Grow Better, Not Bigger: An Interview with Jean-Martin Fortier, Author of ‘The Market Gardener’

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Jean-Martin Fortier with his trusty broadfork, the tool for which his farm, Les Jardins de la Grilinette, is named.
Jean-Martin Fortier with his trusty broadfork, the tool for which his farm, Les Jardins de la Grilinette, is named.
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Jean-Martin Fortier works in the pea patch at his farm, Les Jardins de la Grelinette.
Jean-Martin Fortier works in the pea patch at his farm, Les Jardins de la Grelinette.
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Eliot Coleman and Jean-Martin Fortier talk market gardening tools at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in December 2014.
Eliot Coleman and Jean-Martin Fortier talk market gardening tools at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in December 2014.
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Calibrating and loading up the six-row seeder for sowing greenhouse crops in early March.
Calibrating and loading up the six-row seeder for sowing greenhouse crops in early March.
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The greenhouses harbor secret life in the snowy Québec landscape in March.
The greenhouses harbor secret life in the snowy Québec landscape in March.

If you’re a vegetable grower and you haven’t yet heard of small-scale agriculture advocate and author Jean-Martin Fortier, you need to look him up. Fortier is the author of the popular practical farming manual The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower’s Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming (New Society Publishers). One could say that Fortier’s new book is the updated and more detailed sibling to Eliot Coleman’s New Organic Grower. Like Coleman’s book, Fortier’s manual tackles the practical side of organic farming, with an emphasis on how to make a good living on a small acreage.

The Market Gardener is acclaimed by farming authors Joel Salatin and Eliot Coleman, and just won the American Horticultural Society book award.

Fortier just finished his last tour date in California as part of his 2014/15 U.S. speaking tour. His U.S. tour reached more than 10,000 people through more than 20 workshops and talks, touring to 13 states from Florida to Kentucky.

An Interview with Jean-Martin Fortier

Diving back into his own farming life at Les Jardins de la Grelinette in Québec, Fortier is full of inspiration and insights about small-scale organic farming, profitable agriculture and the young farmer movement.

  • Published on Mar 27, 2015
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