Progress report for ENC22-210
Project Information
This project resulted in the development and support of 8 Farm Law Leaders who delivered at [8] farm law workshops on legal issues of importance to sustainable and direct to consumer farmers. As a result, [240] farmers have more stable businesses and improved quality of life. We achieved these outcomes by hosting a Farm Law Leadership Group- a train-the-trainer program designed to foster the ability of respected educators to lead farm law workshops in local communities. The training curriculum emphasizes risk-reducing action steps and accurate, clear legal explanations. The program also trains (and requires) Leaders to use peer-to-peer training techniques and supports 3 farmers as co-contributors to the leadership program and resulting workshop template resources.
This program created a next-step leadership process for agriculture professionals who have been through our SARE-funded Guiding Resilience program (a 15-hour training commitment to gain a broad, accurate knowledge base, mainly as it affects diversified and direct-to-consumer farmers). These folks asked us for this program because they wanted to build on their knowledge by being able to deliver presentations. With a vast unmet need for more presentations on farm law matters, this was a perfect opportunity. The Farm Law Leadership group created permanent leaders in agricultural law education while offering a template we are already replicating and in other regions of the country.
The primary output of this program is the following:
- 8 Farm Law Leadership Group trainees who are prepared to deliver up to 4 specific farm law trainings in their communities/states. Those workshops are:
- Farm Business Structure Basics
- Farm Employment Law Basics
- Injury Liability and Insurance Basics
- Farmland Leasing Basics
- At least 8 farm law workshops delivered to a total of 30 farmers each, for a total of 240 direct to consumer and sustainable farmers reached with essential information with a track record of reducing risk in the near term.
We also created the Farm Law Leadership training:
- A 5-module curriculum for the Farm Law Leadership Group which will focus on a) building common purpose, b) understanding the value, risks, and opportunities in legal education c) providing folks with all the training necessary to confidently deliver the 4 workshops above, and d) an understanding of how diverse audiences come to legal education and how to meet the needs of underserved audiences.
- The training will also provide detailed information on why using peer-to-peer techniques in farm law education is essential, along with detailed information on when and how to incorporate these techniques.
To support the above, implementws an online infrastructure to support the training package above including the powerpoint decks, the scripts, the activity sheets, the step-by-step instructions for preparing for the presentation, and other supplementary resources.
Education
As of December 2023, we developed and delivered the 5-module curriculum to train our Farm Law Leaders (we changed the name to the Legal Ecosystem Fellowship). Each of the 5 sessions lasted 2 hours and consisted of interactive discussion, training, practice and skills sharing. Fellows also completed one hour of homework in advance of each session including assembling their own presentation and practicing delivering it. By the end of the training curriculum, Fellows had identified the presentations of most interest to their audience, practiced delivery of one or two presentations, and received feedback on their presentation. They also practiced adapting the presentation to their unique audience.
At this point in the program, Fellows were ready to host their presentations in their community! One of our Fellows had already hosted his presentation immediately after the Fellowship training in November. Each of our 7 other Fellows have their presentations scheduled for February and March timeframes.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Prepare skilled and experienced farm educators/professionals to deliver accurate farm law presentations in their communities, while utilizing peer to peer education techniques.
The 5-module curriculum for the Legal Ecosystem Fellowship focuses on a) building common purpose, b) understanding the value, risks, and opportunities in legal education c) providing folks with all the training necessary to confidently deliver the 4 workshops below, and d) an understanding of how diverse audiences come to legal education and how to meet the needs of underserved audiences. The training also provides detailed information on why using peer-to-peer techniques in farm law education is essential with techniques on when and how to incorporate these techniques.
The curriculum contains 5 meeting agendas, 4 powerpoint decks with scripts and teachers manuals, activity sheets/handouts, and a guide to incorporating farmer co-presenters. The workshops Fellows are trained to deliver are as follows:
- Farm Business Structure Basics
- Farm Employment Law Basics
- Injury Liability and Insurance Basics
- Farmland Leasing Basics
We had envisioned a 5th presentation that acted as an overall summary of farm law, but it proved too much, too fast for the Fellows. Four proved to be more than enough options, as most Fellows identified that their community wanted material on business structures or leasing.
This curriculum was successful in building our Fellow's confidence and capabilities to deliver farm law educational workshops. 71% of participants identified that they were "much more confident" in their ability to deliver farm law trainings. 14% said they were "somewhat more confident" and one person ranked their confidence level the same before and after the training.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
This project was very popular! We received 30 applications for participation in the program, and we could only accept 8 people for the Fellowship training. This shows there is tremendous demand for agriculture professionals to be able to deliver educational programming in their community. As our first pilot of this project, we felt the training was a great success. The module and curriculum design worked very well. We were able to serve the 8 Fellows with focused, individual training.
As of Dec 2023, we have not yet seen precisely how successful our Fellows are in actually delivering the presentations to their community. But based on their practice deliveries, they are making creative and insightful changes to the curriculum in adapting it to their communities, without compromising legal accuracy. We are encouraged that the pilot will be successful.
Here are quotes from our participants about their expeirence in the training process, thus far:
- Having slides that have sound legal information included on them prepped with tips on key phrasing included is especially helpful. No need to reinvent the wheel knowing that Farm Commons has already drafted slides!
- Being able to get feedback on our individual work was helpful, it allowed me to also gather ideas from what other people did or talked about after presentations.
- All of the resources and how they are organized is very very helpful. I do not always learn well in classroom situations and part of the value for me is access to all the resources that I can go back and look at. I also appreciate the network of folks that this fellowship has given me. I feel like I can reach out to any of my fellow program participants and get their advise if needed.
- Overall, just a lot of gratitude for FC for putting this together. I think it wouldn't be too hard to scale up some aspects of this with a larger cohort.
- I really appreciated the clear, well thought out information that was shared. I find the powerpoints to be useful tools but the homework and feedback really created a feeling of comfort with the material. That engagement was so valuable compared to just receiving the information. I also found the well thought out structure to be very useful in allowing me to prepare for each session.
We are eager to expand this project so we already applied for and received a grant to bring it to the Southern SARE region. We are cautiously beginning our planning as to whether and how to expand the total number of Fellows served. Having to turn away 20+ people who wanted this training doesn't feel good. But, there is still much we have to learn about train-the-trainer in farm law issues. We did have Fellows who made more complicated changes to their slides that did cause us a little anxiety in terms of insuring accuracy. We also found that people have important and individualized questions about delivering the curriculum. Thus, it remains to be seen how and how fast, we can scale up this program. Regardless, there's so much demand for this content!