Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems

Gabrielle Hathaway

Gabrielle Hathaway

Gabrielle, “Gaabi”, hails from the rare organic pastures amongst Southeastern Iowa cornfields. She spent most of her childhood in nature, finding whatever adventure lay in the woods or under a log. She was dubbed a budding naturalist by her family at a young age, and while not growing up in a farming family, found her way to agriculture through her neighbors’ dairy cows. Here, she started milking cows when she was 15 for her local organic dairyman and immediately fell in alignment with the vocation. From her first day milking cows and walking them back to their pasture to graze, she knew how she could be in nature for the rest of her life. After high school, she attended Iowa State University to study Dairy Science. Eventually, she transferred to California State University, Chico to surround herself with more like-minded people and an education that was headed in a regenerative direction. She found home at the Organic Diary Unit and other surrounding farms in the Chico area that practiced pastured and regenerative farming practices. Throughout her 5 years in Chico, she became increasingly involved in the local food movement and started the Chico State Sustainable Agriculture Club. She graduated in 2016 with a Major in Animal Science and two minors in Agriculture and Sustainability.

Over the past 5 years she has managed the livestock at Caney Fork Farms, a regenerative multispecies livestock, tree crop, and vegetable farm in Carthage, Tennessee. Here, she built the livestock program from the ground up with emphasis on holistic health, holistically managed grazing, and regenerative practices to rejuvenate degraded pastureland. She also was a key player in building the farms’ customer base from the ground up. In recent years she has become increasingly involved with the research program at Caney Fork Farms that focuses on soil carbon sequestration.

This Fall she will begin her graduate studies in regenerative agriculture with research centering around greenhouse gas emissions and lifecycle analysis of organic grassfed dairy systems. Through this deepening of her education, she hopes to become a better steward of the land and conduit for others to be as well. She looks forward to contributing to this industry with the brilliant minds in the field of regenerative agriculture, many of which have come together at the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems.