In the 90-minute ritual, she distributes buckets of grain and hay for the cows’ breakfast, scrapes away animal feces, fills the water trough bucket by bucket, milks the dairy cows, feeds the barnyard cats and new kittens, and shepherds sometimes recalcitrant cows out to pasture. Next, she replenishes feed and water for the chickens and lets them out into their area.

It’s a lot of work. “To be honest, I take a nap every single morning,” laughs Maffie, who is studying chemistry at Bates College. “But I’ve learned more about cows and chickens than I ever knew before.” She’s part of the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund (ASLF), a unique month-long immersive farm apprenticeship program that provides farm internships and apprentice opportunities to students and career changers.

The ASLF was founded in 2022 by the family and friends of pioneering cheesemonger Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheesemongers after her sudden passing. Saxelby, a beloved figure in the cheese world, championed American farmstead cheese, leading to its rise in prominence. Working on farms was life changing for her and instilled a desire to support small producers and change our industrial food system.

“We need to educate this next generation of farmers” in order to bring about systemic change, says Susie Cover, the ASLF’s executive director. Those who enter farming-adjacent careers will also be better equipped to make change. Learning the art of affinage (the process of aging cheese), herd management like Maffie, or how to properly prune plants to encourage stem growth are experiences that students will “never get by learning in a classroom,” she says. “The hands-on part is the most important.”

“The hands-on part is the most important.”

Nearly 100 apprentices are working in 60 farms across the country; one is employed at London’s famed Neal’s Yard Dairy. Placements include produce, animal, hemp, and dairy farms, and cheesemaking and salumi operations in locations aligned with the fund’s mission and values of quality sustainable agriculture.

The program has doubled in size each year; 500 applications were received in 2024, a result of extensive outreach at agriculture, culinary, food studies, and trade programs, postings on job list serves, as well as word of mouth. However, no farm experience is required, stresses Cover, just the ability to handle the physical work and to take initiative. The ASLF is also working to become a college-accredited program.

Apprentices are paid an hourly wage of $20 for a 40-hour workweek and an expense stipend; the ASLF covers transportation and housing costs, removing barriers for prospective applicants and for farms to receive much-needed help.There are frequent check-ins with the apprentices and farms to ensure all is going smoothly.

For apprentices, not having to worry about costs is a huge relief. “To [be able to] put my all into it made me want to put more energy and effort into making the most of this program,” says Mona Ziabari, an apprentice at Fisheye Farms, a sustainably run urban farm in Detroit. A student with limited funds, she’s unsure if she could have applied.

Zibari is a food studies major at New York University and an accomplished cook who envisions a career in the culinary arts. “It is super important to learn about the food production side because I think a lot of people in our society are not educated on what it looks like,” she says.

Zibari had worked in restaurants, but she was taken aback by the physical stamina farming requires. Fisheye’s owners arranged to have a bicycle for Ziabari to bike to work from another urban farm where she is housed, and to stage at farm-to-table restaurants on her days off to broaden her understanding.

“We wouldn’t have been able to have apprentices if they weren’t paid for,” says Ryan McPherson, owner of Glidden Point Oyster Farms in Maine. The ASLF approached McPherson this year to include an aquaculture opportunity. It also added five urban farms to its roster.

McPherson was impressed by the caliber of the applicants, farms, and vetting process. He appreciates the opportunity to share knowledge, since farmed aquaculture is still a very young industry and its connection to and overlap with agriculture is not yet well explored. “It is important,” says McPherson, “to be in those conversations.” Since his farm’s two apprentices had prior terrestrial farming experience, he expects that they’re able to share insights into similarities and differences into the two types of farming. The apprentices have been grading out and redistributing seed, conducting farm maintenance, and washing and packing oysters for sale and shipping.

To Bliss Battle, an alumna of New York City’s Brooklyn Grange, the financial support signaled that “people wanted to see me succeed,” she says. Battle left art school to try farming because it “involved manual labor and being in nature.” She says she “came out way more confident in my skills, like how to use all the tools, and in production-level farming,” and developed an appreciation of growing food for mutual aid and not for profit. She was later hired at another farm by a former Grange supervisor.

Battle is now attending welding school so she can repair farm machinery. “I want to be an asset to my community,” she says. “And my sense of community has been more solidified through the work I’ve been doing as a farmhand.”

“I want to be an asset to my community.”

Ziabari’s eyes were also opened by a blend of practical knowledge and sociocultural perspectives. “I’ve been learning how culture and race intersect with food production,” she says, noting that “food deserts are prevalent” in the more diverse areas of Detroit, already a multi-racial and ethnic city.

Ziabari credits the city’s growing urban farm movement for improving food access for marginalized communities. The farms have a “progressive approach to incorporating culture,” she says, growing produce that is meaningful to residents in a nod to the city’s history.

“It’s just crazy how people don’t think about it in that way,” she says. “I’m one of them. You’re not forced to think about it unless you’re doing it, having conversations about it, or actually having to get on your knees and do the work.”

The experience Maffie gained with farms, cows and cheesemaking—her farm’s owner is developing a cheese program—fit her interest in food science.

She was also surprised at some of the lesser-known ways politics and government affect farms. She learned that farms are required to pay for the USDA inspectors who inspect their meat, which can “put a strain on both butchers and small farms,” says Maffie, because larger farms can slaughter so many more animals that the cost becomes nominal. Also, since only one USDA inspector shows up at a slaughterhouse, the animals on smaller farms wind up subject to more scrutiny than animals at larger ones. With higher volumes, employees there assist the lone USDA inspector who can’t watch each process at once.

Remarkably, while some feeder programs may be more diverse than in the past, the ASLF team was surprised that nearly 70 percent of this year’s applications came from women. Farming though is a white and male-dominated profession; the number of female farmers has held steady in recent years, according to USDA data.

“I think it is probably a backlash to the fact that it is a male-dominated field,” says Maffie. “Now, there’s a bunch of women who are like, ‘No, I want to do that, too,’ so I’m going to start setting myself up to do that.”

Surprisingly, women “outnumber males in aquaculture in Maine,” says McPherson. He bought his farms from women owners and his staff is well over half female.

“I think it is really cool that people can see [food production] as a career option, especially young women,” says Battle. She says programs such as the ASLF can have a huge impact on people’s lives. “Your formative years, you can see a subversive career path and that it is sustainable. And you can go where you want with it,” she adds.

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I’ve been gardening at my home in the Nashville area (Zone 7b) for three years. I’ve learned a lot, but clearly not enough to be able to grow a decent Cherokee Purple tomato. 

Here are 10 tips for a better garden sourced directly from my own garden fails.

1. Set a watering schedule

This one sounds simple because it is. Water is crucial for a successful garden, but not every plant likes the same watering schedule. The bottom line is that you need a schedule and a plan for watering.

Factors like rainfall, humidity and temperature can change how you approach watering, so this skill does take some time to develop. If you’re unsure if your plants need water, using a simple moisture meter can help you see visually how moist your soil is. You don’t want your soil to be too moist, either, as this can also create an environment ripe for pests and disease. 

Inconsistent watering can also leave your plants more vulnerable to disease and pests. Both disease and pests are opportunistic and love to take advantage of a plant that’s struggling. For example, my first attempt at growing big heirloom tomatoes was thwarted by blossom-end rot. I had initially attributed this to a lack of calcium in the soil, but the real culprit was inconsistent watering. Without consistent water, it’s difficult for plants to use the fertilizers you put into the soil. Check out this guide from Water Use It Wisely to get started.

2. Smart staking

When you think about staking your garden, most of us think about tomatoes. While tomatoes are going to be addressed here, there are many other crops you should be giving some extra support. 

The first thing to think about with staking is how the plant grows. If the plant  has a vining habit like cucumbers, squash and some varieties of beans, you’ll want to have supports ready before the plant needs support. Direct contact with the soil can make the plant more accessible to bugs and other pests, so keeping the vine tied up and tidy will keep your plant healthier and promotes its natural growing habit. 

The best advice I have for staking is: don’t use a tomato cage for tomatoes. Tomato cages are often made of thin, flimsy wire that holds up circles of wire around the tomato plant. While the cage may work well for supporting branches, it’s not giving the tomato the support it needs around the main stalk. I’ve found that providing rigid support to the stalk is the most important part of keeping your tomatoes happy and upright. 

A more robust version of a tomato cage like this one sold by Ultomato is a much better choice for an easy assembly cage that will actually provide solid support for your tomatoes. It also works great for other crops like pole beans. I used one of these for my pole beans and it’s doing fantastic. 

3. Choose your varieties wisely

The biggest mistake I made this year was planting Sungold tomato starts, an indeterminate variety of tomato, in a small pot with merely a wire tomato cage for support. I didn’t even stake the thing. 

Indeterminate tomatoes grow more like a vine compared to bushier determinate tomatoes. (You can learn more about the difference through this guide from Bonnie Plants). The difference is that indeterminates will keep growing and produce fruit consistently throughout the season compared to their determinate cousins, which set fruit all at once. Without proper support, they will become an unmanageable jungle of 10 to 15 foot vines. If I had known this, I could have created a better plan for my tomatoes informed by their growing habit. 

Some varieties of crops are hybridized to protect against certain pests or diseases. If you’ve battled powdery mildew in your garden, choose a plant variety that’s resistant to powdery mildew. 

You can find information about disease, deer and pest-resistant varieties of plants on the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences website. If you’re new to disease resistant varieties, this is a great place to start learning.  

4. Spread out

Make sure your plants have enough space to grow and thrive. The seedlings we transplant into the garden are so tiny, and it will initially feel weird to see so much space in the garden. Part of my Sungold tomato failure could also be blamed on my decision to put two plants in one 12” pot. It was too much for the pot, which is why it fell over, killing my tomatoes. 

Be sure you check your seed packet or this chart from Mary’s Heirloom Seeds for accurate information about how much space to give your plants. And trust the information. Your garden is not an anomaly where plants can magically grow closer together. 

5. Use a garden planner

There are lots of resources online for planning your garden. Timing is everything with growing annual plants. For my fall garden, I’ve been using Smart Gardener. What I like about this tool is the built-in reminders based on the time of year. Be sure you’re putting those plants in the soil at the right time. 

It’s easy to think that early planting equals early yield and a longer growing season. However, research and years of experimentation has shown that’s simply not the case. Minding the time of year and your plant’s preferred growing season is key to a healthy crop.

6. Plan for pests

Prevention is better than the cure, especially when it comes to garden pests. Pests can shorten your harvest, cripple your plants’ production potential and double your garden chores. 

Some common pests that set back my garden this summer were squash vine borers, tomato hornworms and birds. Other gardeners in my area have battled powdery mildew, potato beetles, aphids, and deer. 

Constructing simple fencing can help keep rabbits away and planting good companion plants like marigolds can go a long way to keep unwanted critters away from your precious plants. 

7. Organize, organize, organize

Having an organized and tidy space to keep your seeds, tools, fertilizers and other garden implements you’ll be using every day will make keeping up with your garden easier. If the space is chaotic, you’re going to be far less likely to spend time there and less likely to complete your garden chores. 

If you need a hoe or a spade to prep your garden beds, but you can’t find either one, or they’re spread out throughout the garden, your chances of completing the task are going to be far lower. If the water hose is hard to access, you’re going to be less likely to follow your watering schedule.

Do yourself a favor and spend some time organizing your space to maximize both you and your garden’s potential. 

8. In the way, on the way

This advice came from one of my favorite local content creators, Anne of All Trades. The advice is simple: if you know you’re going to need a specific tool or implement to complete your daily garden tasks, put it in a spot where you can’t miss it. 

Plan the shortest or most convenient route to your garden and put all your tools or things you will need along that path.

9. Know your growing zone

If you don’t know your growing zone, there’s an easy way to find out. Simply type in your ZIP code into the USDA Plant Hardiness interactive map and voila! Knowing your zone will help you know how long your growing season is and is a critical tool used by many gardeners to plan when they start and close their gardens. 

The zones and growing seasons are mainly determined by your first and last frost date—the last frosty day of Spring when there’s morning frost and the first frosty day of Fall. 

10. Follow other gardeners in your growing zone

Now that you know your USDA zone, search on your favorite social media site for other gardener content creators who live in the same zone. I’ve found a wealth of information through YouTube by searching “Zone 7 gardening.” There are many growers and content creators in Zone 7, where I live, so there is no shortage of gardeners to learn from. If you live in one of the more extreme zones, here is where following other creators can be especially useful. 

Don’t be afraid to follow gardeners across the pond too. I’ve learned a lot from growers like GrowVeg and Gaz Oakley, who both live in the UK, but are in the same zone. Once you start searching, you may be surprised just how many gardeners are posting about their successes and failures. 

One of my favorite resources for finding growers is Epic Gardening. While Kevin, the founder of Epic Gardening, lives in San Diego, California, (Zone 10), he’s taken care to showcase gardeners in other growing zones across America to ensure folks are getting well-rounded advice. 

Looking forward to fall

It’s August, which is prime time for starting a fall garden in Tennessee. I’m taking all my lessons learned from this spring and summer and I’m applying that knowledge to my fall garden plans. 

I’ve never grown a fall garden. While many gardeners pack up shop after the summer harvest is done, there is still plenty of time to grow crops that enjoy cooler weather. I just planted Danvers 126 carrots, Lacinato kale, Seven Top turnip greens, Purple-Top White Globe turnips, Catskill Brussels sprouts and Early Golden Acre cabbage. The tiny cotyledons just popped up out of the soil today, so I’ll be looking forward to chronicling my fall garden journey. 

The post Ten Tips to Improve Your Garden Next Season appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Umi Jenkins

Director of Mississippi Farm to School Network

Our work is centered a lot around young people in grades Kindergarten through 12th. This past year, we received the Educator of the Year Award from Young, Gifted, and Empowered, because we really put a lot of emphasis around educating the community on food literacy. We’ve had higher community engagement and that’s come with our Youth Ambassador Program. Students participated from different school districts all over the state through this program. Their parents would also join, so it became a virtual network with agricultural-based learning, cooking demos—and all these things are done virtually. This level of community engagement was what we wanted, so farm-to-school doesn’t feel like something that’s so logistical and just taking place among food service directors and specialized folks.

The Farm Bill affects us in that it allows necessary changes and improvements in our agricultural system. I see the Farm Bill as something instrumental that can get your hopes up then feel quite deflating when the implementation isn’t fulfilled.

I just think Farm Bill priorities need to be radically refocused, which, depending on who you ask, feels like a difficult thing to address. But I think the application process for a lot of folks—especially farmers and organizations—is beyond frustrating and has been overly addressed in conversations around what needs to change. And I do feel that’s part of the equity and discriminatory practices that comes up with the USDA in terms of accessibility.

There’s been a lack of investment into specialty crop producers who are not growing as much as the commodity producers. And so, therefore, a lot of the funding and resources is going to the big commodity producers. Specialty crops make up a vast majority of what people need in terms of health and wellness—they don’t need processed food that comes from commodity crops like corn or soybeans. We don’t need that for our health and well-being. We need specialty crops, okra and tomatoes and all the different varieties of fruits and vegetables. If we limit that resource, limit support to the farmers who are growing those things, we are in essence dwindling that beautiful and strong element to the community, which fuels our health. It’s our food source. So, if this keeps getting neglected year after year, or the specialty crop farmers are having more and more difficulty applying for loans or getting the support they need—it just really damages and has been damaging our communities for so long. So, that is the type of implementation that I’m not seeing in my local and regional area. It’s not impacting my region. I haven’t seen any type of significant investment into specialty crop farmers. So, that’s something I think should change. 

If the Farm Bill doesn’t prioritize communities like mine, it would create even greater fatigue in our communities. People are exhausted. They’re exhausted with solutions being present and not being accessible. Something being dangled in front of you is quite frustrating. So, if something that could benefit us is proposed and suggested but not actually implemented or passed, I do feel it’s going to affect our local economy in a way that will create greater decline. We are seeing more and more young people who are leaving the state. And how can we blame them if we’re not creating economic opportunities? In rural areas, agriculture is a really large sector of their economic mobility. So, if the agricultural sector is not being invested in and uplifted, then you’re going to see these rural areas decline even more. And that will get into other discussions like the drug issues that are happening in our communities where there is poverty. That would just exacerbate already existing issues in addition to creating a great mistrust in our ability to look to legislators to solve problems.

I think even if one or two of these things that could benefit our community were strongly implemented and the follow through was there, community morale would boost. We would see improvement in terms of mental health in our community. I think we would see a decline in social issues that come about when there is a lack of investment and just a lack of interest in the community. People are unconsciously or consciously aware when they feel like their community is not expected to thrive. If there’s a shift in that then I think we’ll have more jobs, more creative jobs, more jobs that are rooted in tech because when people have a sense of job security and food security, it allows them to be more open and receptive to learning new things. 

It feels like this spiritual component that is all together left out of the conversation with how people connect with their food and how they connect with land. There’s really not space for that at a policy discussion level, but it’s such a huge part of why people even remain in certain areas despite the poverty. There’s a cultural connection as well as a connection to how people relate to the food ways. So, I think it’s important that we’re listening to the community, that part of the narrative is taken into account in how we prioritize our communities because again, this affects mental health. These are folks’ livelihoods. In terms of farmers, this is how they earn their living and how they feed their families. So, if we’re not associating that with our overall community wellness and plans to improve our community, then I don’t think we’re actively listening to the needs of our community. We’re just putting a bandaid on it or coming up with anecdotal solutions. This isn’t just land. There was bloodshed here and babies born here and bread is broken here. There were activists and people who have fought for this land and fought for the right to grow food here and to worship here. It’s hard to give that up. It’s hard to feel like you’re being run off of something that your family has lived on and loved. 

 There’s so much that is in this land. And so we honor it, and that has to be considered with resources and how we conserve it to ensure we’re creating a container to remember these things and still value these things as a part of our community.

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Choctaw Tribal Members

Choctaw Fresh

Tomika Bell (Choctaw Fresh Produce distribution manager): As Native Americans, we live in rural areas, which means we don’t have the ability to be near any kind of grocery stores or farm stands. But Choctaw Fresh gives people the ability to utilize our mobile market, and put farms in certain areas, which means we’re able to reach those people that live in scarce areas that aren’t able to have access to eating healthy. 

Nigel Gibson (Tribal Council member): Food is an essential need to life. Within our community, we have a high rate of diabetes with all ages within our tribe. What Choctaw Fresh is trying to provide is a healthier way of eating, and also educate tribe members on how they need to eat regardless if they’re diabetic or not. 

Bell: We consider the land our motherland and Choctaw Fresh takes care of it by growing organic. We’re not actually disturbing our soil, which is our way of taking care of our land. I feel like the Farm Bill could help us a lot by getting a lot of our land back. We don’t have much access to a lot of good farmland. 

Gibson: To be able to expand like that would not only give us opportunities food wise within the community, but it also could give us economical help within the community because when you expand, you’re able to provide more job opportunities.

We’re always looking for economical opportunities, whether it’s federal funding or revenue from your own tribal casino. Having that kind of funding for Choctaw Fresh would be tremendous. 

Bell: Access to broadband is also an issue for us because without it we’re not able to reach out and do what we need to do out there. But, personally, I don’t believe that the Farm Bill will make a big impact on us other than the ability to get a better rate of payment for our workers. We hire harvesters, harvest techs, high tunnel maintenance workers, farmers, and anyone who’s operating from the distribution side. We started out paying them $8 an hour and have been able to find the funding to increase that to $12. If Farm Bill funding goes through, we will be able to increase that to $15 an hour. Good paying wages are really important for us to be able to retain labor workers and avoid high turnover. Being able to pay them more would help with food insecurity and food access because if we don’t have workers then we don’t have food.

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Ya-Sin Shabazz

Gulf Coast Sustainable Growers Alliance

We started the Gulf Coast Sustainable Growers Alliance as a way of organizing and keeping on point with a lot of our work around food. We also started the Just Water Initiative, which maintains a two-and-a-half acre off bottom oyster aquaculture operation.

Aquaculture is definitely a challenge our organization is addressing that could be affected by the Farm Bill. There are other challenges in terms of land ownership, land stewardship, and retention. And then there’s the water systems and irrigation systems that can help advance farming. So, those are two of our biggest problems with regards to our food work. With aquaculture, we have challenges in terms of boats, equipment, temporary water closures, and reef closures, because of water quality on the coast, which is also a problem.

Whenever there are adverse effects—anything from severe rain to bad weather to hurricanes being the worst—that does damage to the fisheries. But also just too much rain can affect the water sufficiency because of salinity levels, and things like that. There’s what’s called the freshwater inversion from the Mississippi River. So, when the rivers are high, the Army Corps of Engineers has the ultimate decision-making power, and they can open the spillways from the river into the Gulf. Water that comes in from the spillway will eventually make its way to the Gulf and that really impacts salinity levels, sometimes creating a salty deadzone. All of this can impact different fish species that are dependent on certain salt levels in the water and, therefore, affect the livelihood of fishermen.

Without support from the Farm Bill, there would be a number of challenges. This area has weathered them and will continue to weather them. We just hope to be able to make sure to the best extent possible by promoting local farmers, fresh food, and trying to continually educate the youth on the importance of food and food systems.

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Darnella Winston

Project Director/Cooperative Field Specialist Federation of Southern Cooperatives

Our organization was born out of the Civil Rights movement in 1972, and our focus has been corporate development, land retention, and advocacy. But, lately, we’ve been working more with youth. What we’re realizing is that there’s a whole other audience out there that we’re missing, which is the next generation. And by the next generation I mean everyone from six years old all the way to 46 years old to move into the swing of agriculture. 

I tell people that the Farm Bill sets the priorities for the food and the farm. It is one of the largest bills in terms of money that comes out of the government. We have to be able to say where we want to allocate that money. We try to come up with priorities and recommendations as far as what our members and our clients would like to see. One or two of the priorities that we push for is for the microloan to go from $50,000 to $100,000 because that’s a loan rural people are able to receive. It’s not as much based on credit as it is your work and what it is you claim that you’re trying to do. One of the things that we pushed was for the microloan’s increased limit. There’s loan forgiveness within the USDA’s Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement lending program, which has been a slow start and we’re not sure what’s going to happen with that. But our property is an issue in the BIPOC community. And in order for us to keep saving our land, we need that relending program to be able to save that land for the next generation.

Broadband is also going to be very important for us in the Farm Bill. With the way times are going, that’s almost another way of business for the BIPOC community, but in order to be a part of it, you have to have broadband.

For example, we’re to the point now that some of the grocery stores want farmers to send them an email in the morning letting them know what the farmer is going to have that day. My father would type it up on a typewriter and mail it to them. By the time the grocery store gets it, somebody else might have sent in what they had and outbidded us because we don’t have internet.

If the Farm Bill could help us access better Broadband, people would be able to have a better understanding about local and fresh produce and where it’s grown. People want to be able to see what we’re doing. They ask, “Can we see it? Do you have a website to show us?” Having functioning internet and a website would be a total game changer, especially in the cooperative movement.

If communities like ours aren’t prioritized in the Farm Bill, it’s going to be a slow demise. It would send us back to the drawing board, trying to squeeze six quarters out of a dollar to keep the work going. We can’t totally rely on these programs because we don’t know which way they’re gonna go. We have to remember to cooperatively work together in community to try to push the priorities to the best that we can. But if we don’t get them, we still don’t give up on our work.

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Calvin Head

Farmer and Director of Milestone Cooperative Association

I’m participating in a regenerative agriculture initiative with several other farmers and youth and have served as director of Milestone Cooperative Association for about 12 years. I’m also a community organizer with emphasis on economic and community development. And, historically, I’ve been in this civil rights work almost all of my adult life and most of my young life.

One of the primary purposes of our organization right now is to offset these health issues by growing quality food, which is really not accessible here for most people. We’re helping people to understand what it is to eat healthy because a lot of people don’t really know, believe it or not. We’re also just trying to enhance the quality of life for low-income individuals and limited-resource farms.

I think the Farm Bill was written with us in mind in terms of how it’s presented to Congress, but when it comes to actual distribution and allocation, I think that the rules of the game change somehow. Historically, every time we get inside the process and we get to understand and master that process, they change the rules right away. They know who gets what. It’s the same people in the same places for the most part. They’re all well connected with who they want to help. I will just say the educational piece around the Farm Bill needs to be improved. Instead of just announcing it, let people really, really know what’s in it and how to take advantage of it—especially rural people and people of color.

We have many priorities for the Farm Bill, but where our community is really, really getting left behind is with broadband access. Having access to it where we are is really difficult. Our service providers are price gouging and taking as much advantage of us as they can because they know we have few alternatives. 

Right now, we’re limited to one small hotspot at our farm store for internet access. And everything is set up online, even our surveillance system. So, we can’t run the cash register, the gas pump, the surveillance system and the credit card machine at the same time. We’re limited and that hotspot can only go so far. So, we have to rob Peter to pay Paul. Broadband is so important in everyone’s everyday life. You’re almost third world without it. When we first got certified with the USDA Food Safety Program for our vegetable initiative, there was so much stuff that you had to go online and do.

It needs to be made mandatory that some of the resources from the Farm Bill reach us. Do you know what it would mean to have access to a new tractor to do some of the work we need done in these fields? One day your tractor is working and the next day you’re just hoping it makes it through that day. Or just being able to have some upfront money would be helpful. Most of the time, we’ve invested out of our own pockets. We’ve taken on all the risk and then we’re one flood away from bankruptcy. Getting support from the Farm Bill could give us the same flexibility that big farmers have when there’s a disaster. And you wouldn’t have to spend your life’s savings just to try to get a crop in the ground. It would have a tremendous impact. I have never as a farmer operated in the black.

There’s money allotted just for farmers in the Farm Bill and we just want our fair share. At least, before I leave this earth, I would like to see it. I would just like to see a level playing field just for once. All we want is the opportunity to work hard. Nobody is asking for a handout, just some flexibility.

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Many labels that guarantee humane treatment of farm animals (e.g., “humanely raised”), do anything but and are largely meaningless. Only recently did the USDA announce that it might regulate some of these labels after a push from advocates (we aren’t holding our breath). If this is the case of animal welfare labeling, consumers are right to be concerned that it is likely true of “green” labeling as well, particularly for the dairy industry, which is one of the most environmentally intensive industries on Earth. 

Farm Forward recently published a major investigative report detailing systematic animal suffering and consumer fraud at Alexandre Family Farm—a leading large-scale organic dairy company with “well over 9,000 head of cattle,” according to co-owner Blake Alexandre—whose products are covered in certification labels. The details of this investigation and the facts about large-scale dairy production should call into question the idea that the industry can be compatible with a more sustainable and humane food system. 

Farm Forward’s investigation and deceptive labeling

One of the key findings of Farm Forward’s investigation into Alexandre was this: Certifications such as Regenerative Organic Certified and Certified Humane were, sadly, insufficient to stop widespread abuse of cows and apparent environmental violations of land and water. This means that the primary function of labels—to give consumers assurances that a given product meets their values—frequently fails. In other words, humane labels aren’t there to help the consumer find better products. They’re tools for the meat and dairy industry to market their products. It’s unlikely, for example, that when a consumer sees one of these labels on Alexandre milk products in a Whole Foods Market, they imagine a field of dead cows being used as compost, or decaying cow corpses dangling into waterways, likely violating state water quality laws. Yet that’s exactly what Farm Forward’s investigation found. 

And then there’s the halo effect. Other companies that use Alexandre as a supplier, whether for ice cream, cheese, or even toddler formula, have used marketing based off of Alexandre’s humanewashing and greenwashing, and reaped the benefits. For a long time, Alexandre—and companies that have Alexandre as a supplier—have touted the Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label, a certification with genuinely high standards for cow treatment. However, Farm Forward learned from its investigation that only a relatively small number of Alexandre cows (fewer than 300 of the more than 5,000 to 9,000 cows raised by Alexandre, or roughly three to six percent) actually qualify under the label. Yet, companies bathe in the good image of Alexandre all the same, touting Alexandre’s ROC certification whether or not the actual milk used in their products came from ROC cows (as of writing, Alexandre’s ROC certification was suspended after a February 2024 audit, pending conclusion of the investigation).

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Green Guides require that marketers “ensure that all reasonable interpretations of their claims are truthful, not misleading, and supported by a reasonable basis” and that environmental marketing claims “not overstate, directly or by implication, an environmental attribute or benefit.” The FTC itself states that “…sometimes what companies think their green claims mean and what consumers really understand are two different things.” A consumer buying milk adorned with labels such as ROC and “Certified Humane” ought to have confidence that those products were actually made from properly treated cows by a company following environmental guidelines and ordinances, and free from the systematic abuse documented in the investigation. 

Large-scale dairy is incompatible with net zero

In order to understand deceptive labeling, however, we have to go back to the beginning: Why do massive dairy companies feel a need to plaster their products with misleading labels that may violate FTC guidelines? There’s a simple answer: They know the reputation of industrial dairy is faltering and are desperate to remedy the problem with claims that their industry can both expand and save us from climate disaster. And if the recent industrial dairy ad campaigns are any indication, it would seem that they are quite desperate. 

On an ultra-small scale, a sincere commitment to regenerative agriculture is compatible with reducing many of the harms of industrial animal agriculture, including harms to the climate. However, Alexandre and so many other companies that want to rehabilitate dairy farms are not small-scale; they may have thousands of animals under their care. And recent research into the ability of large-scale “regenerative” cow operations to offset as much greenhouse gas emissions as they produce is quite clear: It won’t work. The authors conclude that soil-based carbon sequestration “has a limited role to mitigate climate warming caused by the ruminant sector.” According to the study, offsetting the methane associated with global ruminant farming annually—a massive 135 gigatons—with soil-based sequestration is biophysically impossible. 

And yet, for decades, the broader dairy industry has been pushing smaller farmers out of business, the very farm operations that can represent a legitimate attempt at a regenerative system. 

Playing dairy roulette 

Farm Forward’s investigation didn’t just reveal that one particular company eschewed these standards, but also that the entire dairy system is flawed. Several certifications failed to see animal abuse happening right under their noses. USDA Organic requires that producers that treat an organic cow with antibiotics must remove that cow from the organic program. In doing so, the USDA inadvertently creates a financial disincentive for producers to treat suffering cows with the proper care, since non-organic milk and meat is sold at a far lower price point (see the report’s appendix); and many companies have benefited from the halo effect of Alexandre’s deceptions. What makes this all especially sad is that there are labels—Regenerative Organic Certified and Animal Welfare Approved among them—that genuinely have high standards relative to many other labeling schemes on the market. They can represent a small piece of the path toward a more sustainable and humane food system. But in the context of dairy production, the findings of the investigation have led Farm Forward to think that guaranteeing proper care of thousands of dairy cows just isn’t possible, given the unique challenges of dairy at scale and given the bad incentives. 

Alexandre’s failures are just one example of the dairy industry failing to live up to its promises. It tells us it can save the planet while treating cows humanely, while raking in unprecedented profits with its mega-dairies. How many more instances of animal abuse and climate devastation do we need to see before we stop believing that the industry that creates these harms also somehow holds the key to fixing them?

When a consumer buys milk from the grocery store—milk that they cannot guarantee came from an ultra small-scale operation with high standards of care—they are playing a game of dairy roulette. And in a world of such extreme levels of consumer deception, it becomes an easy choice to try oat milk. 

Farm Forward is a team of strategists, campaigners, and thought leaders guiding the movement to change the way our world eats and farms. Its mission is to change the way our world eats and farms end factory farming by changing farming, changing policy, and changing the stories we tell about animal agriculture. Learn more at https://www.farmforward.com/

The post Opinion: Farm Forward’s Investigation Into Alexandre Farms and the Greenwashing of Large-scale Dairy appeared first on Modern Farmer.