Next Gen Ag: Views from a Midwest Cricket Farmer

Description:

When Shelby moved back to the Iowa family farm, she knew she didn’t want to grow corn and soybeans with her dad. She started raising crickets – prairie lobster – to stir important conversations about food and the food system. Though the food innovation spotlight is often focused on urban and coastal regions, the Midwest remains at the nexus of food systems issues that disproportionately impact environment, health, and community livelihoods. In rural America, family farms continue to decline as the average farmer age rises. In rethinking the food system, those who live agriculture, and are most impacted by it, have knowledge to share. Young people from family farms like Shelby are serving up what the next generation of farming should and can look like in the Midwest and beyond.