Farming requires deep, multidisciplinary knowledge spanning a wide and ever-evolving range of subjects. In addition to growing dozens of crops with their own unique needs or grazing livestock on healthy pastures, farmers must operate a financially viable business while navigating a changing climate.
Our farmer-led education and training programs offer structured guidance from working farmers committed to regenerative land stewardship, protecting natural resources, and building healthy, vibrant local communities.
At our annual conference and year-round educational events, farmers connect and share practical knowledge along with their struggles, successes, questions and new ideas. From including a wide array of production models and farm types, to engaging educators and collaborators with different experiences and identities—diversity is key to our peer-to-peer learning model.
Our collaborative, farm-based research projects have turned hundreds of farmers across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast into community scientists. We analyze farmers’ data to identify insights and offer practical solutions for improving and protecting ecosystems, natural resources, and public health. Among our multitude of studies, we facilitate the largest and most diverse community soil science project in the nation. We also conducted the most comprehensive review of direct-market vegetable farm finances to date.