Growth plan: Sylvanaqua Farms talks about how it’s expanding

Chris Newman has become an outspoken leader for the minority farming community — a face of an industry to speaks raw truth about how agriculture has long been, as well as where it should be going. Newman, who was featured in 2020 in this AGDAILY article, left a tech career in Washington, D.C., in 2013 and moved to Earlysville, Virginia to practice sustainable agriculture, and later located to Montross, Virginia. His land, Sylvanaqua Farms, is described as a mosaic of public and private lands serving as a base to produce wholesome food with regenerative agricultural methods … a vertically-integrated, employee-owned cooperative … making food available at greatly reduced prices without sacrificing ecological values, and making agricultural opportunities open to more than just the most privileged members of society.

The farm has officially broken up into three businesses and a nonprofit: 40 Acres Community Ranch (livestock), Choptico Farm (produce), Sylvanaqua Farms (processing and marketing), and the Chesapeake Food and Environmental Trust (capital and G&A), according to their Facebook page.

Newman uses this video to explain how it’s all shaking out and becoming the next big thing for this enterprise.