Yearly Archives: 2015

Who really owns the farmland?

Photo from The Contrary Farmer "In Iowa, the latest figures I have, from 2007, indicate that 60% of the farmland is owned by people who are not farming. Some 20% of Iowa’s farm owners do not even live in the state. It is safe to say that most of the farmland in America is being farmed by renters. This is precisely what immigrants from Europe were fleeing when they risked their lives to come to America." https://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2015/10/14/who-really-owns-the-farmland/

2015-10-18T19:52:46-05:00October 18th, 2015|News|0 Comments

Protect Farms; Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Research shows that protecting farmland from development is an important strategy to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. In California, the Governor's Strategic Growth Council launched the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation program to protect farmland. https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article38965995.html

2023-09-13T09:49:47-05:00October 16th, 2015|News|0 Comments

A Farmer’s Guide to Working With Land Trusts

The National Young Farmer Coalition recently published a guide for farmers who want to work with land trusts. "Finding and securing land to farm is one of the biggest challenges that beginning farmers and ranchers face in starting a career in agriculture. Farmland prices are at a record high across the country and land has become increasingly unaffordable for farmers. The land surrounding our nation’s cities, where market opportunities are greatest for beginning farmers, is often the most difficult to access." Help SILT support farmers who are trying to access land!

2023-07-21T09:51:03-05:00October 13th, 2015|News|0 Comments

Western Iowa newspapers cover SILT

SILT's new Loess Hills Young People's Farm A swing through Western Iowa in September resulted in this excellent story running in the Clarinda Herald-Journal and the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. Thank you John Van Nostrand for such great work. The story highlights SILT's acquisition if our first farm, pictured here, just a few miles from downtown Council Bluffs. Interested in having SILT speak to your organization? We can address service clubs, churches, retirement communities, city leaders, community activists, political party gatherings of all stripes - just let us know. We'd be glad to line up a day or two in [...]

2015-10-06T21:18:57-05:00October 6th, 2015|News|0 Comments

U.S. workers sue Monsanto

Six months after the World Health Organization's cancer research unit said it was classifying glyphosate, the active weed-killing ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides, as "probably carcinogenic to humans," a U.S. farm worker and a horticultural assistant have filed lawsuits claiming Monsanto Co.'s Roundup herbicide caused their cancers and Monsanto intentionally misled the public and regulators about the dangers of the herbicide.   https://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/29/monsanto-lawsuit-idUSL1N11Z20Y20150929

2015-10-06T20:51:23-05:00October 6th, 2015|News|0 Comments

Soil Health and Nutrition

Several studies of fruits, vegetables and grains have suggested a decline in nutritional value over time. According to research, this decline is due to factor such as selected varieties (trade-off between yield and nutritional value), soil depletion, changes in farming methods, including the extensive use of chemical fertilizers, as well as food processing and preparation. SILT farmers use practices that guarantee soil health and provide nutritious foods. Read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/science/a-decline-in-the-nutritional-value-of-crops.html?ref=topics&_r=0

2024-02-08T11:06:56-06:00October 5th, 2015|News|0 Comments

80% of farm acres are owned by non-farming individuals

The 2014 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey results released earlier this month underline the challenge for beginning farmers to have access to land. A tenth of the 911 million U.S. farmland acres outside of Alaska and Hawaii is slated for ownership transfer in the next five years, not including farmland that is in or is expected to be put into wills. Landlords expect to keep or put nearly 48 percent of these acres in trusts. This means that only a small percentage of farmland will be available for new entrants into the farming sector over the [...]

2023-07-21T09:50:02-05:00October 4th, 2015|News|0 Comments

Seedstock tells SILT story

A group called Seedstock contacted SILT not too long ago and asked for an interview. We want to thank them for this great coverage, helping us reach beyond state lines to tell our story, including our acquisition of the Driscoll farm, now dubbed the Loess Hills Young People's Farm. If you know media or nonprofits in other parts of the country that can help tell the SILT story, please send them to this site or to info@silt.org. We'll be happy to talk with them.

2023-12-05T14:18:09-06:00August 16th, 2015|News|0 Comments

Tomorrow’s Child

This poem was posted at a TED blog. We thank them for sharing, and we share it here as an expression of how we see our work at SILT. Tomorrow’s Child © Glenn Thomas Without a name; an unseen face and knowing not your time nor place Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn, I met you first last Tuesday morn. A wise friend introduced us two, and through his sobering point of view I saw a day that you would see; a day for you, but not for me Knowing you has changed my thinking, for I never had an inkling [...]

2015-07-16T17:32:58-05:00July 16th, 2015|News|0 Comments

SILT News Coast-to-Coast (almost)

SILT has been making the news across Iowa, nearly coast to coast!  Joe Driscoll, right, explains plans for the Young People's Farm to members of Omaha's City Sprouts. In mid-June, the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil covered SILT's "breaking new ground" party at the Loess Hills Young People's Farm, SILT's first acquisition ever with a nice feature including photos of this amazing farm. Kudos to the reporter tackling a complicated transaction. Now begins the 3-year campaign to raise the funds to make this farm a permanent part of the Council Bluffs/Omaha metro area foodshed! (Donations earmarked with "Young People's Farm" [...]

2024-01-09T08:50:56-06:00June 22nd, 2015|News|0 Comments
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