Hancock County Farm Earns Key Certification

A farm in Hancock County has received a major designation. The land at Tyner Pond Farm, which had previously been used to grow crops, has been certified organic by the USDA after nearly 10 years of work. The farm delivers pasture-raised meats to Hoosiers hungry for a healthier alternative. Co-owner Amy Baggott says the effort is part of a larger “holistic management” movement.

Baggott explained to Business of Health Reporter Kylie Veleta what the movement means for the future of the farm.

“What we’re going to be focusing on moving forward is that we’re going to run our operations and our production holistically, with the center core of everything being our soil health,” said Baggott. “And so it’s very important for us that we had organically-certified land because it matters so much for our soil to be healthy because everything else falls into place after that.”

The holistic management movement is a global initiative based off of the work of Colorado-based Savory Institute. The nonprofit is looking to establish 100 hubs around the world to grow the movement. Baggott says Tyner Pond Farm was recently approved to be an international influencer hub through Savory.

“(It) will be an 18-month process that we’ve started and basically what that means we’ll learn these holistic management (practices) for production and for organization that we’ll put into place and then people from all around the world will come to learn from us at Tyner Pond Farm.”

Baggott says the change from traditional farming to holistic management can be challenging.

“If they’ve been farming conventionally for a long time, it’s very difficult to switch out of that,” Baggott said. “But there are movements that you can do and steps that you can take. You can start doing cover crops. You can start doing no-till crop raising. You can reduce your inputs chemically. There’s a lot of things that can be done. It just takes a little bit of effort to change.”

Baggot says the next step for Tyner Pond Farm is to get its products certified organic, which could take another 1-2 years. She says they have to limit all inorganic things coming into the farm, such as hay or straw, which will become easier as they continue to move toward holistic management.