systems, food safety, farm safety, and farm/financial/risk management.
It is anticipated that 225 new BFs will start farming and 200
experienced BFs will improve their farm plans.
This application is from Central State University and is a collaboration with Ohio State
University and community-based organizations (CBOs). These CBOs (and the
amount that they will be receive from the budget) are: Urban Green
Farmers’ Cooperative (socially disadvantaged serving, $59,736); Coit
Road Farmers Market (socially-disadvantaged serving, $59,736); Trumbull
Neighborhood Partnership (socially-disadvantaged serving, $59,736);
Grace Community Center (socially-disadvantaged serving, $59,736); 5)
Soldiers To Sawyers (military veteran-serving, $57,441); and Springfield
Ohio Urban Plantfolk (socially-disadvantaged serving, $58,341).
Overall, 63% of the $538,988 budget is going to the CBOs, with 55.16%
and 10.66% going to train socially disadvantaged and military veteran
BFs, respectively.
We accomplished the following: trained socially-disadvantaged and military veteran beginning farmers in organic vegetable farming, commercial scale hydroponics farming with nationally-renowned Crop King, farm financial training with Fearless Farm Finances (book produced for beginning farmers by MOSES/Marbleseed), and marketing vegetables to independently-owned ethnic grocery stores.
We plan to bring beginning farmers to start unique specialty crops such as small scale intensive strawberry production and edible mushroom production.