Project Overview
Organic seed production represents a lucrative and growing specialty agricultural market. The specialized skill set required to
produce high quality organic seed serves as a barrier to entry into this market. Beginning farmers need specific production and
business knowledge in order to take advantage of this opportunity. This project is training beginning farmers in organic seed
production through seed intensive workshops, written manuals, and by facilitating internships on established organic seed
operations. The long term goals of this project are to a) increase the number of beginning farmers who grow organic seed, and
to b) improve beginning seed producers' practices to increase their profitability, decrease their financial risk, and improve their
conservation practices. To support these goals, this project has trained over 400 beginning farmers in organic seed production
by a) providing a bilingual day-long organic seed intensive workshop and additional organic seed workshops at 3-day
conferences in 2014 and 2016 and bilingual recordings post events, b) providing print and on-line copies of written manuals on
organic seed production, c) supporting structured seed internships on seed farms, and d) conducting six webinars on seed
production. These goals and objectives support BFRDP priority topics by providing beginning farmers with production, business,
marketing, and conservation strategies. Our target audience includes limited resource beginning farmers, socially
disadvantaged Latino beginning farmers, and immigrant and other farm workers. 35% of the budget is dedicated to reaching
and serving this target audience. The project team has worked extensively with beginning farmers in the past, delivering
multiple Organic Seed Growers Conferences, introductory seed production workshops, training manuals, and an online
database linking organic seed producers with seed purchasers.
Number of Participants: 1365
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