Keep Farming Consultation and Services
FAQ’s
Keep Farming Brochures

Keep Farming is Glynwood’s unique, step-by-step method of empowering communities in the Northeast to support farming and conserve farmland.

Keep Farming came about as a result of our Countryside Exchange program, through which we worked with communities in the US and abroad to help them identify, understand, and seek solutions to problems and issues that threatened their environments and economies. In the course of this work, one problem above all others asserted itself—the loss of farming and farmland in the Northeast.

At the same time, we learned that solutions proposed or imposed by “consultants” from outside the community simply did not work—that the solutions to the problem must be identified and implemented by the community itself. We also discovered that in communities seeking to save their farming, the greatest need was for information and guidance. Moreover, we discovered that enduring solutions require broad participation and buy-in from leaders and representatives of a diversity of forces within the community—including agriculture, business, the environment, and government.

To address these dynamics and help communities save farming, we developed a new model, which:

• Provides them with essential information or points them to where they can get it.
• Guides them in developing and acting on a plan to support farming and conserve farmland.

Keep Farming is currently operating in 12 communities, with our 5-year plan for the program calling for its replication in as many as 60 communities across the Northeast.

The Problem Confronting Farm Communities in the Northeast

During the second half of the 20th Century, dramatic changes in the nation’s agricultural economy—favoring industrial-scale farming—led to equally dramatic changes in farm communities and landscapes in the Northeast. In an increasingly global marketplace, the region’s small- and mid-sized farms struggled to compete with industrial agriculture. Many farmers ceased to work the land, which became re-forested or was sold for residential or industrial development. In the process, the beauty of the rural working landscape began to give way to the pressures of the real estate market, and with these changes the ties that bind people together in farming communities began to erode. Data show that these trends continue:

• In a single decade, from 1987–1997, the Hudson Valley lost 14% of its total farm acreage.
• From 1997–2002 the real estate value of farmland in the Hudson Valley grew by 70%, fueled by residential and second-home development.
• In 2002, two-thirds of farmers in the Northeast reported a financial loss on farming operations.

Even so, in the Hudson Valley alone, there are still 4,000 small and mid-sized family farms on 1,000 square miles of farmland—and they are worth saving. Today many towns and counties are seeking to preserve their rural character, endeavoring to enact land-use policies and develop infrastructure intended to support local farmers and conserve farmland. Yet, because town government is small-scale and dependent on citizen volunteers, the expertise and resources needed to plan and implement change can be difficult to come by.

At the same time, new trends in agricultural markets in the Northeast are presenting smaller farmers with new opportunities. More and more consumers interested in farm produce that is fresh, flavorful, and healthy are shopping at greenmarkets and stores featuring organic and specialty food—markets increasingly supplied by local farmers. And as the petroleum-driven price of producing and delivering industrially farmed products to market has risen, local and regional small-farm products are becoming much more competitive.

As a consequence, Glynwood believes that the time is ripe to save farming in the Northeast.

Keep Farming: How it Works

Glynwood has developed, tested, and piloted Keep Farming in the real world laboratories of seven communities in the Hudson Valley. The result is a program that works, and is ready for broad replication.

In each Keep Farming community, Glynwood commits to accomplishing the following steps:

• Mobilize the community, bringing together stakeholders including farmers and agricultural organizations, elected and appointed officials, business leaders, local environmentalists, and community residents.
• Help each community form a representative Community Agricultural Partnership (CAP), which provides leadership for the Keep Farming process and for implementation of the resulting plan of action.
• Develop data to create an economic assessment of how farming contributes to the local economy, the availability of local food, protection of natural resources, and changing land-use patterns.
• Convene, with the CAP, public meetings at which the data are presented and discussed.
  Help each community design a plan of action adapted to its own particular situation. In some communities the primary focus of action will be on economic strategies, in others land use.
• Help the CAP and community implement their plan, which may involve any or all of the following: (1) creating permanent town boards or commissions charged with encouraging farming; (2) drafting and promoting new zoning ordinances that support the business of agriculture; (3) applying for grants or raising money to build infrastructure or purchase tracts of farmland; (4) creating new local markets for farm products.

These Keep Farming steps—from start-up to implementation of the community’s plan— generally take 18-24 months. But Keep Farming staff remain available for consultation throughout the implementation phase, for as long as it may take.

Keep Farming meets each community’s need for guidance and information. Guidance is provided by the Keep Farming Regional Representative, who is recruited, trained, and supervised by Glynwood’s Keep Farming leadership. Information is provided through our Keep Farming Manual and other program materials. We also provide each community with software to launch a Keep Farming website. The website—which allows for local customizing—functions as a communication hub for sharing ideas and information.

Success for Keep Farming communities ultimately results from the communities’ own sustained action and is measured in their robust farm economies and working farmscapes.

To learn more about how to implement Keep Farming in your community, contact Virginia Kasinki.

Top of the page