Final report for ONC23-136
Project Information
The Regenerative Farming Policy Fellowship is an educational project focused on farm policy for small-scale regenerative BIPOC farmers located in the Greater Dayton-Springfield metropolitan region. BIPOC farmers are requesting help in addressing policymakers, lawmakers and other elected officials. Developed in partnership with The Nature Conservancy of Ohio, the goal of the fellowship is to create policy literacy, funding literacy, and skills in facilitation and public speaking. Policy leaders, legislators and policy change groups will engage with Regenerative Farming Policy Fellows. The fellows will learn how they might overcome barriers and change or advocate for policies that benefit their community at local, regional, state and national levels.
The USDA and other federal and state agencies are committed to helping small-scale farmers, but there is often a gap between what is offered and what is needed. Most farm policy was written for large-scale conventional farms. As farms and farmers become more diverse in multiple ways, such as operating in urban settings with unique environmental challenges, public policy and outreach needs to shift accordingly.
- Regenerative Policy Fellows will gain policy literacy, including knowledge in the policymaking and legislative process and learn how to participate in the process of advocating for their farms and their communities.
- Connect cohort of fellows to their local, regional and state elected officials and policymakers responsible for farm, food and environmental policies.
- Policy leaders, legislators and policy change groups will interact with participants to help them gain an understanding of past, present and future policies that have or will affect their communities.
- Develop a pilot program that can be replicated in other regions of the state of Ohio and beyond.
Cooperators
- - Technical Advisor (Educator)
- - Technical Advisor (Educator)
Research
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Policy Fellowship Three Month Report
The fellowship program officially kicked off in September 2023 with a first module in October and monthly modules planned thereafter Farm Bill RoundTable Format Final. The project went pretty much as planned from the beginning and continued through April. BIPOC Farming Network Policy Fellowship Draft Program. Fellows completed and presented their capstone design projects at a final meeting in May. Project partners, community members, and education module facilitators were invited to attend. We held the final meeting at Gem City Market, a worker-and community-owned market co-op in West Dayton, an economically underserved food desert.
Learning Outcomes
All 10 participants reported changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills and/or awareness as a result of their participation.
Project Outcomes
As a result of the BFFN Policy Fellowship pilot program, in addition to gaining knowledge, participants pursued and launched individual projects that enabled them to apply this new knowledge to real-world initiatives in their communities and with policy officials. Through their capstones, learning modules and engagement with fellowship seminar leaders, the fellows successfully achieved the goals of influencing and advocating for sustainable and regenerative agriculture public policy.
Examples of individual outcomes that were demonstrated in capstone projects:
- Fellow developed and presented a new food and farming curriculum proposal to Dayton Public Schools administrators, parents and to an elected board official.
- Fellow created and produced podcasts focused on public awareness of the Farm Bill and regenerative farming practices.
- Fellow developed a community campaign to elevate Black farmers, growers and food producers.
- Fellow worked with local public library to launch an organic seed library.
- Fellow launched a community agriculture blog on his farm's website.
- Fellow executed a healthy soil, native plants and pollinators plan at her community garden, an extension farm incubator site.
- Fellow engaged with and presented a plan to city water officials intended to revise drainage fee codes.
- Fellow developed and launched a church and farm network intended to address access to healthy food in her community.
- Fellow researched and developed a plan to advance cooperative businesses in Ohio Through Strategic Policy & Advocacy
- Fellow who runs a 12-acre farm developed a proposal for a health and safety commission in her municipality.
Fellows presented their final capstone projects to their peers and members of the public in a final meeting Colloquium Program; REMINDER_ Thurs. May 2_ Policy Fellows Capstone Colloquium. This also served to help them practice their public speaking and presentation skills. Each fellow was awarded a certificate of complete after their presentation FINAL Colloquium Certificate. We provide a full video of the presentations: video1665735755.mp4 - Google Drive
The Fellows established 5 new working collaborations: Ohio's Director of USDA Farm Service Agency, an social justice nonprofit, a statewide small farm advocacy nonprofit, a BIPOC-led coalition interested in expanding and replicating the program across the state, and a seminar leader to do tours at their farm for middle school students.
Long-term Outcomes Beyond Fellowship Program
The Policy Fellowship Program created new coalitions, platforms and long-term relationships for policy fellows, the Regenerative Farming Fellows and the BIPOC Food and Farming Network. We share a few success stories that we feel convey long-term outcomes well beyond the SARE Partnership project:
--Fellow, a homesteader and environmental scientist, cited her participation in the policy fellowship for landing a new job as a lab assistant testing water and soil samples for the City of Columbus;
--Fellow, who participated in the Ohio Statehouse visit session, was selected to participate in a Congressional lobbying event in Washington DC hosted by Earthjustice, an environmental justice organization.
--Fellowship coordinator/cooperator participated in the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Washington Fly-in with Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, which resulted in the BIPOC Food and Farming Network exploring an organizational membership with the coalition.
--Two fellows, who are part of a regional farm collective, developed an online platform for their respective farms.
--Seed Library launched at two local public library branches for the 2024 growing season.
One of the unintended, often intangible outcomes and true success stories of the project was the network and community built between the Fellows and supported by the program facilitators. Much of the community of this group was established prior to the project launching as 6 participants already were Regenerative Farming Fellows (the pilot program funded by a SARE partnership grant). This pilot program was ideated as a way to help graduates of the Regenerative Farmer Fellowship program continue their learning and experiential journey in sustainable agriculture and local community resilience. We include the final meeting video so you can hear in their own words the individual stories of the Fellows and also get a feeling for that peer network that was formed since it's so hard to describe.
We also requested participant feedback on fellowship program evaluation forms. Here are a few selected quotes from the Fellows taken from the evaluation forms:
- "I have been called to attend more meetings and socialize with these (policy officials) individuals, get to know them personally. Before I come to them to ask them for anything now I know I should come with a plan in hand, instead of just the problem that needs to be fixed."
- "I will use my voice more to speak out."
- "I will be more involved at all levels to be part of decision making processes. I don’t know that it would change, as much as it will be reinforced by some of the tools that we learned on how to approach policy. I will definitely be more attentive and try to do as much research as I approach issues that may come up that effect [my local community coalition]."
- "Feel much more comfortable and knowledgeable."
- "I will be more apt to make direct contact as oppose to simply sending written correspondence."
- "Using my voice more to create change in my community."
For a future BIPOC Policy Fellowship Program, we recommend the following
- Consider creating a 2-year program to continue the Fellowship and to allow fellows to realize outcomes of their work in a supported environment.
- Provide additional in-person sessions with policy leaders. This is hard to schedule and arrange as their availability is time sensitive throughout the year. Policy leaders really valued hearing directly from constituents and/or people facing the challenges the Fellows were experiencing.
- Offer multiple field trip/tours: this created community among the fellows and offered more dynamic learning opportunities.
- Reevaluate the time commitment needed for Fellows. We could only cover 20 hours per month of their time. We had them do a capstone project in addition to learning modules. Everyone dived in. We could only compensate them for a portion of the time it really took to research, plan, and execute a real world project.