BFRDP Projects

“Growing Our Own: A New Sonoran Desert Farmers Incubator Program” is piloting a community-based multi-tiered collaborative approach to increasing the number and capacity of market growers, farmers and ranchers in a remote tri-national community of Ajo, Arizona and the surrounding region. The program will 1. Expand the capacity and skills of the existing beginning farmers through providing education, mentoring and technical support; 2. Incubate a minimum of 15 new growers through providing paid apprenticeships, and/or access to land, knowledge, materials and markets; 3. Raise a new generation of Sonoran Desert farmers and ranchers through a school campus-based “education intervention” (“Ag Club”) for high school students at the Ajo Unified School District.

After Year 1, the outputs include 90 hours (out of projected total 150 hours) of classroom style instructions for adults; 275 hours of individual mentoring and technical assistance (projected total hours for three years were 210); 13 field trips (projected total: 9); 5,440 hours of paid apprenticeship (projected total: 6,750); and 57 hours of high school level agricultural education (projected total: 60).

In Year 1, the project served unduplicated 35 local beginning farmers and ranchers (projected total: 30) and additional 85 regional beginning farmers (projected total: 70); or a total of 120 in Year 1 alone (projected total 100), out of which 95% improved their production practices and decision-making abilities, based on their surveys and reports. 15 local growers and ranchers completed a business plan in Year 1 (total projection: 15), and 30 (total project projection was 24) designed a farm (garden) operating procedures including a food safety handling plan. 20 local growers entered new markets (projected total: 10). In Year 1, no new / beginning farmers have used the services of NRCS or Farm Service Agency yet (projected total is 3), however, introductions were made and several farmers are looking into the programs, grants and loans offered. 20 new beginning farmers (projected total: 15) transitioned backyard growing into market growing or started a market growing or a farming operation over the first year, which represents a 66% increase in local number of growers (projected total number: 50%).

In Year 1, the project also installed an urban 1-acre Incubator Farm, added additional youth activities (agricultural club at the Tohono O'odham High School on the Tohono O'odham Reservation and summer ag internship), and started offering mini grants, matched savings accounts and loans to beginning farmers as a part of a community-based partnership program called Kickstart Ajo (funded by the Freeport McMoran Foundation).

As the numbers of beginning farm and ranch women has increased there has been a corresponding increase in programs providing education and technical assistance to them. While these programs have developed tools and curricula for addressing the learning needs of beginning farmers there remain many areas of the country where women farmers are still chronically underserved. In addition, while many tools, assessments and curricula are available there is no central repository for these materials. Nor is there a typology, or catalog, that can be used to determine which materials would be most useful given the needs of a specific target audience. 

The goal of this project is to assemble a national learning network to evaluate existing curricula and materials targeting beginning farm and ranch women of all ages, ethnicity, and agricultural production interests. Content teams will identify information gaps; develop corresponding learning modules, and train peers and colleagues in their delivery and evaluation. Our project focuses on subjects of special importance to beginning farm and ranch women: legal issues; business scale and profitability; farm safety, mechanization and ergonomics; land access, transfer and stewardship; and management. A virtual learning network will provide educators and agricultural technical assistance providers with evidence-based information regarding women’s learning preferences, peer-reviewed training materials, evaluation tools, and mentoring from colleagues experienced in working with women farmers and ranchers. 

We work closely with the BFRDP Clearinghouse and the eXtension Women in Ag Learning Network to determine the most effective way to house available materials and create functional search strategies to help users find support.  

The project develops opportunities to start farming on rented land with financial coaching and guidance from experienced farmer-mentors. Mentors in the program could be paid hourly for time spent mentoring or in a lump sum upon accomplishing the program goals. Notably, the mentors who pursued the lump payments helped two mentees to learn how to fence and seed cropland, based on the experience that the mentors gained as mentees in the program. Overall through the program we documented 14 successful mentorships between beginning and experienced livestock farmers. According to participants’ exit surveys during the past three years, six people started farming, total herd size increased by 107 cows, farm acreage increased by a total of 222 acres, and gross farm income by $144,300 or ~$5,300 per participant.

SW Badger promoted contract grazing, or grazing livestock for other people to get cash income. The grazingbroker.org website helps livestock producers to connect with landowners to rent land. Fifty-three producers and 66 landowners completed profiles. The Grazing Broker Handbook that describes how to rent land for managed grazing was downloaded 72 times and was used as training curriculum during 13 farm visits and four workshops that reached 185 beginning farmers and landowners.

The Grazing Broker was invited to speak at several conferences in Wisconsin during the final year of the project. We used the information from these speaking tours to develop two tools: the land investment assessment and land rental assessment. These new tools were used during 6 farm visits and 5 workshops that reached 196 beginning farmers and landowners. Participants reported that the tools helped them to better understand their options for raising livestock and renting land. The Mentorship Program for Future Livestock Farmers has helped the Grazing Broker program to better serve the needs of landowners and farmers in Southwest Wisconsin.

Access to land is one of the biggest challenges for beginning farmers (BF) in New England. In this project, Land For Good, its partners and 40 collaborators enabled over 2,800 BFs to access land or improve their tenure situation in six New England states. Our goals were to: improve BFs’ readiness to successfully access land to farm; enable effective farm succession and transfer to BFs; improve how BFs find and evaluate farm properties and connect with landowners; educate professionals and BFs about innovative approaches and methods; and strengthen programs that help BFs access land and improve the conditions for farmland access in New England and nationally.

Through coordinated teams and task forces, we developed a curriculum for our 3-session Succession School conducted in six states for 18 farms. We launched an innovative online Build-a-Lease tool and updated our 8-module online Acquiring Your Farm course. We produced a comprehensive Farm Access Guide and decision tool explaining and comparing land tenure methods. We produced a land access guide for commercial urban farming, a farm property posting guide, a Farm Succession School instructors’ manual, 11 fact sheets, and a blog report on affordable farmer housing.

We conducted 46 land access and transfer workshops for 2,536 trainees, and a 2-day cross-discipline succession professional training for attorneys and other advisers. LFG provided direct “coaching” to 887 farm seekers, landowners and transitioning farmers.

We improved the region's farm link programs, revamped our regional online New England Farmland Finder Farm Transfer Network of New England websites. We held three project convenings for over 40 collaborators. In cooperation with USDA, we held a national conference in June 2017 for 220 service providers, agency personnel and advocates from 40 states. A conference report summarizes collected policy and program suggestions for all regions. 

The goal of the project, Advancing Equity in Capital Access for Beginning Farmers BFRDP Project is to build the strength and resilience of socially disadvantaged beginning farmers and ranchers through increasing their knowledge, skills, experience, and network accessing capital to grow their businesses. 
In the first year of this project, we have begun developing and delivering a thorough and practical financial literacy and capital access curriculum combining one-on-one coaching, workshops, and peer-to-peer learning and mentoring. This has resulted in 82 farmer participants attending 7 workshops and receiving 314 hours of one-on-one coaching and 212 farmer participants attending 13 peer-to-peer and short course events.

We have also begun strengthening a collaborative network of business and farm support organizations to participate in curriculum development and delivery, including networking and funder matchmaking events. With 10 partner organizations and 5 committed as key partners, we have held 12 meetings to discuss project progress and curriculum development. We also planned a funder <> business technical assistance meeting that occurred at the very beginning of Year 2.

Development and execution of a rigorous evaluation plan to track outputs and outcomes, and regularly communicating with and gathering the network of project partners to share learnings, make improvements to ensure project success and sustainability is underway. A project director was onboarded and group partner meetings were supplemented by attendance to state and regional meetings of farm support organizations. Improvements to evaluation included incorporating partner and participant feedback into data collection and tracking tools.

Our work continues to be well regarded by federal and state agencies, community-based organizations, and farm and business technical assistance service providers. So far, this project has resulted in 37 underserved RI farmers receiving individualized technical assistance , allowing them to overcome barriers to accessing capital and funding programs.