October 11th, 2024
Coast to Coast: A Summer of Learning and Growth for the Midwest Team
The transition from summer to autumn in the Midwest brings to mind final harvest, seed saving, planning and reflecting on the season passed and the one to come. Our Midwest team at American Farmland Trust (AFT) have spent a summer traveling to farms down the road and conferences across the country, gathering insights and experiences that will guide us through the next growing season.
[In this blog], three colleagues share their unique perspectives from this season of learning. Whether on the ground with farmers or in rooms filled with agricultural experts, each offers a glimpse into the meaningful conversations and discoveries shaping our work. Dive into their reflections!
Growing Deeper Connections to the Why and Who Behind AFT’s Mission
Floreal Crubaugh, Midwest Farmland Coordinator, reflects on this year’s Women for the Land Retreat.
I left the July 2024 Women for the Land Retreat in Portland, Oregon with a renewed connection to the land and the work AFT champions. While exploring the agricultural bounty of western Oregon, participants of the retreat attended a series of trainings led by Natasha Saunders of Transition Life Consulting. In these sessions, we engaged in facilitated dialogues on cultural competency, bias, leadership, and how to bring intention and values to our work at AFT.
It is easy to overlook time for reflecting on our values and beliefs during the workday. But during our time with Natasha, we participated in a self-value exercise and took time as a group to connect our shared principles back to our respective projects and AFT’s mission. It was much-needed time to bring those values to the forefront, especially amid the day-to-day pandemonium. As a group, we drew deeper connections on the “why” and “who” of AFT’s agricultural conservation goals.
With a rapidly expanding Midwest team and new programming, we can draw upon a vast and multi-dimensional set of values brought to the table by our teammates. Knowing that we are all here because we care—and taking time to understand why our colleagues care and what experiences brought them to the table—will only strengthen AFT’s mission and foster deeper, more meaningful connections with the producers we serve.
Agriculture Conservation Work is Human Work
Marlee Giacometti, Midwest Program Specialist, reflects on the 79th Soil & Water Conservation Society International Conference.
After a brief but impactful trip to the West Coast, my colleague, Rachel, and I traveled to the East Coast to attend the 79th Soil & Water Conservation Society International Conference. This year’s conference was heavily focused on the theme of collaborative conservation for all. Conservation professionals from across the country gathered to share ideas and showcase tools designed to foster collaboration to advance environmental conservation.
The conference kicked off with a keynote address that was given by Clarenda “Farmer Cee” Stanly, owner of Green Heffa Farms in Liberty, North Carolina. She shared the history of her farm and experiences with collaboration in reaching her goals as a successful hemp and tea botanicals grower, while uplifting a community of BIPOC farmers in her region. Something that Farmer Cee shared that resonated deeply with me is the advice to “not to take your hand off the responsibility of collaboration.”
Cee also emphasized the“4 E’s framework for collaboration”: economic prosperity, equity, education, and the environment, and how important they are when collaborating. Within this framework, Farmer Cee shared some key experiences she’s had in effective collaboration, while addressing historical dynamics and other challenges that hindered collaboration in the past. She postured that this crucial collaborative work often falls under the category of “DEI work”, but it shouldn’t be limited to just that category, instead it should be considered human work. It takes all of us to advance Ag conservation work.
Farmer Cee’s advice to conservation professionals stressing the impact of inclusive collaboration was a clear reminder that building and nurturing relationships across sectors is key to achieving our goals. It reinforced the idea that we can accomplish more together and encouraged us to take advantage of the connections that can be made at the conference and beyond. Her keynote, along the rest of the conference, was so complimentary to what we learned the previous week in Oregon and emphasizes the importance of the work we are doing through the Women for the Land initiative in the Midwest region.
Weaving Stronger, Inclusive Relationships in Agriculture
Rachel Lechuga, Midwest Outreach Specialist, reflects on the power of collaboration.
As my colleagues shared above, July was bursting with themes of effective collaboration, building relationships, and learning tools to sustain ourselves in the process. During this month, I attended both the 2024 Women for the Land Retreat and the 2024 Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) Conference. Both experiences emphasized themes of inclusivity in agriculture and the power of collaboration.
Key takeaways for me included various lenses through which “inclusivity” and “diversity” can be understood in our work. This could look like the cultural diversity of farmers we work with, the inclusion of additional languages to communicate about our programs, or the diverse agricultural systems that we research and support. Inclusion of diverse voices encourages creative thinking and expands our reach to audiences that have not been included before. As was clear at the SWCS Conference, supporting our agricultural systems requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, which means the inclusion of diverse voices. However, this work does extend beyond external-facing efforts.
During the Women for the Land retreat, Natasha Saunders, the facilitator for the retreat sessions, asked attendees to explore a range of topics meant to teach and explore what inclusivity in our work and workplace can look like. The group explored topics of cultural competency and navigating differences within our work. We began with self-reflection by first asking, “Why am I called to serve the people that I serve?” The group then dove into questions around how one could enhance their cultural understanding of others within AFT and our immediate communities.
Natasha’s sessions wove together a hands-on experience of building relationships all while teaching the group practical tools for inclusivity in relationship building in our work. It was beautiful to witness the relationships that were created in the span of a few short days. This experience alone can inspire the ways we cultivate rooted and strong relationships with the communities we serve. The framework Natasha provided is key to adopting an inclusive approach when building new relationships and welcoming new audiences into AFT programming.
Growing Forward
As the Midwest team looks toward 2025 and beyond, we have begun making changes to current programming to include diverse audiences. In 2024, we expanded the Midwest team’s ability to work with new partners who support diverse scales and methods of farming. Externally, strategic goal-setting efforts found a common theme on the continued need to diversify audiences we serve. To achieve this, we aim to uphold AFT’s diversity and inclusion statement of building authentic and sustained partnerships with organizations led by or representing marginalized groups. Internally, some staff members have contributed to this by examining their personal and professional goals to include diversity and equity as our region develops. The future of the Midwest depends on our ability to diversify. As the agricultural landscape continues to evolve, so too must our goals and efforts evolve along with it.