BFRDP Projects

“Supportive, Small Scale, Basic Livestock, Financial Skills and Risk Management Training for Beginning Veteran Farmers Program”
[Final Report]

Award Amount: $712,500
Grant Program: 2015 Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program Awards
Project Director: Michael O'Gorman
Email: michaelo@farmvetco.org
Organization: FARMER VETERAN COALITION

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  • Overview
  • Results
  • Materials
  • Delivery Area
  • Comments

Project Overview

FVC facilitates a national peer network that develops and provides access to training, education, internships, mentorships, jobs, financial and market opportunities for beginning farmer veterans. We combined new small scale livestock and vegetable production and business planning materials with existing core tools previously created through Risk Management Agency grants (One Page Business/Financial Plan, One Page Monthly Cash Flow Budget, and One Page Risk Management Plan). These tools have been adapted to explain small scale pork and pastured poultry production business, small scale honeybee, grass fed beef, lamb, goat, and vegetable business models. 

Over the grant period, FVC staff engaged with more than 6,000 new farmer veteran members through our headquarters in Davis, CA.

Farmer Veteran Coalition completed 27 workshops focusing on small scale livestock and vegetable production, risk management and financial education.  We have incorporated the new training materials into the workshops that target these farmer veterans and their specific crop and assist them in refining their own financial, production, risk management and business plans.  We held 13 webinars that focused on production and business planning.  Our most successful webinar focused on starting a farm from scratch: land assessment.  Over 140 veterans tuned-in live and the recording has 1,542 views. 

One of the workshops specifically focused on developing, supporting and educating women farmer veterans was held at the Stone Barns Center in March 2016. The women were educated on production, financial and risk management components of small scale livestock/vegetable operations. The 2017 Empowering Women Veterans Conference consisted of twelve hours of workshops in Santa Rosa, California.  This successful event saw many female farmer veterans bonding together to share their experiences and strength. In 2018, FVC partnered with NFU to bring women veterans together with other women farmers in San Diego, CA. Topics included financial literacy, marketing, collaborative farming and agritourism.  

Number of Participants: 6715

Results

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