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Small Farm Training Center, a 501 (c) (3) Non-Profit Educational Organization

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Over the past few years, interest in organic agriculture has increased dramatically throughout America. Understandably so, as this period has seen an alarming increase in heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and childhood obesity. What’s more, with over 70,000 man made chemicals currently in use around the world, we are living in an ocean of pollutants, and the public, by and large, is beginning to worry. Consumers are therefore growing skeptical about the food safety claims made by giant corporations in the food industry and their government regulatory agency partners. More and more people realize that the best way to insure the safety and nutritional value of the food they eat, as well as the best way to ameliorate the harmful impact of agriculture upon the Earth, is simply to buy organic - preferably local organic.

Unfortunately, modern education is almost exclusively focused on preparing children for an urban future, as consumers in a global “free” market. The fact is that, for all the fashionable talk about cultural diversity, schools, colleges and universities prepare their graduates poorly for anything other than a homogenized, fossil-fuel-powered, urban existence. But what is the future is as much rural as urban?

Toward the natural world, the education system emphasizes theories, not values. In the wake of the environmental issues now looming so large before us, Western education today—the education that has equipped and enabled us to drive the planet to the brink of crises--is no guarantee of decency, prudence or wisdom.

This is not an argument for ignorance, but rather a positive affirmation that we must look for help in a different direction. It is not education, but education of a certain kind, that will save us. We must look to the land itself and in particular to the people who “husband” it to find standards of truth that we can live by.

The Small Farm Training Center prepares its students to cultivate an understanding of these problems by teaching organic farming, coupled with sound environmental education. We draw our strength from the instincts of ordinary people—especially indigenous agrarian peoples—who have preserved the intimate knowledge of species, biota, soil, climate and place, and whose wisdom is embodied by observation before it is taught or transmitted.