“Comparing and teaching small and micro farming scales for beginning farmers”

At the Organic Farm School (OFS), students are aspiring farmers who come to study and practice methods of small-scale fresh vegetable production, direct marketing and community engagement. Most of these students hope to one day start and manage a small-farm and are seeking the skills and knowledge that will enable them to do so.

These aspiring farmers will likely face numerous challenges in starting a new farm business including finding access to farmland and capital. Farming can be a difficult business to enter with the cost of land and traditional infrastructure and equipment all very high, often causing aspiring farmers to feel daunted by this situation. Over the past decade, several high-profile small market farms have promoted intensive farming methods of specialty crops using only two-wheeled tractors and hand labor while claiming to be profitable and sustainable on under 2 acres of production. Often called micro-farming, this model is very appealing to new farmers who see it as an opportunity to enter farming with significantly reduced land and equipment investments, thus increasing their chances at successfully launching a new farm business.

To help the students at the OFS determine if this style of farming was a viable option for them, the OFS, through this project, added a 1/3 acre “micro-farm” style production to the existing 10 acres of “traditional” four-wheel tractor production already in use, to experience and compare these two methods. Project partner Oxbow Farm also added micro-farm style production to their operation to develop a second set of comparison observations to this project. This report shares the observations made over the past three seasons of implementing these two methods at both farms.

You can find the full report HERE and you can check out a video that described the project HERE.