First Generation Farming: A blueprint for coordinated, cooperative agribusiness that will keep you on the land for generations Paperback – December 19, 2025

A blueprint for coordinated, cooperative agribusiness that will get you on the land and keep you there for generations. This book is a culmination and synthesis of everything I've learned in my ten years as a first-generation farmer.This book discusses all the things I wish I knew when I got into the business as a first generation farmer:The order in which to develop the different elements of your farm and agribusiness.How conventional agriculture and agribusiness operateHow high a mountain we have to climb to compete with incumbent agribusiness; how to find partners to set up an agribusiness with better ethicsHow agribusinesses and cooperatives leverage economies of scaleWhere and how these organizations are plugged into the local vs. global economyHow career paths are frustrated in both conventional and alternative agricultureThe difficulties posed by everything from volunteer farm labor to agricultural non-profitsIt also helps you unlearn some of the bad ideas that may have already found their way into your head from the farm-to-table influencer corps:The supremacy of small-scale farmingThe locavore principleThe idea that treating your farm like any other business is a bad thingEuphoric ideas about regenerative agriculture’s potential to solve all the world’s problemsThat farming is a spiritual salve for trauma and a substitute for therapyThe idealization of farming as a family inheritanceThe obsession with landownershipThe idea that every single thing about “big agriculture” is irredeemably corrupt and useless.Above all, First Generation Farming aims to save you from years of mistakes, fortunes lost, relationships frayed and, in so doing, to save us all from a continued want of real, rather than imagined, progress on the food sovereignty front. Read more