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A Path to Farm Community
Farmers, like all of us, need time and strength to focus on relationships, health, healing and a sense of belonging, yet many agriculture service providers are unable to give wellness the attention it needs. A recent Cornell Small Farms project, Reconnecting with Purpose, aimed to provide farmers with additional support to cope with the hard […]
Changing Lives Through Better Communication
After a particularly stressful first year of farming on his own, organic vegetable farmer Marc Cavatorta was seeking support from other farmers. He found it when he attended a reflective retreat held not far from his farm in Palermo, Maine. “The retreat offered a chance to be with other farmers who were willing to talk […]
Planting Seeds of Help
Despite years of experience, fifth-generation flower farmer Leroy Hardy was facing foreclosure on his farm near Sedley, Virginia. To navigate the financial crisis, Hardy reached out to Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) for mediation assistance, and he emerged with his assets intact. So when RAFI, the Land Loss Prevention Project (LLPP) and the National Center […]
New SARE Bulletin: Resilient Farmers, Ranchers and Communities
Sustainable farming emphasizes the need to consider the environmental, economic and social impacts of agriculture. For decades, sustainable agriculture research has focused more on environmental stewardship and profitability than on personal and social issues. SARE’s newest bulletin, Resilient Farmers, Ranchers and Communities: Social Sustainability in Agriculture, describes how an increasing number of farmers and ranchers […]
Resilient Farmers, Ranchers and Communities: Social Sustainability in Agriculture
When Nfamara Badjie, Dawn Hoyte and other family members started Ever-Growing Family Farm in Upstate New York in 2014, they had an improbable vision: that they could grow rice well enough to allow at least one of them to eventually leave their off-farm job and work full time on the farm. Rice is a nearly […]
Managing Stress
Farming and ranching are stressful businesses. One key metric of a farm's sustainability is its capacity to provide a quality of life that meets one of our most basic human needs - good mental health. This page highlights successful SARE-funded projects that are using innovative strategies to help farmers and ranchers manage stress. If you […]
Understanding and Measuring Social Sustainability
This SARE brief defines social sustainability and illustrates how it can be addressed more clearly in SARE projects. Sample projects and quality of life indicators are provided to help grant-seekers and reviewers think broadly about understanding, measuring and describing the social impacts of research and education projects.