Hand in Hand: American Farmland Trust Nurtures Creative New Partnerships

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Kids in New York schools are munching on local farm-grown veggies for lunch. Women ranchers in Oregon are circling up to expand their networks and learn from supportive peers. And farmers in Virginia are using cattle to create healthier soil and safer animal habitats.

These changes are coming about thanks to three innovative programs developed by the nonprofit American Farmland Trust (AFT), which works to protect farmland from development and helps farmers make a better living while bringing a new generation into agriculture.

Bridging the Gap: New York Farm to School Institute

To bring farm-grown food into her district’s schools, Regan Kiembock used to take road trips to area farms. “Literally, what I would do is go pick up potatoes in my car, go pick up corn on the cob,” says Kiembock, the director of food services for the Southampton Union Free School District on Long Island.

It wasn’t until she participated in the New York Farm to School Institute, a year-long professional development opportunity, that Kiembock learned about food hubs and the possibility of getting deliveries of farm food to her schools. 

“Getting food from farms into schools and other institutions is not as simple as it initially appears and can pose a challenge,” says Stephanie Hsu, manager of AFT’s collaborative partnership, Farm to Institution New York State (FINYS).

Although interest was high, the efforts were piecemeal, so AFT developed FINYS in 2012 as a way to help connect the dots. Interest on the part of schools soared in 2018, when AFT and its partners convinced New York State to roll out the 30 percent initiative, quadrupling the reimbursement schools receive per lunch if the district buys at least 30 percent of its lunch ingredients from New York farms.

There are many variables to contend with.

“Farm to school and farm to institution include a lot of steps and many people along the way, including supply chain partners like processors and distributors,” says Hsu.

“And each school kitchen is different: some are pushing scratch cooking; others are just reheating ready-to-eat meals; some have equipment such as ovens, mixers and blenders. We have to assess both kitchen and staff capacity, and sometimes you just have to take baby steps.”

Pecks to Pounds

In addition, farmers and food service staff have such different ways of thinking about quantities that there’s a need for translation. “It’s a completely different language,” says Hsu.

Farmers think in terms of pecks, bushels, cartons and crates while school personnel are considering servings and pounds. 

Launched in 2018, the Farm to School Institute is one of the resources FINYS developed to help schools and farmers connect. This year-long program has served 31 school teams to date through coaching, peer mentorship and retreats where school personnel and community partners from throughout the state learn from one another. 

As participants in the Institute, Kiembock and her team were able to assess where their farm-to-school efforts were in terms of the three Cs — classroom, cafeteria and community.

She learned about food hubs, where food can be ordered centrally and processed to minimize the time cafeteria staff spend peeling and chopping. She saw that other schools highlighted the “farmer of the month” and added that feature to her district’s website. Also, at one of the gatherings, Kiembock met a New York State legislator and a New York City school administrator, who are helping her solve a thorny distribution problem preventing Long Island schools from purchasing New York State milk.

Just as schools encounter extra work to serve farm food rather than canned goods, farmers also confront extra challenges when they sell to institutions. They may have to scale up what they grow and will likely face red tape needed for certifications and the complex school bidding process.

To help, FINYS has developed a Farmer Readiness Scan to help farmers assess their readiness and figure out next steps.

“It’s a lot more involved to sell to an institution, but it’s a wonderful opportunity for farmers and producers,” says Hsu. “If you build a relationship and establish a contract with a school or a hospital, you’ll have a consistent customer for years to come.”

Fostering Inclusion: Women for the Land

Across the country from New York, in eastern Oregon, rancher Jenny Beverage is also thinking about farm-to-school food.

Beverage, who owns and runs the 5B Cattle Co., has been taking part in Learning Circles hosted by Women for the Land, a national AFT initiative started in 2019 that brings women in agriculture together to learn from and support one another.

It was during a Learning Circle that Beverage voiced her interest in selling beef from her cattle to Oregon schools. She got encouragement for the idea as well as a contact to help her gain access to this new market. 

Like Beverage, many women across the country play key roles in agriculture, including farming or co-farming 43 percent of the farmland.

However, women remain under-represented in using U.S. Department of Agriculture and state-based conservation programs geared to sustainable farming practices, AFT reports. “Women and nonbinary farmers are this important audience who are often still left out of the broader conversation around farmland preservation, stewardship or even accessing resources to support the business of the farm,” says Gabrielle McNally, director of Women for the Land.

An Alternative Space for Women in Agriculture

AFT’s Women for the Land Learning Circles offer an alternative to the local coffee spot or gas station where white male farmers have historically gathered to talk shop, leaving many female and nonbinary farmers feeling unwelcome.

“I was pretty excited about a learning group for women ranchers specifically because most ranching activities that I’ve been a part of have been mostly directed toward men,” says Beverage.

Taking place across the country, the Circles are full or half-day gatherings on a farm where 15 to 25 farmers, local agency representatives and technical service providers discuss themes such as soil health and land pasture management. Some women attend additional online sessions, which allow for deeper exploration and relationship building.

The Circles provide both psychological and practical incentives toward change.

“It was nice to find out what other women were doing and to learn from them and maybe replicate some of the things they were doing,” says Beverage, who hopes to increase her know-how about cover crops and direct marketing through social media.

For some participants, the emotional support is also a confidence booster. At one gathering, a flower farmer whose husband had passed away was able to speak openly about the difficulty of learning to do things her husband had taken care of, like tractor management and handling equipment repairs. When she later expressed her desire to take a workshop on organic growing, the group gave her the encouragement she needed to move ahead.

In fact, research into the Circles found that 73 percent of participants, like the flower farmer, took action toward conservation after participating in a gathering.

For Black farmers and other farmers of color, the Circles also provide access to funding where there’s a historical pattern of discrimination.

One Black female farmer in North Carolina attended sessions on navigating the Farm Service Agency and USDA resources. Through this experience, she met a technical service provider who became an ally and helped her get COVID relief funds and a grant to purchase a well on her property. 

Women for the Land is doing research to better understand the needs and challenges of the diverse women who work in agriculture. In addition, they’re advocating for policy changes to help remove barriers and increase access to resources.

An important step was the nation’s first women in agriculture resolution passed by the California legislature in 2022, which raises the prominence of women’s stories in agriculture. “It didn’t come with any specific policy guidance or funding,” says McNally, “but we hope it lays the foundation for that kind of work by highlighting the challenges and the outsized role that women play in agriculture.”

Using Cattle to Benefit the Land: The Sustainable Grazing Project

Like Jenny Beverage, Kathryn Everett is also raising cattle, though it isn’t something she ever expected to be doing. Everett was a landscape designer who originally planned to buy property as a spot for family retreats. But her thinking changed when she and her husband became the owners of Chancellors Rock Farm in the Piedmont region of Virginia. “

One of the first things we did was to write a mission statement,” says Everett, “which was to create a working farm that’s a demonstrable example of the best environmentally responsible and sustainable farming and horticultural practices to support the native ecology and wildlife in the Piedmont.” 

When they purchased the property in 2018, there was a small herd of cattle already on the farm.

Everett soon met Jacob Gilley, AFT’s mid-Atlantic sustainable grazing manager, who enrolled her in the Sustainable Grazing Project (SGP). It’s an undertaking to help producers in Virginia’s Rappahannock region adopt regenerative or sustainable grazing practices to improve soil health, water quality, animal welfare and profitability.

The group of 16 producers meets quarterly at one another’s farms, where they share news and food, take a tour and bounce ideas off one another. “It’s that networking — just sharing different strategies and tactics — that helps,” says Everett.

Supporting local producers is just the start, according to Gilley. “The whole plan from the get-go was to develop this out in a way that can be replicated to other regions throughout the country.” 

Cows on the Move

Everett was new to raising cattle, but Gilley’s guidance resonated with her. The SGP promotes adaptive grazing, so that once the plants get to a certain height, you move the livestock off of that pasture, close the gate and allow the land to rest.

“That period of rest helps the plants recover, helps them grow,” says Gilley. “It helps increase diversity so other plants can come in and thrive.” He adds that livestock tend to have favorite plants, so if they’re not moved out of a field, they overgraze on their favorites and under-graze on others.

For Everett, the idea of rotating the cows to different sections of the pasture and using the cattle to regenerate the soil is “a hundred percent in line with our mission.”

Gilley has also connected Everett and other producers to the Virginia Grassland Bird Initiative, a project that encourages certain agricultural practices that benefit grassland birds as well as farms.

Everett has adopted the practice of waiting until later in the year to make hay, which saves the lives of baby birds in ground-level nests who would have been mowed down by the process. “We delay cutting hay to give native grassland birds like the eastern meadowlark, which nests in hay fields, time to raise their young.” 

Making less hay also gives the grass and other plants a chance to grow until late fall, so the cows can graze into winter.

A huge benefit to the farmer is that when cows graze the fields for a longer part of the year, there’s no need to use equipment, fuel or labor to do that same work. “Why try to mimic what the cows are doing by mechanically harvesting the grass for hay rather than letting them do it naturally?” says Gilley.

Another way that SGP is helping farmers is through equipment loans to avoid the cost of buying expensive machinery.

SGP has two offerings available for all producers in the region: a poultry processing trailer for poultry slaughter and preparation for sale and a portable cattle corral, which is especially helpful for farmers renting land who don’t want to invest in building corrals. 

SGP also teaches producers about the complexities of certifications such as “bird friendly” and “grass fed” and helps them decide which ones fit their production practices and make the most sense to pursue.

In addition, they help producers with grant funding and writing grazing management plans.

By promoting regenerative practices and helping farmers achieve them, the SGP is boosting soil health, sequestering carbon, supporting wildlife and making farms more productive. “You can have biodiversity and agriculture; they can coexist,” says Everett. “Agriculture can work hand in hand with conservation for the benefit of the environment.”

Farmland Stewardship Builds Community

Each of these three American Farmland Trust programs has a powerful day-to-day impact benefiting farmers, ranchers, farm animals and wildlife, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions.

In addition, each program can serve as a successful model for similar initiatives in other states and nations. 

“Since 1980, AFT has brought together farmers, environmentalists and others to find common ground and make progress that others didn’t think was possible.  We have credibility with these different constituencies and are uniquely positioned to craft solutions to urgent needs within the farming community and our society,” says David Haight, American Farmland Trust’s vice president for Programs.

“AFT looks forward to expanding these partnerships to keep farmers farming into the future and protect our air, water and food supply.” 

For more information about American Farmland Trust, visit farmland.org.

Top photo: Cattle move to a new pasture as part of sustainable grazing efforts in Fauquier County, Virginia. Photo credit: Jacob Gilley.