Food should be controlled by communities, not agribusiness.
Half of America's farmers retire by 2035.
Most of the next generation set to inherit those farms simply wants to cash out. Unless something is done, corporations, billionaires, and foreign interests will continue acquiring the land of retirees — eroding the number and health of our farms, our food, our farmworkers, and the natural environment we all depend on.
We need a large influx of new, first-generation farmers to stem the tide. For decades, we've pinned our hopes on the small-farming movement to provide that influx.
Unfortunately, that movement has failed.
Intense labor requirements and a poor business model prevent nearly all of these new farmers from lasting a single decade, much less a generation. After a decade in it, our co-founder Chris couldn't help but notice that regenerative agriculture seemed to be really bad at two important things: making food affordable to most people, and supporting farmers as anything but a hobby for the wealthy.
For all the hype about solving climate change and feeding the world, regenerative ag turned out to be little more than a playground for rich consumers and well-off farmers.
A cooperative, not a charity.
Blackbird is an agricultural and agribusiness cooperative designed from the ground up to fix the First Generation Farmer Problem. Production, processing, and distribution under integrated community control — so farmers earn a living, land gets cared for, and food finds the people who need it most.
Not under the control of an adversarial relationship between family farmers and shareholder agribusiness — one that leaves corporations rich, farmers starved for cash and incentivized to abuse their own land, their heirs looking for a way out, and 2.3 billion people living with food insecurity.
The co-op model puts profits at the service of people. That doesn't attract a lot of speculative investment — but it works.
Our customers and our communities are our biggest investors, and where we place our hopes. Memberships are the load-bearing wall. They let us pay farmers a living wage without jacking up prices for everybody else.
We will win, or ruin ourselves trying.
Four farmers. Four farms. One co-op.
A decade running Sylvanaqua. Wrote the book the manifesto comes from.
Runs the route. If your order shows up, Jonas is why.
Beef and pork on pasture in Westmoreland County.
Heritage pork and produce, Blue Ridge foothills.
How we got here.
Sylvanaqua Farms started
Chris bought first land in Colonial Beach, VA. First pasture-raised flock.
The pilot co-op
Four first-generation farms ran an experimental cooperative season. It worked.
Year one
Blackbird officially opens. Memberships, mutual aid, weekly route across 5 cities.
Where we are now
Still tiny. Still optimistic. Building responsibly toward a co-op that proves the model.