OAK BROOK, Ill. – In the summer of 2024, Farm Foundation christened its new Innovation and Education Campus (IEC) at its research farm in Libertyville, just outside Chicago. In October, the foundation welcomed Timothy Brennan as its first vice president of programs and strategic impact in the 91-year history of Farm Foundation, which is a self-described accelerator of practical solutions for agriculture.

“Helping to build trust and understanding between agriculture and society, which is our mission, is really what our programs are designed to do,” Brennan told Farm World.

The hiring of Brennan, who had served in other capacities with Farm Foundation over the past dozen years, reflected the organization’s increased emphasis on prioritizing work with clearly defined impact, such as an expansion of programming at their new IEC.

“I think that for most of the life of Farm Foundation people have characterized it as a think tank. They’ve published a lot of articles, they’ve put together a lot of committees, they have a lot of experts and they’ve produced a lot of recommendations and results for USDA or the industry, but it was hard to measure impact. I was brought on to sort of rally the resources of Farm Foundation to have more of a (traceable) impact on the food and ag sector,” said Brennan, also co-chair of Chicago Wilderness Growing With Green Agriculture Goal.

Since his hiring by Farm Foundation, Brennan has been involved with research in reducing antibiotic usage on farms, among other significant projects. He’s looking forward to continuing work on some of the most urgent needs facing those in food and agriculture. “We’re working to accelerate people and ideas while looking for practical solutions in agriculture. My new role is to manage those programs and continue to build coalitions,” he said.

At the IEC, Brennan looks forward to bringing Farm Foundation’s vision and projects to life.

“My role there is to develop more programs and opportunities. Currently we have an Ag 101 boot camp project for companies that are trying to help their employees better understand modern agriculture. We’re going into a 10-year strategic planning process, so I imagine our board and other stakeholders will come up with other ideas that we can use the IEC for as well.”

Brennan operates a hobby farm in Crete, a Will County suburb of Chicago, where he dabbles in specialty crops that he mostly gifts to friends and neighbors. He takes his inspiration from his parents, who were early proponents of organic farming.

“We had a goat dairy; sort of everything that is popular now (his parents) were doing back in the 1970s and ‘80s,” Brennan said. “On my farm I grow all sorts of things, but what I’m most interested in are native crops, things like pawpaws and hazelnuts. I also grow a variety of heirloom fruits and vegetables. I’ve got some chickens, but I’d say they’re more for their manure than their eggs.”

Though Brennan has found his career niche with Farm Foundation and his home in Will County, a life devoted to agriculture didn’t always seem to be in the cards.

“When I graduated from high school in 1987, my uncle had lost his dairy farm like so many around us during the ‘80s farm crisis. I didn’t think there was a future in agriculture for me so I went to a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania,” said Brennan, who eventually found employment in Chicago before purchasing his circa-1859 farm property in Will County. He devoted 12 years to carefully restoring the farmhouse and the land, which had fallen to neglect and vandalism.

During his work with Farm Foundation, Brennan may be most proud of his role in establishing the Farm Family Wellness Alliance, which offers tools for farmers’ emotional health needs. “I think it is the biggest collection of farm organizations to ever come together on a single issue, and it provides free, unlimited mental health services to every farm family in America,” he said.

“We want to take that model and continue to apply it around other urgent issues – issues that we feel can have a measurable impact. We have an endowment that pays part of our bills thanks to the generosity of our founders, but we also have to compete with other organizations for additional dollars. In order to do that, we need to show more impact. That’s why I’m here.”