The New York times is running an article on the (possible) demise of the Modern Farmer magazine/brand as it currently exists.
My only connection to this magazine is that someone cut out a glossy article about it for me a few months ago. See, there are other educated semi-hippies out there that want to do this whole farming thing too! I kind of get it now! is the message that seemed to come along with the thoughtful gesture. I read the article, but never bought the magazine or visited the website, and I'm pretty sure the person who passed the article along didn't buy the magazine either.
The idea of someone wearing Gucci while posing next to farm animals, fancy portraits of roosters, and expensive farm to table restaurant reviews didn't appeal to me, and that's really the only impression I had of the magazine from the article. It sounded like something I'd happily leaf through if I found it on a coffee table, but nothing I would go out of my way to pay $7 for on a magazine stand.
And therein, perhaps, lies the problem of Modern Farmer, which is now in peril because its founder walked out over a dispute with the chief financial backer over the magazines ability to bring in money, despite the website allegedly getting a million page views a month.
Many of the people I know who are interested in the modern farming movement are hyperaware of the way things are monetized, and, for whatever reason, are not willing to take part. Many just simply don't have the money. Or they graduated college and were forced to enter the job market for the first time during the Great Recession and now have a bit of a 'prepper' mentality when it comes to money. Or they grew up in a climate of extreme abundance and are just tired of stuff and the culture of stuff. Or they simply find joy in building and creating things themselves. Or they're willing to pay for quality, but only from specific places that don't lend themselves to mass marketing. Or. Or. Or. Or. The point being, its a tough market to turn a dollar.
Of course, that is just a small subset of the people becoming more interested in the environment and "who want a little more back story to their food", as Ann Marie Gardner, the founder of Modern Farmer, says. Some of these people do have money. Some of them are willing to buy fancy muck boots at a gazillion percent profit for whoever is selling them. And for that reason, we'll continue to see products and marketing geared towards this group. And they will therefore continue to be the stylish face of the 'modern farming' movement.
But for the rest of us, I made a list of sites below that serve a different set of modern farmers- a growing community of do-it-yourselfers interested in finding new (or very old) ways of producing food and stewarding the land.
Meanwhile, the New York Times article changed my impression of Modern Farmer magazine. The initial article I read presented it more as a uppity glamour food porn venue. The NYT suggests that this side of things is more of a wrap to support a journalistic heart focusing on food/farm issues. The NYT ends with this:
“I don’t want to speak ill of the dying, but what is the plausible audience in such a magazine?” he asked. “It was too kind of nitty-gritty and old-fashioned, back-to-the-land hippie magazine for the food-farm porn market, and yet too ‘What about the dairy situation in the Philippines?’ for people who are really raising chickens for a living.”
Actually, that sounds exactly like something I want to read.
****Farming resources for the modern farmer******
Pick up almost any garden or food book today, or even do a search on the internet, and much of what you'll find is pretty pictures and regurgitated elementary information on how to site your garden and eat whole foods. Everyone online is a content producer claiming to be an expert. But where do you go to get actual, practical information once you're sick of articles on How to site your garden in a sunny spot! and clicked through all twenty slides of Must-have perennials that will make your garden pop!?
These are sites I've found informative/interesting. If you know of others- please email me or post in the comments.
Farm Hack - This is a young site where anyone can post links to tools and resources that "support sustainable farming and sustainable farmers". The 'tools' run the gambit from a dump of Enterprise farming budgets (which can help farmers just starting out get a realistic picture of things), to arduino heavy remote sensing projects, to how to build physical tools like a wheel hoe or squash peeler. The site organizers recently posted their community principles here.
Open Source Ecology - A bit like Farm Hack with a more directed purpose. They are "developing a set of open source blueprints for the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – a set of the 50 most important machines that it takes for modern life to exist – everything from a tractor, to an oven, to a circuit maker" and posting the blueprints online. The community is a bit more controlled than Farm Hack, but you can still get involved.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) - Lots of acronyms associated with this one! They are mostly supported by the United States Department of Agriculture's Rural Business-Cooperative Service and are a branch of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) "a private nonprofit organization, founded in 1976, which manages a series of projects that promote self-reliance and sustainable lifestyles through wise use of appropriate technology". The site is a treasure trove of information related to sustainable agriculture.
Rodale Institute - The slogan of this group is "Through organic leadership we improve the health and well-being of people and the planet". They provide a wide range of research, news, and farmer resources related to organic agriculture.
Your local agricultural extension office - Yup, this a still a real thing, it still exists, and every state in the US supports them. They host informative events for farmers, fun and educational activities for the community, and produce valuable research that you can find free on their website. You can even call them and talk to a real live person and get personalized farming advice. Its like your local library- your taxes paid for it, you might as well use it. Just google the name of your state or county + "agricultural extension". They're also a good place to read up on ongoing research. I particularly like the research archives at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
Dialing back...
Believe it or not, back when it was harder to get information out to the public, people put a lot of effort into making sure that information was actually useful. The best, most practical gardening information I've found was mostly written before the 1940's.
Some of my favorite resources are George Washington's Carvers agriculture bulletins published from the late 1890's to 1940's. A complete list of them can be found at this Tuskegee University site, and then googled individually to get the full text. Most of them can be found as Google Books.
Several other resources have recently been posted at Farm Hack- including this Encyclopedia of Farm Knowledge from 1922.
Other sources can be found in the FAO's online portal to the David Lubin Memorial Library.
***Other sources not directly related to farming***
These aren't directly related to farming, but I thought they deserved a mention.
Public Lab - This is a bit like Farm Hack or Open Source Ecology, but dedicated to science education and making science tools (like spectrometers) free and accessible. Some of these tools are just neat, others, like instructions to create your own aerial imagery are of direct use to farmers.
Adafruit - Many of the tools being promoted by sites like Farm Hack require some technical know-how. Adafruit sells introductory electronics equipment and provides tutorials to get you up and running building your own weather stations and more in an fun, easy to understand way. Best of all, many of the projects on the site are particularly geared towards women and young girls, without the here-let-me-empower-you vibe that usually comes with such things. Credit goes to all around awesome founder, Limor Fried.
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