Growing Together: Mentorship and Capacity Building for Economically Viable, Culturally-Specific Agriculture in Wisconsin

Commodities

Practices

Over the last several years, Rooted has made land and infrastructure available to over 50 farmers and small scale growers at both urban and rural vegetable farms ranging in size from ⅛ of an acre to 5 acres in the Madison, Wisconsin area with a focus on supporting growers from historically underserved communities. Growers have expressed several needs related to making their operations successful, but we have lacked the capacity and resources to support them. Our aim is to build out our capacity to offer sustained technical support, mentorship, and educational opportunities to all growers at our urban and rural sites. We will work closely with our partner farmers as well as other non profits and educational organizations that we work with to develop culturally relevant trainings, webinars, and field days with the larger goal of developing a community of practice of language and culture-specific grower mentorship on sustainable, economically viable agriculture. We  also plan to pilot our first farmer mentor program led by one of our established growers. We are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of a wide range of farmers who often lack access to these resources.

• Host 2 field days
• Develop a 2 part winter webinar series over 2 seasons for a total of 4 webinars that are focused around farmer identified areas of need 
• Host a minimum of 20 attendees at each field day and webinar event
• Compile a list of local, state, and national resources to accompany trainings, field days and webinars
• Provide a minimum of 4 site specific trainings at Troy Farm
• Offer sustained technical support and mentorship to all growers at our sites. 
• Pair Farmer Mentor with 1 new grower at the Troy Farm site and build out Farmer Mentor program