small farms

Four farmers in California's Central Valley are part of a two-year project to see if elderberry bushes, commonly grown in hedgerows along the boundaries of a field, can be a profitable crop. The blue elderberry, a native plant in California, produces clusters of small, bluish-black berries with a sweet-tart flavor, says the University of California's agriculture and natural resources division.

Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan unveiled a bill to make crop insurance available at lower cost to beginning farmers, and to make it easier for diversified farmers to get insurance. Less than 50 percent of small farmers, including organic, livestock, fruit and vegetable, and direct-to-consumer operations, have crop insurance, says a small-farm advocacy group.

For hundreds of years, a network of earthen canals that ribbon through New Mexico have been central to a thriving small-farm scene and a communal way of life. But those canals, called acequias, and the way of life they support, are being pushed to the brink by a changing climate, a development boom, and the imperatives of the modern economy, says Alexis Adams in FERN's latest story, published with The Weather Channel. (No paywall)

Large farms, with more than $1 million a year in gross income, nearly doubled their share of U.S. agricultural production in the past quarter-century, says USDA's Economic Research Service. As production shifted to larger farms, so did crop subsidies and crop insurance indemnities, says the ERS, which made the comparison on inflation-adjusted revenue figures.

City officials in Long Beach, California, are laying the framework for an Urban Agriculture Enterprise Zone program “that would encourage more urban farms to crop up in vacant lots across the city,” says the Press-Telegram.

By far, the family-owned-and-operated farm is the prototype of U.S. agriculture: 99 percent of U.S. farms are family farms, say USDA economists. Increasingly, large family farms are the leading source of production; only 2.9 percent of them have more than $1 million a year in gross cash farm income but they deliver 42 percent of U.S. production.

With 15 Swiss and Normandy milk cows, central Iowa dairy farmer Kevin Dietzel is a small operator with a business plan — "add value to that milk by making cheese" — aimed at the growing demand for upscale local foods, says Harvest Public Media. "We have to do something that's a little bit more original and is also going to be worth that money," says Dietzel, who makes small batches of cheese on the farm.

USDA has accepted more than 600,000 acres into a Conservation Reserve initiative to preserve grasslands and aims to enroll at least an additional 200,000 acres in a sign-up that ends on Dec. 16. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) says a large part of the land is in states where there is a high risk of grasslands being converted to cropland or development.

Biointensive agriculture, a low-cost and low-tech format, could be life-changing for the small farmers of the world, who must earn a living from four acres (two hectares) or less of land, says Ensia. The system uses less fertilizer, water and energy to produce the same amount of food as conventional agriculture, writes Bob Cooper.

A new FDA regulation, issued as part of implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, says farms and farm-operated businesses that sell directly to customers are exempt from regulation as food facilities, a category aimed at processing plants. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said the regulation would prevent undue regulation of small farms.

Historically, small or medium-sized farms produced the majority of the annual pig crop. But in the space of two decades, three at the most, the hog industry was transformed into a sector dominated by large farms with at least 5,000 head apiece, says the USDA's Overview of the U.S. Hog Industry report, issued for the first time since 2009.

While the average age of U.S. farmers and farm size is rising, the tale of young people returning to farm on a small scale "is more common than we think," economist Kent Olson tells the nonprofit Minnesota Post in a story that looks at two young farm couples.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), aided by a giant U.S. seed company, "are testing a new approach to improve the production of corn among the millions of poor, small-scale farmers who dominate African agriculture," says the...

The average age of U.S. farmers is a frequent topic of concern because it is fairly high - 58 years in 2011, according to a new USDA report on the structure and finances of family farms.

Economists at the annual Ag Bankers Conference said crop growers will face more stress in 2015, says Farm Futures. "Some farmers may need to restructure debt to keep cash flowing the next two years, says...

"China, the U.S., Britain, Germany, Singapore and a small group of other nations account for the majority of global land acquisition" according to research by Sweden's Lund University, says the Thomson Reuters Foundation.