Impacts & Success Stories

Glynwood gets results.  We measure the success of our programs by their impact in advancing our mission of saving farming by strengthening farm communities and regional food systems.  Here are some of the accomplishments we look back on with pride.

  • In 2011, publishing The State of Agriculture in the Hudson Valley (pdf, 4m), which uses Ag Census data and other information to examine the challenges and identify the opportunities for farmers, entrepreneurs, and communities in the Hudson Valley.
  • In 2011, launching Keep Farming in Berkshire County, Mass.  This 3-year countywide initiative will help 32 towns to plan and coordinate initiatives and policies to strengthen their farming economies.
  • In 2011, launching The Apple Project, which is working to save Hudson Valley apple orchards by helping entrepreneurs and orchardists build markets and a regional identity for value-spacer added products like hard cider and spirits.  In its debut year, Apple Project initiatives included: (1) Cider Week, a week-long celebration of hard cider in restaurants and shops in New York City and the Hudson Valley; (2) the Hudson Valley Cider Route, a website that includes a map of orchards and cideries, and information about the region’s producers; (3) an “exchange” of cultural and technical knowledge between producers and cider makers in the Hudson Valley and France’s “apple basket”  region of Le Perche, Normandy. 
  • spacer In 2011, expanding our CSA, more than doubling the number of households receiving our Certified Naturally Grown crops, and providing neighboring schools, food banks, and restaurants with locally grown food.
  • In 2010, launching a unique modular mobile slaughterhouse – the only modular designed mobile harvest system in the U.S. and the first for large animal slaughter licensed east of New Mexico.  As featured in the New York Times Sunday Magazine (pdf), our Modular Harvest System (MHS) is demonstrating a break-through and cost-effective solution to the dire shortage of slaughterhouses in the Northeast, which will enable more farmers to get their pastured meat to market.
  • In 2010, beginning a special urban Keep Farming initiative in Newburgh, NY, which is helping the city create its own local agriculture through creation of community food gardens.  Three gardens have already been started.
  • spacer From 2009-2011, conducted a USDA-sponsored study that demonstrated that herds of goats – cordoned by portable solar-powered electric fences – can be used to recover and manage pastures by intensive grazing on invasive plants.  The results of this study  (pdf, 7m) have been documented and disseminated to other farmers.
  • In 2010, founding of the Glynwood Institute for Sustainable Food & Farming, which in 2010 and 2011 was the lead sponsor for the first-ever TEDxManhattan: ‘Changing the Way We Eat’ programs that engaged tens of thousands of people in exploring the issues, impacts, and innovations in the movement to sustainable eating and farming.
  • In 2009, building a new livestock “barn with a mission”, which in addition to enabling us to better care for our animals, is enabling us to use their specially composted manure to fertilize our pastures.  Enhanced pasture fertilization has enabled us to put more animals on the land and raise them to be healthier and more robust.  Independent labs are measuring the impacts on soil nutrients and haspacer y productivity.
  • In 2009, initiating Biological Farm Management techniques in our CSA gardens to balance the mineral levels in our soils in order to feed soil micro-organisms, which results in crops with the highest nutritional value.  In conjunction with independent labs we are documenting and plan to disseminate these measurable results.

Earlier Impacts & Successes

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