The Aging Landscape of American Farming

How To Support The Next Generation Of Farmers | This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic

The average age of a farmer in the United States today is 58 years old. And it’s been projected that about 40% of the continental United States’ farm and ranch acreage will have changed hands between 2015 and 2035. However, young people who are looking to get into farming are unfortunately faced with a number of barriers to entry, including difficulty accessing land, education, and financing. This is why it is so important that we begin to spur business innovation and create policy supports to bring in the next generation of farmers, and innovators in the food system.

Dr. Hyman explored these topics in three conversations he had last year with guests Kimbal Musk, Tobias Peggs, and Danielle Nierenberg.

Kimbal Musk is a chef, restaurateur, and philanthropist. His personal mission is to pursue an America where everyone has access to real food. He’s been named a Global Social Entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum and is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of three businesses—The Kitchen Restaurant Group, Big Green, and Square Roots—with real food missions that are rapidly growing across the US. The Kitchen Restaurant Group (with its three concepts Next Door, Hedge Row, and The Kitchen) serves real food at every price point and has created over a thousand mission-driven jobs. The restaurants source sustainably grown food from American farmers, stimulating the local farm economy to the tune of millions of dollars a year. Kimbal’s nonprofit organization, Big Green, builds permanent, outdoor Learning Garden classrooms in hundreds of underserved schools across America reaching over 350,000 students every day. His tech-enabled food company, Square Roots, builds urban farms in climate-controlled shipping containers with the mission to bring real food to people in cities around the world by empowering next-gen farmers. 

Tobias Peggs is co-founder and CEO of Square Roots, the Brooklyn-based urban farming company known for changing the way people think about growing local food and training the country’s future generations of farmers. Previously, he led Aviary, a mobile photo editing company as its CEO until its acquisition by Adobe, and was also CEO at OneRiot, a social media analytics company, acquired by Walmart. Tobias grew up in England and has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Cardiff University. 

Danielle Nierenberg co-founded the non-profit Food Tank in 2013 as an organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Prior to starting Food Tank, Danielle spent two years traveling to more than 60 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, meeting with farmers and farmers’ groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, along with journalists, documenting what’s working to help alleviate hunger and poverty, while protecting the environment at the same time.

Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Kimbal Musk, “How To Fix Nutrition In Schools,” here:  https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/KimbalMusk

Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Tobias Peggs, “What Is Hyper-Local Food?” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/TobiasPeggs

Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Danielle Nierenberg, “How One Woman is Transforming the Food System,” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/DanielleNierenberg

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