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 regional 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. In 21-22 LSP offered a fully online Farm Beginnings course with 46 beginning farmers attending 10 on-line sessions. The Farm Beginnings team delivered 1,104 participant hours of training and met 1-1 with 57 beginning farmers. Collaborating partners for this project are: Soil & Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) in three Minnesota counties; Cultivating Resilience, LLC; established farmer-leaders from across the region; the 4 Directions Development (4DD) corporation and community leaders 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: 46
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