By Ann Kreilkamp | April 21, 2015

No matter where you look at the Oakwood Retreat Center, in the near distance sit enormous acreages of poisoned, depleted land forced to cough up season after season of GMO corn and soybean.

IMAGINE: these huge fields cut into small sections, each one worked intensively and organically, by hand, with say, 30 or 50 different crops to sell locally, rather than the usual monoculture that is not only GMO, but heavily sprayed with chemicals and used for ethanol, or animal feed in CAFO operations; the rest is packaged with artificial ingredients as human “food” transported over long distances by oil-drinking semis. Oh yes, and these monocrops are also highly unstable, subject to all sorts of diseases and blights that can unexpectedly sweep in on the wind.

IMAGINE: not one “farmer,” sitting enclosed in a glass cage, working levers and wheels, punching buttons, whiling away the hours with talk radio, disconnected from the ground he is planting (and poisoning), hunched over, saddled with debt from his purchase of the latest gigantic fancy farm equipment he transports from acreage to acreage, all with the same two crops, GMO corn, GMO soy.

IMAGINE instead, a legion of young farmers, aware of permacultural principles, and eager to begin permacultural practice. Here’s a website that will speak to all the young permies itching to create their own livelihood by digging their feet into the soil of their own land.

www.civileats.com

 

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The average age of the American farmers is 57 years old, but all across the country young and beginning farmers are stepping up to answer the call to feed our future. Our Young Farmers stories chronicle their experiences from undergoing training programsto finding love in rural America to getting access to land.

Civil Eats aims to educate and empower young farmers by providing a place where they can engage with fellow growers. In addition to telling stories about farmers’ experiences, we also share information about healthcare, the possibility of student loan forgiveness in exchange for farm work, and small farm financing and acquisition. Young Farmers Unite celebrates how the newest generation of farmers found themselves passionately committed to one of the most rewarding and difficult tasks on the planet.

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