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Will Allen, owner of Cedar Circle Farm in Vermont, has spent the last 14 years pioneering a process where a relatively small farming community feeds thousands of locals, and teaches them about organic urban agriculture. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in the organic agriculture movement.

I visited Will’s farm in Vermont last year just prior to attending the BioChar conference. We did the interview at his farm. Their community-supported agriculture (CSA) program has 200 households in it during the summer, and another 100 households join their fall program.

“When we first started out, we decided that it’s going to be an educational farm because most of the farmers right now are not producing young farmers,” he says. “We’re trying to train the next generation of farmers and trying to change farming by training that generation to be organic and community-focused…

We have several young people and middle-aged people who got trained here and who are now running their own farms. We put them through a program where they have to be here two or three years. But they get paid a regular salary; it’s not like an apprentice program,” he says.