BFRDP Projects

Building Farm Foundations and Planning for Success: Beginning Farmer Training for Military Veterans in the Intermountain West.
[Final Report]

Award Amount: $238,441
Grant Program: 2016 Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program Awards
Project Director: Tammy Howard
Email: tammyh@ncat.org
Organization: NCAT

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  • Overview
  • Results
  • Materials
  • Delivery Area
  • Comments

Project Overview

Over the course of Building Farm Foundations and Planning for Success: Beginning Farmer Training for Military Veterans, we have complete 4 -40 hour Armed to Farm trainings with 90 participants from throughout the Intermountain and North Western US. In addition we did a follow up training for Armed to Farm Alumni titled Armed to Farm 2.0 a Lean Canvas Enterprise Planning model with 13 hours of training.  This training had 13 Armed to Farm graduates that wanted to dig into their business plan or try out planning for a new enterprise. Of the 90 veteran participants in the Armed to Farm training, 23 have started farms and our post training evaluations indicate that 60 made positive changes to their business planning and production practices as a result of the trainings. 

In an effort to increase the success of our Armed to Farm graduates, we provided one on one technical assistance at the trainings as well as follow up technical assistance as needed. This included 55 individual technical assistance sessions by NCAT staff and our project partners throughout the course of the project.

We have watched a network of veteran farmers grow and solidify through the efforts of NCAT,  the veteran participants, and our project partners. We have a Montana based email listserve to promote agriculture events of interest for Armed to Farm alumni to attend. 25% of the Armed to Farm alumni in Montana have joined the national Armed to Farm Facebook group and participate regularly.

Our partner Vilivus Training Institute's efforts to recruit a veteran apprentice on their organic grain farm, did not materialize. Vilicus Training Institute, instead, provided mentoring and guidance on organic certification, USDA program participation, and cover cropping strategies to 10 veteran farmers.


Number of Participants: 95

Results

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