For farmers

New Athens residents are not just new customers, but partners who are invested in how and why you farm the way you do. Once we’ve chosen a location, if you’re a farmer nearby, we’ll aim to bring you tens of thousands of people who see you as integral to their health and the fabric of their community.

If you manage a farm that’s aligned with our vision for restoring what Big Ag destroyed, we want to talk with you. Email us.

At New Athens we are interested in establishing a healthy and vigorous community that will outlast all of us. That means a long term commitment to a healthy food supply for our citizens. We’re also interested in making sure that the help we provide is meaningful. Here are the things that we are willing to do for you:

1. Pay for the naturally grown certification of any farmer that is close enough to New Athens to be a meaningful part of the food ecosystem.

2. Ask farmers to comply with any growing techniques that the farmers involved in this system believe could improve health (both soil and human) without unreasonably affecting production.

3. Setup an internal stamp (New Athens approved) for all farms that meet the above requirements. Food stamped as such will be considered as ‘organic’ for all purposes within the city except the right to display the organic stamp.

4. Ensure that all food used by local schools and government activities comes from ‘New Athens approved’ farms if possible - and put a city wide effort on encouraging grocery stores and restaurants to stock ‘New Athens approved’ food. This city is hopefully going to attract health conscious families that care about the quality of their food and city. By joining in this effort, you’ll be able to get distinguished access to a market that will appreciate your efforts, and won’t require you to accept such low margins as wholesalers and food packers demand in the current system.

Unlike ‘organic’ certification, we will not: take a percent cut of profits or require you to demonstrate that the land had not been farmed according to our requirements for any period of time prior to your taking possession of it. In our experience, these two requirements are the single largest reasons that certified organic is so onerous on farmers and expensive for consumers.

Not just new customers, but partners who are invested in how and why you farm the way you do.

We aim to bring the farms near New Athens 1000s of people who see you as integral to their health and the fabric of the community. Not just people who buy cookies at the farmers market.

We’re the people at the farmers market who buy food, not just cookies.