Our Environment, Animal Tips & the Great Outdoors

Above photo courtesy of Maitri Farm 

It’s no secret that farming is becoming harder and harder. It’s never been an easy job, but between climate change, the unprecedented environmental changes that come along with it, and constant changes in funding and grant availability, farming seems to be increasingly difficult in recent years. 

According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 2022, nearly 22.1 million full- and part-time jobs related to the agricultural and food sectors – 10.4 percent of total US employment. But direct on-farm employment only accounted for about 2.6 million of these jobs, clocking in at just 1.2 percent of US employment. 

But if farming is becoming a less common profession, why does it seem like farms are cropping up (no pun intended) with more regularity in our region? Why, if farming is becoming arguably harder to do, are people more drawn to the land in recent years? What are some of the qualities of the modern farmer? These are some of the big-picture questions I sought answers by speaking with a handful of farmers in our region. 

Access to funding and grant programs for local farms

Agriculture is a major component of the New York State economy. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2021, agriculture in New York produced roughly $3.3 billion in gross domestic product and paid close to $1 billion in wages. 

The most recent New York State Enacted Budget added several new programs to support farmers, including increasing the investment tax credit for farmers, doubling the farm workforce retention tax credit, and creating a new refundable tax for overtime paid hours worked between 40 and 60 hours per week. 

But across the border in Massachusetts, the state recently cut funding for the Healthy Incentive Program. Since the program’s rollout in 2017, it offered anyone receiving federal food assistance a monthly boost of $40, $60, or $80 (depending on family size) to purchase fruit and vegetables directly from farmers. In December, the benefit was capped at $20 per month for all program recipients, regardless of family size. 

According to Mass.gov, while Governor Maura Healey requested $25 million in her fiscal year 2025 budget proposal to fully fund the HIP, the final budget provided $15 million, leaving a $10 million deficit. Mass.gov states that while the Department of Transitional Assistance worked with the Department of Agricultural Resources to evaluate options to meet the provided budget, reducing the monthly HIP incentive to $20 was “the only viable option to ensure the program could continue to operate year-round.” 

The Healthy Incentive Program was not only vital for recipients, but also for farmers. Jamie Nadler, co-owner and head farmer at Dancing Greens Farm – a sustainable, no-till, micro-farm founded in 2023 in Great Barrington – is concerned about how the recent HIP legislation will affect recipients and farmers in the Berkshires. 

“It’s not directly impacting us yet, thankfully, but for farms who have built up a lot of infrastructure based on grants and government-backed funding, it can be really scary when those programs get cut. It trickles down to affect those farmers,” she said. “The HIP program in particular aided a lot of lower income people, so I think that’s a challenge that we’re going to see more of going forward. I’m concerned that farms are going to have to pivot to selling only to people who can afford it, which will make the food availability gap even wider.” 

Suffering the effects of the rising cost of housing and other socio-political changes

Maggie Cheney, co-owner, founder, farmer, and director of non-profit operations for Rock Steady Farm in Millerton, NY, notes that one of the most dramatic challenges has been the cost of living in the Hudson Valley. “The cost of housing is one of the biggest challenges for small farms because the pressure is put on us to raise the wages of our employees to meet that environmental shift, all while the price of food isn’t rising. It’s a crisis moment right now. If you don’t have housing on your land and you’re hiring people who live locally, you need to raise your wages significantly in order for them to make a livable wage. It’s really challenging for small farms to do that.” 

Maggie noted that in the past, it was more affordable to live in rural spaces, and therefore, farms were able to pay a lower wage for their employees. That is not true anymore. “I think farms are constantly grappling with having to make the highest dollar, whether that’s through selling at the best market in New York City or to high-end restaurants. It’s really difficult to have the scale, outlet, and overhead all line up.”

Additionally for the folks at Rock Steady Farm, the challenges are also layered due to their identities. As a multi-racial, queer, and trans-led farm, Rock Steady is not only concerned with the changes to farming as a whole but also to the shifting socio-political climate. 

“We’re currently having challenges with access to basic, life-affirming healthcare, which is even harder in a rural area like this,” Maggie explained. “If Medicaid stops providing health services for trans and LGBTQ+ folks, that means we’ll have to turn to private healthcare centers, which are primarily located in cities, which in turn will pull people farther from our rural area.”

Small farms typically don’t have the budget to cover healthcare for their employees, so many rely on government-backed programs like Medicaid. “It impacts farms because it impacts our well-being and ability to do our job. If there aren’t as many resources here, then people will leave and flock to cities where there are more social services available. That puts our local food system in a precarious place. I think that there is a real disconnect between those who are purchasing the food and the realities of the farmers who are growing that food.”

In addition, with the recent freezes of federal funding and DEI programs, Maggie shared that Rock Steady Farm has had “$100k terminated from The National Institute of Food and Agriculture community food projects grant, which supported our training of beginner QT BIPOC farmers this year; $40k cut from food access related funds enabling us to fund lower income people in the area; and $80k from NRCS funding for the water mitigation.”

“In just two weeks, projects like Rock Steady are now going into crisis management mode, trying to fill huge funding gaps and seeing years of planning and time on applications go to waste. And we are just one farm,” Maggie said. “If people want farms to exist, now is the time not only to buy locally but also to invest in the survival of local farms. Our funding is getting cut and we need people’s support.” 

Jenn Djambazov, head farmer at Maitri Farm in Amenia, NY, echoed Maggie’s concerns about housing in the region. Jenn hires a handful of seasonal farmers each spring and one of her biggest challenges is finding places for her staff to live. 

“The post-pandemic world in this region of New York is much different from the pre-lockdown world. Many people came out to this region and now live here permanently, which is great, but that has also changed the landscape of the community. It makes pressures like the housing shortage even greater. Where do I put my staff?” Jenn explained. “I’m trying to adjust how we function in order to account for lack of housing and no public transit, but it certainly makes it more difficult and stressful.”

Push back from the environment

With the effects of climate change being felt all around the globe, it’s become increasingly difficult for farmers to plan for each season without truly knowing what the weather will bring. 

At Dancing Greens Farm, Jamie and her fellow farmers put in the hours to ensure that they have the most resilient farming practices that they can. “I’m constantly thinking about the ‘what if?’ circumstances and trying to build our practices to best adapt to those situations,” she said. “No-till is a really resilient farming practice, because the soil structure and organic matter hold on to water better and can be resilient when there are extremes in the weather – whether it’s extreme heat with little rain or too much rain that leads to flooding.” 

One of the other aspects of farming that is often overlooked when it comes to weather extremes is the effect that it has on the people working the land. “When you need to put in really long days and half that time it’s over 90 degrees, there’s not a lot of assistance to help with some of that revenue lost or to give workers more help,” Jamie said. 

In the state of Massachusetts, laborers engaged in agriculture and farming are exempt from Massachusetts overtime compensation. Additionally, under federal law, farm workers are typically not entitled to overtime compensation due to an exemption within the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“That’s something that I’m thinking about when it comes to building a team. I’m figuring out what’s okay to put both myself and other people through when it comes to extreme heat in the summer and other weather patterns,” Jamie continued. “I think utilizing the best farming practices possible and starting to make plans as to how to treat staff and ourselves are particularly important going forward.” 

For Freund’s Farm, located in East Canaan, CT, the severe weather events of the past few seasons have been particularly difficult. Now in the third generation, Freund’s Farm hosts three separate farm businesses: the farm itself; Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery, a year-round market offering catering, garden supplies, and farm tours; and Canaan View Dairy, a newly formed enterprise that manages the dairy farm and CowPots, which manufactures biodegradable planting containers from the dairy farm’s composted manure. “We diversified the farm partly because of  the generational transitions that happened and also to be more creative with how we manage our farm resources,” said Amanda Freund.

From the freeze in May of 2023 to the weeks of no rainfall in the fall of 2024, weather extremes have had drastic impacts on crops. “Two specific examples of weather events in the past two years that compromised our crops: in July of 2023, the Blackberry River flooded our fields in one of the most extreme flood events we’ve ever seen,” said Theresa Freund. “Our entire crop of pumpkins and winter squash was washed away. In March of 2024, just a week after we had transplanted 1200 tomato plants, a storm with fierce winds ripped one side of our greenhouse off. As these weather events with strong winds, temperature shifts, rain, and lack of rain become more common, we will need to focus on mitigation and adaptation.” 

Speaking of adaptation, the Freund’s note that “the old adage of not putting all of your eggs in one basket” is relevant to their farming operations. Over the past ten years, they have noticed important changes in consumer behavior – such as preferring prepared foods to bulk volumes of raw ingredients. As such, they have shifted their focus to expanding their kitchen and bakery to accommodate the changing buying habits. They have also utilized funding opportunities through the USDA to invest in energy-efficiency projects, including lighting and coolers to help mitigate the increasing cost of electricity, and grant opportunities to build high tunnels, which help to extend the growing season and expand water access to the fields. 

Most recently, their dairy operation has completed the construction of a manure storage tank – achieved with funding from the USDA and the Long Island Futures Fund. “Increased storage allows the farm to have more control over when nutrients are applied to the crop land for optimal value for soil health, crop uptake, and reduced erosion,” Theresa explained. 

Maitri Farm is located at the end of a valley, which has caused them to encounter a lot of problems throughout the past few years with flooding and excessive water. The only access to the farm is to cross a short bridge at the entrance, and last year, that bridge collapsed. “We had to close for two weeks in August, during the highest production time of the year,” Jenn shared. “Farmers are obsessive planners, and there’s no way to plan for something like that.” 

To better prepare for extreme weather events in the future, Rock Steady Farm has added a heat policy and a smoke policy to their employee handbook, which states protocol such as requiring masks when there is wildfire smoke over the region and changing working hours in times of extreme heat. 

“Part of it is using lessons learned from past experiences. We now know what support to provide for our staff and how to adapt in the future,” Maggie said. “We’ve taken advantage of grant programs that help us build high tunnels and manage water for our land, as well as enrolling in funding sources for farms to put in different infrastructure for water management plans. We’re also building more buffers into our budget, which allow us to have some padding for the unknowns every year.”

Why are more people turning to the land?

In spite of all of the challenges that come with farming, it seems that more and more people are returning to the practice in recent years, both on a small and large scale. 

For Jamie, the love of growing food for others has always been a driving force behind her work on the farm. A first generation farmer, Jamie grew up in the suburbs and watched her parents work business jobs that required them to spend much of their day locked in an office working on a computer.

“I think more people are turning to the land as a bit of a rejection of the status quo. I saw and continue to see my parents and friends spending all of their days on a computer contributing to something they don’t believe in. I was fortunate because my parents working those corporate jobs allowed me the opportunity to work on farms without worrying about paying off student debt or other financial burdens,” she shared. “I also believe that how you spend your time matters. Technology is becoming more invasive in our lives, food is becoming ultra-processed, and every industry is a constant battle of conglomerates – I think farming is a rejection of that.” 

Theresa and Amanda at Freund’s Farm Market echo this sentiment. “With so much of our daily lives being tied to screens, it’s easy to spend all our time typing, scanning, scrolling, and zooming. While we are more connected than ever, at the same time, it’s a huge disconnect from the basic tenets of our existence,” they said. “Choosing to connect to time (seasons) and space (this land) in a physical way is foundational. It’s a choice and an honor to have the opportunity to nourish our community while caring for the land.”

Maggie agrees and believes that people are “sick of urban experiences and being forced into an indoor workspace. It’s a back-to-the-land kind of movement, not just here, but all over the country. Society is shifting and we need to get back to the basics in some ways.” 

Jenn believes that while farming has been romanticized on social media, there really is a component to the work that is both satisfying and beneficial for mental health. “At the end of the day, you stand up and see the physical manifestation of the effort that you’ve been putting in all day. There’s both immediate and long-term rewards. Everybody has to eat, so farming is appealing and an approachable way to get outside. The ease of accessibility to programs and information allows people to make a jump into farming with more confidence than they maybe could have before.” • 

To learn more about the farms mentioned in this article, visit their websites: Dancing Greens Farm (dancing-greens.com), Rock Steady Farm (rocksteadyfarm.com), Maitri Farm (maitriny.com), and Freund’s Farm (freundsfarmmarket.com) and (cowpots.com). If you’d like to lend your support, invest, or donate to any of these farms, please contact them directly via phone or email.