How can we regenerate our backyard?

The Young Farmers Incubator Program is a joint project between Farmers Footprint Australia and The Farm Byron Bay, and it focuses on encouraging the next generation of young farmers into a life on the land, providing them with access to land, machinery, mentors, and financial and business skills.

With support from the Byron Shire Council and Stone & Wood (via a $12K donation through our foundation) in 2023, the Incubator Program is designed to be scalable and transferrable, with the intention to establish a model which can be introduced in other regions.

“Becoming a Farmer or Grower is most often a lifelong commitment and requires an ongoing investment of time, energy and capital intensive resources; one of the primary barriers to the emergence and success of young growers. If this remains the status quo, the future of our food security and the Australian agricultural industry as a whole will be facing a significant skills and labor shortage crisis,”⁠ says ⁠Jordy De Boer from The Farm Byron Bay.

There are many barriers that young people face today that are preventing them from getting into farming. Tanya Massy identifies 6 key areas, that include: 

• Access to capital

• Access to land

• Accessing hands on learning pathways

• Social challenges

• Lack of dedicated funding and support

• Ecological and climatic challenges

The misconception also exists that communities and regions will have enough food to sustain themselves if major roads were to be cut off. Throughout the Northern Rivers, this came to light during the floods and storms that have affected the area recently: there were challenges in accessing fresh produce, and there was not enough fresh produce to go around.

As the impacts of climate change continue to be felt - it is more crucial than ever that we choose and learn to farm in ways that regenerate the land. There needs to be a focus on building resilience in our communities and economies. Through supporting opportunities for young people to access farming, we’re creating pathways to a regenerative, innovative and more sustainable future.

 “The beauty we see in the Incubator program is its potential to have far reaching impact beyond the twelve months of support and how it may provide a model that can be replicated and scaled to support the regenerative farming sector and more people whose dream it is to become farmers. We are proud to have supported this, through Stone & Wood’s donation, enabling a program that is collaborative, innovative and influential in the way it is bringing stakeholders along for the journey, with the hope of doing things differently and better for the future. We look forward to seeing it continue in 2024,” says Jasmin Daly, Executive Director of Ingrained Foundation.