You can get involved with American Farmland Trust’s work to advance conservation-minded farming practices, empower existing farmers and ranchers to stay in business, attract and support the next generation of farmers and keep American farmland in production here
Across central Virginia in 2020, American Farmland Trust (AFT, whose No Farms No Food® bumper sticker you may be familiar with) tested a Sustainable Grazing Pilot Project designed to help livestock producers adopt regenerative farm and ranch management practices.
The goal of the project is twofold:
- Provide producers with a technical support network to help them transition to regenerative production practices
- Help producers maximize the profitability impacts of this shift to regenerative practices for their operations
Regenerative and sustainable production practices are central to the project —strategies like rotational grazing, proper stocking rates, streambank protection and detailed recordkeeping. AFT’s goal is to help farmers translate these practices into increased profitability and improved business opportunity for their operations.
American Farmland Trust recognizes that while the environmental benefits of regenerative practices may be clear, the bottom-line benefits don’t always support the decision to transition, keeping many producers from making the jump. For the past 40 years, American Farmland Trust has been working to ensure America’s farmland remains viable and productive rather than being lost to development or degradation.
To address this, the project helps producers participating in the project to access new markets and marketing opportunities through networking and direct sales opportunities.
Additionally, the project helps producers improve their communication and marketing around their operations’ sustainable production practices. The project supports producers in using sophisticated marketing techniques, such as drone videos, to enhance the way they tell their operations’ story. In turn, this enables producers to make a stronger case to landowners as to why they should be considered as tenants.
By providing producers with the technical support they need to transition to regenerative practices, while at the same time providing them with the tools and training to ensure those regenerative practices provide a return on investment, the project seeks to create a replicable model that could be scaled across the U.S.
Want to learn more about this sustainable grazing project? Click here.
You can get involved with American Farmland Trust’s work to advance conservation-minded farming practices, empower existing farmers and ranchers to stay in business, attract and support the next generation of farmers and keep American farmland in production here: https://farmland.salsalabs.org/farmjournalad/index.html
