148: Will Reed of Native Son Farm on Coming Home to Mississippi, Surviving Adversity, and Reshaping Land and Community

Will Reed and his wife, Amanda, returned to Will’s home in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 2010 to start Native Son Farm with a walking tractor and an acre of production. Today, Native Son Farm has twenty acres of produce in two locations, and markets through its 200-member CSA, an on-farm retail store, farmers markets, and restaurants.

Will shares the story of coming home to Mississippi, and learning to grow and sell organic vegetables in a climate where everyone said it wouldn’t work. He shares how they manage the long, intense seasons, their strategies for marketing non-southern produce in the deep south, and his involvement in the policies and politics around organic and local agriculture.

We also dig into how his farm team and community rallied during health and weather crises that came just as the farm was really scaling up, and how Native Son Farm has worked to reshape the land they farm on and the community they farm in to make organic, local agriculture a resilient reality.

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Pictures, show links, and more at farmertofarmerpodcast.com/episodes/reed.