These two images are typical rural sprawl compared with Central Manhattan, on the exact same scale. Now I'm not an expert on these matters, but something tells me pollution, traffic and logistical problems would be much, much worse is everyone had their own plot of land.
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You may be able to partner with the Agrarian Trust. Also if you all around you may be able to find a book on ecological respiration for your region.
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My hope is to do the latter while holding down an actual job that pays the bills instead of having to rely on farmers markets, because small scale farming that supports a family is a pipe dream
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Thats a good ass start tbh. I started on conservation work and moved to small scale organic agriculture. Biggest lessons I've learned is to work with and not against your natural environment and treat your whole operation holistically. Everything is interconnected and any tweak needs to consider every other input. Start small, learn what works, and seasons after season add one more operation. And honestly eat what grows easily, instead of killing yourself trying to grow what you think you want to eat. In the face of climate collapse we're all going to be eating whatever we can manage honestly
in my opinion, as some guy who worked in smaller scale, diversified ag for years before going back to school and getting a degree in agriculture and now working in conservation sort of stuff.... it probably sounds like bunk, but definitely consider a land grant school.
there are people in those institutions that are 100% against your ideas and values, but there are also very smart people who are going to be allies. the land grant institutions, as a whole, are Part of the Problem, and the academy has it's own shitheadery, but there are absolute weirdos in it that can teach a lot about specialized skills (like plant breeding, hybridization, tissue cultivation) that have become very uncommon on farms today. it is also a great vehicle for finding other weirdos, people you can turn into weirdos, and people with even weirder ideas than you have yet seen. i thought i was a radical before going to an ag school, but it exposed me to a lot of wild shit.
maybe i'm the starry-eyed baby, but the land grant system is also supposed to be OUR collective institution. it has been deeply influenced in its formation and execution by the forces of capital and they have their hooks in deep, but there are mechanisms and avenues that respond to democratic pressure and little pockets of committed resistance which are not hard to find.
i caught and still catch a ton of shit from my former associates that were purists and stayed away from the big ag schools... and you know what, they are invariably dependent like a serf on some megarich land owning asshole(s) doing some type of ecofascism now, while i get to connect actual broke/curious people with resources, be a part of worker organizations to pressure for reforms, and speak candidly with younger farm workers about who they should avoid working for.
i will never forget the reaction of the megarich, exploitative, lib-AF landowners i had been working for when they found out i was quitting to go attend the public ag school. they fucking hated it and school taught me why.