As COVID-19 continues to develop, here at PastureMap we wanted to check in with a message of care for our community. Rest assured that all our operations will continue - we are fortunate to be a remote team that is already working from home in California and Texas. CK will be continue to be available for all PastureMap operations and support.
We've covered Lydia Carpenter and Wian Prinsloo's decade-long journey from inception to farm ownership. For lessons from the first 5 years, see: Making Farm Ownership Viable for Young People: Lessons from Luna Field Farm Part I
We are very grateful that Ainsley Harris at FastCompany highlighted regenerative ranching in full long-form coverage today. This was a several month process of working with a thoughtful journalist on soil health, research studies, invitations to conferences, etc.. We learned a lot about how much it takes for a smart, engaged journalist to ramp up on an issue as complex and in-depth as regenerative agriculture.
Read FastCompany's full coverage here: The Green New Deal Wants Farmers to Restore the Land, Not Keep Wrecking It
Please share widely. Mainstream media and thoughtful journalists are beginning to take notice.
Photos: Luna Field Farm
How Lydia Carpenter and Wian Prinsloo got to farm ownership, nearly a decade after they started their grazing and regenerative meat business.
Our good friends Lydia Carpenter and Wian Prinsloo are the owners of Luna Field Farm near Belmont, Manitoba. Neither of them grew up with a family farm, but were deeply committed to farming as a career since their 20s. They knew they wanted to farm, but had no clear picture how they would work their way into owning land.
Fast forward a decade, and they have built their way from renting pastures, to rolling three-year leases, to owning their own farm in a succession agreement nearly a decade after they started their business.
Part I: Advice to Young Farmers From Luna Field Farm reposted from our blog in 2016. It starts with building a small, portable business to take advantage of leases. Stay tuned for Part II on a deep dive of how they made farm ownership work.
We couldn't be prouder to support Womxn in Ranching.
We're proud to follow our teammate Erin Kiley's leadership in creating critical spaces of inclusion and belonging. Erin started one of the initial conversations that became Womxn* in Ranching (WinR), in a hallway conversation at Quivira Conference. Erin Kiley asked for more spaces for womxn like herself in the ranching community. Just a year later, Womxn in Ranching is 80 members strong, with a 300+ person waitlist. As a leader in WinR, Erin has helped create 5 Circles in California, Montana, and New Mexico. In her day job, Erin is the Grazing Management and Rancher Success Lead at PastureMap.
When womxn rise, we all rise.
"Womxn in Ranching is not just about womxn, and not just about ranchers. It's about answering the calling of “how do we belong to the land?” and “how do we belong to each other?” The answers reverberate far beyond the circles of womxn, and ranchers, from where these questions originate." - Our CEO, Christine Su, belongs to Circle Two at TomKat Ranch in CA.
The WinR fundraiser has one week left, and has reached 70% of their funding goal. Donate now for a 3x funding match. Achieving $10k will unlock $30k total from matching partners to build WinR Circles in every Western State.
Donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/women-in-ranching-empowering-womens-leadership
I can't believe it's time to welcome 450 producers to Santa Rosa for Grassfed Exchange 2019: Regeneration Rising in less than a week. As co-chair of the conference, I've been dreaming, planning, and anticipating for a full year. Here are the sessions I'm most excited about:
Our breakout session with Dave Pratt and Deborah Clark on Friday. Real talk on losing millions, pulling out of disaster, and make-or-break decisions that drive ranch profitability.
A version of this post first appeared July 2018. This March 2019 update precedes the Grassfed Exchange: Regeneration Rising 2019 conference.
Many of us in the soil health movement like to think of ourselves as regenerative businesses. But a regenerative mindset isn’t only about land, animals, and plants. Building a regenerative business means including ourselves. We need to invest in what Nikki Silvestri calls social soil building.
Electronic ID / RFID tags for cattle identification are becoming increasingly popular as producers use them to track individual animal performance. EID tags, wand readers, and portable scales are making smart cattle tracking easier by the day.
So - how can this technology help us make more profits? By tracking individual cattle AND individual pasture performance to more effectively convert grass to beef to dollars.
Just released! Healthy Soils to Cool the Planet, a philanthropic and investment guide to scale up soil carbon sequestration. This excellent guide by Breakthrough Strategies includes basic information on the benefits of healthy soils, a list of regenerative agricultural practices and an extensive portfolio of recommended grantees.
Here at PastureMap, we are delighted and grateful to be featured as one of the 6 recommended investment opportunities in Soil Health for impact investors.
We could not be more excited to be co-chairing the The Grassfed Exchange conference: Regeneration Rising this April in Santa Rosa, California!
We have an absolutely packed agenda of national and global speakers. We're also centering the voices of next generation leaders, including Doniga Markegard, Ariel Greenwood, Brian Alexander, Byron Palmer, Nikki Silvestri, Dede Boies, Loren Poncia, Anthony Myint, and more.
