Sound Bites: Debating ‘Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Farmers’

Baltimore, MD -7/2/14- Denzel Mitchell, of Baltimore, harvests for cucumbers Wednesday afternoon. Mitchell owns operates his farm, "Five Seeds Farm" and provides it's vegetables to local Baltimore restaurants.  Rachel Woolf/Baltimore Sun -- #7308August 19, 2014 – Segment 3

On a live (call-in) episode of Sound Bites, we look at the state of small farmers today. As a follow-up to last week’s New York Times article “Don’t let your children grow up to be farmers,” the first question we ask is: Are small farmers able to survive and prosper off the land? With: Don Bustos of the Santa Cruz Farm in NM, an award-winning sustainable farmer who produces food on the same New Mexico land his ancestors have farmed for 300 years; Joel Salatin, who wrote a response to the Times article, is a full-time farmer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and author of Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World; and Jenny Hopkinson, who covers Agriculture and Food Policy issues for Politico Pro.

Following that discussion, small farmers weigh in and talk about their own experiences: Denzel Mitchell, Founder and Farm Manager, Five Seeds Family Farm and Apiary; Cheryl Carmona, Co-founder of Boone Street Farm in East Baltimore; Ted Wycall third generation farmer at Greenbranch Farm in Salisbury, MD; and Carole Morrison of Bird’s Eye View Farm in Pocomoke City.

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