Fields of Farmers: Interning, Mentoring, Partnering, Germinating

I’ve been waiting to read this book for some time now and after reading it (in three days time) it ended up exceeding my high expectations. Anyone who has followed this blog or peeked at my book review section knows I’m a fan of Joel Salatin. It was his first book “You Can Farm” which was the inspiration that set me on this journey. After writing his first book, fifteen years later with numerous inspirational books in-between Joel has written another book that equals the first one on the scales of practical inspiration. I’m certainly not saying the others aren’t great books, I love them all, but this book spoke to me in a powerful way much like the first one did. I will admit different books speak to us at different times when we are in need of what they supply, but aside from that I think this book has some ground breaking ideas for the future design of the world foodscape. The complete title of the book is “Fields of Farmers: Interning, Mentoring, Partnering, Germinating” and it lives up to the title in every respect.What’s in the Book?The book is broken into five sections, which include 17 chapters, and 320 pages. Section one, What’s the Big Deal? is more of an introduction section which covers the need for new farmers and the idea of what a healthy and productive classroom or learning environment is and should be. Section two, Especially for Mentors is as the title suggests a section written for the farmers who will be teaching the aspiring farmers ( the interns and apprentices), and it covers wages, mindset, skills, and investing in people. Section 3, Especially for Interns is written for interns and covers the cost it takes for a mentor to host an intern along with the spirit or attitude an intern should have to justify that cost among other things. Section 4, How it Works talks about the vetting and selecting of interns, how the internship program works at Joel’s farm – Polyface, housing, leveraging labor, and what to do when a mentor/intern relationship isn’t working. The final section Future Farming Success addresses land access, creating new farmers, food clusters or networking, and stacking or adding multiple enterprises to the farming business.HighlightsIt’s tough to choose highlights from this book, as I feel the entire thing is a highlight, but I’ll try to pick a few of the ripest cherries, at least to my taste. One of the big takeaways I got was was in examining the relationship between the mentor and intern and looking at value. The value the mentor gives to the intern is quite easy to see, but the value the intern exchanges for the mentor’s knowledge is hard to recognize, and sometimes it’s simply absent. Being someone who is looking to be an intern in the near future this section was very useful to help me gain the proper perspective and mindset when it comes to thinking about the value I can add for my future mentors. The fact is the intern costs the farmer money for at least the first two months of any internship. There are broken tools, there is time wasted in what Joel refers to as “work slippage” – this is when the intern does a task incorrectly and the mentor must do it again correctly with more time spent on repeated instruction. Joel says it’s not until the 3rd or 4th month that the intern is able to begin adding value to the operation. All of this is very natural of course and part of the learning process, and above all else it’s critical for the intern to have a positive attitude and always be looking to learn, improve, and share positive energy, but it’s crucial for the intern to be aware of the fact that they are causing the operation to lose money and not take it for granted. Joel also makes a point that no farm should ever take on an intern in hopes of getting cheap labor, and that a farm should be fully operational and profitable before even thinking about taking on an intern. The bottom line is farms are businesses and survive and grow from profit. It’s profit that allows them to mentor the aspiring farmer by providing housing, food, time, and absorbing the damage they may cause to property or tools due to their inexperience. So the question the intern should be asking him or herself is: “How can I help this operation be more profitable?” Here is a telling passage from the book on this topic: Interns must be as careful about watching costs and stopping slippage as the mentor. Unless and until that personal ownership occurs, the intern works along with a misplaced notion of entitlement and importance. When the interns figure out how to make their mentors money, guess what? They’ve just figured out how to be financially successful themselves. The past is a prologue. The attention to frugality and financial stewardship in the internship will carry over into an intern’s future endeavors. The internship is an incubator for habit development. Habits are not just procedural how-to’s.This is a critical point. This is really the ultimate lesson for any wannabe farmer. If one plans on running their own operation it involves much more than labor, it involves efficient labor, along with a multitude of other things that can only be learned from working with the mentor. If the intern continually keeps the profit reality in the back of their mind during the internship they will emerge from the program with a much greater chance of being able to run a successful operation of their own some day, and the mentor will have been rewarded for his efforts and be able to continue to work with new interns in the future.Another highlight was in the last section that described what Polyface does and how it’s developed over the years. The Salatins have been hosting interns and apprentices for 20 years now and the family of farmers that’s grown from those relationships is amazing. Every intern who has graduated from their intern program has found land to work. It was never the plan to grow and produce for as many customers as Polyface does today, it developed over time naturally from demand for their products and the Salatin’s desire to give young farmers the opportunity to get a start in farming without all of the beginning trappings like going into debt. I’ve said this more than once in other book reviews, but it’s very relevant here so I’ll say it again. The average farmer in America and most of the world is 60 years old. In this book Joel mentions the endless letters that come to him from older farmers asking him to send a young farmer to them to work their land in partnership. The demand is never ending and growing day by day. The reality for the young farmer is it’s nearly impossible to buy farm land today with inflated land prices all over the world, and unfortunately too many people take that as a barrier to farming and give up, or never try. The fact is you don’t have to own land to be a farmer. Joel even references Greg Judy’s book “No Risk Ranching” which I reviewed last month for a great example of how young farmers can access land through leases. Over the years Polyface has leased numerous farms in the surrounding area to manage. Guess who manages these farms? Polyface interns and apprentices who have graduated from the Polyface program. What an opportunity for a young farmer just getting started. They need zero capital. They don’t need to worry about marketing as everything is marketed through Polyface. An agreement is made including how the young farmer can make profits and he or she is essentially given a farm to operate at zero cost. You might think that this is just a way for Polyface to expand and make more money. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only does Polyface give the young farmer this golden opportunity to get started but they allow and encourage the farmer to farm and create their own separate enterprises – enterprises that compete with the Polyface label and surely take Polyface customers away from their customer pool. What company hires an employee, puts them in a high management position, then encourages them to start a rival company that would surely take away from their customer base? Not a company that’s sole interest is profit, that’s for sure. Talk about giving back in incalculable ways.Final ThoughtsThere is so much more to say about this book, but I’m trying to keep my book reviews down to a more digestible 1,000-1,500 words. The idea about Food Clusters at the end of the book which I only touched the surface on when describing the Polyface network and partnerships is I believe the future of local food as I alluded to at the beginning of this review. The future farmers of America and the rest of the world who are going to lead the way healing the land and growing the healthiest food possible will not be land owners. They will be farmers with a working knowledge of how to be productive and profitable. The beauty of this is a natural byproduct of being productive and profitable is the healing of the land. The two go hand in hand. Perhaps a few generations later these farmers will be able to take a majority stake in ownership of the land, I think that likely will be the case as economic bubbles created by poor government policy pop and deflate over the coming decades. And when that does happen there will be a legion of capable farmers who will have made a profit and accumulated savings waiting to take the land back into healing hands as owners. I look forward to being a part of the new wave that reshapes the way the we think about food and farming, and anybody who wants to join me or anyone who simply wants to have a clearer picture of how the future foodscape will look I couldn’t endorse reading this book anymore than I already have.[...]

With no doubt Joel Salatin is way ahead many farmers of this time. His passion and experience in farming is outstanding. Great book for anyone that owns or want to be a farmer, full of practical tips.

I’ve read most of Joel Salatin’s books and I always find creativity and enthusiasm within them. This book – Fields of Farmers – is no exception.The basic premise of the book is for current farmers (or landowners) to start considering how they can best attract younger people to take on the challenge of healing the land – and figuring out a way to make a good living doing it. Salatin spends the first half of the book focusing on the apprentice program he runs at Polyface Farm (in Swoope, Virginia) and the blessings (and occasional disasters) that occur when you turn over vital operations and duties to those who have few such experiences in their lives.But the end sum of Salatin’s book is to nudge the aging landholder (with sledge-like finesse) to think of creative ways to open up opportunities to others, to broaden the revenue streams possible from a finite piece of land, and thereby launch an expanding operation that can grow according to the talents, inspirations hard work of all the people involved.If you’ve got an orchard, why not run chicken tractors under them, and start a cider line? YOU don’t have to do it. Your new partner can. Salatin’s appeal is an exciting way to structure strategic planning, but it also opens the possibility for unexpected opportunities as well.I wish a million people would read this book; then if 10-percent of them put Salatin’s words into action, we’d see clusters of home farming operations that would turn the population declines of our rural neighborhoods around. And using Polyface, land-nurturing principles, the blessed ground would be all the better for it for the millennia to come.

For someone like me, a former management consultant for fortune 500 companies and now, owner of a software company catering to Agri-Businesses I like this book. It provides a fundamental understanding of the challenges faced by farmers in the US. There are clear examples of success and practical guides such as how to structure contracts, MOU's (memorandum of understanding), insights to profitability, how to run a farm like a business, succession planning and of course there is no lack of great wit and humor from Joel Salatin.But there is more, I found consistent mention of SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures) something that is so fundamental for any business, I would concur this is critical especially for farming operations. Running a business based on consensus planning and execution (Sales & Operations Planning) where various representatives such as Marketing, Operations, Processing & Distribution are brought together to make decisions; is something even fortune 500 companies struggle with today and they look to optimize on a periodic basis via Sales & Operations Planning Processes.This book has great insights, Mr. Salatin could probably advise a management board based on these principles. And as for making use of the energy, innovation, willing to change the world that comes with youth these concepts are also employed by large profitable companies. I think this book makes a great attempt to highlight those opportunities, so read this with an open mind and you may find insights to drive your business like you never thought possible.

Mr Salatin carries on a little too long for my taste but I really appreciate his insights and agree with much of what he has to say. His thoughts on work ethic, reactions of people who do not have skin in the game (although everyone really has skin in this game in the long run), and what constitutes real worth are dead on.

My first holiday in 15 years I deliberately take this with me. Being a regenerative farmer, and having tried to work with the diversity and spiritual context that the author and his family have for decades successfully achieved, I knew getting away was the only chance I would get to really study the wisdom of hard experience. This for me is now required reading for any farming partnership, whether it is at board or prospective intern level.

Just what we needed at this stage of our farming life.....how to inspire and pass on knowledge to the next generation. Another excellent book by Joel Salatin.

Joel says it how it is!

Great book and good company to deal with.