BFRDP Projects

Labor Readiness: Pathways for Farm Workers to Start Up and Advanced Beginners to Scale Up New Farm Businesses
[Final Report]

Award Amount: $599,147
Grant Program: 2017 Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program Awards
Project Director: Anusuya Rangarajan
Email: ar47@cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell University

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  • Overview
  • Results
  • Materials
  • Delivery Area
  • Comments

Project Overview

Being prepared to hire, manage and retain skilled employees is crucial for farmers across New York.  The “Labor Ready Farmer” (LRF) project, offers a team-based approach to address this challenge by building the managerial skill-set of new farmers and Hispanic farm employees wanting to climb the ladder from labor to management to farm ownership.
The project’s long-term goal is to ensure that new farmers and advancing employees in our region can access high-quality information, supportive networks and proven tactics essential to effective management of labor.  These efforts support new farmers scaling up and Hispanic farm employees to move up the ladder of management on existing farms through professional development curriculum specific to the fruit and vegetable industry.  For new farmers (operating less than 10 years), effective management of labor is core to scaling up produce businesses. Our training programs demonstrated the importance of investing in the skill of valuable employees, while saving farm owners money and creating positive on-farm impacts. Most importantly, we continue to create pathways for advancement and long term retention of key farm employees in the NY fruit and vegetable industry, reducing employee turnover rates.  The curriculum developed by the project also features online courses and videos. The last phase of the project will include, Spanish plain language guides and visual resources, virtual based English classes, regional face to face training programs (ENY and WNY) and new HR consultant teams that will individually coach 25 selected participants.

Number of Participants: 230

Results

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