Progress report for LNC22-461
Project Information
Successful operation of small-scale specialty crop farms requires knowledge in production as well as business and marketing. Without foundational business skills, an otherwise successful farmer will not maximize their sales and growth potential. Community Crops works primarily with refugee and immigrant farmers who are often highly skilled in production, but need more support on the business and marketing aspects of their operations. Barriers in culture and language can make these challenges more pronounced. Access to technology and knowledge on how to use technological tools has also been a limitation. This project, titled “Marketing & Business Skills for Beginning, Refugee, & Immigrant Farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska,” will focus on providing a series of educational workshops which will connect beginning farmers, with an emphasis on immigrant and refugee farmers, in the Lincoln, Nebraska area to a network of qualified instructors. Farmer education will focus on marketing, making small farms profitable, and developing sustainable business models. Project objectives include 1) 12 educational workshops (6 classes each year for 2 years) on business planning and marketing for small-scale specialty crop farmers in the Lincoln, Nebraska region and 2) increasing the confidence and knowledge of small-scale specialty crop farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska region on business planning and marketing for their farm businesses. There is a lot of opportunity for beginning, refugee, and immigrant farmers to build successful operations throughout the North Central Region. This project will focus on developing an educational curriculum that can be shared with other organizations serving these communities in our region, ensuring farmers have access to the full toolbox of skills they need to build sustainable farm operations. Our educational model includes partnering with successful local farmers to co-teach so that farmers are learning from their peers and building a long-term network of relationships that can be sustained beyond the project.
Objectives:
- Offer 12 workshops ( 2 years with 6 classes each) on business planning & marketing for small-scale speciality crop farmers in the Lincoln, Nebraska region.
- Increase confidence and knowledge of small-scale specialty crop farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska region on business planning & marketing for their farm businesses.
Pre- and post-surveys are being utilized to understand the baseline knowledge, confidence, and educational needs of the farmers our project will reach. The curriculum developed, including translated materials and lessons learned, will be made available to other farmers and programs in the North Central Region at the project conclusion.
This project coordinates learning targeted toward New American and Beginning Farmers on business and marketing topics for small scale specialty crop farmers. We are currently working on this project on a no cost extension. We hosted 12 workshops in the first year with 14 graduating students. Our second and final workshop series under this project is in progress currently, with 16 core students in the cohort and 8 classes.
Research
Education
For this project, we have mainly utilized lecture style classes to present on all class topics. Due to having mixed audiences (New American & born in US) with varying language skills and primary languages, we have primarily worked with instructors who are well versed in working with New American and ELL audiences, who are experts in their field. 2 of our classes offered so far have been targeted to new American audiences specifically, Computer Fundamentals, which was a 3 session course focused on foundational computer skills like searching the internet and online ordering, sending emails, making invoices, and an introduction to using spreadsheets, as well as Produce Safety, which introduced FSMA and produce safety training in a modified way, and focused on teaching participants best practices and standards for consumer safety and to meet buyer expectations. Current produce safety courses are generally not set up to teach non-English speakers, especially in languages that are not Spanish.
In our second year of the project, we have continued to work to teach information for all topics in an accessible way to our New American and ELL learners. As classes are offered, we work with instructors to review content with our interpreters in order to find ways to best talk about the information. Most class materials are currently translated into Arabic, and we are working to develop and finalize all parts of curriculum including worksheets, lesson plans, handouts, and slide decks related to this series for future use and sustainability of the project beyond the scope of the grant.
Project Activities
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
In total, we have hosted 17 workshops, described in detail in the ‘Project Activities section’. Our outreach has included heavy recruiting for farmers who grow at our two farm sites to participate in the classes, in monthly newsletter and social media promotion, and with individuals working in local food and sustainable agriculture who are serving on the leadership team as part of a UAIP grant we have active. Additionally, we presented on this project as part of the Nebraska Healthy Farms Local Food conference in January 2024.
Learning Outcomes
- Computer Fundamentals for ELL Farmers
- Produce Safety Standards and Practices for Small Scale Growers
- NRCS Cooperative Agreements, EQIP Program, and other local funding resources
- Finance Management and Accounting
- Principles of Marketing
- Brand Identity
- Business Planning
- US Tax Structure and Preparation for small Farm Businesses
- Becoming a Business: LLC's and Sole Proprietorships
- Production Planning for Market and Wholesale Sales Avenues
- Cooperative Ownership Models
- Farm Recordkeeping
- Markets for Farmers
Project Outcomes
We are still collecting and processing the data as we continue to host workshops to help us provide an accurate answer to this question. When workshops are complete we will able to share what we learned from our data analysis in the final report.
Attached are several photos from our classes.
