Bright Young Things

Hot Young Farmers Cultivate Vegetables, Followings

Photo: iStockphoto

Last summer, New York Magazine wrote about “the farmer as cult hero” and the clamor about tillers of the soil has not only grown louder, it has also gotten younger. Mother Nature Network today published a list of “40 Famers Under 40,” and many of them live and work in Northern California and Upstate New York.

Avocado farmer and Billboard Top 40 singer Jason Mraz tops the list — he purchased his five-acre avocado ranch with money he made from album sales. Other farmers who made the cut include Jason Mark, of San Francisco’s Alemany Farm and Padraic MacLeish, beekeeper at New York’s Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. The majority of these young aggies are either working toward a social goal (such as Alemany’s role as a community garden) or cultivating a boutique crop (like Pete Rasmussen’s 25 varietals of garlic at his Sandhill Farms in Utah). Inadvertently, they might also be boosting enrollment in 4-H.

40 farmers under 40 [MNN]

Previously:
A Tour of Alemany Farm [Grub Street San Francisco]

Hot Young Farmers Cultivate Vegetables, Followings