“We’ve created a movement at the Market Gardener Institute. We’ve taught the Masterclass to more than 10,000 farmers in 91 countries. So that’s a lot of farms.

“My goal was never to own it or to be ‘the guy.’ I’m just so happy that this is happening, because you wouldn’t believe how many young people are starting farms. It’s amazing.

“I go to conferences like this and it’s all young people, they’re all market gardening, and they’re all excited. They want to do it, and they’re making it financially. They’re making it work. I’m inspired by that, just like I was inspired by Eliot and what he did.”

–  JM Fortier at “Farmer Friday” from our Churchtown Dairy conference

I first met JM Fortier back in the spring of 2019 when both his 1.5 acre home vegetable farm, La Grelinette (run by his wife, Maude-Hélène), and his teaching farm, La Ferme des Quatre Temps (FQT), signed up to be part of the Real Organic Project.

I wanted to see how his small home farm design would scale up to six acres at the teaching farm. Surely he would include larger machinery, a sit down tractor, transplanters and automatic carrot harvesters. Instead, what I saw at FQT was the same “human scale” design that was implemented at La Grelinette, but run by many, many more humans!

It was an exciting time to visit FQT. The documentary TV Series, Les Fermiers had just finished its first season and JM’s face was plastered on posters and blown up on the side of public buses! The show followed the daily operations of the farm school and it was the #1 ranked TV show in Quebec!

Who would have thought that watching young farmers use broadforks, bed rakes, and power sprayers on TV would be so captivating – but it was. The real draw was that it inspired people of all ages that they too could make a living getting their hands dirty right in their own backyards.

JM Fortier and Eliot Coleman at the 2025 September Churchtown Dairy conference.

SAVE THE DATE: The Real Organic Conference at Churchtown Dairy will be held Saturday, September 19, 2026. “Farmer Friday” will be held Friday, September 18th.

The movement began in 2012 when JM published a book called The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming. This “how to” manual ended up selling over 350,000 copies (and counting) and has been published in over 12 languages! There are literally hundreds of thousands of people all over the world that want to learn how to grow vegetables professionally on just an acre or two.

Last September we were fortunate to have JM Fortier speak at “Farmer Friday” about his small farm techniques and we just released this talk on the Real Organic Podcast. Farmer Friday is the day before our Churchtown Dairy conference and it’s a day for our Real Organic certified farmers to come together to “talk shop” before the more issue-driven gathering on Saturday.

JM’s presentation was about how he and partner Maude-Hélène have run their 1.5 acre home farm for over 20 years, grossing over $350,000 a year in their Quebec backyard. JM’s message is simple: you don’t need more than 1-2 acres and you don’t need expensive equipment. You just need to farm smart.

“Scaling” JM’s farm design by using bigger machinery on more acreage was never his intent. The purpose of the larger 6-acre teaching farm was to produce many highly skilled farmers who would be ready to go. they would start their own successful 1-2 acre farms using thoughtfully designed affordable hand tools and a good plan. 

JM’s clever tagline is: “Replace mass production with production by the masses.” His vision is that through “biointensification” (tight plantings and multiple successions on the same permanent planting beds) you can produce a lot of vegetables in a very small space. By selling them directly to the customer, you can get the best price and make a good living.

Using his techniques, a first generation farmer who needs to buy expensive farmland close to where they want to sell their vegetables, might actually make veggie farming pencil out. The beautiful thing is that I’ve seen it working on many small farms all across the country in my travels with the Real Organic Project.

This year, Farmer Friday will be held on Friday, September 18th with presentations from Real Organic certified farmers from Full Belly Farm in California and Green Things Farm Collective in Michigan. Full Belly is a 500 acre, 2,000 member CSA, farmers market and event farm that also does quite a bit of wholesale too. They grow almost everything you can possibly think of to eat there. A large part of Full Belly’s success comes from the fact that they have brought in multiple owners with different skill sets. We are also excited to have Green Things Farm Collective present their story about how and why they merged three businesses into one. They raised eyebrows last year when they stood up in the Q&A, thanked JM for teaching them how to farm, and then went on to say that they have scaled his farm model to include 30 employees on five acres, grossing over a million dollars. Wow!

For me, the question now is not whether there are enough people who want to farm, but whether our food system is set up to support them. The once rapidly growing CSA and farmers market movement has reached a saturation point in many communities and independent grocery stores willing to carry products from local farmers are struggling to compete. We are up against an ever consolidating marketplace full of dishonest marketing schemes.

This is part of what JM, Chris Moran and I discussed on the recent Market Gardener Podcast. The good news is that there are many people who want to run a farm. And we have the tools to be very productive on small plots of land close to population centers. And there are many customers that want this kind of food. But we need to make it more convenient and consistently available. That is our challenge. If only the grocery stores where most people shop on a daily basis would welcome products from small farms, rather than requiring us to work outside of the system by building out food hubs, online shops, and phone apps.

Coming together through the Real Organic Project is an important step in raising awareness about the challenges the next generation of farmers face. We are grateful there is a community of people who care.

See you in the field,

Linley

JM and Maude-Hélène’s 1.5 acre home farm, La Grelinette, was the topic of his Farmer Friday presentation on this week’s Real Organic Podcast.

SAVE THE DATE: “Farmer Friday” at Churchtown Dairy will be held Friday, September 18, 2026 with Full Belly Farm and Green Things Farm Collective.

Catch Linley on the recent episode of the Market Gardener Podcast with JM Fortier and Chris Moran. She shares all kinds of nuggets about her Colorado farm and the backstory of how she came to find Dave and the Real Organic Project. You can listen on your favorite podcast player (here’s a link to Apple) or watch on YouTube.

P.S. Canadian farmers – you too can join the Real Organic movement through our FREE farmer-led certification!!