Young Farmers Cultivating Change

In June, Modern Farmer asked our community to tag exciting or inspiring young farmers. We received so many suggestions and wanted to share a few of these farms and farmers with you. We asked each of them to tell us what makes their farm special, why they each chose farming, and what advice they would give to any future farmers out there.

This story is part of our Future Farmers series, highlighting the joys and hurdles of a career in agriculture today. 

Graeme Foers

Lost Meadows Apiaries & Meadery
Location: Essa Township, Ontario, Canada
Age: 33
Years Farming: 13

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
My farming season begins early February with the maple syrup season. I make maple syrup more traditionally with buckets and flat pans over fires outside. The season then turns to bees with my first queen graft right at the beginning of May. I produce around 100 queens per week for 12 weeks which are sold to beekeepers across Ontario. My queens are bred for a number of traits, but the most important being hygienic, mite resistant and overwintering ability. Aside from the queens my 200 hives make honey from around mid may to September. I keep the honey separate from each meadow and each month. This makes a huge range of different tasting honeys based on what was blooming and in what quantities when the bees collected it. I try and keep my bees away from commercial agriculture to help minimize the impact it has on my bees and also on influencing the flavor of the honey. I also own a small meadery on the farm with my sister, we use the honey from my hives to make the mead and have won several awards for it at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
I want to work at something that I find meaningful in life and that I feel I can leave behind as my contribution to society. For me that is through beekeeping and specifically breeding queen bees. My first beehive I had died and I was devastated. I decided that if I was going to have bees again I never wanted another hive to die, so I would have to be the best beekeeper I possibly could be. This lead me to queen rearing and eventually queen breeding and finding bees that are resistant to varroa mites, and other brood diseases, that are gentle and can thrive in this changing climate.

What advice or insight do you have for young people interested in farming?
Don’t stop believing in yourself, and try and be around people who believing you. Don’t be afraid to be part of the change even if a more experienced farmer tells you that’s not how to do it or its not the conventional way of doing it. Doing it your way may be the small difference you need to have customers buy your product and gain market share.

What are the barriers to being a young farmer, and how are you dealing with or overcoming them?
The biggest barrier for me is the extreme cost of everything from equipment to land and anything else involved like fuel and gas. I have had family members lend me some money for equipment purchases and I try not to expand too much at one time so I don’t stretch my resources too thin.

Keaton Sinclair & Alanna Carlson

AKreGeneration
Location: Treaty Six Territory at Fiske, Saskatchewan, Canada
Age: 32 and 33
Years farming:  5 years (20+ years experience as a 3rd generation farmer)

Tell us a bit about your farm: 
We are connected to our family farm and do grain cropping and custom grazing using regenerative agriculture practices that prioritize plant and soil health. AKreGeneration is committed to restoring the land for generations to come, acre by AKre. Using the seven generations principle, we remember whose who came before us, and our decisions are guided by the seven generations that will come after us. Some of the different practices we use include: diverse crop rotation, cover crops, intercropping, low chemical use, biological fertilizer and seed treatment, soil amendments, and livestock incorporation.

Why farming? What drew you to it as a livelihood?
We grew up farming with our families and thrived working on the land and being connected to and learning from the plants and animals and other farmers. We see the regenerative farm as a good way to listen to the land, improve the soil health, natural ecosystem, nutrient integrity of the plants, improve profitability and enhance our lifestyle. We both got educations and live in the city, but are drawn back to the land, and want to farm in a way that is sustainable for us and the ecosystem.

What advice or insight do you have for young people interested in farming?
Go get your hands dirty and get experience working on the land, any land. You might not get much for clear answers if you directly ask for advice. Build relationships. Join groups and unions. Find farmers that will spend time talking or working with you so you can learn different practices and principles; everyone does things different. Listen to their stories and wisdom and follow what you think is aligned with your plan. Nothing happens in a hurry.

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