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4:05 pm
Sun, Oct 26, 2008 |
Zaca
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| | Hey Everyone – I've been looking around this wonderful site (thank you btw, its a great resource) and learning a lot. It keeps sending my off in directions I never would have know about. I am 18 years old and about to finish highschool. When I'm done I really want to go into agriculture. I am interested in starting an organic, small, sustainable farm. I realize it is going to take a lot of work and some capital to start, but I am willing and ready. My plan is to spend a year or so working to save up enough to buy a small piece of land (5-10 acres) and go from there. I have had some experience. We've always had a garden of some sort as I've grown up, whether in the backyard when we lived city or 1/4 acre garden when we lived in the country. I've always helped out and its something I've come to love doing. My two questions then are: 1.) Do I need a formal agricultural education(college)? It seems to me as though on a small scale its not really necessary. I've been reading everything I can get hold of on small scale sustainable farming. Do you think that educating myself is enough, or is there something to be had from a formal education? 2.) Does anyone know of any grants or something similar that could help me get the funds to start? Thanks a lot -Zac A |
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2:12 pm
Thu, Oct 30, 2008 |
Matthias
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| | Hi Zac, Before buying land and starting to farm, the best investment in your agri-future you can make is by interning/volunteering on other peoples successful small farms. The amount of knowledge you can acquire in just a season working with somebody who can show you "how it works", would take you many, many years of trail and error to figure out on your own (I've been down the re-inventing the wheel path myself). Stack the deck in favor of your success and make your learning curve mistakes and miscalculations as a intern or volunteer on other farms. With one or two years with this sort of "practical schooling" you'll be ready to launch your own farm much more successfully. If you are in Canada I'd recommend you get in touch with the Craft growers Guild. They are a group of small/organic/csa etc. farmers dedicated to teaching their skills to their interns and helping them to become farmers in their own right. Otherwise just about any farm you are interested in will be glad to accept a willing worker who wants to learn. Stay out of debt, learn all you can, when you feel ready, jump in with both feet. |
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10:48 pm
Sun, Nov 02, 2008 |
Mike (tfb)
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| | Hey Zac, 1) learning to farm: From what I've gathered, university agriculture programs are not intended to train for practical, small-scale farming. After getting some sort of agriculture-related degree, you would still have to learn all of the hands-on details of starting up and running a growing operation. If you anticipate some day going into consulting or policy-related work, or teaching, for example, or just want to get an undergrad degree before starting to farm, it…can't hurt (I don't think :). But formal education is certainly not necessary and probably doesn't offer a practical advantage in small-scale farming. My experience is of being completely self-taught, no formal schooling in farm-related topics, and no internships or working on other farms. I don't necessarily recommend this approach to everyone, but I've done OK that way, made it to the local farmers' market with high quality crops in good quantity in the first season. Nothing that's happened after six seasons suggests that I'd have been better off starting any other way. But I also didn't plan in advance to start farming, it happened sort of suddenly; if I had been planning, I might have spent at least a year checking out and working on other farms. From meeting and working with a few interns, I think that getting some experience on other farms can be a great thing. Every bit of hands-on experience will come in handy. It's important, though, to realize that there's a really wide range of small farm operations and personal styles. It's possible to get "stuck" on a small farm where there is not much learning opportunity, for any number of reasons. For example, one person I know spent a season with one other intern, parked almost every day for weeks in 10 acres of weedy organic garden, weeding. He didn't feel he learned much, and basically seemed to find the time a waste and ended up discouraged. ALL experience is valuable, but there is a quality consideration: if you're interning, pick your farm or farms carefully. Programs like CRAFT here in Ontario, mentioned by Matthias above, are one approach to finding good experience; the WWOOF network is a good way to get a shortlist of farms to contact and research; the Web is also great for finding opportunities. Another aspect of interning is location. You can choose to intern all over the world, near or far from where you plan to settle down. Lots of people travel quite far, and to different climates, to check out different types and styles of farming. This can be great, but you could also consider spending your time specifically in a climate similar to where you'll be growing. There are distinct pluses and minuses to each approach. 2) grants/start-up financing There doesn't seem to be any direct funding available for small farm start-up (here in Canada), like, "apply here for a small farm grant." From time to time, there are government and private sector funding programs that could be applied to a small farm, like programs to encourage local small business initiative, build local food awareness, things like that. One thing I've become kinda interested in that's related to start-up financing is land ownership alternatives. The cost of real estate seems to be the biggest single obstacle to small farming. If you don't own land, it can be tough to start, and zoning regulations can make shared ownership with several farmers working and living separately on one piece of land, or purchasing a small plot and building a home on it, extremely difficult. So it may be worthwhile to get familiar with zoning laws and how they work and are practically applied, and also with creative ways of using incorporation to allow groups to safely manage shared ownership. Hope that helps! |
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2:54 pm
Thu, Nov 06, 2008 |
Zaca
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| | Wow. Thanks for the in depth response to my post. Mike – I'm glad to know that you had no formal education/training regarding small farming. It gives me encouragement that it is possible to just get up and go. Matthias does have a good point though. I'm sure that any time spent on a real farm doing real work is well worth it. I have found a few different farms in my area that take interns/apprentices. The wonderful thing about small farms is that it seems that most people are more than willing to educate us "greenhorns". I have found a great website http://www.attrainternships.ncat.org/ for internship and apprenticeship opportunities in North America. I'll post that link in another post for others. I'm young, I know, and I have time to learn and travel and experience, but right now I feel that farming is something that I want to do for the rest of my life. Maybe I'm to idealistic. Patience is a virtue, but that is a lot more easily said than done. |
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6:32 pm
Thu, Nov 13, 2008 |
ryan
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| | Hi Zac, I received a formal education in sustainable agriculture from the university of maine. While I found it worthwhile to work on farms each summer and then learn the how and why during the school year, you can certainly make a go of it with some practical experience and a stocked bookshelf. I would strongly recommend that when you decide to start up your own you utilize Cooperative Extension services (do they have these in Canada?). Here in the states university extension agents will come out to your farm and offer free advice and free/ cheap services. Also, the book "Sustainable Vegetable Production From Start-Up to Market" by Vernon P. Grubinger should be in your collection. Finally, there is something called a journey person program in Maine that you could read about on the mofga.org website. I'm not sure if similar programs exist elsewhere but it is sort of like a business incubator program. You are paired with a mentor and given a piece of land to use for free. Hope this helps! Ryan |
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11:10 pm
Thu, Jan 01, 2009 |
TedB
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| | Zac..you still have a few empty pages in your book for experience, travel, work, and some formal education paper. With regard to schools. Very (very!) few schools/programs today (US/Canada/abroad) offer or are focused on hands-on farm-to-market instruction. My only point here is that if/when you do enroll in a formal or college-university degree program look for course offerings beyond agriculture (which you'll get anyway.) Courses with titles/descriptions and teachers you've heard of are 'good.' Subjects that interest you be they computer related, literature, art, or the sciences. And when you go (if you go) focus on getting some negotiable paper for your work–I'm talking about certification or registration paper or a degree. Zac I've hunted (and taught for a few years) in/for the kind of school or program I think you 'might' want. Both in the States and abroad for close to 50 years. Aside from a program or two (Switzerland, Holland, old Yugoslavia, and Greece)…Zac there aren't many around focused pretty much "full time" (which works out to be less than full time) on farm-to-market production knowledge and skills. Lincoln U outside Christchurch in NZ smells good to me today–but I haven't been everywhere/visited schools-programs in Australia, UK, Japan, Taiwan or other points on the compass. Mike and Matthias have some good advice…and so does Ryan when it comes to collecting experience and hunting out people connections. Let me add this to the pot. If you decide to start collecting experience in Canada make a point of visiting farmers markets. Scout for growers that have a mix of attractive/common-sense display and/or CSA package for their member-customers. Collect names and ask if you can visit them/when would be the best time. Then visit. Hock your under ware if you have to for gas money. But visit…for starters visit 5 or 6…smell around. From the sound of you I'm betting that you have a good smeller attached to you someplace. One last thought. If you have a friend, a friend of a friend or someone that knows/has experience WWOOFING…some family or a family friend with folks still living in Europe, NZ, or Australia…give a serious thought to overseas experience. If you do, it might be best to be or have been enrolled in school in Canada (any, really) so as to qualify as a student when the issue of work permits comes up. Good luck Zac. Ted |
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1:18 am
Thu, Jan 08, 2009 |
mike
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| | Zac- When I was in your shoes about 20 years ago, I was really interested in farming but grew up in the suburbs. So, I took two tracks. I went to school (which wasn't my first impulse at the time), first at a place called Sterling College, VT, USA for a one year program- it was a chance to see if I like doing chores twice a day in bitter cold enough to keep going. I went on to get a BS in Plant and Soil Science. The second track was to follow the advice of an uncle and get as much experience as I possibly could. So, I worked on the type of farms that I was most interested in creating for the five summers and worked at a produce business for another couple of years. A few years after college, I owned and operated an organic veg farm for about 9 years. For a variety of reasons, mostly to do with new family and born into family, I had to quit farming. At that point, it was the schooling that I had that carried me forward (and I know that everyone tells you that you can go to college at any age, but it never gets any easier than when you're 18-19 with fewer responsibilities than when you're late 20- 30s; I know that now as I teach adult college students who have to balance quite a few things to get their classes in). If you do jump in at this point, the best thing to do is to keep your expenses as low as possible, rent ground and make as much cash as you can. Be prepared to work during the winter (believe me it's a drag, after a full on summer). And always take a breath before you react to something that isn't going just right- you'll be exhausted- in a good way, but still, you don't want that to take over. A final thought- you can always do both- go to school and farm in the summers or even season extension during the school year. You'll have plenty of time you can skip studying to weed! Best of luck to you. It's an exciting time |
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