Grow Food

photo courtesy Viva Farms

Connecting people who want to farm with the opportunity to do just that.

By Amanda Kimble-Evans

GrowFood.org is a network that connects farmers interested in teaching with people interested in farming. Their mission is to help grow a community of new small-scale organic farmers and break America’s dependency on factory food. We talked with one of the founders Ethan Schaffer about the website, the next generation of programs they’ve launched and the positive changes he’s seen in the agricultural community.

How did you get involved in organic agriculture?

I grew up on a farm in northern Idaho. When I was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer at the age of 15, it drove me to look for more healthy alternatives and reducing toxicity in the world. Growing up in the rural community and farming community lead me toward how we can transform agriculture.

When I worked on an organic farm in New Zealand, I found my calling. I knew this was a contribution I could make to the world.

How did GrowFood.org come to be?

Ten years ago we were in the middle of the “dot com” boom and we were children of the internet. My brother was a web designer and both my wife and I had worked on over 10 different farms across New Zealand and beyond.

We took the early social networking movement and applied it to creating a network for experienced farmers and people interested in learning how to farm. We now have farms in all 50 states and 44 countries listed on the site and we just launched an updated website that connects better with other social networking systems so farmers can connect with other farmers.

Our network is even useful for people who are trying to grown their own food in their backyards. Local farmers are great resources for gardeners. We’re even encouraging people to take a day and work on their local farms.

We want to push the spike in new farmers even further. But we recognize not everybody wants to be a farmer, so we also want to connect more people with their food. It is completely transformative to get your hands in the soil and realize this is what it takes to put food on your plate.

We think we’re really sitting on an internet trend. Not just social network online, but linking it with something real. Make the connections online and then get people out on the farm.

How does GrowFood.org compare to WOOFING?

We’re similar. WOOFING is kind of a complicated network of different organizations that sometimes leans toward eco-tourism with the limitations the program put on participants in terms of how many hours they can work. And early WOOFING programs in the U.S. weren’t really successful. We realized the U.S. had to do it a little differently.

The majority of members in our program actually plan to learn how to farm. They are really trying to learn agriculture. They don’t work just 4 hours a day, they work 10-12 hours. There are also opportunities for learning the ins and outs of natural building and energy management—skills participants can eventually apply on their own farms.

That’s not to say future farmers are the only people who can use our site. There are “day farming” opportunities, internships and seasonal farming positions in addition to learning opportunities for people interested in farming as a career path.

How do you keep your connection to the land when your work with GrowFood.org involves mostly the virtual?

Even when we were founding the site, we were working on the farm. We were just as excited about getting out and getting our hands dirty as we were about the potential of the GrowFood.org network. I’d work 10-12 hours on the farm and then go work on developing GrowFood.org.

In 2009 we launched a pilot farm called Viva on 33 acres in Northern Seattle (www.vivafarms.org). The focus of the farm is to train a new generation of farmers--to take new farmers through an educational course and provide them with infrastructure.

The course is a two-part program divided into farm education and farm management, and is more for people who have some experience already and are ready to launch their own farms. Participants can then rent land below market rate on Viva’s property and we provide other services like equipment share. Local organic farmers need $20-$30,000 to start up if they already have land. With us they can get started for $5,000.

The farm is basically based on two models: one is Intervale and the other is Alba. And our particular focus is working with Latino and other immigrant farmers. Helping them transition from farm workers to farm owners. Everything is taught bilingually and we work really hard to create community between the English and Spanish speaking participants.

We had nearly 40 students go through the education program in 2009 and it boiled down to nine farmers on the Viva property. We also help place students on land opportunities and a lot of the other participants had their own land.

What we really want, long-term, is to make it a successful model that other communities can then create into similar programs.

How has the agricultural community changed over the last 10 years?

There is a huge issue that the USDA is worried about—the aging farmer. I believe the average age is around 57 years old. When we surveyed our GrowFood.org farmer-members—60% are over 40. But 50% of the new members were between 20 and 40. We saw a spike in young farmers in our membership and I think this holds true as general trend right now in agriculture.

The children of aging farmers are moving to the city and the new farmers on the scene are coming from all over, but not necessarily from places you might expect. There is an increased diversity of backgrounds in the farming community. The latest trends are young college-educated people without a lot of farm experience, and immigrant farmers who have a lot of farm work experience but who haven’t had a lot of opportunity.

Historically there has been a level of discomfort between farm owners and immigrant farm workers. We designed Viva Farms to really integrate these groups. The good thing about the young farmers new to the community is they are much more comfortable with diversity and languages. We don’t really see that kind of clash of cultures that we used to.

What do you think is the most important thing for consumers to understand about where their food comes from?

The amount of work and effort and knowledge and care that goes into growing our food. Over the past 50 years or so, farming has lost its standing as a profession. The recent resurgence in consumer wanting to know where their food comes from is putting the farmer back into a revered position. And, personally, I’ve never been happier working on the farm. That is something we think everyone should experience.