In my last post, I noted that we do not have enough young and beginning farmers to replace those who will retiring or otherwise changing control or ownership of their farms. In this post, I will cover why they have trouble getting access to land. It is ironic that...
Farming in the U.S. has gone through an incredible transformation in the last century, from highly diversified to highly specialized. Over that period, we’ve gone from 6.4 million farms to 2.1 million farms. Meanwhile, average farm size in the U.S. has increased...
As we live our busy lives, we tend to miss the signals that markets are changing. Of course, we know that change is happening quickly. We only need to monitor how technology improvements continue to accelerate. Facebook began just 10 years ago and Google – 15....
We are delighted to be part of the Maryland Collaborative for Beginning Farmer Success that received a grant from the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. SMADC supports the effort with enhanced resources on the Maryland FarmLINK website and...
Why do we need small farms? The world-wide trend in agriculture has been to specialize and scale-up. Bigger operations can be more efficient and reduce the cost of agriculture products. So why have a whole conference about small-scale agriculture? Should we even be...
