We also asked readers what questions they had for agroforesty experts. Here’s what you wanted to know, with answers provided by Savanna Institute executive director Keefe Keeley:

Q: How can I incorporate agroforestry practices into my small home garden?

A: Agroforestry practices help us think about how woody, perennial shrub plants can be incorporated into farming systems, as well as how food production can be achieved in forested environments. This can help you with your gardening as well. If your yard or garden is heavily shaded, you may be able to grow plants or mushrooms used in forest farming, which takes place under a closed canopy. If you are limited by space, you could consider growing perennial woody shrubs such as elderberries or black currants, which can begin producing berries in 2-3 years. Agroforestry invites us to think about how systems connect. Your plants could help provide a windbreak or visual barrier, habitat for wildlife and pollinators and food for your table all at the same time.

Q: If you want to plant an orchard with a guild but are limited on resources, which plants should be prioritized?

A: While plant selection will vary based on your specific location and goals, some agroforestry species have notable intercropping potential. Black currants and pawpaws are two examples of shade-tolerant species that can grow well with other types of trees. You can see examples of groupings used by other farms on our website and YouTube channel.

Q: How do you keep deer from eating the trees and shrubs (aside from building a giant cage fence around each one)? We would like to reforest a section of our property, but can’t imagine caging that many trees.

A: We are experimenting with a few different deer-deterrent strategies at our demonstration farms. We have had success with using five-foot high tree tubes for each tree (which offers other benefits as well) and with 3D deer fence: two separate electrified fences set three to four feet apart. This creates “depth” and makes it difficult for the deer to jump over them.

Elderberries are a hardy perennial crop that has been harvested by humans for centuries. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Q: What equipment do you use to dig holes to plant trees? A spade and rocky ground is hard-going.

A: We use a variety of equipment for planting woody shrubs. Depending on what is being planted and the soil quality, this could include a trencher and tree planter pulled behind a tractor, a PTO-driven post hole digger or some of the modified precision ag equipment we are experimenting with on our demonstration farms. You can learn more and see examples on our YouTube channel.

Q: Any sources for chestnuts? Seems that most nurseries in Canada are always sold out.

A: One of the biggest challenges to expanding agroforestry is the shortage of plant material currently available for purchase and planting. That’s why we launched a nursery with our partners Canopy Farm Management, which offers tree planting and plant material in the region. As members of the Agroforestry Coalition, we also work with others across the country to improve nursery stock availability and production.

Q: I know chestnuts prefer well-drained soils. How can those of us on more poorly drained soil grow the highest-value tree crop? Is there any research about using swales or planting in fields with drainage tiles?

A: “We are working with Canopy Farm Management to develop a series of mapping tools to help people identify areas of their land that would be most suitable—or unsuitable—for different agroforestry crops. These will be available later this year. Drainage tiles (which are common in Midwest farm fields) are a concern for many growers. We do not have much research or experience growing chestnuts with drainage tiles, but we’re working to learn more.”

Q: What are three of the fastest-growing trees for an emerging Southern California food forest?

A: Since most of our work is focused on the US Midwest, I would refer you to some of our collaborators in the southwest region. This video by the Quivira Coalition featuring Roxanne Swentzell could offer some insights. 

Q: Is there a comparable program [to SI] to help new farmers enter into agroforestry, including forest farming, in [a] mountain area of Maryland?

A: We are partnering on a new Expanding Agroforestry Project with Virginia Tech, which is working in Maryland. You should also check out Appalachian Sustainable Development, which is working to support agroforestry and forest farming in your region.

American chestnut tree flowering in spring. (Photo: Shutterstock)

In addition to reader questions, Keeley offered answers to three of the questions the Savanna Institute hears most frequently:

Q: Where can I find plants?

A: Talking with your local conservation specialists is often the best way to find plant sources that are a good fit for your location. The nation-wide Agroforestry Coalition has identified nursery stock and plant availability as a key bottleneck in expanding agroforestry production, so certain crops and varieties can be hard to find. We work closely with Canopy Farm Management, which offers agroforestry crops suited for the Midwest. For more nurseries in your area, check out the National Nursery and Seed Directory.

Q: Where/how can I sell my products?

A: In any farm enterprise, it’s important to identify market opportunities in advance and design your operation with these in mind. Farms using agroforestry sell products through the market channels all farms use—they just have more trees at work benefiting the crops and livestock on their farms. On some farms, the trees provide the primary crops: fruits, nuts, timber and other tree products. These farms sell their products through U-pick businesses, direct-to-consumer sales and regional wholesale distributors. Many tree crops are best sold as value-added products, which entails additional processing costs but can open up additional marketing opportunities.

Q: How do I find land to do agroforestry?

A: If you are thinking about planting tree crops, you will need long-term access to land to reap the full benefits of your investment. This is a significant obstacle for most beginning agroforestry farmers. Developing a detailed business plan and building relationships in your local community are important steps towards achieving this goal. Our new interactive guide, Designing An Effective Long-Term Agroforestry Lease, helps you work through key considerations for acquiring long-term access to land.

Do you have more questions for the Savanna Institute? Check out its “Ask an Agroforester” page for more frequently asked questions and to submit your own.

The post Your Questions About Agroforestry, Answered appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Along the way, we found some interesting data: Roughly 83 percent of folks in Vancouver compost. New York City diverts more than eight million pounds of organic waste from landfills every year. Many cities, including Boston, San Jose, and San Antonio, provide compost back to residents for use in home gardens. Most importantly, in each of these cities, there is some sort of compost program accessible to residents.

If your city doesn't offer a compost program, you may be able to change that. Here are a few ways to get started:

• Look for community compost groups. Many organizations, including community gardens or environmental clubs, hold seminars or introductory panels on how to start composting. Get up to speed on what’s offered in your area; in addition to learning the composting basics, you might be able to join a network that’s already established. You can also search for a local composter here, or use this EPA map to find opportunities to divert excess food near you. 
• Make your voice heard. If your city does not offer a compost program, let the waste management department know you want one! One of the biggest hurdles to starting a pilot program is ensuring that there are enough residents interested in composting in the first place. Make it clear that you want to participate in a program, which makes it much easier for city officials to greenlight one. There are also resources to help municipalities as they get started, including this template from the US Composting Council which helps cities look at land use ordinances and classifications. 

• Look at the zoning bylaws. Many municipal bylaws were written decades ago, and they may not be up to date with the best waste management strategies for cities. But when city officials see that there is interest from the public, they have more reason to look at updating those bylaws, or looking at new ways of waste diversion. 

For more on how to get your city to start composting, read our Q&A with a composter here.

Want to add your city to our map? Fill out the form below, and let us know what composting is like where you live.

The post Map: Who Composts? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

We’ve got plenty of plans, but one of our most important priorities is to do more connecting with and listening to our reader community. With that in mind, we want to hear from you.

• Got an idea for a topic or person we should write about? Our readers are a great source of ideas, tips and feedback. For instance, one of our most-read stories of the year, about the plight of livestock guardian dogs, came from a reader tip left as a comment on our social media.
• Have a perspective you think our readers might be interested in? We sourced stories on the thorny topic of farmland succession from our reader community, and want to do more work that amplifies the real voices and experiences of people working in the food system.
• Have general feedback or questions about what’s we’re doing? We’d love to hear it.

Tell us what’s on your mind by leaving a comment below, or using this form to share your thoughts with us. We look forward to hearing from you.

The post Tell Us: What Should Modern Farmer Cover in 2024? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

That’s what Bobbie Kramer, a veterinarian near Portland, Oregon, was wondering when she responded to our recent call for reader questions about where their food comes from. 

“As a meat eater, I enjoy the flavor and texture of lamb. But I’d love to try mutton. I know that in other parts of the world, lamb and mutton are more economical and popular to raise than cattle,” she writes. “I’ve traveled a fair bit (Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Great Britain) and have friends from parts of the world where small ruminants such as sheep and goats are raised for meat and fiber. My good friend from South Africa tells me how she and her husband miss cooking with mutton, which they find more flavorful and satisfying than lamb. What happens to the mutton-aged sheep here?”

It’s true that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find mutton—defined as meat from a sheep over two years old—in American grocery stores. “Mutton is not an accessible protein option in the US,” says Megan Wortman, executive director of the American Lamb Board, an industry group aimed at expanding the market for domestic sheep products. If you’re looking to get your hands on some mutton, “you’d have to go through a specialty butcher shop or directly to a special-order processor,” she says.  

Mutton has less tender flesh and a stronger flavor than lamb, which comes from sheep that are less than a year old. (Meat from sheep aged one to two years is generally called “yearling” in the US, and “hogget” elsewhere around the world.) That stronger flavor lends itself to curries, stews and “value-added” products such as spiced sausages, says Wortman, “so most of our mutton goes into value-added products or into specialty ethnic markets at this point.” 

Some mutton is exported to Mexico, where it’s braised low and slow, barbacoa-style. Mutton is also often sold at butcher shops that serve communities that have brought a taste for the meat with them from elsewhere, such as new immigrants from Africa, Central America and the Middle East. (Wortman notes that the majority of US lamb and mutton is halal processed.) And in western Kentucky, a tradition of barbecued mutton still holds, although no one is quite sure why.

“There are consumer segments that would raise their hand and say ‘yes, I would prefer a stronger flavor,’ but we just don’t market it in mainstream grocery stories,” says Wortman. “There’s definitely a general hesitation that the minute you label it ‘mutton’ the average consumer has negative connotations with that product.”

So, how did mutton, a widely consumed protein around the world, come to be unmarketable to most Americans?

Sheep were first brought to the southwestern US by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, and flocks grew with the influx of European settlers, who utilized sheep locally for their wool and meat. With rising demand for wool in the 19th century, sheep farming became more industrialized, but the primary focus was on the wool, not the meat. Simply put, mutton was a byproduct of wool production.

Mutton was slaughtered, sold and canned locally, but no large-scale infrastructure arose to source and process sheep meat. “The simplest story is that no commercial meat industry developed around mutton,” says Roger Horowitz, a historian and author of Putting Meat on the American Table. “It seems to me that it was very rural in character.” He points to a can of roast mutton in his collection, dating from the 1890s, as emblematic of the time: It advertised that its contents were both slaughtered and canned “on the range” in Fort McKavett, Texas.

A man shearing a sheep at the San Emigdio Ranch in Kern County, CA in 1890. (Carleton E. Watkins/Library of Congress)

That’s not to say that mutton wasn’t consumed at the dinner table. Mutton chops were featured in cookbooks and restaurant menus from the late 19th and early 20th century, as the population grew and urbanized and demand for protein rose. Lamb was a seasonal product served at Christmas, and for a time, sheep meat was seen as a food for the upper classes. Even first-class passengers on the RMS Titanic were served grilled mutton—for luncheon and breakfast. 

Sheep numbers in the US peaked in 1884 at 51 million head. But with the advent of synthetic fibers in the 20th century, wool production began to flag, and sheep numbers—and the availability of mutton—declined. (In 2016, there were five million head of sheep in the US.) Lamb consumption began to dwindle, too: Americans consumed five pounds of lamb per person in 1912. Today, that number is about a pound per person annually. 

Pork, Horowitz notes, was more convenient. “Everybody had pigs, and pigs are a lot better to raise for meat because they eat anything.” And when it came to grazing animals, cows just made more sense: They provide far more meat per animal, and demand for beef was—and remains—high.

This woman does not want to cook mutton. (Photo: Ethan/Flickr)

By the end of World War II, mutton had come to symbolize everything that Americans wanted to leave behind. Men returned from the war swearing they’d never eat another bite of mutton after stomaching tinned army rations that included the notoriously unappetizing “Mutton Stew with Vegetables.” Women were enjoying new appliances that allowed them a modicum of freedom from household chores. Modernity and convenience were all the rage, and mutton, which requires dry aging and long, slow cooking times to become tender, was neither modern nor convenient. If mutton ever really had a heyday, by midcentury, it was over. 

“I joke sometimes that I do lamb by day and sheep by night,” says Cody Heimke, who, in addition to managing the Niman Ranch lamb program, raises a heritage breed of Shropshire sheep on his property in south central Wisconsin. The flock of about 50 head are raised primarily for breeding, but Shropshires were at one time the most popular sheep in the world, primarily because of the quality of their mutton. “[The] breed of sheep doesn’t really matter when it comes to the flavor of lamb, but it does when it comes to the taste of mutton,” he says. 

Heimke does “a little bit” of direct lamb and mutton sales when he has sheep to harvest, selling middle cuts to a restaurant in Madison, and utilizing the rest for sausages in varieties such as Bavarian-style, Merguez and spicy Berbere. He acknowledges that there isn’t a lot of demand for mutton. “I got a call this year, somebody looking for mutton, which is rare. I don’t usually get those calls.”

His advice for would-be mutton eaters? “Find somebody at a local farmers market that’s selling lamb. You really gotta find somebody that’s raising sheep and doing direct marketing, and ask them if they’re doing any mutton.”

For his part, Heimke says he enjoys mutton in sausage form. Last year, one of his wholesale clients was looking for ground lamb, but he didn’t have any in stock. “I’m like, ‘Well, what about ground mutton?’ And we [sold] one-pounders of ground mutton,” he says. “I tasted that before I sold any of it, and it was as good or better than any ground lamb I’ve ever had.” 

Have you ever eaten mutton? Do you want to try mutton—or not? Tell us what you think in the comments below. 

Thanks to Bobbie Kramer for submitting her question for our “Digging In” series. Got a question about where your food comes from? Let us know what you’d like us to investigate next by filling out this form.

The post Digging In: Why Don’t Americans Eat Mutton? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Though your grocery list may look straightforward, the global food system is complex. The Modern Farmer team is here to turn your questions about the food on your plate into reporting that helps you—and your fellow eaters—understand where your food comes from. 

Along the way, we’ll meet the people who actually plant, fertilize, harvest, raise, slaughter, brew, ferment, pack and process the ingredients that go into your meals, and dig into stories that get the people who eat (aka everyone) a little bit closer to the people who produce. 

Take a look in your fridge, pantry and shopping cart. Do you really know what goes into getting that food from … wherever it comes from … to you?

We envision turning this into a series, but we need your help to get started. Don’t be shy: Add a question or suggest a topic you’d like Modern Farmer to investigate using this form. We’ll get in touch if we look into your question.

The post Let’s Dig In: What Do You Want Modern Farmer to Investigate? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Not all of our readers are farmers, of course. Some are homesteaders or gardeners. Others are researchers, educators, and people interested in sustainable food systems. Many are just curious about what goes into getting food onto our plates.

Within our reader community, there are a multitude of ideas, stories, and experiences. We’re looking to highlight those perspectives, starting with four farmers who responded to our family farm question.

From planning for the emotional challenges of farmland succession, to establishing a conservation easement, to the divergent stories of two different dairy daughters, check out their stories here.

What topics would you like to hear about from the Modern Farmer community? Let us know your ideas for future topics, or commentary you’d like to share with readers, using this form.

The post Who’s To Take Over the Family Farm? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As America’s farming population gets older, an increasing number of small and medium-scale farmers are grappling with the question of when and how to retire, and whether to keep farms in the family, rent out their land, or sell. 

More than one-third of farmers in the US are over the age of 65, up 26 percent in the period between 2012 and 2017, when the most recent USDA census took place. And despite growing rates of consolidation, family farms make up 98 percent of US farms, meaning that intergenerational handoffs have historically made up a significant portion of ownership changes. 

Indeed, of the 10 percent of all farmland expected to undergo a transfer of ownership between 2015 and 2019, only about a quarter was expected to be sold between nonrelatives, according to USDA survey data. The rest was to be transferred via trusts, gifts, wills, and sale to a family relative. 

But with complex financial pressures, family dynamics, and the preferences of younger people at play, there’s no one-size-fits-all story of what happens when farms change hands. 

That’s where you come in. We’re collecting stories and experiences of real farm families to inform future reporting on this topic. We want to know: What has your experience been? What issues have you encountered? How does it feel to keep the farm in the family, or not?

We would love to hear from you, especially if you are:

• An owner-operator navigating who will take over the farm when you retire or pass away.
• A child or other relative of a farmer who has taken over farm operations, or plans to in the future.
• A child of a farmer who has decided not to take over the family farm.

To share your experience, please leave a comment at the bottom of this article, or email us at info{at}modfarmer{dot}com using “Family Farm” in the subject line. If we decide we’d like to know more, we may contact you for a future story about succession on the family farm. 

We kindly ask that all commenters abide by our Community Guidelines.

The post Who Will Take Over the Family Farm? We Want to Hear From You appeared first on Modern Farmer.