Voices for Agriculture: Michelle Hughes

Seven years ago, a first-generation young hog farmer from New Haven, Connecticut, stopped farming to follow a greater purpose.

Michelle Hughes, the co-executive director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, based in Washington, D.C., now helps young farmers and desires equitable change for them through advocacy and policy work.

Hughes, 31, has held roles that spanned most departments of the Coalition and led or partnered on work honing the organization's impact on young farmers since her start in 2017. Her early roles included supporting young farmers in roundtables ahead of the 2018 farm bill passing, in which the organization saw many wins for new, young and beginning farmers.

"Specifically, the inclusion of the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network and permanent funding for ... programs that support underserved farmers -- that includes young farmers and farmers of color -- were two wins we felt excited about," Hughes says.

As equity and organizational change director, Hughes conducted a comprehensive racial equity impact assessment of the organization's internal workflows and external programming, which identified gaps in the Coalition's programs, policies, systems, structures and practices. This led to the organization being able to rethink and redesign how to provide services to young farmers of color.

In 2022, Hughes extended her work on internal structure reform with USDA through her appointment to the Department's Equity Commission, Agriculture Subcommittee. Alongside several revolutionary leaders in agriculture, her work on the subcommittee attempts to address a history of discrimination at USDA by providing recommendations to the department to better serve young farmers of color.

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-- https://www.youngfarmers.org/…

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