“U.S. agriculture is at a crossroads. The path we’ve been on, industrial food production, is a dead end. It damages air, water and soil, harms rural communities, and limited future productivity.
But there’s a better way. Scientists call it agroecological farming. We call it healthy farms. Healthy farms can be just as productive as industrial farms, but they’re better for the environment, the economy, and the people who grow (and eat) food.”
The Healthy Farm principles are focused on productivity, economic viability, and environmental stewardship. To achieve these goals, farmers focus on building their farm’s characteristics to be multifunctional, regenerative, biodiverse, and interconnected. An approachable way to maintain Healthy Farm practices is by maintaining the landscape, using crop diversity and rotation, integrating crops and livestock, and by planting cover crops.
All in all, the Health Farm reduces the needs for chemical inputs, increases biodiversity, reduces the environmental impact, and builds upon drought resilience.