episode of our 2023 Farm Bill series, digging into the farm policy that will affect the next generation of farmers and ranchers.

We’ve been asking how 1,000 pages of federal policy can provide tangible benefits and support to beginning and BIPOC farmers, our communities, and the environment. And in this episode, we're joined by Mario Holguin and Julieta Saucedo of La Semilla Food Center, and Ana Moran, Water Organizer at the National Young Farmers Coalition. 

La Semilla Food Center, based in Anthony, New Mexico, has a mission “to foster a healthy, self-reliant, fair, and sustainable food system in the Paso del Norte region of southern New Mexico and El Paso, TX.” They do this work through a number of programs that Mario and Julieta discuss with Ana, including their Community Farm, farmer fellowships, policy and community development, and storytelling efforts.

Throughout their conversation Ana, Julieta, and Mario explore some of the ways that the 2023 Farm Bill can directly address the climate crisis, and what building climate resilience looks like across the Southwest. We know young farmers across the country are motivated by conservation and social justice. In our 2022 national survey 97% or respondents said their farm or ranch was using sustainable practices, and 86% identified their practices as being regenerative.

We end our episode today with a brief chat between Erin Foster-West, Policy Coordination and Management Director with the Coalition, and myself. Erin shares some exciting new bills recently introduced in Congress that would help small farms secure more accessible funding for conservation efforts and also support community support systems through farmer-to-farmer education opportunities.

Find the Young Farmers Action Center here. 

Learn more about La Semilla Food Center here.

Learn more about the Farmer-to-Farmer Education Act here and take action and learn more about the Small Farm Conservation Act here.

Become a National Young Farmers Coalition member at youngfarmers.org/join for only $1/year.

Produced by Jessica Manly and Evan Flom.

Edited by Hannah Beal.

Original podcast art by SJ Brekosky.

Gratitude to Chipotle and 11th Hour for sponsoring our Young Farmers' land campaign and to the our many partner organizations for furthering this important work with us.

In part 2 of our produce safety series, Young Farmers' Produce Safety Manager, Maggie Kaiser, talks with Ellen Polishuk about integrating Lean Farming principles into your farm's food safety plan. 

Visit youngfarmers.org/foodsafety for our online produce safety resource library and all of our food safety workshop episodes.

Become a National Young Farmers Coalition member today for major discounts on produce safety supplies and gear! Join at youngfarmers.org/join for $35/year or $5/month.

Produced in partnership with the National Farmers Union.

https://www.planttoprofit.com/

The Lean Farm: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-lean-farm/

Episode edited by Hannah Beal. 

This week and next we'll be talking about an often overlooked, and sometimes daunting, part of farming: *food safety*! Part 1 is a conversation with Scott Chang-Fleeman, owner of Shao Shan Farm in Marin County, who grows Asian heritage vegetables. It's interesting because it seems produce safety really clicks with Scott, as does farming in general, and he has a natural ability to assess risk. He has scaled his operation quickly and considers produce safety every step of the way. Plus he’s just really got his shit together... Enjoy!

Become a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition today! www.youngfarmers.org

Learn more about produce safety at our online resource library: https://www.youngfarmers.org/foodsafety/

Follow Scott on Instagram: @shaoshanfarm

Thanks to our partner National Farmers Union

Edited by Hannah Beal, recorded via Zoom from NY, VA, and LA.

Miles Griffin and Amanda Doughty currently live on 20 acres in Twisp, Washington. Amanda is a

licensed therapist, who works off the farm full-time but loves a good Saturday weeding session. Miles is the owner and operator of Posterity Farm, producing pastured turkeys, wholesale organic garlic, and diversified vegetables. Miles and Amanda find deep interest in the intersection of their professions, especially the contrast between the risk factors that farmers face and the inherent therapeutic benefits of their practices. Miles and Amanda hope to one day use their experiences to develop a farm therapy

program that reduces stigma around mental health and addresses food insecurity, community-building, and job training. If you are interested in learning more about their farm you can visit posterityfarm.com or email them at eatforposterity@gmail.com.

A note: this episode discusses topics related to suicide and mental health. Please take care of yourself and your needs before you listen, as you listen and as you process this conversation.

At the end of the episode you will hear from Chandler Briggs, of Hayshaker Farm, who introduces you to Justin McClane. Justin was a farmer and an active member of the WA Young Farmers Coalition and died by suicide. His death was a wake-up call for the chapter and the community. Justin continues to impact the work of WA Young Farmers and his contribution inspired us to center care as one of our foundational values. 

Amanda wanted to share the following resources with folks in the audience who want to access more resources for mental wellness: 

National Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-8255 Crisis Text Line - text “help” to 741741 

Telehealth platforms: 

-Ginger.io 

-Talkspace 

-BetterHelp 

For more on the WAYFC Farmer Mental Health Bill: https://www.washingtonyoungfarmers.org/hb2671 Music credit to Made By Finja by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6171-made-by-finja License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To join the National Young Farmers Coalition, visit youngfarmers.org/join

Nyema Clark is the Executive Director and Farm Queen at Nurturing Roots, a farm and community garden committed to addressing food justice issues in the Beacon Hill Neighborhood in Seattle. Nyema dives into their grow-your-own program Nurturing Your Roots at Home and we talk about how farmers and food-growers can prepare for the long haul in the midst of pandemic. In the episode we talk briefly about Living Well Kent, a group of Kent residents and community-based organizations united to achieve health equity through policy, systems, and environmental change. To learn more about Nyema and Nurturing Roots you check out their Facebook @NurturingRoots206 and Instagram @nurturingroots. If you want to support Nyema’s work you can send donations to cashapp $nurturingrootsfarm or through PayPal at nurturinginfo@gmail.com. 

Become a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition at youngfarmers.org/join and take action to support young farmers and ranchers through our advocacy network by texting FARMERS to 40649.

Music credit to Made By Finja by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6171-made-by-finja License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Washington Young Farmers Coalition (WAYFC) takes over the Young Farmers Podcast to talk about resilience and community building in the time of COVID-19. Become a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition at younfarmers.org/join and sign up for our advocacy network by texting FARMERS to 40649.

Tracy L. Stewart is a mindfulness based mental health therapist at the Nile’s Edge wellness collective and activist in Seattle, WA. She currently serves on the board of SURGE, a BIPOC centered reproductive justice organization, Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) – Seattle, and has served on three Social Justice Fund (SJF) giving projects. Elizabeth was able to get Tracy on the phone to help connect the dots between food-growing, uprisings for racial justice, and our mental health. Our conversation sprawls between rage and love, trauma and healing and does include explicit references to police brutality, internalized oppression, and other forms of harm. We acknowledge that some of this conversation could be triggering, and we encourage all our listeners to please take care of your needs. Tracy sees her role in community as working to create supportive, safe space for BIPOC folx in discovering their gifts through mindfulness practice and social justice awareness. Her cup is filled by the outside places, silly friends with microphones, passion for life, and folx sharing their good medicine with each other. “My focus is learning to be a good elder in order to support those out in the community fighting for all us to BE. In my work, I see a lot of suffering of black and brown folx who are warn from fighting to be their full selves. With Gathering Roots, the intention is creating a place where that burden can be released, people can fill their cups with joyful learning and the beauty of the Earth, witnessed and empowered to be all that they are.” 

You can learn more about Gathering Roots at their website: https://gatheringroots.org/ 

Throughout the episode we make reference to the work of: 

Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams : https://angelkyodowilliams.com/ 

Michelle Lee, Author of Working the Roots : https://kpfa.org/episode/the-herbal-highway-may-9-2019/ Llama Rod Owens: https://www.lamarod.com/ 

Leah Penniman: https://www.endoftheworldshow.org/blog/2020/5/6/apocalypse-survival-skill-4-braiding-seeds 

My Grandmother's Hands: https://www.resmaa.com/books 

Music credit to Made By Finja by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6171-made-by-finja

John Wesley is a curator, cultural ambassador, and community organizer. He is passionate about designing and producing experiences that connect diverse cultures and cultivate joy. JW is the founder and director of Seattle Bipoc Organic Food Bank; an organization dedicated to providing everyone with clean water and organic food. Their strategy is centered around outreach to the most vulnerable and underserved communities, beginning with the BIPOC community. Their goal is to help connect individuals and families to sustainable ecosystems, instead of merely focusing on short term solution. #foodcomesfromfarms 

Emma Shorr, a WAYFC Board member, and John share a conversation about food access in Seattle, what it takes to start a community-driven food bank and the importance of feeding folks organic veggies. You can find more information about John’s project on Instagram @seattlebipocfoodbank and their GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/seattle-bipoc-organic-food-bank-fund In this show John talks about some of the great farm and food projects in the Seattle region led by and serving BIPOC folks. 

Become a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition at youngfarmers.org/join and join our advocacy network by text FARMERS to 40649.

Danny Woo Garden: https://www.dannywoogarden.org/ Yes Farm: https://www.facebook.com/yesfarmofficial/ Nurturing Roots: https://www.facebook.com/pg/NurturingRoots206/posts/ Percussion Farms: https://percussionfarms.org/ Beacon Hill Food Forest: https://beaconfoodforest.org/ Music credit to Made By Finja by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6171-made-by-finja License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We turn the mic on Lindsey this week for the finale episode of our first season of the Young Farmers Podcast. The National Young Farmers Coalition's Sophie Ackoff, VP of Policy and Campaigns, and Holly Rippon-Butler, Land Access Program Director, join Lindsey in the studio to talk about the early years of the Coalition, big wins, favorite memories, and what's next.

National Young Farmers Coalition website
www.youngfarmers.org

Become a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition
youngfarmers.org/join

Farm Generations Cooperative
https://www.farmgenerations.coop/

Lindsey on her transition from Young Farmers
https://www.youngfarmers.org/2019/01/edsearch/

Recorded at the studios of Radio Kingston. Edited by Hannah Beal and produced by Jessica Manly.

Today we dive into the heady world of industrial hemp. Hemp is no longer just for Canadian cereal companies and scratchy beige t-shirts. This low-THC strain of cannabis, think of it as the well behaved fraternal twin to marijuana, is, as of the 2018 Farm Bill, a legal crop in all 50 states. And the hemp hype is real, mostly because of CBD, a hemp extract that's popping up in everything from $8 cans of seltzer, to medicinal tinctures, and even Carl's Jr hamburgers. But if there's such huge consumer demand for hemp, and it doesn't even get you high, why was the crop criminalized in the first place? And now that it's legal, what does this mean for farmers across the country who want to start growing it? We talk with Michael "Mr. Hemp" Bowman and Ben Banks-Dobson of Hudson Hemp and Old Mud Creek Farm.

Special thanks to our podcast editor, Hannah Beal, producer, Jessica Manly, Ben Banks-Dobson, and Michael "Mr. Hemp" Bowman.

More on industrial hemp and CBD:
https://nifa.usda.gov/industrial-hemp
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrebourque/2018/12/17/how-hemp-and-the-farm-bill-may-change-life-as-you-know-it/#1bfcbe2e694c
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/us/cbd-cannabis-marijuana-hemp.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/14/magazine/cbd-cannabis-cure.html

Hudson Hemp:
http://www.hudsonhemp.com/

Michael Bowman:
https://www.agprofessional.com/article/how-serve-growing-hemp-market
https://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/what-farmers-need-to-know-about-growing-hemp
https://www.agweb.com/article/three-potential-paths-for-farming-hemp/

Show art credit: Hudson Hemp @hudsonhemp

Karen Washington is one of the most influential food and farming activists of our time. From starting the Garden of Happiness in the Bronx, Black Urban Growers, and now Rise and Root Farm, Karen is modeling a new food system based on equity, social capital, and health.

New York State has over 57,000 farmers, and less than 200 of them are people of color, and this disparity holds true in every state across the country. Karen challenges Governor Cuomo to meet with black and brown farmers to talk about the policies and programs needed to support their success in agriculture.

Black Urban Growers:
https://www.blackurbangrowers.org/

Rise and Root Farm:
http://www.riseandrootfarm.com/karen-washington

Karen in the press:

Bright Spots in the Food System, Annette Nielsen, Edible Bronx. April 29, 2016

Bronx Urban Farmer Receives Earth Day Award for her Years of Work, Advocacy, Metro. April 19, 2016.

Women in Food: Karen Washington Forges Path for Black Farmers, Laura Hurst, SeedStock. April 11, 2016

Ten Questions with Karen Washington, Co-Owner of Rise & Root Farm. FoodTank. April 9, 2016

Karen Washington, Queen of Urban Gardening, Adrien Schless-Meier, Civileats.com. August 20, 2014.

EBONY Reveals 2012 Power 100! Ebony Magazine. November 1, 2012.

Karen Washington at TEDxBarnardCollegeWomen

Food Hero: Karen Washington

The biggest problem faced by farmers across the country is access to land. Who owns it, who rents it—it all has a big impact on the kind of food we grow and who has economic opportunity in rural communities.

Young Farmers' Land Access Program Director, Holly Rippon-Butler, sits down with Megan Horst, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University, to talk about who owns U.S. farmland, and whether or not this is shifting.

More research on land access and ownership:

https://civileats.com/2019/01/25/new-research-explores-the-ongoing-impact-of-racism-on-the-u-s-farming-landscape/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/30/america-black-farmers-louisiana-sugarcane

National Young Farmers Coalition land access programs:
https://www.youngfarmers.org/land-access/calculator/
https://www.youngfarmers.org/finding-farmland-course/
https://www.youngfarmers.org/land-access/workinggroup/

Follow Holly's ice cream making on Instagram @farmersconecreamery!

This is the second episode of a six-part series focused on the one thing everyone in our network – from farmers to policymakers, organizers to corporate partners – is laser-focused on right now: the 2023 Farm Bill.

In this episode, we're joined by Dãnia Davy, Director of Land Retention and Advocacy for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and Alita Kelly, Land Organizing Director at the National Young Farmers Coalition. Throughout our conversation we’ll explore some of the ways that the 2023 Farm Bill can directly address the land access crisis happening right now in the US.

We end our episode with Holly Rippon-Butler, Young Farmers Land Policy Director. Holly tells us why each and every one of us should be a land advocate, how young farmers are building powerful solutions to the land access crisis across the country, and a bit about what's next for our land policy priorities in the 2023 Farm Bill.

Sign up for our One Million Acres for the Future campaign here and take action by asking your Members of Congress to support the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities Act.

Learn more about the Federation for Southern Cooperatives at www.federation.coop.

Learn more about the LASO Act here, and the Increasing Land, Capital, Market Access Program and its recent awardees here.

Become a National Young Farmers Coalition member at youngfarmers.org/join for only $1/year.

Produced by Jessica Manly and Evan Flom.

Edited by Hannah Beal.

Original podcast art by SJ Brekosky.

Gratitude to Chipotle and 11th Hour for sponsoring our Young Farmers' land campaign and to the our many partner organizations for furthering this important work with us.

Lindsey speaks with Matt Russell, an Iowa farmer and executive director of Iowa Interfaith Power and Light, an organization that brings people of all faiths together in conversation about critical issues, like climate change and the future of rural America. Matt sees an opportunity for farmers to be on the forefront of climate innovation and mitigation, and being in Iowa, he's in a great place to influence policy and the 2020 presidential debates-he's already influencing them, in fact, as co-author of recent New York Times Opinion piece, "What Democrats Need to Know to Win in Rural America."

Recorded at the studios of Radio Kingston, edited by Hannah Beal, produced by Jessica Manly. Big thanks to our podcast intern Maia Banayan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/opinion/democrats-iowa-caucus.html

https://iowaipl.org/

Photo: Jim Young/Reuters

"We need to understand the challenges young farmers are facing regionally in order to create solutions." Lindsey checks in with Karen Gardner, National Young Farmers Coalition's Pennsylvania Policy Associate, about what she's hearing from beginning farmers in PA, and the upcoming Pennsylvania Young Farmers Report, "Growing Pennsylvania’s Future: Challenges Facing Young Farmers and Recommendations to Address Them." Join the #morefarmers movement at youngfarmes.org/join. The Pennsylvania Young Farmers Report hits the internet later this month!

Become a member and join the #morefarmers movement at youngfarmers.org/morefarmers

Recorded at the studios of Radio Kingston.

Thanks to our amazing editor, Hannah Beal, producer, Jessica Manly, comms manager, Bilal Sarwari, and podcast intern, Maia Banayan.

Special thanks to Margaret Schlass, a busy PA young farmer who took the time to chat with us for this episode, but whose audio we very unfortunately lost due to a major tech glitch!

Photo by Don Holtz Photography.

Lindsey talks with Kate Greenberg, Colorado's new Commissioner of Agriculture, and former Western Program Director with the National Young Farmers Coalition. Lindsey and Kate check in about what it's been like to be the youngest person, and first woman, to hold this role in Colorado, as well as Colorado's plans to address climate change, land access barriers, and to support its next generation of farmers and ranchers.

Kate's advice to young people looking to move into roles of leadership in food and agriculture? "Just do it." Surround yourself with people that love and support you, and don't wait until you feel ready, because you probably never really will.

Follow Kate on instagram @coagcommish

https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/agmain/commissioner-kate-greenberg

https://civileats.com/2019/02/11/meet-kate-greenberg-colorados-new-commissioner-of-agriculture/

https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/12/commissionergreenberg/

http://www.journal-advocate.com/sterling-local_news/ci_32351814/young-farmers-director-gets-top-post-nod

Kardie Equipment

California produces more food than any other state in the nation. Over one-third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of U.S. fruits and nuts are grown in California. But drought, wildfire, and the impacts of climate change are increasing across the state. How are the farmers doing? And how are the young farmers doing? Lindsey talks with Mai Nguyen, Young Farmers' California Organizer, based in San Diego, who is also a heritage grain farmer, activist, and former climate researcher. Mai authored the 2019 California Young Farmers Report for the National Young Farmers Coalition which drops later this week.

Last week, the USDA's NASS released the results of the 2017 Census of Agriculture, the first count in over five years of U.S. farms and ranches and the people who run them. What do we know now about the state of agriculture in this country? Lindsey talks with Erin Foster West, Young Farmers' federal policy director, about the rise in female farmers, decrease in farmers of color, and what the 6.4 million data points mean for the future of farming.

The 2017 Census of Agriculture: https://www.nass.usda.gov/

Young Farmers Census press release: https://www.youngfarmers.org/2019/04/census2017/

On February 7th, 2019 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey introduced a resolution in Congress recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

The resolution starts by listing the many ways that climate change will devastate this country, including mass migration, wildfires, a trillion dollars of economic damage, and then it puts forward ideas to simultaneously reduce emissions and build a just and prosperous society.

Farmers are in there of course. Agriculture is estimated to contribute up to 1/4 of global greenhouse gas emissions, and farmers are on the front lines of global weather changes. Lindsey interviews Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First, who recently wrote "The Green New Deal: Fulcrum for the farm and food justice movement?"

https://foodfirst.org/the-green-new-deal-fulcrum-for-the-farm-and-food-justice-movement/

https://foodfirst.org/

https://www.gp.org/green_new_deal

Photo credit: National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition

Lindsey is joined in the studio at Radio Kingston by freshman Congressman Antonio Delgado (NY-19) to talk about his hotly contested race for office, representing the needs of beginning farmers in DC, and how he's trying to reach across the aisle in an era of "political tribalism." After the show, Lindsey and Jessica debrief.

National Young Farmers Coalition is proud to have our VP of Policy and Campaigns, Sophie Ackoff, as well as several member farmers on Rep. Delgado's 19th Congressional District Agriculture Advisory Board, including Wes Hannah and Bryn Roshong, Solid Ground Farm; Hudson Valley Young Farmers Coalition, Tianna Kennedy, Star Route Farm; Greater Catskills Young Farmers Coalition, Ben Tyler and Greta Zaro, Unadilla Community Farm; Leatherstocking Young Farmers Coalition and Bari Zeiger, Frost Valley Farm.

Photo from left: Michelle Hughes, Lindsey Lusher Shute, Rep. Antonio Delgado, and Sophie Ackoff in Washington, DC.

Passed in 1972, the Clean Water Act (CWA) is one of the most progressive, influential environmental policies in U.S. history. The CWA is charged with keeping U.S. waters "fishable and swimmable," and protected from pollution. Recent proposed changes from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would rollback these protections by changing the legal definition of "waters of the United States" (WOTUS). Lindsey talks with law professor Mark Squillace about the details of the Trump administration's proposed changes and how they could impact agriculture and the environment.

The comment period on proposed revisions to WOTUS are open until April 15, 2019. The public can comment via regulations.gov.

Summary of proposed EPA WOTUS definition change.

EPA Comment Link.

Professor Mark Squillace.

Edited by Hannah Beal, produced by Jessica Manly, and recorded at the studios of Radio Kingston. Cover art American College of Environmental Lawyers.

The Bracero Program began in 1942 as an agreement between the United States and Mexico to bring laborers to the U.S. to replace men who were leaving farms to fight in World War II. The program didn’t end with the war, however, it actually grew by hundreds of thousands of workers, and continued until 1964, laying the foundation for our current agricultural guest worker programs. Lindsey discusses the program's history, and its intersections with contemporary immigration, labor, and food justice issues with Dr. Matthew Garcia, professor of History and Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College.

Further Resources:
Matthew Garcia: https://home.dartmouth.edu/faculty-directory/matthew-j-garcia

Bracero History Archive: http://braceroarchive.org/about

Cows, Land, and Labor Conference at Dartmouth College: http://cowslandlabor.com/

Image credit: Time.com

The 4-H program's mission statement includes "a promise to America's kids to reflect the population demographics, vulnerable populations, diverse needs, and social conditions of the country." In 2017, however, USDA administration pressured the national 4-H organization to retract its LGBT+ inclusion policies. Shortly after, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas, the progressive 4-H Youth Development Program director who had been working hard to boost equity and diversity, was fired. Lindsey speaks with Chaisson-Cardenas, Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy, former director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and investigative reporter Jason Clayworth about the implications of these actions and what's next for the youth leadership organization and its 6 million members.

Further resources:

The retracted policies: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5096567-Iowa-Policy.html

https://4-h.org/about/what-is-4-h/

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2018/11/18/4-h-transgender-lgbt-iowa-john-paul-chaisson-cardenas-iowa-state-university-civil-rights/1572199002/

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/23/4-h-congress-information-trump-agency-push-dump-lgbt-policy-usda-lqbtq-stand-for-projects-policy/2662533002/

https://youtu.be/tyYUpzjJVxU

https://youtu.be/PN0SJjNh0sQ

Illustration was created for the Des Moines Register by Mark Marturello.

This is the first episode of a new six-part series focused on the one thing everyone in our network – from farmers to policymakers, organizers to corporate partners – seems to be laser focused on right now: the 2023 Farm Bill.

We're joined by Billy Hackett, Policy Specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), for a high-level overview of the farm bill. We know... 1,000 pages of federal policy, how exciting, right?! But we’re here to convince you that this bill is the most important piece of legislation shaping the future of food in this country, and that it affects all of us.

The farm bill influences what you eat every day, who grows your food and how they grow it, what food you can afford to buy, and even what you put in your gas tank. And we want you to know that you can help us make sure that this bill supports all of us–our families, our communities, and the next generation of farmers and ranchers. 

Find all the resources that Jessica and Billy mentioned during their conversation on Young Farmers' 2023 Farm Bill webpage and sign-up for NSAC's weekly newsletter here.

Sign up for our One Million Acres for the Future campaign today by texting LAND to 40649 or by visiting p2a.co/land.

Become a National Young Farmers Coalition member at youngfarmers.org/join for only $1/year.

Produced by Jessica Manly and Evan Flom.

Edited by Hannah Beal.

Original podcast art by SJ Brekosky.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! To celebrate, we're talking with some of our farmers about L.O.V.E. We’ve got some tips from a couple that have been farming together for 44 years, a story of finding a farm partner and true love on “The Tinder,” and a surprise Valentine’s message for a certain Young Farmers Podcast host.

Recorded at Radio Kingston, edited by Hannah Beal, music by Tom Daly and "Memories in Love (ID 1144)" by Lobo Loco.

Featuring:

Two Bear Farm, Whitefish, MT: http://twobearfarm.com/

Abbie Corse, The Corse Farm Dairy, Whitingham, VT: https://thecorsefarmdairy.com/

Carolina Mueller, Middle Ground Farm, Austin, TX: http://middleground-farm.com/

Cara Fraver, National Young Farmers Coalition, Business Services: https://www.youngfarmers.org/

Harrison Topp, Topp Fruits, Paonia, CO: https://www.youngfarmers.org/2017/03/national-uncertainty-community-hope-and-pruning/

Jeff and Annie Main, Capay, CA, Good Humus Produce: https://www.goodhumus.com/

Ben Shute, Hearty Roots Farm, Germantown, NY: http://www.heartyroots.com/

Warning: This episode deals with topics surrounding suicide, and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Suicide rates among farmers and farm workers are among the highest of any occupation in the United States (CDC data). In part two of this series on farmer mental health, we talk to members of the Washington Young Farmers Coalition about the organizing they launched in response to the loss of founding member Justin McClane in 2017. We also hear from Matt Perdue of the National Farmers Union, Joe Schroeder of Farm Aid, and journalist Debbie Weingarten, author of the pivotal Guardian piece on farmer suicide, "Why are America's farmers killing themselves?"

We hope this series will contribute to the effort to break down the stigma surrounding farmer mental and behavioral health, inspire policy change, and grow support for programs addressing the farmer mental health crisis in this country.

Take action today. Text "Farm Crisis" to 40649 to be connected with your Members of Congress to tell them to fully fund the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN).

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Hotline at (800) 273-TALK (8255).
You can also speak with someone directly at the Farm Aid Hotline at (800) FARM-AID (327-6243).

For further resources, please visit:

Policy Victories for Family Famers from Farm Aid: https://www.youngfarmers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Farm-Advocacy-Policy-Changes-List.pdf

Joe Schroeder at Farm Aid: https://www.farmaid.org/author/joeschroeder/

https://farmcrisis.nfu.org/.

https://www.facebook.com/wayoungfarmers/photos/a.243951272306662/1374009989300779/?type=3

http://www.washingtonyoungfarmers.org/political/hb-2671/

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/sowing-the-seeds-of-mental-health/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas-farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers

Recorded at Radio Kingston and edited by Hannah Beal.

Warning: This episode deals with topics surrounding suicide, and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Suicide rates among farmers and farm workers are higher than in any other occupation in the United States. We start this two-part series with the story of Justin McClane, a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition, who we lost to suicide in 2017.

Our hope is that by telling Justin's story, and sharing the powerful organizing his community of young farmers in Washington State launched in response to his death, we can contribute to the effort to break down the stigma around mental and behavioral health, inspire policy change, and grow support for programs addressing the farmer mental health crisis in this country.

If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Hotline at (800) 273-TALK (8255).
You can also speak with someone directly at the Farm Aid Hotline at (800) FARM-AID (327-6243).

For further resources, please visit https://farmcrisis.nfu.org/.

https://www.facebook.com/wayoungfarmers/photos/a.243951272306662/1374009989300779/?type=3

http://www.washingtonyoungfarmers.org/political/hb-2671/

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/sowing-the-seeds-of-mental-health/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas-farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers

This week, Lindsey talks with Matthew Dillon, Senior Director of Agriculture at Clif Bar & Company, about Seed Matters, the company's organic seed research initiative. We talk about the challenges of food labeling for consumers, the differences between organic and conventional seed breeding, genetic consolidation in the U.S. food system, and Clif Bar's ag policy efforts.

Learn more about Seed Matters at www.seedmatters.org.

https://seedmatters.org/news-from-the-field/

Tom Vilsack served as the 30th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. Prior to his appointment as Secretary, Vilsack served two terms as the Governor of Iowa, in the Iowa State Senate, and as the mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.

Host Lindsey Lusher Shute and Secretary Vilsack discuss managing the USDA during a shutdown; the anticipated economic impacts; whether farmers are really still in support of President Trump, as widely reported; and the immigration debate at the heart of it all.

Tell your Members of Congress it's time to end the #GovernmentShutdown. Text "ACTION" to 40649 to join our activist network and to be connected with your Representatives. Also add your #shutdownstories to @youngfarmerspodcast
Link to action: https://p2a.co/SShIhTg?fbclid=IwAR0k4hOcI5BYy3x5EnzU4VMDyqid1IAG7eLNRv016YF8b9nACaek6e8wlxA

Will 2019 be a year without the USDA? Lindsey speaks with Andrew Barsness, a young grain farmer in Minnesota, and Helena Bottemiller Evich, a senior food and agriculture reporter for POLITICO Pro, about the government shutdown and its impacts on food and agriculture.

Text ACTION to 40649 now to join our activist network and to let your Representatives know that young farmers need USDA agencies up and running ASAP.

Helena Bottemiller Evich

Andrew Barsness - Heart and Grain

After months of waiting, we have a farm bill! Just before 10pm on December 10th, the 2018 Farm Bill dropped. The next day, the Senate passed it through in a landslide, and on Wednesday, the House followed suit. Andrew Bahrenburg, NYFC's National Policy Director, fields some listener questions about what it all means for young farmers and the future of ag. Lindsey is joined in the studio with podcast editor Hannah Beal and NYFC's Communications Director, Jessica Manly.

For NYFC's detailed analysis on young farmer wins in the bill: https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/12/farmbillforthefuture/

Please rate, subscribe, and review and we'll read your comments and thank you on next week's pod!

Follow us on instagram @youngfarmerspodcast to stay in the loop on Young Farmers Podcast news and to get your questions and opinions on the show.

In October, the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a stunning Special Report on Climate Change. The study found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, we will face devastating consequences across all sectors by 2040, much earlier than previously thought. The IPCC is "the single largest science-policy experiment in history" according to Professor Mark Howden, a Vice Chair of the IPCC and Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. We talk with Mark about the report's findings, the politics of climate change in the U.S., and how farmers need to adapt to a new reality.

https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/

https://ccafs.cgiar.org/climate-smart-agriculture-0#.XArwlfZKjUI

https://theconversation.com/new-un-report-outlines-urgent-transformational-change-needed-to-hold-global-warming-to-1-5-c-103237

http://climate.anu.edu.au/about-us/people/mark-howden

https://csa.guide/csa/what-is-climate-smart-agriculture

https://www.ipcc.ch/people/mark-howden/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html

"I felt legally supported to participate, emotionally safe, and that what I had to say was powerful - that it counts. Some of the power that I had lost through the [immigration] process, I was able to get back."

The Spanish phrase "poder hablar" translates to both the ability to speak, and literally, the "power" of speaking. This week, we hear the powerful story of Isabel Quiroz of Tequio Community Farm in Mendocino, California. Isabel immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico four years ago, and was nervous about participating in the U.S. policy process, and about whether her experiences would be counted by Members of Congress. She shares with us about her journey to DC for our 2018 Convergence, and how becoming a young farmer advocate has helped her to gain a sense of agency as a U.S. citizen and to feel supported on her farm.

"Tequio comes from an indigenous concept in México that makes reference to a work party, traditionally members of a community would gather on a weekly basis to perform a task that would bring benefit to everyone."

Teaganne Finn, agriculture reporter for Bloomberg's BNA Washington Bureau, shares the latest on farm bill negotiations. The news? Things are actually moving forward. Teaganne's also been following the regulation of cell-cultured meat. Is it the meat of the moment, or the long distant future?

Follow Teaganne on Twitter @Teaganne_Finn and on BGOV at https://about.bgov.com/blog/author/teaganne-finn/.

["Burgers grown in a lab are heading to your plate. Will you bite?"][1]

Access to affordable, quality farmland is the top challenge young farmers face, particularly BIPOC farmers, who today make up only 2% of farmland owners. Young Farmer's Land Campaign Director Holly Rippon-Butler talks with New York Times reporter Elizabeth Dunn about her recent article, “How ‘Fairy Tale’ Farms Are Ruining Hudson Valley Agriculture,” about the land access crisis and how the National Young Farmers Coalition is working to transition one million acres of farmland to the next generation of farmers.

The article, “How ‘Fairy Tale’ Farms Are Ruining Hudson Valley Agriculture,” illustrates how “a rush of wealthy urbanites seeking fresh-air retreats in bucolic settings” has made land access for young and BIPOC farmers across the country even more challenging.  Read the article here.

You can hear Liz Dunn on her podcast Pressure Cooker with Liz Black here.

Join the National Young Farmers Coalition here.

Learn more about the One Million Acres Campaign here.

We're just returning from our Annual Leadership Convergence in DC, and we're especially grateful for all of the amazing young farmers in our Coalition, fighting for a bright and just future for agriculture. Listen in this week for some words of gratitude from Lindsey Lusher Shute, and a big announcement on some changes ahead for the Coalition.

Here's some footage from #NYFCconvergence 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ROLibZNh1A&list=PLGjXOe-nEUH0H6X5TYStoiDGCY8SraR0z

And here are some of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes!

Cranberry relish (sub in maple syrup for sugar)
https://www.oceanspray.com/en/Recipes/By-Course/Sauces-Sides-and-Salads/Fresh-Cranberry-Orange-Relish

Ottolenghi's sweet potato mash with herb salsa
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/27/yotam-ottolenghis-coriander-recipes

Edna Lewis' buttermilk biscuits
https://louisiana.kitchenandculture.com/recipes/edna-lewis-hot-crusty-buttermilk-biscuits

Apple-ginger crisp
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/apple-ginger-crisp-recipe

Visit us on our instagram @youngfarmerspodcast and share your favorite Thanksgiving recipes (or cocktails)!

Recorded at Radio Kingston and edited by Hannah Beal. And thanks to our podcast intern, Julie Davis.

After years of spraying, Dewayne Johnson, a groundskeeper, believes the herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate, caused him to develop Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a rare and very painful form of skin cancer. So, he filed a case against Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup. Four years later, a jury awarded Mr. Johnson $289 million dollars in damages (recently reduced to $78 million). Many, many farmers use Roundup, and the question of how dangerous it is has been studied. The EPA found it to be safe, yet the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer found it to be "probably carcinogenic in humans," so mixed results. Monsanto, for its part, maintains that Roundup is safe but faces over 9,000 similar cases across the country. This week an Oakland, California judge said that another case will go forward next March. This week, Lindsey speaks with one of Mr. Johnson's lawyers, Mark Burton. Mark tells us about the case and how they managed to win it.

The Monsanto Papers

Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company

"Cancer patient who was awarded $289 million in Monsanto trial says he'll take $78 million instead"

"Groundskeeper Accepts Reduced $78 Million Award In Monsanto Cancer Suit"

"Cancer Case Plaintiff Continues Crusade Against Monsanto"

Leave us a review and we'll read your name on the air! And follow us on our new instagram, @youngfarmerspodcast.

This week, NYFC's Michelle Hughes interviews Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, food justice activist, and author of the new book "Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land." Leah talks about her history, her spirituality, and her work training the next generation of black and brown farmers to build a more sustainable and equitable food system.

“Black people have a history in regenerative agriculture that is not circumscribed by slavery, share cropping, and tenant farming. We have tens of thousands of years of history innovating and coming up with dignified solutions to solving hunger in our communities without destroying the planet.”

NYFC members get 35% off of Leah's book at Chelsea Green Publishing, join today!

www.youngfarmers.org/join

Soul Fire Farm:
http://www.soulfirefarm.org/

Farming While Black at Chelsea Green:
https://media.chelseagreen.com/product/farming-while-black/

The 2014 Farm Bill has been expired since October 1st. What does this mean for young farmers and ranchers and the USDA programs they rely on? This week, we catch up with Andrew Bahrenburg, our National Policy Director and guy on the ground in DC, about the effects of the expiration and fate of these so-called "stranded" programs. We also chat with USDA Economist Dr. Anne B.W. Efland about the history of the bill, and what's at stake if a new bill isn't passed this year.

Also, a reminder to VOTE in the midterm elections this Tuesday, November 6th. In the meantime, you can take action today by calling your Reps and telling them that young farmers need a #farmbillnow. Text "FARM BILL" to 40649.

"Expiration of the 2014 Farm Bill: Some Potential Implications"

This week, Lindsey talks with NPR's Food and Agriculture Correspondent, Dan Charles, about the controversy surrounding the herbicide Dicamba, and the drift damage it has caused to other crops and wildlife across the country.

A few years ago, Monsanto engineered Dicamba-resistant soybeans because many weeds had developed tolerance to their popular product, Roundup. Many farmers were thrilled, and this year, soybeans were planted on approximately 89.6 million acres in the U.S. - 40% of these are Dicamba-tolerant. Although dicamba is highly effective at weed control, it can volatilize into the air, traveling for miles, and damaging non-resistant crops, trees, and other plants nearby. EPA will have the final say on whether growers can use Dicamba on their crops in the next few weeks.

More by Dan Charles on the Dicamba debate:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/09/27/651262491/a-drifting-weedkiller-puts-prized-trees-at-risk
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/09/654847573/despite-a-ban-arkansas-farmers-are-still-spraying-controversial-weedkiller
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/14/584647903/these-citizen-regulators-in-arkansas-defied-monsanto-now-theyre-under-attack
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/26/559733837/monsanto-and-the-weed-scientists-not-a-love-story

Visit us on instagram @youngfarmerspodcast and let us know what you think about Dicamba and how you think the EPA should rule.

Recorded at Radio Kingston and edited by Hannah Beal.
Thanks to our podcast intern Julie Davis.

In 1920, 14% of U.S. farmers were black - today less than 2%. Land ownership by Black farmers has also declined over the past 100 years, from 15 million acres to roughly 2 million acres. These numbers are tough, but some say they would be even worse without the leadership of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. Lindsey talks with Cornelius Blanding, executive director of the Federation, about Black land loss, how coops are helping black and rural communities, and their work with young black farmers.

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund
http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/

October is National Co-op Month!
National Cooperative Business Association:
ncba.coop

#farmbillnow
Text "FARM BILL" to 40649 to support the FOTO/2501 program and other programs young farmers and farmers of color rely on.

Find us on Instagram @youngfarmerspodcast

The internet is flooded with food photos, recipes and diet advice, partisan news, and farmer-inspired fashion, but who is listening to the farmers themselves? Farmers grow your food and manage nearly half of all land on Earth. It's time to pay attention to the policies, programs, and events that are shaping the future of agriculture. Our host, Lindsey Lusher Shute, co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition, provides a fresh, farmer-centric take on food and farm policy. We talk with policy makers, experts and advocates, and, of course, farmers, about the most critical issues facing farming in the U.S. and globally. Edited by Hannah Beal and recorded at Radio Kingston.

Visit us on Instagram @youngfarmerspodcast!

https://www.youngfarmers.org/category/podcast/

In celebration of Indigenous People's Day, Lindsey speaks with Clayton Harvey of the White Mountain Apache Tribe in Arizona about how farming has shaped his spiritual identity and helped keep Apache traditions and language alive in his community. Clayton shares how his journey to Standing Rock has influenced him, and inspired other indigenous young people to farm. His farm, Ndée Bikíyaa, has a mission of promoting personal and cultural health among White Mountain Apache through agriculture.

“In Apache, the word for mind and land are the same. It goes to show the relationship that our people had with the land-we're one with the land…Our mother [earth] is alive and has a heartbeat in the same sense that our mind is alive…we can eat all the healthy food, we can be active and involved in our community and our ceremonies, but if environmental health isn't right, then we're just a broken puzzle.”

https://www.facebook.com/ndeebikiyaathepeoplesfarm/

https://gardenwarriorsgoodseeds.com/2014/09/19/ndee-bikiyaa-the-peoples-farm-white-mountain-apache-tribe-az/

https://edibleschoolyard.org/program/ndee-bikiyaa-peoples-farm

https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-treaties/dapl.cshtml

Hurricane Florence has been a disaster on many levels, leaving economic, social, and environmental destruction in its path across the Carolinas. In North Carolina, a locus of global pork production, continued flooding has also led to a livestock death toll in the millions. This week, Lindsey interviews Tom Philpott, former farmer, and current food and ag correspondent for Mother Jones, about the complex future of confinement meat production in the U.S., and the clean up poultry and hog producers face in the storm’s aftermath.

Mother Jones:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/09/2-weeks-after-florence-we-still-dont-know-how-toxic-carolina-waterways-are/

The Secret Ingredient Podcast:
http://thesecretingredient.org/

The Bite Podcast:
https://www.motherjones.com/topics/bite/

USDA CAFO facts:
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/people/?cid=nrcs142p2_000482
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plantsanimals/livestock/afo/

Disaster Assistance for Young Farmers:
https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/09/drought-wildfire-hail-is-there-a-usda-disaster-assistance-program-to-help-your-farm-or-ranch/

Text FARM BILL to 40649

Hurricane Florence has caused an estimated $1 billion in damages to farms in the Carolinas, and the destruction continues. Lindsey interviews Davon Goodwin, a North Carolina farmer and manager of the Sandhills AGInnovation Center, to find out what it looks like on the ground, how farmers are trying to recover from the losses, and what can be done to build resilience to natural disasters in the future.

AND, the farm bill expires September 30th. Ryan McCrimmon of Politico's Morning Agriculture gives us the rundown on what to expect by, and after, the deadline.

Politico Morning Agriculture:
https://www.politico.com/morningagriculture/

Sandhills AGInnovation Center:
https://sandhillsag.com/

USDA Disaster Assistance Programs:
https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/09/drought-wildfire-hail-is-there-a-usda-disaster-assistance-program-to-help-your-farm-or-ranch/

Crop Insurance for young farmers:
https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/08/one-young-farmer-is-thankful-for-crop-insurance-could-it-be-right-for-you/

Today we're coming to you with a special episode from our Hoosier Young Farmers Chapter. The Hoosier chapter just released their own podcast series which shares the voices of farmers from across the state, farmers you might not think of when you picture the farmers of Indiana. This episode features stories about the challenge of acquiring affordable, quality land for farming, and some of the creative ways these farmers have managed to get on the land. You can listen to the rest of the Hoosier Young Farmer Podcast at hoosieryfc.org/stories.

Land access is the number 1 challenge young farmers across the country report in growing food for their communities and starting farm businesses. To address this barrier, Young Farmers just launched the One Million Acres for the Future Campaign. We are calling on Congress to invest $2.5 billion in the 2023 Farm Bill to facilitate equitable access to one million acres of land for the next generation of farmers. As part of the campaign, we created the Land Advocacy Fellowship, a two-year, paid advocacy and leadership fellowship that will resource 100 young farmers, growers, and land stewards to advocate for equitable land policy. Applications are open now through January 15th. To learn more about the campaign and to apply for our Land Advocacy Fellowship, visit youngfarmers.org/onemillionacres. And to join the National Young Farmers Coalition, visit youngfarmers.org/join.

*Brief correction to the land transition statistic Liz states in the introduction. She meant to cite this Civil Eats article which claims, "In the next decade, 400 million acres of U.S. farmland will change hands," instead of "400,000 acres." According to American Farmland Trust, “371 million acres of farmland will change hands over the next 20 years."

Can farmers save the planet?

We all know that the weather impacts agriculture, but farmers are also changing the weather. Dr. Nathan Mueller, head of the Mueller Lab and Assistant Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, walks us through cutting edge research on the complex and interesting relationship between agriculture and climate, and some of the powerful ways farmers can steer global environmental change.

The Mueller Lab:
https://www.ess.uci.edu/~nmueller/people.html

Climate Change and Agriculture:
https://www.ess.uci.edu/~nmueller/research.html

Check back soon for the new study on climate change and the future of the global beer supply!

Xie, W, W Xiong, J Pan, T Ali, Q Cui, D Guan, J Meng, ND Mueller, E Lin, and SJ Davis. in press. Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat. Nature Plants.

Episode Transcript

This is the Young Farmers Podcast. I'm Lindsey Lusher Shute. We already know that weather impacts farmers and the food system. So what will the future of farming look like in the face of climate change? To get an answer to that question, I spoke to Dr. Nathan Mueller. He works at the Department of Earth Systems Science at the University of California-Irvine. He's studying this exact topic, how climate change and farming relate to one another, how weather influences farmers, and farmers influence the weather.

Hi, I'm Greta Zarro, organic farmer at Unadilla Community Farm and co-leader of the Leatherstocking Young Farmers Coalition in New York State. I'm a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition because NYFC provides me with a platform for connecting with fellow beginning farmers in my region. For $35 a year, you can become a member too. As a member, you're part of a community of beginning small family farms following sustainable and fair practices. And you get discounts too like 10 percent off High Mowing Seeds. To join, go to youngfarmers.org.

Lindsey:  And Nathan, what is your area of study? And what do you do? I know your website says the Mueller Lab. That is like a group of researchers working together?

Nathan:  So I study, uh, the intersection of agriculture and global environmental change, thinking about land use, biogeochemistry, the climate system. And then I'm also thinking about the ways in which global environmental change is influencing agriculture and farmers. Um, so for example, how changes in climate are influencing crop yields and how we can adapt to those changes in the future.

Lindsey:  Can you talk about how climate change is currently impacting agriculture and what we anticipate for, for the future of agriculture? I heard you share one stat that there's going to be an 80 percent loss of maize production by 2080 just in the US, which is pretty incredible. What are we seeing already and what does it look like, uh, going into the future?

Nathan:   So that particular stat is an interesting one to start with. There was a paper that came out about 10 years ago now, using statistical models of past weather variability and yields and they projected this potentially very large decline in the productivity of US staple crops, and the conversation has evolved since then talking about statistical modeling, so throwing a bunch of data at the problem, talking about process based modeling, so using our best understanding of how crops grow and how they respond to temperature and radiation and soil moisture. And what we see is that the picture is mixed. I wouldn't say we're confident about that 80 percent number. One thing that is clear is that climate change will pose a greater headwind to crop productivity. It's unlikely, given, especially in the US, given the way that technology advances. So it's unlikely that we'll get net declines, but we might see that increase start to slow in the future.

Lindsey: So the productivity gains will not continue on sort of the same trajectory given the increasing challenges of growing food in certain regions.

Nathan:  Yeah, you can think of that in line of yields going up. And we actually have some new research coming out soon, fingers crossed, where we've looked at historical trends in climate over the US. And we've had this really interesting thing for corn farmers where kind of moderate temperatures have increased but extreme temperatures have have actually decreased just a little bit in the corn belt, and this seems to actually have given a little bit of a boost to yields, but looking into the future that trajectory may change as warming is projected to increase quite a lot.

Lindsey:  That's really interesting. The reduction in extreme temperatures, do you think potentially that's related to some of your other research on how corn and agriculture of some of these commodities is changing the weather?

Nathan:  Yeah. So, you know, when we think about climate change our default is to just think about carbon, right? The big greenhouse gas. But there are many different greenhouse gases including nitrous oxide, which, uh, you know, we see released from the use of nitrogen fertilizers for example. But you can also have a regional climate changed by land surface properties. So irrigation, when we have irrigated large swaths of land, that actually can lead to a cooling of daytime maximum temperatures. Think about, you know, when you walk into a lawn that's just been watered or something. It feels nice and cool compared to your pavement.

Lindsey:  So this reduction- am i characterizing that right-- it's a reduction in extreme temperatures or sort of moderation because of this irrigated agriculture. And is that just in the midwest that you're seeing that or is that something that's happening outside of the Midwest as well?

Nathan:  Right. So is something that's happening globally. Everywhere we have irrigation development, it influences regional climate. In the Midwest, we've seen it in the central valley. In places like the North China Plain and other places where a summer crops have intensified and where irrigation has developed as well.

Lindsey:   This irrigation phenomenon in moderating the climate, is this some sort of a bubble...this impact because farmers are in many cases reliant on groundwater and underground aquifers for irrigation? Is this, is this something that you anticipate will not be the case in the future as some of those supplies dwindle? Or do you think that just the techniques, even with rain fed agriculture are so much more advanced than they were at one point that this trend will continue?

Nathan:  That's a great question. If we zoom in on the Midwest and of course as you go to the western part of the corn belt in Nebraska and the great plains, you have irrigated crop lands. But farther east, very little irrigated and in those areas to the east, when there's a big drought, that cooling effect goes away. It evaporates, no pun intended. Um, and so yeah, you could think very similarly in the irrigated areas, if your water dries up, this sort of buffering induced by the land surface change is going to go away. In agricultural landscapes, you've got multiple factors influencing that regional climate. One factor, as we were just talking about, can be changes to the land surface. It can be increasing productivity of crop lands and more water use. But then we also have the influence of what we typically think about as global climate change. We have increasing greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere, trapping energy and leading to warming of air temperatures and surface temperatures. So it's kind of the balance of all of those factors that are going to drive climate into the future. And well, I think it's fair to argue that the landscape change has had a big influence, for example, in the Midwest during the summer, the greenhouse gas signal is having a bigger effect during other seasons and at some point is going to lead to warming during the summer for those very extreme temperatures as well in the Midwest.

Lindsey:  When you say other seasons, I imagine one of the things that you're talking about would be, for instance, in the Southwest, we're seeing some of what would normally fall into the mountains as snow is coming as rain or the melt is happening sooner, that type of thing?

Nathan:   Definitely. Yeah. So winter is warming. In general, nighttime temperatures have been warming more than daytime temperatures and winter temperatures have been waming more than summer temperatures. And I think the snow question is a really interesting one and really critical, especially here in California, we rely so much upon the natural reservoir of snowpack. It's pretty unclear how globally, you know, how much of our food supply is really dependent upon snow melt for water supply and what the vulnerability is in the future. But I would say it's clearly something to worry about.

Lindsey:   Right, yeah, our western farmers are pretty concerned in the four corners area in particular just about what the reservoirs are like right now. Um, some of them didn't get any allocation of surface water, river water this year, and they receive like 60 percent of their allocation of storage water that comes from that snow pack and the reservoir is lower going into the fall than it typically is. So that is definitely on the minds of a lot of our farmers thinking about are we going to get enough snow this winter to keep us through next summer?

Nathan:  And one thing with that is that, you know, it's not just the average changes but also the changes in extreme events and routes that we're really concerned about, especially multiyear droughts like we had in California recently. When these events happen year after year, it can really influence the financial viability for farmers and um, could end up pushing people out of agriculture, which is something we certainly don't.

Lindsey:  Oh yeah, that's absolutely true. You know, we talk about resilience oftentimes when it comes to farmers adapting and being prepared for, um, climate extremes. But there's also like a financial viability as a big part of that as well. Like, can your business make it through those tough seasons?

Nathan: Well, I have a great postdoctoral scholar who is just starting to investigate snow melt dependence of irrigated agriculture from a global perspective.

Lindsey:  All right, excellent.

Nathan:   So we'll let you know what we find out.

Lindsey:  You know, with climate change, there's a couple of other elements of it that I'm curious about. Certainly out east this year we had a major hailstorm on our vegetable farm. It was a really extreme storm with like softball size hail that knocked out solar panels that are rated for golf ball sized hail, that kind of thing. I just wonder like are these sort of extreme storms that we're seeing- is this normal or can this also be in any way associated with climate change?

Nathan:  One of the projections from the models is in fact that we will see more frequent and severe rain events, in the midwest to the northeast. And so that certainly could be related. There is a growing field within the climate science community called attribution. And the idea is that when we get extreme events that you can actually use the tools of climate science, these global climate models, and use them to characterize what the influence of climate change is on the probability of some event occurring. And as scientists we're always very hesitant to say that anything is definitively because of climate change. What we can say is when something is more likely to have occurred because of climate change.

Lindsey:  And I'm wondering too, one of the things that I know we've experienced on our farm has been, um, you know, different pests and disease pressures and whatnot because of, you know, warmer winters. Um, and I'm wondering what do the climate models project in terms of disease pressure and how that is going to change nationally? Is that something that you could speak to?

Nathan:  There was just a brand new study that came out in Science which was one of the, uh, I'll say one of the fanciest journals out there, and they did a nice job connecting climate projections with essentially pest prevalence, and they do predict that this will be a major mechanism by which agriculture is effective.

Lindsey: This is really an intriguing idea how farmers are impacting the weather. It's a difficult thing for farmers to internalize, right? Like what a responsibility it is to actually have impact on global climate systems. To think about that and take responsibility for that I think is quite important. So I'm just wondering if you can just name all of the ways that farmers are presently impacting weather now and into the future.

Nathan:  I guess there are two main mechanisms by which farmers and agriculture in general influence the weather and our climate system. One is by influencing these biophysical mechanisms that we were talking about earlier. So for example, how much water is used on the landscape, irrigation, changes in crop productivity, and land use change. So for example, deforestation. All of these factors influence the climate from that biophysical perspective. And then the other main way that farmers and agriculture influence the climate system is through greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture in general contributes about 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. About half of that is coming from land use change, uh, primarily in the tropics, deforestation and related carbon emissions. And then the other half has to do with kind of on farm management practices as well as livestock. Ruminate livestock commit methane is a greenhouse gas. Um, rice cultivation also releases methane. The use of nitrogen fertilizers releases N2o. And those are some of the big ways in which farmers influence and agriculture and food consumers such as myself influence, uh, the greenhouse gas budget of the world. It's not fair to, you know, I don't think we'd want to put it all on farmers, for some of these are like unavoidable consequences and they are very, I would say, difficult to deal with emissions, compared to changing power plants, etc.

Lindsey: When it comes to transition of forested land or prairie land or whatnot, and I guess a lot of this is happening right now in the tropics, can you explain what that means for greenhouse gas emissions or how that impact occurs?

Nathan: Yeah. So let's take as an example, Indonesian Rainforest that is being cleared for oil palm. And so they'll come in and clear the land often through burning. And so you release the carbon locked up in the above ground biomass in the trees when you burn, and then when the soil is disturbed, that also releases carbon from the soil. And then in Indonesia, there's another interesting case where you have wetlands soils and when these wetland soils are drained, um, that increases the decomposition of the biomass that's essentially locked up in those soils. And so, um, you can see a lot of emissions from the soils as a result of that.

Lindsey: And what about in the Midwestern context? Um, when we see a native native prairie, uh, turned into cultivated land, I suppose as an example. Are there similar greenhouse gas emissions in that scenario?

Nathan:  Yeah, exactly. Very similar mechanisms at play where you have a pulse of carbon coming from the above ground biomass and then also when that soil is tilled and worked with, um, you see emissions from below ground as well. In general, there's this enthusiasm about focusing on soil health and how focusing on soil health can actually be a really key way to help solve the climate problem. Specifically the idea that these soils can be made more carbon-rich through management and that that sequestration of carbon can really help.

Lindsey:  Do you have a sense of like the scope of such soil health practices that would be required to really play a meaningful role in climate mitigation?

Nathan:  You know, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I will say that the researchers that have been doing field studies on this topic, they find that pretty large sequestration rates are possible on cropland and on degraded pastures. And um, and then, you know, when they do back of the envelope calculations to see, you know, how this could scale up, you do get some really large numbers. Um, the majority of countries in the world with the exception of the US have agreed to, um, you know, limit climate warming to two degrees celsius with a more aspirational goal of one and a half degrees. And it turns out that in these models, one of the only ways they can get there is if they assume there's some way in which we're able to actually suck carbon out of the atmosphere. So these are Called negative emissions. And one of the ways that you could get negative emissions is if you produced bioenergy and also capture the carbon and sequestered some of the carbon associated with that bioenergy.

Lindsey:   So when you say a bioenergy, it's some sort of replacement fuel to a fossil fuel in addition to having negative emissions?

Nathan:  Right.

Lindsey: And so negative emissions would be, I guess one way to do that would be soil carbon sequestration?

Nathan: Yeah, exactly. It's a little disturbing that, you know, the scenarios that we can come up with that allow us to meet the goals that we have stated for ourselves with climate change. But it's another way of emphasizing the importance of agriculture in all of this, and we'll see how it ends up.

Lindsey: Some of your work has been on farmer attitudes on climate change and what makes a farmer associate a particular, um, uh, I guess weather event or weather trend as climate change or not. Could you tell me a little bit about the work you've done on that?

Nathan:  Sure. So yeah, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a great researcher at the University of Vermont, Meredith Daniels. So in our specific study we were looking at actually farmers in New Zealand, um, and we were comparing perceptions about how climate was changing to how climate was changing locally in those regions. And so we saw, you know, it was really a mixed bag in that population. One thing that was interesting is that their belief and whether climate change was occurring at the global level was related to their perception of whether they thought that a change was occurring locally, and the farmers were also very accurate in capturing the fact that uh, the winter was warming a quite substantially.

Lindsey:   So if the farmers observed local events, they were more likely to believe that global climate change was occurring. Is that correct?

Nathan:   Yeah. So, uh, it was actually, if they believe that global climate change was occuring--

Lindsey:   Oh, ok, I'm wrong. It's the other way around--

Nathan:  --they were a bit more likely to perceive the local change. Yeah. Which was really interesting. We also saw that you know, for some of the perceptions, like for example, with the winter warming were certainly right on, which tracks with the fact that who's going to be a better observer of weather and climate than farmers.

Lindsey:   So you're finding is that if a farmer believes that global climate change is happening, they would associate weather anomalies or winter warming or whatnot also with that climate belief.

Nathan:  Their beliefs were associated with their perceptions of local change for sure. Um, but, uh, some of the perceptions definitely tracked the local changes. And here in the US, um, my understanding of the latest research on this is that across the country a majority of farmers do believe that climate change is happening and is likely to affect them. But, um, there is still less than half that believe it to be anthropogenic.

Lindsey:  How much should we use that data in thinking about encouraging and working with farmers to get more of them engaged in these efforts on climate mitigation?

Nathan:                     That is a really, really interesting question and I'm not sure I have a perfect answer for you. Uh, but certainly some practices that might be considered an adaptation to climate change may just be also something that's good for the soil. It's good for the bank account and so whether the motivation is fundamentally about climate change or the weather, it may or may not matter as much once you get down to actually just adopting certain practices that are going to be beneficial for the farmer.

Lindsey:   Yeah it's something that I've thinking a lot about since hearing experts say that they need farmers to play such an important role, but also knowing that farmers aren't necessarily aware of what's expected of them or hoped for their practices. And I feel like there's a sort of a fundamental disconnect there, broad scale or maybe just on farm scale. Like what are the top things that could change, particularly with US agriculture, that would really make a significant difference?

New Speaker:  Yeah. So I think all this research coming out about soil carbon sequestration is really key. We also see that nitrous oxide is emissions from nitrogen fertilizer use, but inorganic and organic sources, of course. We also see nitrous oxide from organic nitrogen sources. Managing nitrogen, increasing nitrogen use efficiency, promoting precision agricultural technology are all means by which we can help reduce those emissions. One way that we can influence greenhouse gas emissions as food consumers is through how much room and meat we consume. And this becomes a little tricky. I think it's hard too because, you know, I have relatives that raise cattle and there are livelihoods and cultures, uh, associated with meat production. And so I don't know, it's a hard conversation to have.

Lindsey:   So some of that is reducing meat consumption, but also, we have more people, right? So if we even just stay at the level we're at now, that's less meat per person.

New Speaker:  The key thing here is like if in the developed countries, our diets are a little bit less than intensive, you know, we also have massive population growth, massive increases in the richness of diets. In the developing world, increasing meat and dairy consumption. So I don't think we're talking about like a net negative decline in meat and dairy globally, by any means. But at least, that is a lever that can be pulled on to have an influence.

Lindsey:  And I know this isn't your specific area of study, but when you say ruminant agriculture, there is a difference between ruminants that are grown in a confinement situation and those that are raised on pasture in terms of methane emissions.

Nathan:  Yeah. So I'm not familiar with all of the details of that work. I know that it matters, you know, what the rates of emissions are. And there was some recent work suggesting that the grass-fed impacts are actually a little bit larger.

Lindsey:  Because of the length of time to raise a given animal.

Nathan:  Exactly. Yeah. So I think one bigger picture thing that I've found since getting into this topic from an academic perspective is that it's difficult because we all come from different backgrounds and have different ideas about, you know, what we think sustainable looks like or ought to look like, and you find yourself sort of humbled over and over where you know, you realize maybe your perceptions weren't right and you have to reevaluate in the face of evidence. You know, for example, in the case of this greenhouse gas emissions of grass fed cattle thing, it was a surprise to me.

Lindsey:   Is there a tendency to just look at all of that carbon emissions narrowly too, as opposed, you know, like you think of a pasture based system as being very healthy for the ecosystem as well, that it supports, whereas a confinement operation is dramatically altering that ecosystem to support growth of animals and livestock. So I think it's really interesting to see what that carbon balance is, but what is being missed in that conversation?

Nathan: That's a great point. Yeah. Even though we, you know, need to bring numbers to bear on all of these issues, it's really important not to look too narrowly and to consider all of the dimensions of the system, all of the services that are being produced by that landscape, and the impacts of how it's managed. And in research about ecosystem services as a little subfield of environmental science where we're talking about how the services provided to humans of different landscapes-- they often have these plots that are like flower petals. And each petal encompasses some dimension that we care about. So you know, one could be greenhouse gas emissions, one could be biodiversity for example. Something that's nice about that is you get this nice visual picture of how these different landscapes compare. You can see what it looks like and not just go down to one particular axis but look at a bunch of different outcomes together and that's a nice framing to keep in mind.

Lindsey:  There is so much complexity to all of this and I think there is no choice but to embrace that complexity. Right? Because ignoring any part of it, I think--

Nathan:  Exactly, I think that's very true.

Lindsey:  You know, not just this narrow sort of carbon balance equation when you're thinking about um, raising livestock, but also just like thinking about how we get more farmers engaged in climate mitigation. We're like attitudes and cultural beliefs and you know, regional practices, etc. like how that plays into economic variables and I don't know, the list goes on and on and on. But yeah, these are the conversations we need to be having and as challenging as they may be, because the climate impacts, it's happening now.

Nathan: Absolutely.

Lindsey:  Nathan, thank you so much for joining us today. I learned a lot.

Nathan:  Thanks so much for having me.

Lindsey:  Thanks so much for your time. Dr. Mueller, thank you so much for being on the show and for explaining so much. I have to mention that Nathan Mueller is also a coauthor on a new paper on the impacts of climate change on the global beer supply. We will link to that paper in the show notes as well as some of his other research. If you like what we're doing here on this show, please leave us a note on iTunes. It really does help more people find the pod. This show is edited by Hannah Beal and recorded with the generous help of Radio Kingston. See you next week.

As the September 30th farm bill expiration date looms, Lindsey checks back in for a status update with NYFC's National Policy Director, Andrew Bahrenburg. What do the "Fab Four" have to do with farm bill conference negotiations? Will Congress pass a final farm bill in time? And what will happen to the programs young farmers rely on if they don't?

Take action, and tell your Representatives that we need a #farmbillnow. Text "FARM" to 40649 today.

For more about the farm bill programs young farmers rely on:

https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/09/beginning-farmer-and-rancher-training-programs-in-danger-of-farm-bill-cuts/

https://www.youngfarmers.org/2018/09/young-farmers-rely-on-the-organic-cost-share-program-to-afford-organic-cred/

Episode Transcript

This is the Young Farmers podcast. I’m Lindsey Lusher Shute.

Currently, there is a Senate version of the farm bill, and a House version of the farm bill. And unless they resolve their differences, the farm bill will expire at the end of this month. And that means the Senate and the House are in something called a conference committee to work it out.

And what are the things they have to work out? Well, the House bill would remove an estimated 2 million – yes, 2 million people from federal nutrition programs; the House version would eliminate funding for farmer markets, organic certification, and it would take billions from conservation programs — even as farmers in the West endure one of the worst droughts of their lives. The bill needs to be passed by September 30th, and our representatives are taking recess starting Monday and won’t return until Sept. 25!

Andrew Bahrenburg, our guy on the ground in Washington, was at the first public conference committee meeting last week. Today, he brings us up to date on what happened.

Lindsey: So tell me what happened.

Andrew Bahrenburg:

Yeah. So, it was the first official meeting of the Farm Bill Conference Committee yesterday and they met for about three and a half, four hours. There are 56 members of the conference committee and each of them gets three minutes to make their opening statements. Um, so after, after some longer opening statements from the chair and ranking member of the committees, the so-called “big four,” or as Senator Roberts calls them, the “fab four,” they kind of set the tone. And then from there, each member of the committee got three minutes to basically stake out their priority issues.

Lindsey: Wait, wait, wait–all 57 members got the opportunity to [speak for] three minutes?

Andrew: Every single one. That’s right. A few were in and out from other, you know, I mean Senator Leahy of course, is one of the top Democrats on the judiciary committee. So he was in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing most of the time. So it was mostly ceremonial I would say. Of course, this is not the venue for actual negotiations. This is more the ceremonial pomp and circumstance around the conference committee. So you saw a lot of members, um, you know, getting in their primary talking points about the things they like and the things they don’t like.

Lindsey: So it’s like the opening ceremonies for the conference committee.

Andrew: Exactly.

Lindsey: How do all fifty-some people get beyond their talking points to actually, you know, work this thing out?

Andrew: At the end of the day they really don’t. Right? I mean, I think they will meet as a big group like this. You know, they did yesterday. They likely will at least once more. The main negotiations are happening behind closed doors with the top members of the committee. That’s not really a mystery who will be negotiating the actual brass tacks of this thing. It’ll be Senators Roberts and Stabenow and Congressman Conaway and Peterson, the people who have been really steering this ship from the get go for the last, you know, the better part of two years now.

Lindsey: Who’ve been doing it all along..

Andrew: Mmhmm, and their staff. And there are members of their staff who, you know, know more about every single line in those bills than anyone here in Washington. They’ll be putting in some long hours ahead, particularly as we get closer and closer to the September 30th deadline.

Lindsey: But the actual negotiations, none of that is happening in the public view.

Andrew: Not yet. I mean there will be some controlled releases to the press. For instance, after the long three and a half to four hour conference committee meeting yesterday, the Fab Four, they then met privately immediately after that meeting to really continue negotiating. And that’s more or less the dynamic and then you know, coming out of that couple hours long meeting, but they kind of held forth with members of the DC press. But again, you know, most of their comments publicly are not real substantive, because, you know, these are really delicate negotiations and I think to say too much publicly, for better or worse, could swing things in one direction or the other. Or at least you lose some degree of control over how negotiations are going. And they are trying to thread a very small needle here.

Lindsey: I mean, just the idea that they’re going to be able to do this by the end of the month. Is that realistic? I mean, just a month. It doesn’t turn out to be a whole lot of time.

Andrew: I would say it’s possible. It’s going to be very difficult. There are still are some pretty big issues and big differences between the two bills. I mean the big wild cards are non-farm bill related things that are also required of these legislators in September. Right? So the entire federal government for 2019 is not currently funded. So September 30th is not just the deadline for the farm bill. It’s the deadline for funding the federal government. You’ve seen President Trump saying that if a shutdown happens, it happens, right? Having kind of a cavalier attitude toward the entire federal government grinding to a screeching halt. Um, and then there are some other big things. Of course there’s a supreme court nominee to be possibly confirmed this month as well. And you have some potential battles over immigration, and oh yeah, every member of the house is on the ballot in early November for reelection and a third of the Senate. So there are plenty of things that could get in the way of them doing a farm bill on time.

Lindsey: If it doesn’t happen by the end of September, what do they do?

Andrew: That’s an important question. They have to pass an extension, which is not a particularly uncommon thing to have happened with a farm bill. Uh, it’s such a big piece of legislation, you know, it’s a five year authorization bill, but also in part because politics have gotten more divisive than partisan over the last decade or two. So it’s gotten harder even with the farm bill. The big concern particularly for a lot of our priorities is with those so called stranded programs that would not automatically be extended because they’re so small. Right. Which is, you know, almost ironic in that sense. They’re the smallest, cost the least, and yet they’re the hardest to make sure they continue. So if we reach October one, we wake up that morning, and even if an extension has passed, unless that extension specifically funds those programs (like beginning farmer and rancher development program, like organic cost share, like value-added producer grants, farmer’s market promotion, that kind of stuff), those programs will in effect cease to exist at least for the time being until they pass a permanent farm bill.

Lindsey: Right. Which is what happened in 2014, and then there wasn’t a year of funding for projects that are funded by the beginning farmer and rancher development program, which has a big impact for a lot of the young farmers in our network, because those are the training programs and technical support programs that many of them rely on.

Andrew: Exactly…which isn’t to say that those programs aren’t already impacted, right? Because so the way that money kind of moves out the door through USDA is not always just, you know, “here’s some money.” But instead, you know, they’ll put out requests for proposals for this or that program. There’s a whole bureaucratic process that has to take place before you can start writing checks to farmers or to community based organizations or to lenders or something like that, and so even by coming up to the deadline like we are right now is inevitably going to cause some delay in those requests or applications getting out the door. Now obviously those problems would pale in comparison to an entire year of no funding for some of those programs.

Lindsey: Of course.

Andrew: But the impact will still be felt regardless.

Lindsey: And so what are we hearing on big ticket items like SNAP and food stamps? Do we expect that the house is going to back down on some of the work requirements? I know just right before conference committee, President Trump tweeted out his support for the work requirements. I mean, how is that going to play out?

Andrew: And he did so again earlier this week and Vice President Pence has as well. In a way that seemed almost a little bit coordinated, right? Like they are still digging in and at least trying to fortify the house position on some of that stuff a little bit. Now, of course like that is also quite possibly negotiating tactic, right? You want to seem like you’re not going to cave right up until the moment that you maybe do make some concessions. There has been some indication that the both sides have been moving a little bit. There were reports earlier this week that Chairman Conaway, the chair of the House Ag Committee, had essentially made kind of a compromise proposal and had put it on the table in the form of a memo that kind of outlined some of the things within the nutrition title that he could envision softening on, I guess. No one but for a handful of people well above my pay grade have seen that memo. Right. So we have no idea what’s in it. The press has only been able to report that it exists, but we’re not sure where he has identified there is wiggle room, but it’s at least a signal that they’re starting to kind of do the horse trading that will be necessary, right. And I think because the Senate Farm Bill passed with 86 Yes votes at the hearing yesterday, there were two senators absent during that vote that would have voted yes. So really it would have gotten 88 votes. Right. That’s an overwhelming majority that gives them a very strong negotiating position on this stuff. You know, that’s kind of impacting all of these negotiations, right? It’s to say, “look, our bill is bipartisan and popular. It doesn’t have all of those work requirements that made yours so divisive. We’re holding all the cards here and we can’t pass anything that’s not going to get 60 votes. So you know, put your gun down and we’ll do the same.”

Lindsey: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. So that’s the big piece as you correctly identified. I mean, and then there’s plenty of other things, especially around the conservation title that I think are also going to come down to the wire. Right. I expect that those will be the last pieces to fall into place. And particularly around funding. Right. I think where negotiations have gotten so far is on a lot of the policy pieces because that’s like an easier place to start, but the actual money discussions, which are arguably the most important, those are kinda gonna be saved till the end I guess.

Lindsey: All right, so what’s the next step here? When’s the next public meeting of the conference committee? When do you start to see some text?

Andrew: I mean little bits and pieces of text will trickle out and, and I think that’s, you know, you asked earlier how transparent this will be. I think the answer is not very for now. Um, but they are pulling in key stakeholders on particular chunks of the bill. Right? So it’s like for us, you know, if there are beginning farmer provisions of the farm bill being negotiated, um, you know, a lot of times the committee staff will kind of reach out to us and be like “like how would you feel if we were to move this section and eliminate this part?” Right. So that will happen across all stakeholders, I think as we go. There is no next meeting formally on the books, uh, so that’s an open question. The Senate Ag Committee interestingly did schedule a hearing for next week on trade where they are hauling USDA’s topic economist before the Senate committee, probably to yell at him about tariffs and trade and also ask a lot of questions about that trade bailout package, for which the application process began this week. Money is going to start moving out the door at a pretty steady clip.

Andrew: And so who receives that money and where it goes is going to be a particular interest to the Senate Ag Committee.

Lindsey: And what day is that hearing scheduled for?

Andrew: That’s on the 14th. That very much seems like an election year type hearing. So every member can kind of stake out their turf and talking points on the trade situation, particularly those up for reelection in big ag states.

Lindsey: So even if they support the administration that has created the tariffs, uh, and they can’t do anything about it from a policy perspective, at least they are on record saying they don’t support it or they’re concerned about impacts.

Andrew: And asking some tough questions of the people overseeing where this money goes, which to be clear is their job as the legislative branch– to conduct that level of oversight. So I don’t mean to cast too cynical a pall over it, you know, it is a very necessary hearing I think. And a lot of us will be watching to see what sorts of questions are asked and the answers given.

Lindsey: Yeah. And these senators are in a really tough position, right? I mean because I think that they have very, I mean they might support the administration on, on some level, even if it’s just in support of their party, but you know, the impacts at home are very real. Um, and I think many of them are quite upset about the tariff situation. So…

Andrew: Yeah. And I think it’s particularly interesting for members that are big on agriculture and may sit on that committee but also come from big manufacturing states. Right. Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio comes to mind who is a Democrat and so obviously is often very critical of things the Trump administration does. But at the same time, as steel workers in Ohio celebrate those tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, he has to walk that line between knowing that the retaliation is, you know, the hammer’s going to come down on farmers in his state, but at the same time he’s got an interest group in, in a lot of the manufacturing sector. I don’t envy that position one bit.

Lindsey: Yeah. On one level, I guess maybe it’s a difficult position to be in, but it’s good that senators like Senator Brown are, you know, looking out for all sides of the equation here.

Andrew: Mhmm. It kind of underscores the point about global trade, which is that when you get to that level, everything’s connected, right? Like you can’t separate raw metals from soybeans traded on the global marketplace, right? Everything is connected. And if you pull on one thread, all of a sudden the whole thing starts to come apart.

Lindsey:

Well we certainly hope that the farm bill doesn’t fall apart and we will be closely following what comes next in the days ahead.

If you want to take action on the Farm Bill and join the National Young Farmers Coalition’s network of activists text ‘FARM’ to 40649.

There is a lot at stake here.

As a reminder, the Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach Program (FOTO), remember Tiffany Washington from an earlier episode, is in the Senate version of the bill. That’s the funding for beginning farmer training nationwide, and outreach and support to veteran farmers, indigenous farmers, and historically underrepresented farmers. I don’t know who is against this program, but it won’t be in the bill if our network doesn’t step up.

The Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP for all policy wonks out there) is the program we need to support farmers markets and local and regional food. The House bill eliminates funding for it all.

To take action, text “FARM” to 40649.

The Conservation Stewardship Program–USDAs largest conservation program–assists farmers in taking care of natural resource concerns on their farm — resources like soil, air and water that impact everyone. A recent study showed that for every dollar spent, the Conservation Stewardship Program returns nearly 4 dollars in public benefit. The House bill also gets rid of this one.

To take action, text FARM to 40649.

SNAP benefits give a very modest boost to families in need. The maximum value is $1.86 per meal. The House bill would take this small bit of help away from nearly 2 million people, including 740,000 adults living in households with children – many of whom do work, but whose wages are so low they qualify for assistance. These are the ‘working poor.’

To take action, text FARM to 40649.

We’ll keep you posted.

If you like what we are doing here, please take a second to review us in iTunes, or tell a friend about the show.

Andrew, thanks for your updates. This podcast is made with support from the staff at National Young Farmers Coalition. It’s recorded at Radio Kingston, and edited by Hannah Beal. Podcast transcript by Julie Davis.

See you next week.

"If we don't start doing things differently, there won't be agriculture to pass down."

Climate change is a hot-button political issue, but in the Western U.S., no one can deny that the drought and above average temperatures are real. Mike Nolan, a young farmer in Mancos, Colorado, gives an insider perspective on farming in extreme weather conditions, building resilience, and shares how an innovative conservation policy idea that started over beers and ended up in the Senate farm bill.

What is the path forward for farmers in the arid West?

Mountain Roots Produce:
https://mountainrootsproduce.com/aboutus/

U.S. Drought Monitor:
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Drought Diaries:
https://www.rmfu.org/homepage-2/latest-news/happening-now/the-drought-diaries/

Episode Transcript

This is the Young Farmers Podcast. I’m Lindsey Lusher Shute. Today I’m speaking with Mike Nolan, a farmer at Mountain Roots Produce, and chapter leader at the Four Corners Farmers and Ranchers Coalition that’s based near Mancos, Colorado. Mike is already growing in a dry climate, but this year has been especially tough. He explains the challenges brought by drought and severe weather and how he is cop

ing with it all. He also tells us how micro-equip, an idea he had over some beers, made it all the way to the Senate version of the farm bill.

I’m Julia Sherman, farmer at Rag and Frass Farm in Jeffersonville, Georgia, and a leader of the Middle Georgia Young Farmers Coalition. I’m a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition because it’s so important for young farmers to work together to create change. For $35 a year, you can join too. In addition to being part of a bright and just future for agriculture in the United States, you’ll also get discounts like 40 percent off Filson and 25 percent off farm to feed socks. To join, go to youngfarmers.org.

Mike: You know, you guys had that at your place. You had that massive hail storm.

Lindsey: Yep. Mmhmm.

Mike: You know, we’ve had like kind of like one of those events or something like that, like every 10 to 14 days where it’s like—

Lindsey: Woah Woah Woah…

Mike: We’re like really? It’s either hail or bug infestations or water issues or smoke or fire or something.

Lindsey: Ah wow, you’ve had it all. So can you just, you know, even now when I talk about the water situation, particularly to really new farmers where you are, who are east coast farmers, it’s just so different. I mean you’ve farmed on this side of the country for a while so you can understand the contrast. Could you just very briefly describe how your farm gets water?

Mike: Yes, definitely. Um, basically our water rights go back to the late 1800’s. They’re some of the oldest in the state, so a lot of the farms and ranches here have adjudicated water rights. So they’re water rights that kind of stay with the ground. Like ours come off river. So we have river water rights and then we also have storage water rights. So we have storage water out of our lake, which serves to make this valley, and that deeds us an acre foot of water per acre on an annual basis. And then we have–

Lindsey: And that’s not water that you have on your farm–that’s in the reservoir.

Mike: Yeah, that’s in a reservoir. And that reservoir also serves Mancos role water, which is our domestic water. It serves the town of Mancos and it also serves to Mesa Verde National Park. And that reservoir is small compared to a lot of place

s. It’s only 10,000 acre feet when it gets full. And right now after this summer, I think it’s sitting at about 1400 acre feet going into the winter with the 2 municipalities or municipal water. Mancos and Mesa Verde will be continuously using it all winter.

Lindsey: Okay. So over 10 percent full. Uh, how does that compare with a normal August? Like where should the reservoir be at this time of year?

Mike: You know, normally the reservoir would be 30 to 40 percent full, possibly higher. The tricky part this year, Lindsey, was that in a normal year we get to run off our adjudicated water, our priority water, and in the past five years on this place we can run off river water until about, you know, fourth of July, sometimes early August, and this year we didn’t get a single day of river water. And then our storage water was limited to 60 percent of our total allotment. So this is really abnormal. And the hardest part about it honestly was we didn’t get any precipitation all winter, so the ground was so dry. So even hay guys around here, they could grow two to three inches of water in 24 hours on hay grounds and it would just drop right into the water table. Like you’d come back seven days later and it’d be bone dry.

Lindsey: If you have senior rights, then there’s a lot of other people who clearly didn’t get water either.

Lindsey: Yeah. Some folks, I mean, some folks still have river water. Um, so here’s kind of an interesting thing. The town of Mancos is priority 3, but the priority is sitting at two right now. Um, so the town of Mancos is actually using their storage water and there’s two irrigators in the valleys that are priority one and two that are using water right now to irrigate hay. So the town has actually fallen out of priority, which rarely happens.

Lindsey: So the town has fallen out of priority for its river water?

Mike: Yeah. So the town usually is able to pull off the Mancos River for their domestic water use. Um, but right now they’re just pulling off the lake

Lindsey: And so they’re further depleting the reservoir?

Mike: Yeah. And I don’t totally know what their usage is. It’s a small town so I can’t imagine it’s more than an acre foot or two. So yeah, they were using their lake water. Everyone’s on storage water right now and it’s scary out there.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So you have received 60 percent of your total allotment this season for storage water. How is that impacting the farm?

Mike: So we, this winter by farm partner and girlfriend Mindy Perkovich and I kind of sat down and we knew it was going to be tight, so we wanted to, we knew we needed to do the CSA crops and we can kick that on domestic water. Then we kind of had tears of like, okay, storage, beets, potatoes, winter squash. You know, last year we did about seven acres in production. This year I think we did about 1.7 or 2 acres of production. So we’re super limited. Our water came on about four weeks later than it should and we’ve been out of water for I think two and a half weeks now. And we’ve had like barely any rain. We’ve been running off our Mancos role water just to ease things along, and we’ve just taken crops that we would like to finish out, like the cabbage and the beans. And we’ve either just mowed them and decked them or picked them early. We could afford the water with rural water.

Lindsey: That’s like from the town?

Mike: It’s our domestic water for the valley. So it, you know, we don’t like to use too much of that stuff because the Ph is a little bit off. It’s a little bit higher in salt, it’s chlorinated.

Lindsey: It’s treated water.

Mike: It’s treated water and I hate using treated water for vegetable production personally.

Lindsey: And it’s expensive I imagine.

Lindsey: Oh yeah. You know, we budgeted about a thousand dollars for the last six weeks of the season to be able to tide us through.

Speaker 2: Wow. So what, so what is next for you guys for next season? Doesn’t seem like it’s expected to get much better next year and the reservoirs are lower than in previous seasons. What are you thinking about for the 2019 season?

Mike: We’re thinking a lot of stuff. It’s, you know, with all the workers in NYC, you know, we are always talking about resiliency, right? Resiliency and drought. And what I’ve realized this year is that I can totally figure out how to be resilient, resilient with my markets and crop production. What I’m having a hard time with is being resilient in relationships and with mental health. And I don’t think that Mindy and I could do this again next year. I think it would crush us. So if things don’t get better, we’re just going to get jobs for a year. Um, we’ll have some water. We’ll be able to cover crop things great for some rain. Um, in the meantime, financially we’re okay. Like we’d have enough to start up again next year. Um, but if we don’t farm, we won’t have enough to do it again in 2020. We’re being, we’re trying to be really pragmatic about it and not take it too close to heart personally if we can’t farm next year, because fighting it is not..you can’t fight this. In order for us to be looking good next year. Um, and these are things I think folks out of the Mountain West don’t totally understand about water is that, you know, we need some good fall rains to wet the mountains so that the snow, and then we need a good snow pack and then we need a good slow melt. And the reason why we want mountains to go in wet is that if the mountains go in dry, which is what happened last year, the little bit of snow there, you know, for every 10 inches of moisture up there, you can lose 40 to 60 percent of it to the ground and we want that to run into the rivers. So we need to kind of have like a very normal fall, winter, spring, um, in order to kind of pull ourselves out of this.

Lindsey: If there are those conditions possibly in the fall, then you and Mindy might consider making a go of it for 2019.

Mike: The plan will be to farm next year until we really get those clear signals that it’s not a good idea basically. Every year is a gamble that, you know, I have this silly analogy when it comes to this water stuff that helps me understand it, is that it’s all this stuff. It’s kind of like a GPA. So it’s like you do all this. It’s good, good, good, good, good. And then you have one year or one bad grade and it totally screws you up. And then it can take years to get back to that place that you were prior. And that’s kind of where we’re at now is that one winter is not going to save us. We probably will have a limited year next year. It’s going to take a couple of good winters and some good summer rain to pull us out of this.

Lindsey: And what are you hearing from folks who give technical support and are making projections on the weather?

Lindsey: You know, all spring they were like “this is going to be one of the best months and years on record” and we have gotten about an inch of moisture or less than that all summer. And so it’s like they’re predicting for a wet fall. But I, I honestly have no idea like what to expect. We’re just grateful that it’s cooled off a little bit because the other thing is that, um, our nighttime and daytime temperatures are five to 10 degrees above average for most of the summer as well. It was, it was a very bizarre summer here. But you know, some of my 80 year old neighbors are like, they’ve never seen this before. So we have some CSA members that do, you know, there’s a lot of folks that work for the FEDS around here, a federal government, whether it’s BLM, Forest–

Lindsey: On federal lands?

Lindsey: Yeah, national parks, I mean they employ so many people in our region because we’re surrounded by every form of public lands. Um, so there’s lots of scientists and biologists and we have a woman who is a CSA member and she does lizard studies and she was telling us that she’s seeing Pine, Pinyone and Juniper trees that are 80 to 90, 100 years old, just completely dying in front of her plot that she’s researching.

Lindsey: Because, because of the weather, because of lack of rainfall.

Mike: 2018 is one for the books is the most quiet way I can say it.

Lindsey: And then on top of that there was, was the 416 fire, is that the one that has impacted you as well? I know there have there been quite a few in the region.

Mike: The big impact of the fires is that, um, it just, it hit the economy super hard. Everybody’s numbers are down. I mean, wholesale numbers are down across the board for farmers. People weren’t eating out as much. Tourism kind of dropped off. Honna and Daniel, who are NYFC members, um, they’re about 45 minutes away from us. They were saying that there was a four or five week period where their wholesale numbers were down about 60 percent or more. Locals were leaving town, so they weren’t buying the local restaurants and tourists weren’t coming and it was just this really weird—. Like one restaurant we sell to was closed for three weeks because the fire, because they couldn’t access it, um, they’ve pulled them out of there on opening night. So we’d lost that account for about three, four weeks. And then you first smoke on top of that and you know, that kind of messes with the plants, we would call it. It was causing all of our head-lettuce successions to bolt, because I think it was messing with their, with their daylight requirements. You’d have multiple times where our visibility was like a mile and a half, two miles and the sun was red. Kind of like the eclipse last summer. And we would plant these head-lettuce successions and they would just barely grow and then bolt. It was usually a couple days after you’d have one of those kinds of smoke events. So yeah, that’s another, another crazy thing about the fires, but the economy hit was the really big one. Um, and I will give props to everyone, like being really resilient about it and also to our elected officials on both sides of the aisle that showed up. I mean we had our congressional rep, both senators, governor, um, everyone in the State House, State Senate, county commissioners. Everyone’s really pushing for people to like come back to our area because we’re such a tourist economy.

Lindsey: Just by, just by promoting it and saying it’s still safe. You should come. It’s beautiful.

Mike: We’re still open for business.

Lindsey: I mean, I guess that sort of brings me to another question. How does policy relate to any of this and what do you want elected officials to do to help farmers in your region?

Mike: Havin

g direct assistance payment is I think what they really need. There’s so many cattle producers, hay producers, you know, producers that are just on the verge of bankruptcy. The last thing they need is a loan.

Lindsey: And you’re talking about like an emergency loan offered by a farm service agency?

Mike: Yeah, and those, you know, I appreciate those and I think they work for some people, but we’re down here with our state representative, Marc Catlin, and that’s what all, I mean these are guys and girls that do not want to ask the government for everything. And they were like, we need something. Otherwise, you know, our centennial farms are going to be filing for bankruptcy and we’re done. And there’s no reason for the next generation to come in if it’s not economically viable in any way, shape, or form.

Lindsey: I don’t disagree with you at all. But I wonder what is the strategy to keep those farms viable if these conditions continue? Like I think they do need, you know, more than a loan potentially. But like for how, I mean no one knows for how long. What we’re seeing with global warming is only going to make these conditions potentially even worse than they are now. So what are people talking about just like the future of agriculture in the region? Like is there a path forward?

Mike: Yeah. So I would, I think that’s a great question. I don’t think it’s smart for anybody to prop up types of agriculture that are long-term unsustainable. Stewardship-wise, but also economically. I think a couple of steps would be to like prop things up now and get it so you know, these families aren’t dipping into all their savings and their kids are going to be left with nothing. Just prop them up for a minute so we can all sit down and figure it out. There are a lot of families in this region who are coming to. I’m on the Mancos Conservation District Board as well. And we have multi-generational families and cattle families that are coming to our offices being like, “what can we do that’s different? Like what crops can we grow that are more profitable, what’s up with all this market gardening stuff? What’s up with this root crop vegetable stuff? Like what can we change to be more economically versatile and resilient?”

Lindsey: And what are they growing right now?

Mike: I mean in this valley like hay and cattle. There’s no real crop production in Mancos per se.

Lindsey: So one of the things that I’ve heard you talk about that I appreciate is this need for young farmers to really stand with multigenerational farmers. Some farmers who are doing things very differently at a much different scale. You describe culturally like the importance of having this farm community intact. Can you just speak to that for a minute? Like why do you think it’s so important to have these larger farms in your region?

Mike: Farmers make up two percent or less of the population and whether somebody is raising commodities or you know, these hay guys are raising hundreds of acres of yay, you know, and hundreds of heads of cattle, and I’m over here doing an acre or two of potatoes. We’re all on the same boat. We’re all in that small number of people. So, inadvertently creating divisions, being like we’re really different and better or worse than or any of those kinds of things. I don’t think that’s helpful because you sit down with a lot of these farmers and ranchers and you know, I understand there’s a unique set of struggles that NYFC is addressing really well when it comes to young and beginning farmers and ranchers, but they’re not too dissimilar to some of the things that these farmers or older farmers or ranchers have gone through and also are kind of struggling with too. I mean it’s still hard to make a living whether you’re starting out or three, four or five generations in. It can be really challenging. You know, there’s just such a wealth of knowledge there. And so like that kind of cohabitation is really important to me.

Lindsey: We’ve definitely had a similar experience in New York. Just really needing those farmers to be there for so many reasons because they’re the reason we have a tractor dealership and a market, you know, and availability of, you know, mechanics and even if we’re doing things totally differently and even if they think we’re crazy on some level, you know, they still, there’s still like this mutual respect and understanding about the life we live and the hours we work and the seasonality and the risk and that sort of thing that is just like so, so vital for farmers to do well. I think it’s just too hard to be out there by yourself.

Mike: It’s pretty awesome to have those kinds of connections.

Lindsey: So, you know, on the federal level, I think people are looking at conservation programs. Do you think conservation programs can help them in a moment like this?

Mike: Oh yeah. I mean, I don’t have any ground and obviously in CRP. And there’s a lot of ground in our region that’s in those conservation programs, and on a year like this that ground has become really vital. A lot of folks up in the Duck Creek area and some of these other places in Montezuma county and Dolores County, the state has allowed them to graze their CRP ground, which has been in literally a lifesaver for some of their herds.

Lindsey: So you guys in the Southwest are really feeling the brunt of climate change. And I think people are, seems like with, with rising temperatures and extended drought, folks are more comfortable pointing to your farm and saying, Oh yeah, that’s climate change. So do you feel, how do you feel about the government’s response on climate and to what extent do you feel like there should be greater action taken on it? Or do you feel like it’s just so slow moving? It’s not really gonna make a difference?

Mike: That’s a loaded question.

Lindsey: Like, if anyone should be complaining, it’s you and you’ve got a pretty strong case to make that climate is having a major impact on your farm, on the local economy, on food security. I mean, I feel frustrated about some events that I associate with climate change in New York, but we’re not having to cut our production by more than half. Do you feel like, um, we should be taking more action on climate? Do you feel like the farmers in your region are feeling more passionate about climate issues as well?

Mike: To be totally frank on a federal level, with the Paris accords and all those other things, I honestly don’t know what the Feds can do. The western slope for the most part is pretty conservative. Folks don’t want government help for the most part. What I see is that that’s changing a little bit. So people want pipelines put in, they want dams and storage upgraded. Um, but what I see is people aren’t really on the ground talking about climate change. What they’re talking about is that water is scarce and water is rare, and we need to adapt our farming models and we need to do all this kind of stuff. So it’s kind of funny. Like I don’t, we don’t actually have the climate change conversation around here all that much, so I don’t know how much whatever the Feds are going to do is really going to change that? There’s a lot of people, the majority of folks around here understand that something is changing and that if we don’t start doing things differently, there won’t be agriculture to pass it down to the next generation.

Lindsey: So when they’re thinking of doing things differently, that’s we need to farm differently, we need to manage water differently. It’s not we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Mike: Yes, exactly.

Lindsey: And uh, and I guess it’s like we have to bring these communities together at some point, right? Because you guys are feeling that you are, you’re in it, right? You have the stories to tell that I think can really move people to take action, broader action on climate change. Obviously taking care of this season and next season and keeping a family and business needs to be priority one. But clearly to achieve climate mitigation, to lessen the longterm impacts for, you know, for 100 years from now, we all sort of have to have that recognition of how the United States and globally we’re impacting this situation.

Mike: Yeah, I totally agree. Mindy and I were having a conversation about this maybe yesterday, the day before. You know, a lot of the old timers that we know, like they just don’t believe in climate change. And I said, well, what I’ve kind of realized is that when you tell somebody who’s in their sixties or seventies that climate change is going on, I don’t know if it’s not that they don’t believe it, but I think their perspective is that they’ve been farming for 60 years. Every year is completely different. They see what they think is climate changing all the time. So telling them like we need to do something. They were like what are you talking about? Like we’ve kind of realized that kind of stuff and I think that’s like, you know, a lot of the others, like the things you’re talking about, I agree with. And I think for me, doing what we can here when it comes to management practices in water efficiency, I think that’s really huge.

Lindsey: When President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accord, was there any reaction from the farm community?

Mike: No.

Lindsey: No. Yeah.

Mike: Not really. But also, you know, we live in the wild west, like, you know, I grew up in California and living here now the political landscape is, I find it super intriguing. It’s like you can throw yourself into a ditch in the middle of winter and anybody’s going to come by and pull you out, like people get along really well here and you know, you just don’t talk politics.

Speaker 2: It’s like we have, we have to maintain these strong and positive relationships that are really driven by being neighbors and being fellow farmers and community members, but also figure out some way to recognize and take action on these global issues because they are also impacting us locally too.

Mike: I think the other thing, you know, with doing all the advocacy within NYFC and locking down Farmers Union and the conservation district and all this kind of stuff, is there are people in our region doing that thing you’re talking about. And I just realized my role is to not do that. I’m going to sit on my four wheeler on the fence line and talk to my neighbor about, you know, whatever. You know about the boxes and chickens and like what’s wrong with this chapter and all this kind of stuff. And that’s kind of my end.

Lindsey: Yeah, I mean it’s all gotta sort of start at the fence line anyways. Right. It’s has to be like a personal trust and communication.

Mike: Yeah.

Lindsey: So my last thing, I just wanted to congratulate you on micro-equip and getting that into the Senate version of the farm bill. And I wanted to ask you just to, if you could describe sort of the process of making that happen.

Mike: Yeah, thanks. You know, it’s funny. So Alex funk, who used to be the western policy director, so we we’re at convergence two years ago in San Diego.

Lindsey: And I’ll say, convergence is National Young Farmers Coalition’s gathering of chapter leaders from all across the country. And Mike is the chapter leader of Four Corners.

Mike: Basically, we were sitting around one evening after everything having some beers and what I realized about this, it’s very hard to get anything new into the farm bill, and so if you do want to make changes or want something new, to me the smartest way to go about it is taking an existing program and make an adjustment. And part of the inspiration was what you did and what NYFC did in its early days with the micro loan.

Lindsey: Microloans. Sure.

Mike: Yeah. So you were taking something that’s there and you’re like well let’s just tweak it and see if we can get more people in the door and more people accessing it. So that’s kinda the idea between for micro-equip. There’s lots of programs that small scale growers can access, but there are certain aspects of it that’s really challenging, but the hope is to change the equip program a little bit. So we just have more young beginning and small scale growers walking through the doors in our CRS offices. That alone to me is super beneficial because if we don’t have that generation of folks coming through the door, what’s the point of those offices being there in 20 years?

Lindsey: And it’s like the identifiable product for I think a lot of young farmers, the micro loan has been. So, like they know, “oh yeah, farm service agency through USDA. They have those microloans. I should go check that out.” Now that so many new farmers have gotten microloans, it’s like it seems like a place to start for a lot of people, which is great. So and micro equip– so environmental quality incentives program, which is how we’ve used it on our farm for instance, to do high tunnels, to build greenhouses for season extension. Was there a project on your farm that you sort of had in mind when you were thinking about this concept?

Mike: I had looking at the cover crop payments. We do a lot of cover cropping here and the payments didn’t make sense for me to access them, both for my agent to deal with the paperwork and also for me to make the trip over the Cortez to kind of deal with it. A lot of the payments for some of these programs… they’re scaled out so big. So the payments per acre are actually really low. So how do you incentivize somebody who’s doing say three acres or two acres of market grabbing crop who’s contributing to the local economy? How do you incentivize them to go and access something for subsurface drip or some sort of other aspect of an equip program where the payments are really low? And I think if there was a micro equip where paper work was kind of streamlined and we could kind of trial out some of these programs to see if they can be scaled differently or the payments could kind of be different, I think that’d be really great.

Lindsey: All these programs and why the micro lending program was necessary, all of the paperwork is pretty intense. I mean it’s a lot because it’s written and designed for oftentimes a much larger system, a much larger farm and much more scaled farm than what many of the projects that beginning farmers are bringing to the table. Like that’s, that’s why we just need to have, you know, different, a more flexible system that can make it easy for agents to say, of course. Yeah, let’s, let’s work with you. I have this program that was designed for this case.

Mike: Yeah, exactly, and that’s the thing. I will say, I’ll give a shout out to Julie, our NRCS agent over there in Cortez. This program wasn’t coming out of him not being able to do anything or that office not being able to do anything. It’s more that with the hiring freezes and everything going on, these offices are stretched so thin there. So part of the idea of micro equip is to obviously incentivize young beginning and small acreage growers that need to instill, like you’re saying, we need to incentivize the agents. They do so much work and there’s just so much paperwork and bureaucracy to be able to access these things. So if this program can alleviate even a little bit of that, I think they’d be much more amenable and available to work with young, small beginning producers.

Lindsey: So the idea for this started with you and Alex having beers at convergence and then like what was the, what was the next step?

Mike: Well it’s funny like when we had the idea we weren’t expecting it to go anywhere, to be quite honest. Like, you know, we were just like, we both thought it was a good idea. So then like, you know, Kate Greenberg, who’s western program director, you know, I told her about it and she talked to people about it. I talked to Andrew in DC about it and it just kinda kept on getting kicked around. It was like kick the can to be quite honest. It was just kinda like, oh, this got mentioned here, it got mentioned here, it got mentioned at Bennett staff or it got mentioned to Tifton and it got mentioned blah blah blah. And you know, I think it’s serendipitous to a certain degree. I think we’re lucky because there’s all this awesome NYFC infrastructure. For some silly reason, I love policy. And also, our state Senator Michael Bennett is also on the Senate Ag Committee. So there’s these little things that part of it’s luck, part of it’s hard work. Yeah. And I think eventually it just kind of got picked up like when all that went down and I was like, okay, this is, this is crazy. All of a sudden, you know, there’s like a signed thing with Michael Bennett’s signature being like, you know, “this is going into the farm bill” and he’s like saying my name on the Senate floor and I’m like “okay,” so at least you know, my mom’s proud now.

Lindsey: Well, she should be.

Mike: Yeah, so it was kinda good. I mean the thing that, you know, if I want to communicate to those listening to the podcast, NYCF members or not, is that those crazy ideas, you know, those late night ideas, early morning ideas like if you think it’s a good idea, try kickin it up the chain. Email your congressional staffer, email your senator. Like if you think you have a good idea, like see if they can go up the chain

Speaker 2: I mean the best ideas definitely come from real life experience in the field and interaction with federal programs. We need that as Young Farmers Coalition to know what ideas need to be moved up to Congress. And frankly not everything needs to be in the farm bill. Right? A lot of the micro equip program, or excuse me, the micro loan program was piloted by USDA, by farm service agency, before it was put in the last farm bill. So there are things that can change, you know, just through a conversation with folks at USDA. We can make a lot of change by just as you said, like thinking about how this might be different or how it might be better and with the knowledge that indeed we can be quite powerful in this and really help to make those changes become reality.

Mike: Yeah. And I think another big thing for me is like thinking about changes in programs and adjustments that aren’t super major but benefit, you know, your neighbors too, or even just benefit your neighbors. Because what I realized around here is if my neighbors are happy and healthy, that has a direct effect on what’s going on with me. I hope, hopefully we’ll access micro-equip. Um, you know, it’s my plan that if I don’t, that’s okay. I just hope that for a whole bunch of other people, that it benefits them.

Lindsey: Well, we’re going to be fighting for it in the House version of the farm bill and the final conference version. Of course, if you know we don’t have a farm bill this year, we will look to your administrative changes or if it’s not put in the farm bill this year, I mean that, that won’t be the end of it. Uh, so thank you so much for your leadership with your chapter, with, with Four Corners and thanks for speaking to me today and man, I really hope that you guys have a good fall because I know you need it. I hope you’re going to be farming in 2019.

Mike: Well, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity.

Lindsey: All right, Mike, thanks so much.

Next week, the farm bill is back. Andrew is going to tell us all about what’s going on in conference committee as they try to get a farm bill done by the end of this month. Thank you to Mike Nolan for being on today’s show. This show can be found wherever you get your podcasts. If you like us, please take a second to both rate and review us on iTunes and tell somebody else about what you learned on the show today. Thanks to Radio Kingston. Thanks to the National Young Farmers Coalition, the whole team for being there, to Hannah Beal for editing and to you for listening. Thanks so much.

Today’s bonus episode is about an important program in the 2018 Farm Bill that needs your support: Farming Opportunities Training and Outreach (FOTO). Tiffany Washington, Navy Veteran from Austin, Texas, shares her personal journey to farming, and how farm bill programs are helping her find success.

Take action:
Text "Farm" to 40649 to join NYFC's Team Farm Bill

Farmshare Austin:
https://www.farmshareaustin.org/

Texas AgrAbility:
http://txagrability.tamu.edu/