After six years of enriching the soil and cultivating neighborly relationships, however, We Grow Farms is up against an insurmountable challenge facing many farms and pastures across the state: the real estate market. In the next year, the lot’s landowner, a developer, plans to turn the urban farm into affordable housing to feed an acute regional housing demand.

While Hawkins is sympathetic to the need, he says the farm’s uprooting will come at a great cost. He estimates that he has invested nearly $40,000 in soil improvements and irrigation infrastructure alone, and the loss will also impact the underserved communities We Grow supports.

As a Black farmer, Hawkins also provides a visible, powerful connection between food and its source, supplying the neighborhood with fresh produce such as collard greens, black-eyed peas, and tomatillos at its weekly, onsite farm stand. The rest is distributed to nearby urban and suburban areas in Yolo and Sacramento counties through food programs and community supported agriculture (CSA) subscription boxes—25 percent of it for free.

Small-scale farms are highly sensitive to the profession’s many challenges, including extreme weather, rising water and labor costs, and razor-thin margins. And for the majority that rent or lease their fields, the lack of long-term land stability can make farming “a David and Goliath battle,” Hawkins says—especially for growers who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Together, BIPOC growers own less than 2 percent of all farmland in the country.

But Hawkins, along with Nathaniel Brown and Keith Hudson—two other Black growers in the Sacramento River Delta—have a plan to address the disparity. As founders of the nonprofit Ujamaa Farmer Collective, the trio aim to strengthen the roots for historically underserved farmers by staking a cooperative claim to land ownership.

After persistent advocacy efforts by agriculture groups, the California legislature allotted a $1.25 million grant in 2022 to Ujamaa for the purchase of a medium-sized plot of land in Yolo County. The deed secures the tenure for multiple farms to operate on individual plots ranging in size from half an acre to 5 acres, each with a voice in collective governance and access to shared resources.

By building a resilient, worker-controlled network on secure soil, Ujamaa—which is named after a Swahili word for extended family and the fourth principle of Kwanzaa, embodying cooperative economics and advancement—will “elevate everybody’s potential so [we] can all thrive,” says Hawkins.

Agriculture-based collectives, such as farmer cooperatives and produce and commodity associations, are well-established in this country. Yet “they’re often white-led and they’ve had privilege,” including greater access to land and resources, says Brandi Mack, national director of The Butterfly Movement, an educational organization working to connect BIPOC women to the land through permaculture.

Mack is also a member of the People’s Land Fund, a collaborative that includes members from seven other social justice and agriculture nonprofits and is providing Ujamaa with pilot support, including pre-development guidance and starting capital.

Ujamaa’s purpose “is a different consciousness,” Mack says. Collective land ownership and governance set the course for “redistributing the flow to BIPOC farmers,” empowering them to build a more resilient community by amplifying their voices and “getting a leg up in the food sovereignty game.”

The Widening Historical Gap

The efforts come at a crucial point for Black farmers, whose numbers have been on a precarious national decline over the last century. At their peak in 1910, African Americans made up around 14 percent of all U.S. growers and owned more than 16 million acres of land. Today, they make up just 1.3 percent of all farmers and own fewer than 5 million acres. The Golden State’s numbers are even more dire; the 2017 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) census counted just 429 African Americans out of approximately 124,000 producers.

Meanwhile, national efforts to reverse disparities continue to fall short. Facing fierce political backlash, the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act—a debt relief program intended as restitution for decades of documented discrimination against Black and Indigenous farmers by the USDA— was rewritten to remove race from eligibility requirements. And recent reports also uncovered disproportionately high USDA loan rejection rates for BIPOC growers under the Trump administration.

For historically underserved farmers, land security is fundamental to leveling the field, says Jamie Fanous, policy director at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, a nonprofit that advocated for Ujamaa’s legislative allocation. Yet intense competition for land in the state has widened the gap in farm ownership, she adds. Currently, more than half of the state’s cropland is held by 5 percent of landowners, while one-third of all fields and pastures are rented or leased out by non-farming landowners.

“Land grabs are rampant” throughout California, says Fanous, noting the latest case in which an investment group snatched up 55,000 acres of ranch and farmland in Solano County, in the northeastern San Francisco Bay Area. “And it’s getting worse as we see hedge funds and corporations come in,” she says.

Investors usually amass agricultural parcels for planting large-scale, high-value commodity crops, or develop them for residential and urban uses. As bigger players take over the landscape, it’s typically at the expense of smaller ones, and a disproportionate number of those tend to be BIPOC and historically underserved farmers.

“You need at least $1 million to purchase farmland in California, and that doesn’t even include the tools, infrastructure, resources, and the labor,” Fanous says. “It’s just insane, but that’s the reality we’re in right now.”

An Intentional Community

The 29-year-old grower has carved a successful niche at local farmers markets selling unconventional crops such as Caribbean red, striped, and fish peppers, stinging nettles, and flowers, all grown using a home-brewed, brown sugar-based fertilizer. However, his farm, which includes two pygmy goats that help maintain weeds, is quickly outgrowing its space, Brown says. And despite the security of family property, there’s no room to expand.

Along with more fields and new water infrastructure, Brown’s wish list of upgrades includes cold storage, a washing and staging station, and tractor access—most of which require additional space, construction, and expensive permits. Without the ability to scale up, these investments simply won’t pan out, he says.

For small-scale farmers, particularly those engaged in regenerative practices, the return on investment in soil health, irrigation, and crops can often take years to realize. Farming, though, “is a long-term process,” says Brown, as is stewarding the earth, so moving his operations to Ujamaa’s new land will allow him to “think a few seasons ahead.”

The stability of land ownership lets farmers plan more resilient and diverse operations, he adds. Orchards and other perennials, for example, make more sense when you own your own land because they can take a while to mature. And while permanent crops don’t typically yield immediate profits, they can help buffer producers from pests, disease, and market spikes. Building up healthy soil can also increase carbon sequestration and moisture retention, reducing the impacts of drought, extreme rainfall, and the increasing challenges from climate change.

As a collective, “we’re trying to get away from the more colonial, extractive, and destructive systems that have shaped farming over the last 100 years,” Brown says.

The stability of the collective also reinforces a culturally relevant model of land and community stewardship. “Intentional community started with Black folks in this country,” says Mack, of the People’s Land Fund. She notes that rural livelihoods, marginalization, and meager economic resources—the reality of Black roots in this country— have encouraged strong cooperative networks. “That’s the only way we survived.”

Still, “it’s difficult to unbuild how land was used to punish us for 400 years,” Mack says, referring to the deep scars left by a history of enslavement and sharecropping. She sees greater representation in the field as key to reclaiming that relationship for a new generation. “With the land stewards themselves being folks of color and running the program,” she adds, Ujamaa “is really going to help shift the paradigm.”

Ujamaa’s Hawkins also sees the collective cultivating much more than food. The organization’s mission is to fill the gap for historically underserved growers who lack access to land, generational wealth, or a family background in farming, he says. The individual farms that compose the collective will tap into shared resources such as water, infrastructure, and large equipment, while nurturing and sharing skills and institutional knowledge about regenerative practices and long-term land stewardship. Ujamaa will also make onsite worker housing a key priority.

“There’s security in a collective,” says Hawkins, noting that he sees Ujamaa as both a scalable and replicable model of collective ownership and governance. “The more we can work together, nudge each other, and educate each other—we’re stronger together.”

Minnow, a member of the People’s Land Fund and a nonprofit organization advancing social equity in farming, is currently helping Ujamaa develop its collective governance structure.

Hawkins, Brown, and Hudson also hope to create a safe space for the BIPOC community, which, Hawkins notes, is often a rarity in rural areas. He hopes the Yolo County location will keep Ujamaa farmers connected to urban markets, community resources, and organizations.

“We want to maintain those relationships,” he says, “and expand our impact to folks that need better access to fresh food.”

“Growing food brings people together in such a powerful way,” says Hawkins, who hopes that the land acquisition will materialize by the end of the year. But with a huge systemic imbalance for those who produce it, “now’s the time for us to make that shift happen in a racially equitable way,” he adds. “Otherwise, it’s just going to be the same thing.”

The post California Will Help BIPOC Collective Cultivate Land Access for Underserved Farmers appeared first on Civil Eats.

Climate change is emerging as a central theme of the 2023 Farm Bill negotiations. Some farming groups are asking Congress to prioritize young farmers and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) farmers in those climate provisions, given the historic discrimination they’ve faced, coupled with the fact that BIPOC communities bear disproportionate impacts of climate change.

According to the National Young Farmers Coalition, which surveyed over 10,000 people under 40 years old, lack of access to land and capital are the core issues young farmers face across the U.S., and the challenge they would most like to see addressed in the next farm bill.

We spoke to Mazariegos-Anastassiou recently about the challenges she faces and how the 2023 Farm Bill could better support farmers like her in recovering from the effects of climate change.

Is climate change impacting your farm?

(Photo courtesy of Veronica Mazariegos-Anastassiou)

The short answer is yes, in the sense that there have been fluctuations in what we should expect. There was the drought, and then there was a deluge of water. In 2020, we were directly affected by the CZU Lightning Complex fires. We understand there are many causes of wildfires, like the warming weather and the drought. But it’s also a land management problem; [people] haven’t been maintaining certain land, and therefore you have these very devastating effects of fire. We felt that directly impacting our operation. I think when you go into farming, you know that things are sometimes out of your control, but you do expect patterns. Now, those patterns are changing at a faster pace than past generations experienced.

During the CZU Lightning Complex fires, did you have support—financial or otherwise—from the federal government to get through?

Absolutely not. But we were supported by our community—family, friends, our customers . . . that’s where we felt supported.

One of the biggest conversations around this latest set of floods is how inaccessible federal support is. The Farm Service Agency, which is the main point of contact for a farmer at the local level, is so bureaucratic. Its products and supports are not geared toward the kind of agriculture that we and other BIPOC farmers are doing. We’re farming in a very different way than what these programs are designed for, so you automatically feel like you don’t even qualify.

There’s also a staffing shortage problem; there are just not enough people to address all the issues. And when you’re talking about smaller, diversified producers, we are all the way at the bottom of the list of whoever gets assistance.

It does seem like there are some improvements. The Inflation Reduction Act started to acknowledge the role that farmers like us play in climate change mitigation and the need to support us in adapting to these inevitable climate change impacts. But we have a long way to go.

Why do you feel like you don’t qualify for federal assistance programs?

When you look at some of the assistance programs, like the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) or the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP), you apply based on the acreage you’re growing of a particular crop. The payout is a very small fraction. In that calculation, if you’re growing very small quantities, there is no point. Filling out the application is actually more work than what I will get out of it. Because the programs are not designed for diverse systems, it feels like they don’t really apply to you. That has been my experience.

With the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), there is a lot of funding for management of a property, but they tend to favor you heavily when you’re the landowner. It’s much harder to access the support when you’re a tenant. And when you’re thinking about BIPOC-owned farms, the reality is that you have a lot less land ownership in that group. We’re subleasing one of our properties, so we’re not able to access the support that’s available, because it really is for folks that have complete agency over their property.

What climate provisions would you like to see in the farm bill?

There are three things I think about. How do we help farmers of all sorts deal with the effects of climate change? And that comes in [the form of] insurance, lower interest loans, and even grants to deal with something that’s unforeseen.

The second thing is the role that farmers and ranchers play in mitigating the effects of climate change. When we’re talking about cover cropping, composting, managing riparian areas, maximizing biodiversity . . . can we have more support to do that work? Because right now we’re doing it because we know it’s important, but it’s not a revenue stream. Federal programs need to provide concrete support for those farmers who are implementing those practices.

The third and probably most important is that you need to have programs that help farmers stay in business and do their work. If we can’t stay in business, forget climate change; we’re not going to be able to do this work, period. And being able to stay on a piece of property long term is very important. What programs can make that easier? Supporting first-time land buyers with down payments or incentivizing landowners that are leasing land to farmers to have really good terms and co-invest in a property. Right now, for example, we are in a year-to-year lease situation, and that’s very difficult when you’re planning a business with long-term ramifications. So that’s another way the farm bill can support beginning farmers and BIPOC farmers.

Why is it important to prioritize BIPOC farmers in the farm bill?

BIPOC communities in our country are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, food insecurity, and a lot of the issues that are tied to agriculture. Yet, we’ve also been essential and crucial in agriculture because we have often been the farmworkers, the ones actually doing the work, but we have not had the agency to lead those projects.

I am a first-generation American. I’m also a first-generation farmer. A lot of the motivation I had to farm is because I saw how challenging it is to provide healthy food for a family of limited means. And this is not just about food; it’s about our environment. My communities are being more affected by environmental degradation. We’ve largely been left out of the picture when we’re talking about agriculture in the United States.

We have heard ad nauseum about the average farmer’s age, race, and background. Now I think there is an interest in [seeing] these other communities play a role and influence the direction the agriculture industry takes. We’re moving away from a monoculture. There is a wave of young farmers and ranchers that are seeing this as the way forward for agriculture. I think that’s an important perspective to support. We know that certain communities have been historically discriminated against by institutions like the [USDA’s] Farm Service Agency, so I think we are a key group to listen to and support, since we have historically not been afforded that opportunity to lead.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Why BIPOC Farmers Need More Protection From Climate Change appeared first on Civil Eats.

https://civileats.com/2023/04/12/the-rush-for-solar-farms-could-make-it-harder-for-young-farmers-to-access-land/ https://civileats.com/2023/04/12/the-rush-for-solar-farms-could-make-it-harder-for-young-farmers-to-access-land/#comments Wed, 12 Apr 2023 08:00:03 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=51480 A few years ago, that wide, flat land caught the attention of a San Diego-based solar developer, EDF Renewables. A handful of Ward’s neighbors agreed to lease their land so EDF could build a $256 million utility-scale solar project on 1,800 acres. The Byron Solar project, as it’s known, will be Minnesota’s second-largest solar farm […]

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The front windows of Mindy Ward’s southeastern Minnesota home look out on farmland that is “flat, flat,” she says, “completely flat.” On the day we speak, the ground is frosted in snow, blinding white under the bright afternoon sun. She says the orderly, square parcels that stretch over most of Dodge County are “ideal for growing corn and soybeans” and are “beautiful” in their bounty and vastness.

A few years ago, that wide, flat land caught the attention of a San Diego-based solar developer, EDF Renewables. A handful of Ward’s neighbors agreed to lease their land so EDF could build a $256 million utility-scale solar project on 1,800 acres.

The Byron Solar project, as it’s known, will be Minnesota’s second-largest solar farm and will produce 200 megawatts of electricity, enough to annually power more than 30,000 homes, ultimately helping Minnesota achieve its goal of 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040.

“Are we really understanding what we trade off when we put solar panels on farmland? We should be asking those questions.”

As the world braces itself for the 1.5-degrees Celsius warming mark and climate messages from the science community grow increasingly dire, many states have similar plans to shed reliance on fossil fuels, and President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act funnels billions toward achieving net-zero emissions in the next 30 years. To reach that target, a 2021 U.S. Department of Energy study indicated that as many as 10 million acres of land will have to provide solar generation. American Farmland Trust (AFT) estimates 83 percent of new solar built in the next few decades would likely be sited on agricultural acreage.

While Ward supports a clean energy transition, she is upset that steel and aluminum solar panels will replace bucolic fields in her community. “We need to put this on marginal land,” she says, “land that is not ideal for food production or purposes related to agriculture.”

She is even more frustrated that such a large project was planned and executed privately, with little input from the farmers and other rural residents who are proud of the region’s agricultural heritage. “We’re completely breaking the cycle of rural America by doing this,” she says, adding that the long-term contracts—often binding for as many as 30 years—with solar developers disrupts “the cycle of transferring land to the next generation.” (EDF did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, nor did other prominent utility-scale solar developers.)

No one will feel that disruption more than young farmers. “Land access is the No. 1 challenge they are facing, and this challenge is even greater for farmers of color,” says Holly Rippon-Butler, land campaign director for the National Young Farmers Coalition. There’s only so much land available, and solar developers can offer far more money than farmers can. “Are we really understanding what we trade off when we put solar panels on farmland? We should be asking those questions,” says Rippon-Butler.

She, along with organizations including The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and AFT, want solar developers to better engage with communities so that locals can help identify top-notch acreage that should be set aside for future farmers, or, perhaps, site both solar and agriculture. This isn’t an easy proposition, though, as land owners will likely have the ultimate say.

Half of all U.S. farmland is expected to change hands in the next 15 years, according to AFT. Farmers are increasingly aging out of the work, and leasing to a solar company can be financially rewarding and provide peace of mind, knowing the land will continue to produce a valuable resource.

At a recent conference hosted by the National Farmers Union, one Montana farmer boasted of the “nice retirement plan” he has in place after signing a contract with a solar developer, while a Michigan farmer grew emotional when he shared that he was considering leasing his land for solar rather than transferring it to his son to farm. He said the decision was “tearing my guts out.”

The Michigan farmer’s son, however, had described the decision as a “no-brainer” and encouraged him to lease the land. The agreement would secure about $1,200 per acre per year with escalating payments over 35 years. For comparison, a young farmer who rents the land might be able to offer $300 per acre.

One farmer shouted from the crowd: “Do it!”

Crops grow next to solar panels in an agrivoltaic system. (Photo credit: Jason Whalen, Fauna Creative)

Farmers Outbid

At that same meeting, a few farmers suggested to the Michigan farmer that he could always go find other land if he didn’t want to give up farming. Sounds easy. It’s typically not, especially if you’re a newcomer.

There are many competing interests for land, far beyond solar: Foreign investors and private equity firms can easily outbid farmers. And while many farmers inherit land, Rippon-Butler says 78 percent of today’s young farmers didn’t grow up in farming. “[They] struggle to break into this grower network,” she says. “That can have particular consequences in terms of racial equity, in that 98 percent of agricultural land is owned by white landowners.”

The Young Farmers Coalition is advocating for a $2.5 billion, 10-year investment in the 2023 Farm Bill that would go toward securing 1 million acres of land for young farmers, with an emphasis on “making sure underserved producers are the priority,” says Rippon-Butler.

While that could help with land access, the renewable energy transition may take millions of acres out of production. Several people interviewed for this story described how solar developers will often approach landowners by visiting their farms or sending letters offering lucrative deals that are shielded by nondisclosure agreements. (In advertisements in agricultural trade magazines, one solar company entices landowners with $800 to $1,500 per acre per year with incremental increases.)

“We know that solar developers tend to favor prime farmland that is near existing interconnection and infrastructure . . . because it is flat, sunny, and clear,” says Samantha Levy, AFT’s conservation and climate policy manager. “If they have to do anything related to grading, making sure that everything is level, or clearing, then it just increases their costs.”

Levy says the current build-out of solar energy tends to be “market driven,” i.e., what can be accomplished without a lot of upfront investment, rather than driven by where communities might like to place the projects.

Cutting Into ‘Prime Farmland’

The terms “prime farmland” and “marginal farmland” are often repeated in discussions about where to place new solar panels. One has a relatively clear definition. The other, not so much.

Prime farmland, as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is land that has the best “physical and chemical characteristics” for growing crops. Marginal farmland is less defined, however—it may be hilly, it may have poor soil—and classifying it as such can be a fairly subjective decision.

Ward, in Dodge County, is among a chorus of farmers and conservationists arguing that solar projects should go on “marginal land” or, better yet, in polluted lands known as brownfields and other nonproductive spaces.

“The lack of planning of these projects is going to alienate people who consider themselves blue in red America. These decisions are being made by people who have no knowledge of agriculture or agricultural business.”

So much land in the Midwest and Northeast, and in Ward’s area of Minnesota, is considered prime, however, that developers have found workarounds when confronted with the argument that solar expansion stands to decrease the availability of prime land. For instance, the Byron Solar project was able to get an exemption from regulators by arguing that 1,800 acres was a very small percentage of the prime farmland in Dodge County.

It’s also worth noting that the 10 million acres that could soon host renewable energy projects totals only about 3 percent of total U.S. agricultural acreage. Anna Dirkswager, the Midwest regional director of climate and energy at TNC, says that may sound inconsequential, but if a lot of those acres “are in your backyard, then that’s going to matter, right?”

Agricultural communities, are, after all, little ecosystems, and they include a range of other businesses, including seed suppliers, machine shops, and trucking companies. If a sizable chunk of business disappears, the whole system wobbles. Also, with less land availability, land prices may go up, putting it even further out of reach for up-and-coming farmers.

Ward, who hopes her nephew and children might follow the family farming tradition, worries that if projects continue to lack meaningful engagement with communities it could sour an increasingly rare slice of America.

“The lack of planning of these projects is going to alienate people who consider themselves blue in red America,” she says. “These decisions are being made by people who have no knowledge of agriculture or agricultural business. And there is a perception that everyone who lives in rural America doesn’t think there’s a benefit to renewable energy. I don’t think that’s the case at all. There are others who believe, as I do, that there are benefits.”

An overhead view of solar panels installed in a farm field. (Photo credit: Fauna Creative)

Community Pushback

Potential political shifts aside, Dirkswager of TNC says developers who seek out project sites solely based on how close land is to transmission lines, rather than factoring in whole communities, are more likely to face community pushback. “That’s a big deal,” she says, especially with ambitious renewable energy goals looming in the near future.

Last year, TNC released a report called “Power of Place—West,” which identified how Western states could achieve a rapid buildup of clean energy while taking into account the priorities of agriculture, as well as Indigenous and other rural communities. Dirkswager says TNC, in partnership with AFT, is doing a similar analysis for the rest of the country, with the hopes of figuring out if nationwide net-zero emissions can be achieved while protecting the most productive farmland.

Levy, with ATF, says when agriculture and solar developers work together, fewer “speed bumps” arise, and there are more potential benefits to the wider community. These proactive meetings could, perhaps, look at community ownership of the project, something many farmers expressed interest in during the National Farmers Union panel.

Some local governments, though, are trying to get out ahead of solar projects before they even arrive. For instance, after a growing number of local bans on renewable energy projects were passed in Illinois, last month Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation preventing counties from enacting those preemptive local ordinances and nullifying the ones already in place. In Iowa, “setback” laws that require wind and solar projects to be built far back from roads have also popped up. And in upstate New York, a small city mulled banning all solar projects on prime farmland.

Dirkswager says in some communities, the tension around solar development creates a space for misinformation that can malign the projects. “The type of information that’s spreading—like, ‘If you live near a wind turbine, you’re likely to have cancer’—is not factual,” she says, “and it stirs fear.”

Furthermore, Dirkswager adds, outright bans on renewables can prohibit older farmers from accessing money that they need to retire. “And for young farmers, if we put these ordinances [in place] without thinking about how to do these agreements in the first place, we’re not giving people a chance to have autonomy over their lands,” she says.

Of course, if they’re given the choice, some of those farmers may take advantage of models that combine solar and agriculture on the same land.

Rise of Agrivoltaics

On a recent afternoon, Julie Bishop commuted around south New Jersey refreshing the water source for sheep at one solar farm and checking on another site to gauge whether vegetation was tall enough for the sheep to graze there. (Not quite yet.) Bishop created Solar Sheep in 2014 to offer vegetation management around the growing number of small, community-based solar arrays, and she also sells the animals as pets and for their meat.

This is one example of “agrivoltaics,” a strategic combination of photovoltaic solar arrays and agriculture that tends to involve either traditional crops grown alongside panels, or livestock grazing around them.

Bishop says sheep and solar are “well suited” to sharing the same land. While cattle can be clumsy and goats will chew through wiring and jump on panels, sheep just mosey and eat, and there’s no need to even raise the height of the panels as is sometimes required for cattle.

Bishop, who is on the advisory board of the American Solar Grazers Association (ASGA), says interest in matching sheep with solar arrays has grown tremendously in recent years. ASGA’s membership soared from under 10 to 500 in five years, with about 25 percent of the members representing solar development. Still, the sheep industry is small and contributes to less than 1 percent of U.S. livestock industry sales, so it’s not realistic to think millions of acres can generate clean energy while hosting flocks of sheep. At least not yet.

Rippon-Butler, with the National Young Farmers Coalition, says while agrivoltaics may be of interest for the next generation of farmers, land access remains the persistent hurdle.

“Many young farmers don’t own land and they certainly don’t own land that’s large enough to be attractive to solar projects,” she says.

Her organization supports a clean energy future, but the group’s core priority is ensuring that young farmers gain access to land. “You can’t eat a solar panel,” Rippon-Butler says with a laugh.

And if part of the climate solution includes regenerative farming practices and more local, low-carbon food systems, the young farmers of today will have to help build that framework. Solar leases that lock in land for 30 years, she worries, which may only make that harder.

The post The Rush for Solar Farms Could Make It Harder for Young Farmers to Access Land appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2023/04/12/the-rush-for-solar-farms-could-make-it-harder-for-young-farmers-to-access-land/feed/ 8 https://civileats.com/2023/03/02/forging-pathways-to-land-access-for-bipoc-farmers-in-georgia/ Thu, 02 Mar 2023 09:00:35 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50938 “I was a part of the Young Urban Farmers Program, where they took high school kids and showed them farming techniques,” Yearby explains. In 2019, he was matched with farmland through an online platform called Georgia FarmLink and was able to start his operation, Cozy Bear Market Gardens, soon thereafter. Yearby was the first Georgia […]

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“The biggest trouble is finding land, and I didn’t know where to go to farm even though I was qualified,” says Deijhon Yearby. The 26-year-old started his journey with farming in high school and now grows okra, tomatoes, kale, and other Southern favorites on a quarter-acre in Nicholson, Georgia.

“I was a part of the Young Urban Farmers Program, where they took high school kids and showed them farming techniques,” Yearby explains. In 2019, he was matched with farmland through an online platform called Georgia FarmLink and was able to start his operation, Cozy Bear Market Gardens, soon thereafter.

Yearby was the first Georgia farmer matched through the Georgia FarmLink web tool, which was launched in 2019 by the Athens Land Trust (ALT) to help beginning and disadvantaged farmers access farmland. The website connects farm seekers and landowners/donors, allowing them to meet each other independently, while still having access to ALT’s resources and technical assistance.

“FarmLink enables farm owners who want to help reduce the barriers for new farmers to be able to be creative in how they do so.”

Online land access platforms exist in a range of states including Washington, Oregon, and New Jersey and can be incredibly helpful for new farmers. In the United States, increasing urban sprawl and rapid commercial development continue to consume farmland: From 2020 to 2021, the country lost 1.3 million acres, a shift that drove up the price of the remaining farmland.

As of 2022, the average rent for irrigated cropland in Georgia was $221 per acre, and $74 per acre for non-irrigated cropland. The average cost to purchase an acre of farmland in Georgia is around $3,900. For new farmers, finding enough capital to rent, much less buy, farmland is a massive hurdle, and they may not have the tools to absorb the risk or the overhead costs to scale.

“FarmLink enables farm owners who want to help reduce the barriers for new farmers to be able to be creative in how they do so,” says Johanna Willingham, who manages Georgia FarmLink on behalf of ALT. Since the beginning of the pandemic and the subsequent global food crisis, Willingham notes that it has become more common for farm donors to offer unconventional lease models designed to meet new farmers halfway. “Some farm donors are not charging for rent and utilities and just asking for 5 percent gross,” she says. “Some say, ‘Just pay the utilities.’”

Although the effort stalled at the start of the pandemic, the platform soon picked up speed and saw an overall rise in the number of farmers searching for land: Since 2021, the Georgia FarmLink program has had more than 3,100 participants. These new participants include growers who are trying to make connections with landowners directly, and others who get ALT’s help in facilitating a match. However, even with an increase in new donors, there are still more farmland seekers than there are donors.

“We have about a thousand farmers that are seeking land and about 20 posts by land donors,” Willingham says. “A lot of landowners don’t think about the transition plan until the end of their lives or farm careers.”

To help address this imbalance, ALT started an incubator program that prioritizes people from historically underrepresented groups in Athens as a way to support budding farmers who are preparing to get connected to land. ALT is also working to make more connections with land donors and running programs on estate planning.

Jean Young, Deijhon Yearby, and Johanna Willingham at the Williams Farm, a small-scale urban farm that anchors the Williams Farm Incubator Program. (Photo credit: Oisakhose Aghomo)

Better Call FALT

While access to land is key, there are also additional tools that can help beginning farmers navigate the complex, confusing legal process needed to acquire and manage land. This is particularly important for farmers from diverse backgrounds in an industry that is 95 percent white and 64 percent male. The agricultural industry also has a history of discriminatory practices in providing access to resources and assistance, often enabled by the inequities exacerbated by property law.

Launched in 2018 by the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School, the Farmland Access Legal Toolkit (FALT) is one such tool.

“The toolkit is a bridge, it’s designed to give ordinary people the information they need to handle their property issues before they go to a lawyer,” says Francine Miller, a senior staff attorney at Vermont Law who curates FALT.

Since the start of 2021, 45,000 people have accessed the toolkit. Many are located in the South, particularly in Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Virginia, and nearly half are 25 to 44 years old. Ensuring that users can navigate these tools with little to no hassle is paramount. The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems is constantly working to pinpoint access challenges and gather a better understanding of its users’ needs.

“We’ve created Spanish-language resources, we’ve made sure that our toolkit is accessible by mobile phone, and we are also working on distributing PDFs of the toolkit,” Miller says. “If someone calls and says, ‘Hey, we need this toolkit for our farmers in remote areas in Wisconsin,’ we’ll ship the PDFs.”

The FALT tool has a particular focus on heirs’ property, a legal category that affects BIPOC and white communities in the Appalachian region and the greater South. Heirs’ property generally refers to land purchased or deeded after the end of the Civil War that has been passed down through multiple generations without formal estate planning or wills, which creates a number of difficulties for farmland owners.

Because the land can be owned by a large number of heirs, and since historic racial barriers to accessing legal aid prevented previous generations of landowners from creating wills, efforts to hold on to family farmland can be put at risk if one heir chooses to sell their part of a property.

“Black people have lost millions of acres due to heirs’ properties,” Miller says. “It’s such a huge civil rights issue.

The toolkit explains the legal definitions of different titles and sales that can occur in heirs’ property cases, a step-by-step guide to what to do before contacting a lawyer, recommendations about what type of lawyer to contact, and state-specific resources.

“Heirs’ property affects a lot of growers and landowners because they just don’t know that it exists,” explains Willingham.

The Athens Land Trust is launching a program to actively help heirs’ property owners resolve their legal challenges, but in the meantime, Willingham says, they rely on platforms like FALT to fill in gaps and save on lawyer’s fees. Willingham has been using FALT herself for almost a decade in her work and has integrated the toolkit into Georgia FarmLink’s education program.

The Williams Farm in Athens, Georgia, site of ALT’s Williams Farm Incubator Program. (Photo credit: Oisakhose Aghomo)

Accessing Markets

Once a farmer finally gains access to land, they must be able to sell what they produce. The ability to sustain a farm business depends entirely on the marketplace; understanding how to build a market is an important aspect of farmland access that receives less attention.

“Building a viable business model and marketing strategy is the most important thing you can do before you start making any plans,” says Yearby, “especially before you buy land.”

Yearby has been successfully selling his produce as a wholesale distributor, but he says getting to that point wasn’t easy.

“You’re competing with [food mega-distributor] U.S. Foods,” explains Yearby. “You have to be certified to even apply for some farmers’ markets.” He started by getting his farm certified organic, which increased his reach into more farmers’ markets and restaurants. And he’s working to expand his production to attain a spot on the coveted U.S. Foods payroll.

“For a while, markets didn’t exist unless you go through commercial wholesale markets,” Willingham says. “Now, there’s this massive movement, people are creating food hubs and distribution markets [for local food]. It’s in its renaissance phase.”

Jean Young, the first incubator farmer at ALT’s Williams Farm Incubator Program, grows Southern favorites such as tomatoes, collards, and okra. Young started her microfarm Freedom City Gardens in 2021. “It was my way of doing my part during the pandemic,” explains Young. “I wanted to bring fresher foods to my community.”

Jean Young pictured at her plots at Williams Farm, which anchors ALT’s Williams Farm Incubator Program. (Photo credit: Oisakhose Aghomo)

Soon after starting the farm, she began braving the marketplaces, selling at farmers’ markets and as a certified vendor for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Young’s microfarm allows more flexibility to sell retail. So, she has also ventured into digital marketplaces, which have presented some unique challenges.

“In the digital markets, there are questions about who and what gets promoted, and the corporations [that run the apps and websites] are making decisions that affect your business, and you aren’t there,” Young says.

Logistics challenges can also present a barrier. “The biggest challenge when people are selling online is that there’s a gap in distribution,” explains Willingham. “People want to use the online market, but the logistics are different because there’s the added element of transportation—it can add additional stress on your budget.”

Willingham notes that difficulties in gaining access to markets are common from new growers. She believes their frustration often stems from a lack of centralized resources—something that has been lacking in Georgia’s farming industry for a while.

“We’re working on incorporating comprehensive business classes into the GA FarmLink program and creating a roadmap that allows for these farmers to navigate with more independence and ease,” says Willingham. This roadmap will allow for a smoother process from acquiring a farm to growing a farm, providing resources and opening up networks for small-scale BIPOC farmers.

Yearby is a shining example. Three years into owning his own farm, he has a much better understanding of what it takes to run a business and how that differs from farming as a hobby. This insight allows for him to see farming as a career he can sustain. In a country where the population of BIPOC farmers is rapidly declining, the value of resources that support them in their quest for sustainable careers cannot be understated.

The post Forging Pathways to Land Access for BIPOC Farmers in Georgia appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2023/02/07/an-ancient-grain-made-new-again-how-sorghum-could-help-u-s-farms-adapt-to-climate-change/ Tue, 07 Feb 2023 09:00:12 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=50715 But there was one crop that suffered less. “It doesn’t take a whole lot of rain to make a good yield for the sorghum crop,” said Rendel, who plants about 1,000 acres of grain sorghum each year on his 5,000-acre farm. While he did lose some of his grain sorghum, or milo, to the drought, […]

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Last year’s drought took a severe toll on Zack Rendel’s farm. Like many of the neighboring farms in his northeast corner of Oklahoma, his corn crop practically shriveled up due to the lack of moisture. During a normal year, he typically harvests about 150 bushels per acre of corn. Last year, he averaged only 22 per acre. His soybean and wheat crops were also impacted.

But there was one crop that suffered less.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot of rain to make a good yield for the sorghum crop,” said Rendel, who plants about 1,000 acres of grain sorghum each year on his 5,000-acre farm. While he did lose some of his grain sorghum, or milo, to the drought, the loss was minimal compared to corn. “[Sorghum] helps offset our risk,” he said.

“Sorghum was relatively cheap to put in the ground, it had a very good yield to it, and it could withstand some hot, dry summers.”

Farmers in drought-prone areas are increasingly relying on crops that require less water to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. The Great Plains is currently facing exceptional drought, and agricultural hub states like Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma are dealing with long-term consequences. Sorghum is looking especially appealing as a solution.

Rendel, a sixth-generation farmer, said sorghum has a long history on his land, dating all the way back to his great-great-grandfather’s time. He is a member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and said his predecessors primarily planted sorghum for their own subsistence.

“Back then, everybody had a farm. You had to grow food for your family. Sorghum was relatively cheap to put in the ground, it had a very good yield to it, and it could withstand some hot, dry summers,” Rendel said.

As those hot, dry summers become the norm, Rendel can’t rely on Mother Nature to consistently irrigate his crops.

“[Rain] seems to come either all at once or at the absolute wrong time of the year. So that’s where sorghum begins to fit into our operation very well,” he said.

Sorghum has multiple properties that make it drought tolerant. The leaves and stems of some sorghum varieties are coated in a waxy substance, an adaptation to low-moisture landscapes. It also has uniquely deep roots that can stretch up to 2.5 meters underground.

“It has a deep and fibrous root structure that really digs down to get that water,” said Adam York, sustainability director for National Sorghum Producers (NSP), which recently secured a $65 million Climate-Smart Commodities grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to increase production and develop the sorghum marketplace. According to York, sorghum’s robust root system also gives it a Kernza-like ability to store more carbon deep in the soil than the average plant.

However, sorghum in the U.S. is primarily turned into ethanol fuel and livestock feed—two of the most fossil-fuel intensive agricultural products.

“If we grow double the acres of sorghum in America to feed more livestock, there is no way that is a climate-friendly approach,” said Silvia Secchi, a sustainability professor at the University of Iowa. While she supports the expansion of sorghum production in the U.S., Secchi said there has to be a systematic approach to ensure it has a net positive climate impact.

“Are we producing sorghum in systems that reduce overall fossil-fuel use? And are we then using it to promote a food system that is lower in carbon emissions?” she asked.

Animal agriculture contributes a significant amount of global greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, corn ethanol—which dominates the biofuel industry—is more emissions-intensive than traditional gasoline, and, furthermore, promoting biofuels ultimately delays the electrification of the U.S. transportation system, Secchi argued.

Last year, NSP signed a letter to Congress expressing support for year-round E15—gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol that has limited availability during the summer months because it worsens air quality. NSP also plans to use a significant portion of its USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant to bolster the biofuels market.

Sorghum requires less fertilizer than corn (resulting in fewer emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide), and there is some evidence that suggests the production of sorghum ethanol might result in fewer overall emissions, but further research is currently underway at Kansas State University.

“They knew that once the sorghum is milled, it’s a sweetener, a seed, a feed, and it’s got multiple resources that would help a household.”

York said sorghum’s role lies more on the adaptation versus the mitigation side of climate change.

“It’s an improvement journey, right?” he said. “Certainly, technology today has made agriculture more climate resilient than where we were yesterday, and I think sorghum has a key and positive story to play in that,” he said.

Sorghum’s African Roots

Sorghum is a truly ancient grain, with records of production dating way back to 8,000 B.C. The grain originates from northeastern Africa and remains a staple crop in many semi-arid African countries including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. It’s also grown and consumed in India and some East Asian countries.

Unlike the U.S., however, most African and Asian countries use sorghum as food. In fact, more than 500 million people in 30 countries consume sorghum, and the crop is the fifth most important cereal grain in the world. In Ethiopia, for example, it’s used in staple foods including injera, a fermented, spongy flatbread.

Martha Mamo, agronomy and horticulture department head at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has done extensive research on sorghum production in Africa. Most sorghum producers there operate small-scale farms on just a few acres of land, she said, and sorghum is an ideal crop for them. It’s an especially valuable crop as the Horn of Africa is currently experiencing its worst drought on record, causing mass food shortages and exacerbating famine.

“When I think about the many farmers that I have interacted with in Ethiopia, they always think about risk aversion,” said Mamo, who believes the U.S. could learn a thing or two from African agricultural regions. “It could be a [farm] saving crop,” she added.

Diversify the Farm, Diversify the Farmers

Rendel calls sorghum the “red-headed stepchild” of commodity crops. “It’s like, yeah, it’s there. Nobody likes it, though, because it’s itchy at harvest time.” (The plants release small particles that can irritate farmers’ skin when they go through a combine.) Beyond that short-term challenge, however, Rendel said sorghum may be best for adventurous farmers who are willing to experiment.

And yet, experimenting with sorghum is fairly low risk. In addition to needing less fertilizer, it’s less likely to require large acreage and expensive machinery than corn and soy, making it popular among beginning farmers and farmers of color, who often have fewer resources to work with.

On average, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) landowners operate significantly smaller operations than white landowners, and many BIPOC farmers rent or lease their land. Because a farm’s acreage largely determines what it grows, cash crops with a high upfront cost often make less sense for small-scale farmers.

“To grow mainstream cash crops like corn and soybeans, you have to have the know-how. You have to have a large enough size to really compete and thrive,” said Mamo. Smaller farmers often lack land and resources, she said, making sorghum an easier choice.

It’s no accident that sorghum is particularly popular among both Indigenous and Black farmers. “Our Indigenous brothers and sisters are the ones that have helped us survive from day one,” said JohnElla Holmes, executive director of the Kansas Black Farmers Association. “They knew that once the sorghum is milled, it’s a sweetener, a seed, a feed, and it’s got multiple resources that would help a household. I think that was one of the most important reasons it became an important crop for Black farmers.”

It’s also possible there are simply more BIPOC farmers in drought-prone regions due to racist land giveaways in the 19th century, such as the Homestead Act of 1862, which overwhelmingly favored white farmers and left some Black farmers with marginal land.

“Even though sorghum is an ancient grain, it’s gained more traction lately and has a huge opportunity to be a bigger part of the puzzle.”

The Trouble With Markets

Most Americans have never eaten a baked good made with sorghum flour or a steaming bowl of sorghum breakfast porridge. That’s because sorghum lacks a robust consumer market in the U.S. That lack of a market is why sorghum production is much lower than corn, soy, and wheat; there were around 6 million acres harvested in the U.S. in 2021, compared to 84 million acres of corn and 86 million acres of soybeans.

In fact, sorghum production in the U.S. has fallen over the past decade, raising questions about its domestic market viability. But some foresee that trend reversing as the climate continues to dry out in certain agricultural regions.

NSP is working on expanding the market, according to York. The USDA recently added sorghum to its Food Buying Guide, which schools across the country use to plan their meals. It’s being brewed into gluten-free beer ranging from Anheuser-Busch’s Redbridge to craft brews like Bard’s. There are a number of sorghum flour mills that see consumer potential in gluten-free and non-GMO markets. And York sees potential in younger generations that are making increasingly climate-conscious decisions.

“Whether that be greenhouse gases, water, or, importantly, biodiversity . . . they could be looking to sorghum as one of those products that has the metrics and the story to tell behind it,” said York.

Verity Ulibarri, a sorghum grower in New Mexico, agrees its future is bright. “Even though sorghum is an ancient grain, it’s gained more traction lately and has a huge opportunity to be a bigger part of the puzzle,” she said.

As drought conditions worsen on her small farm, Ulibarri thinks sorghum could eventually take center stage, rather than acting in a supporting role for other crops. “I see it not just as a substitute option, but a primary option in certain areas,” she added.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2022/11/28/young-farmers-are-growing-food-for-climate-action-and-racial-justice/ Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:01:02 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=49781 A version of this article originally appeared in the October issue of the Deep Dish, our monthly newsletter for members. Become a member today to receive the next issue. Edwards woke up most days terrified of what her future would look like as the climate crisis intensified. She also learned about the devastating rates of […]

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A version of this article originally appeared in the October issue of the Deep Dish, our monthly newsletter for members. Become a member today to receive the next issue.

As a teenager, Iriel Edwards couldn’t wait to get out of rural Louisiana. But while studying entomology at Cornell University in New York, her path began to change, curving unexpectedly back toward home.

Edwards woke up most days terrified of what her future would look like as the climate crisis intensified. She also learned about the devastating rates of Black land loss and food insecurity in the rural South. She worked in a greenhouse on a project that investigated rice varieties brought from West Africa by enslaved people. Then one day in the library, she discovered Leah Penniman’s book, Farming While Black. “I had never even visualized that possibility for me before then,” she said.

Now, she adds, “farming feels like a practical, tangible thing that somebody can do to make change here and now.” Edwards, 24, works for Jubilee Justice, where she manages a 5-acre farm in Alexandria, Louisiana, on land that was once a plantation. There, her team of Black farmers just wrapped up its third trial season of growing rice using a climate-friendly system called the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI. The organization’s mill will come online before the end of the year, enabling them to begin selling the grain. At the same time, she has started to grow vegetables on her own plot of land with a partner who grows mushrooms.

“Farming feels like a practical, tangible thing that somebody can do to make change here and now.”

According to the results of the National Young Farmers Coalition’s 2022 survey, many of Edwards’ peers share her motivations. Of the 4,300-plus farmers under age 40 who responded, 83 percent said that environmental conservation was one of their primary motivations for farming; meanwhile, 29 percent of all farmers, 54 percent of BIPOC farmers, and 74 percent of Black farmers surveyed ranked anti-racism work among their primary motivations.

The survey also shows that little has improved for young farmers in the last five years, as a significant percentage of respondents reported facing the same challenges to success they identified back in 2017. They’re still struggling to access capital and to manage high healthcare, housing, and production costs. Student debt is still an issue but doesn’t rank as highly as before, likely because most people have paused their payments during the pandemic.

And if President Biden’s plan for partial debt relief is implemented soon, many farmers are likely to benefit, said Carolina Mueller, the rancher and coalition manager who worked closely on the survey.

However, the challenge once again topping the list is finding and affording land—and over the past five years, it has likely gotten worse, Mueller said. Early in the pandemic, wealthy buyers flooded rural areas, driving land values up. At the same time, foreign investors, billionaires, and corporations have also been buying up farmland at high rates. “It’s overwhelming how much of a challenge accessing land is for young farmers,” she said.

“Young farmers are politically and socially driven . . . they want to solve the world’s issues and they have the energy to do it. [The government should] support people who are ready to do that work.”

Edwards says land is fortunately still affordable in Central Louisiana. Even so, she is now one of 100 land advocacy fellows spread out all over the country advocating for local and national policies that will guarantee equitable access to land for the next generation of farmers. And she has witnessed the impact of Black land loss in her work with Jubilee Justice: In working with Black farmers, she has been made aware that, “there are not very many of us.”

Like close to three-quarters of the farmers surveyed, Edwards has also witnessed the impacts of climate change as she plants and harvests. As older farmers age out and farming gets more difficult due to weather extremes, she said, supporting young farmers will become even more critical.

“Young farmers are politically and socially driven, they’re environmentally conscious, they want to engage with their community, they want to solve the world’s issues—and they have the energy to do it,” Edwards said. “Instead of allowing for barriers to persist . . . [the government should] support people who are ready to do that work.”

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]]> https://civileats.com/2022/11/28/a-young-oyster-farmer-carrying-on-the-family-business/ Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:00:33 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=49778 A version of this article originally appeared in the October issue of the Deep Dish, our monthly newsletter for members. Become a member today to receive the next issue. “Growing up on an island where there’s only really lobstering, I thought [the oyster farm] would be a really good opportunity for our family—and I’d get […]

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A version of this article originally appeared in the October issue of the Deep Dish, our monthly newsletter for members. Become a member today to receive the next issue.

When she’s not doing schoolwork or playing field hockey, 15-year-old Gaby Zlotkowski can be found working with oysters: flipping cages, harvesting, shucking, and more. It’s not uncommon for teens to help with the family business, but the island town of Isleboro, Maine, about 100 miles northeast of Portland, is primarily lobster country. It’s all the more notable that Zlotkowski was a driving force not only behind her mom starting Isleboro Oyster Company, but is also now pursuing an oyster and kelp farm of her own.

“Growing up on an island where there’s only really lobstering, I thought [the oyster farm] would be a really good opportunity for our family—and I’d get oysters whenever I wanted,” Zlotkowski said.

The timing is right as Maine’s coastal waters have grown warmer, and many lobsters are moving further north, endangering the industry. Last month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium added lobsters to its “do not eat” list, prompting political backlash from a Maine congressman.

After years in the lobster industry, Zlotkowski’s mother, Kim Grindle, says she had always wanted to try aquaculture. “When I started talking about [oyster farming], Gaby kind of pushed me into it and said, ‘You have to do this.’ She was very eager and she’s the reason we’re integrating species diversification.”

After learning about the kelp farms in Portland’s Casco Bay, Zlotkowski started thinking about how kelp could provide diversification for her mom’s oyster farm. When she began the 2021–22 school year and had the opportunity to create an independent learning project, she decided to develop a program on growing kelp.

“I’ve eaten a lot of kelp in restaurants and really like it,” said Zlotkowski, adding that she likes that kelp doesn’t require pesticides, freshwater, or fertilizer to grow, and that it can create healthier ecosystems and cleaner air and water.

Most Mainers set their kelp in October or November. Zlotkowski didn’t get her state license until January, but she still managed to lay 1,200 feet of line and harvested about 800 pounds of kelp. She also gave tours of the kelp farm to local schools and was able to employ two friends and her brother on harvest day.

“I’m going to keep growing kelp as long as I can, and as my mom expands her business into a kelp farm, I plan on playing a key role,” said Zlotkowski.

While she’s not sure what she’ll do after school—she’s only 15, after all—Zlotkowski sees the work on the kelp farm as a key ingredient.

“As the working waterfront becomes less accessible in parts of Maine, my family’s history plays an important role,” she said. “I’m proud of my heritage and it’s pretty unique. There are a few things that I’m interested in doing after school and I think aquaculture and fisheries will play a major role.”

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