Folks across the country know something is wrong.  There’s just something about the system we’ve created over several decades that is inherently flawed. Some blame the government, others big banks, still others blame political parties, but all agree that there’s something that’s just not quite working the way it should.  People are losing homes, jobs, and health coverage at an alarming rate because of the societal turbulence in the enormous yet formless thing we call the economy.

Enter Change.org and their 10 Ideas for Change in America.  Taking advantage of the concept of “the wisdom of crowds,” Change.org launched a campaign to find 10 great ideas.  It began with thousands that were submitted by ordinary individuals and organized interest groups alike.  These were whittled down through online voting to a more manageable 70 or so, and right now the voting is getting down to the wire to choose which 10 ideas will be presented to the White House – as in formally presented to senior people there, not just sent in an envelope to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  You can (and should!) vote too.

All, or nearly all at least, are worthy ideas.  Each has its merit and is worthy of consideration.  But for those with an interest in food, three of them rise to the top quickly, and first among equals is Slow Money.

The idea is a simple one: invest as if food, farms and fertility actually mattered. Get anyone who invests money (and if you have a 401k or an IRA, that’s you too) to direct just 1% of it toward small food enterprises and local food systems.  Get at least that small sum of money out of the hands of Wall Street, huge banks and multinationals and use it, quite literally, as seed money.  Invest in local farms, food systems, artisans, brewers, bakers, cheesemakers and so on and keep that money close to home.

We’d create a thriving economy that makes real, healthy food, instead of a fake one that just makes money for bankers.  One that invests in people and the land, not in some distant amorphous concept called Wall Street.

In their book Inside the Apple, a Streetwise History of New York City, this is how Michelle and James Nevius describe the building of the palisade for which Wall Street was named: “The wall had two major problems: it wasn’t needed and it didn’t work.”

Also interested in investing in the land is the American Farmland Trust, whose idea for saving farm and ranchland is doing quite well in the balloting, as well as an initiative to put a garden in every school.  Both are important concepts you’ve heard me advocate for vociferously for years.

Slow Money is new and novel though, and needs more votes before this thing wraps up at 5pm EST this Friday, 3/12.  Please visit Change.org, vote for these 3 ideas and any other 7 you feel are worthy.  It’s fun, important, and it only takes a couple minutes.  Thank you.

“Shelburne Farms!” “Oh you got to visit Shelburne Farms?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms amazing?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms beautiful?” “Are they still making cheese at Shelburne Farms?” This is all I heard when I got home from my very first trip to Vermont. The night of my return to San Francisco I helped run our fifth installment of Kitchen Table Talks (on Mayor Newsom’s new sustainability directive, watch for a re-cap post) and chatted with a lot of people who are very found of Shelburne Farms. And, yes, it is amazing and beautiful and they are still making cheese there. Bread too!

So, what is Shelburne Farms? I certainly had no idea before I went there. All I knew was that I had an invitation to stay at a friend’s father’s place near Burlington. I knew it was in a gorgeous spot near Lake Champlain. But with zero concept of Vermont aside from knowing it’s the home of rural farm lovers, Ben & Jerry’s, and Burton and that it lacks billboards of any kind (which is truly radical and wonderful to see), I was clueless. Of course, after three nights and three days on the property, I now have an understanding of the love, attraction and appreciation for Shelburne Farms.

Once a 4,000-acre “model agricultural estate” created in 1886 by William Seward and Lila Vanderbilt Webb, it has, since 1972, become a National Historic Landmark, working farm, and educational non-profit who’s mission is to cultivate a conservation ethic. That ethic is abundantly evident and demonstrated in the stewardship of the land, the condition of the barns, the impressive archiving, preservation and utilization of materials found on the property and in the ways in which their farm and forestry programs play a major role in sustainability education for visitors and the folks who are fortunate enough to live there.

The current property sits on 1,400 acres of woodlands that are Green Certified from the Forest Stewardship Council (the remaining acreage was sold off in plots). And, their grass-based dairy has 125 purebred, registered Brown Swiss cows whose milk is used to make award-winning farmhouse cheddar cheese on the property. During my visit, I didn’t see the cheese-making facility, but I did enjoy the bakery’s dark rye and olive pugliese. Every morning I woke to an impressive view of Lake Champlain and the sounds of wild turkeys, hawks, and geese; each day included a long beautiful walk along the property’s many trails. Suffice it to say, I left feeling at peace, grateful for an opportunity to enjoy the quiet of a country estate. (I feel compelled to mention that my host rents one of the many modest homes on the farm. And we had run of all the public spaces, which are abundant.)

I also learned a lot about the sustainable food community in and near Burlington. I especially love what’s happening around Intervale Compost. This business takes the city’s organic waste, mixes it with milky wastewater from Ben & Jerry’s and transforms them both into enormous mountains of compost. As a soil lover I really enjoyed watching backhoes move three-story high piles of black gold goodness. The compost is sold to local gardeners and landscapers and the entire operation is moved every few years so that a farm can enjoy the soil and new farmland can be cultivated.

The really cool thing, though, are Intervale Compost’s neighbors. Community and independently-owned small farms, a garden supply store, and a wood-burning power plant. The whole area, known as The Intervale, all 700 acres of it, is a green flood plain on the banks of the Winooski River that was once an industrial wasteland, literally on the other side of the tracks, where folks came to throw their used tires.

The person who led the transformation was Gardener’s Supply’s founder, Will Raap, who settled his business near the McNeil power plant to take advantage of saving energy by heating his building and greenhouses with the power plant’s waste heat. With the vision of creating new resources from other waste, and in partnership with the city and the utility, the area is now home to bike and hiking trails, a community garden, and 350 acres of organic farms that provide the Burlington area with fresh produce and flowers. Each farm is under the guidance of the Intervale Center which exists to manage the land and provide education resources to the community and associated businesses. According to their website “there are three categories of farms that operate in the Intervale. Incubator farms are the newest farms and receive business planning support, mentoring and reduced prices for land and equipment. Enterprise Farms have operated for at least three years. Mentor Farms are mature farms who have been operating in the Intervale for at least five years and take on the role of mentoring incubator farms.” What’s not to love?

Of course, back in the day the area was rich farmland for the Abenaki Indians and Ehtan Allen had a homestead there. However it’s only been since 1985 that it’s slowly transformed into the productive and bio-diverse farmland I saw on my trip.

I also enjoyed a wonderful meal at Hen of the Wood in Waterbury. The picturesque restaurant is housed in an old grist mil, complete with recessed stone and wood walls and a roaring river’s waterfall outside. They are known for serving exceptional local, seasonal cuisine. I enjoyed some local Vermont cheeses, a superbly autumn hen of the wood and dumpling dish, and the tastiest fried oysters that side of NOLA.

My discoveries aren’t new, especially to those who are deeply entrenched in the good food movement or to folks who love Vermont, but having never been there I was so grateful to experience them firsthand. My trip reminded me that when communities work together with the shared value of growing good food, feeding people good food, and preserving the land on which we grow good food, the world is beautiful indeed … just like Shelburne Farms.

Greenhorn is a word I expect I’ll hear fairly often in years to come. A greenhorn, according to Severine von Tscharner Fleming, Paula Manalo and Zoe Bradbury – authors of the newly released second edition of The Guide for Beginning Farmers is “a novice, or new entrant into agriculture.” To be precise, it is a certain kind of new entrant into agriculture: one who was not raised to farm and who has no family farm to inherit but who is unconventionally and some would say irrationally choosing to become a farmer, no matter his or her lack of education and resources. Touches of madness are not uncommon among greenhorns. Gutfuls of passion aren’t either.

In the authors’ words, The Guide for Beginning Farmers is “part pep-talk, part institutional index, part career-planning guide” for greenhorns. It is a work in progress. While the authors seek a publishing house willing to expand it into a full-length book, The Guide serves as a “first, early stab” at compiling resources for young people who hear the call to farm but have no place to dig in. The Guide gives them long-ish lists of apprenticeships and mentorships; land trusts and FarmLink programs that help new farmers find land; books on organic cultivation; books on smart business; local, state and federal loans and grants for starting farms; even consumer and food activist organizations that support sustainable agriculture, food access and farmworkers’ rights. There are plenty of places to begin.

Reading through the breadth and number of these lists gives the sense that The Guide is still very incomplete. There must be many more manuals, funding sources, apprenticeship listings and unclaimed parcels of land than the authors have been able to compile. There are people farming wisely and organizations supporting their efforts in every state in this country. It seems to me that programs and policies to incubate new farmers already exist; they’re not extensive, they’re not all tested and they’re not widely known, but they are ideas to try and replicate. Books on how to manage a sustainable and profitable farm are in print. Innovative, successful models of urban and rural food production that meet the specific needs of our time are out there. It seems to me, then, that what we really lack in the movement to create millions of new farmers is awareness. There aren’t too many Americans asking for a Guide for Beginning Farmers. There might be more if city people who condemn corn syrup and demand good food also demand that incentives be put in place to make farming an economically and socially viable profession. Or if they speak up and declare that farming is radical; that farmers, no matter how they do it, are heroes. The first obstacle in creating millions of new farmers is not a shortage of land and capital; twenty-somethings have too little farm experience and too many student loans to buy land anyway. The first obstacle is getting agriculture onto the minds of twenty-somethings before they decide that medicine or banking or pop music or drug dealing is the only way to ensure a “respectable” quality of life.

Hence what I admire most about The Guide for Beginning Farmers is not its references to so many websites but the way it reads, at times, like a Manifesto for Beginning Farmers. In future editions, I suggest the authors play up the joy of growing food and the role of farmers in any sustainable, healthy and just society. They’ve already begun it on Serve Your Country Food, a website The Greenhorns have produced to document, connect and support the work of young farmers. Manifestos are risky, but they’re also exciting. Excitement grabs attention and starts movements. We’ll never know if the existing programs for new farmers or the ones now being proposed are worth their weight if young people don’t demand the chance to try them out.

This post is part of Gordon Jenkins’s Young Farmers Unite series, where he writes and invites others to write on the challenges young farmers face, and how we can support new farmers at their profession.

In his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Barack Obama told us, “America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done… Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save.” The group of about 20 of us who were listening to his speech on a laptop as we got ready for the “young farmers seed swap” about to take place at Slow Food Nation stood straight up and smiled. “Did he say farms? Does he mean that?” As 80 other young activists, students, cooks and farmers streamed into the room, that phrase – “farms to save” – swam circles in our ears. Obama was confirming what we are all beginning to feel is mission of our generation: saving farms, rebuilding the food system, digging back into the land. He didn’t mention what kind of farms we have to save, but he did imply that the future of the economy and of our cities is bound to the future of agriculture and that the security and livelihood of our nation depends on our ability to grow food. That’s an old-fashioned idea, but it’s still a big one—even to young people.

The people in that room knew that if we’re going to save farms, the first challenge we’ll face is finding farmers willing do it. In 2002, the U.S. Agricultural Census reported that the average age of the American farmer is 55. Between 1 and 2% of the U.S. population works on farms; that’s fewer than are in prison. Since the 1950s, agribusiness, with the backing of the U.S. government, has worked hard to put machines, instead of people, on farms, claiming that factory farming produces the cheapest food and frees Americans from the “drudgery” of having to grow and prepare their own meals. As a result, generations of farmers’ sons and daughters have fled the land, seeking jobs and city lives that are marginally more secure. Today, many of the people working on U.S. farms are new immigrant laborers who have no rights, earn below-minimum wages and can’t avoid being exploited. The impression of the people farming the land today is that they’re the people the rest of the country would prefer to ignore.

In a time of concurrent economic, energy, climate and health crises, we’re beginning to realize how badly our country needs to rebuild its food and agriculture system. We should also realize that a food system that is good for us, good for our communities and good for the planet is going to rely on small-scale, diversified agriculture and is therefore going to require a lot more human labor. The U.S. needs millions of new farmers. But right now, that’s good news. Millions of people are losing their jobs this year and millions more need real food. Were we to invest in a healthy food and agriculture system today, we would create jobs at every level that not only boost our economy but also put healthy food on our tables, return money to rural communities and clean up our carbon footprint. (And we should all tell Obama we think so.)

There’s a vanguard of young people taking it upon themselves to find or create careers in agriculture, but it’s mostly idealistic college graduates. Those are the mad young farmers-to-be who gather at San Francisco seed swaps and raise their fists in solidarity when they hear Obama say “farms to save.” (I’m one of them.) As a group, we hope that we’re paving the way for other young people, and we hope we’ll soon be implementing programs and policy that incubate new farmers, but we’re admittedly not a “young farmer movement.” We don’t represent the wide swath of people this country will need to see farming real soon. We’re not going to see that swath of people farming until rural communities can sustain real economic security and provide the nurturing social fabric that makes life livable. “Ordinary Americans” won’t put their hands in the dirt until their neighbors consider farming a noble profession and are proud to shake the calloused hands that feed them. The prospect of jobs may lure people back to the land – or into parks and onto urban rooftops – but they won’t stay unless we train them to grow food and respect them for doing so. To ensure that the next generation of farmers is substantial and serious enough to fix our broken food system, farms will need an economic infrastructure (read: local processing facilities and markets for quality food) and a cultural vitality (read: internet access and things to do on the weekend) that make farm life viable.

That’s a radical agenda; to see it happen, every one of us, farmer or not, will have to rethink the way we interact with the land and with each other. But we will reap its rewards: strong urban and rural economies, healthy communities, a safe and secure food system, a habitable planet. There’s a lot of work to be done in readying the next generation to farm the land, and Obama’s right: we cannot turn back. We have to look forward, and from where I’m standing, the future looks full of promise.

This post is part of Gordon Jenkins’s Young Farmers Unite series, where he writes and invites others to write on the challenges young farmers face, and how we can support new farmers at their profession.

Photo: growing youth project

One of the lasting mysteries about food for me is how it can be so deeply personal on the plate and at the same time so very cosmically impersonal—and complicated—in the world. Learning about food systems and the politics and industry that define them has been a steady process of learning how much I don’t know and admiring those who can find a cogent and meaningful through-line to follow. I admit I was relieved when I realized a little while ago that, while there is much to be gained from tackling the large and knotty issues around agricultural production and distribution, industrial hegemonies and trade contortions, not to mention the Farm Bill (or, as Michael Pollan so aptly renamed it, the Food Bill), you can glean an amazing amount of useful knowledge across the spectrum by visiting a farmer.

We’ve all been encouraged to do just that, or at least to trace our food to its source. The trick is how to do it without getting in the way—of the farmer, that is. With any luck that didn’t happen when we crafted Come to the Table: The Slow Food Way of Living, a kind of companion book to Slow Food Nation that profiles a baker’s dozen of California farmers and will, thanks to our publishers at Rodale, roll off the presses just before Labor Day weekend. Fanning out across the state, we tried to capture some of the spirit and personality of people who are working to create large-scale change through small-scale enterprises.

Up near Mount Shasta, SFN’s executive director Anya Fernald spent time at Windborne Farm with Jennifer Greene, who is singlehandedly reintroducing the historic grains of the region to locals. Contributing journalist Carol Ness’s peregrinations included a visit to the wise and wizardly Pixie growers of Ojai and a burgeoning sustainable ranch, Clark Summit Farm, in western Marin County. Another contributor, Nate Johnson (a Harper’s magazine contributor who wrote an insightful piece on the raw milk “underground” for its April issue) went to the Burroughs family dairies in the Central Valley and to Monterey County to meet father-and-son partners Juan and Pablo Perez at J&P Organics. My own travels took me to Fresno, where I met Will Scott Jr., founder and president of the African American Farmers of California, as well as two Hmong farming families, the Vangs and the Mouas. On an amazing, and amazingly (to the uninitiated) hot morning, Alice Waters—who wrote the book’s foreword—and I walked with Mas Masumoto through his peach orchards before having a peach-laden breakfast with the Masumoto family on their porch. At the Tierra Miguel Farm in the Pauma Valley, north of San Diego, I felt a wild rush of exhilaration and relief on realizing that the verdant and well-loved ground I was walking had very nearly been lost forever to a country club subdivision.

Jenny Elia Pfeiffer shot most of the photography for the book, and two other photographers, Emily Nathan and Kim Westerman, contributed some beautiful work also. The cover photo is by Aya Brackett.

All the farms were different, of course, but by their own accounts the farmers have a lot in common: dedication to environmental stewardship; concern about livelihood and farmland preservation; optimism about the network effects that can flow from small-farm coalitions; and worries and hopes about growing new farmers. They also shared a quality of mild preoccupation, as if you were an interruption but not an unwelcome one. (As a New England native accustomed to a certain lack of fat in the conversation, I found myself recognizing the style of discourse.) Not a moment of the farmers’ time was idle, which meant that we got to see the daily routines and workloads in all their impressive and often daunting reality.

The farmers asked us to tell the story not only of how they farm but why they farm; they’re proud of the choice. Above all, they asked us to remind people that farming is by definition slow, full of infinite variety, and deeply satisfying as a way of life.

Full Belly Farm’s Judith Redmond (who has a smile tailor-made for that name) told me she still feels giddy every farmer’s market morning. “I wake up excited about the day. I love visiting with folks, I love the social atmosphere and the conversations and the hubbub of the market. I love to see farmers and customers getting to know each other.”

The book can be preordered at Powell’s Books, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon. Or find it at an independent bookseller near you.

Images courtesy of Rodale