Project Overview
Land Stewardship Project (LSP) project
entitled Regional Farmer-led Education and Training Hubs for Building
Resiliency and Viable Farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin is responding
to the emerging needs of farmers in four distinct geographic service regions of
Minnesota and Wisconsin, and uses partnerships to provide relevant education,
mentoring, and technical assistance to beginning farmers with diverse needs.
The long-term goals of this project are to: 1) Offer proven beginning farmer
training programs for varying levels of farming experience, with enhanced,
farmer-informed curricula; 2) Develop two new farmer-led training hubs to
increase resiliency of beginning farmers with 5-10 years’ experience; and 3)
Collaborate with Red Lake Nation to develop a new curriculum and build
community capacity to support socially-disadvantaged beginning farmers. Since
September 2021 LSP has trained 91 beginning farmers through both in-person and
online sessions of the Farm Beginnings course. The Farm Beginnings team
delivered 2,533 participant hours of training with 168 beginning farmers.
Collaborating partners for this project are: UMN Extension; Cultivating
Resilience, LLC; established farmer-leaders from across the region; the 4
Directions Development (4DD) corporation and of the Red Lake Nation.
This collaborative project is led by LSP, a nonprofit community-based
organization with more than 25 years of experience developing farmer-informed
and farmer-led programming to support beginning farmers. LSP’s grassroots model
makes the farmer’s voice the primary source of information for all programs and
services offered and has resulted in a set of unique and successful farmer
training programs, some of which have been replicated across the country, such
as the Farm Beginnings program. LSP’s farmer-led and community-based approach
leads to ongoing innovation in how we engage and support beginning farmers, as
the changing needs of farmers dictate the curricula and delivery models of our
programs.
Number of Participants: 168
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