Strengthening Farmers' Markets Through Advanced Business Training and Mentoring

Strengthening Farmers' Markets Through Advanced Business Training and Mentoring

Summary

Farmers' markets are key organizations for expanding local market opportunity for farmers, yet weakness in their business structure can undermine their ability to fulfill their economic and community promise. This project provides training for resource providers from Cooperative Extension, NRCS and State Departments of Agriculture and from Main Street programs, Chambers of Commerce and other economic development organizations to support their efforts to strengthen the business fundamentals of this unique type of group-based agricultural enterprise. Training will be conducted in each of the six New England States. Modules will cover board, staff and member roles and responsibilities; member retention and recruitment; equity and fund raising; operational audits; market and business planning; community alliances; and the role of a state or regional farmers' market association. Where feasible, resource providers will participate with a farmers' market board and/ or staff person and put theory to practice in the development of actionable plans to start or strengthen a market. The project will mentor the development and implementation of these plans and will assist resource providers in planning local farmers' market training programs. Collaborative relationships with existing farmers' market organizations will be organized to help plan, publicize and conduct the trainings. Resource providers will develop competency in farmers' market technical assistance including the delivery of model educational programs. Training materials will be added to the Cooperative Development Institute’s “Group-Based Business Sustaining Agriculture in the Northeast” web page at www.cdi,coop.

Our activities for this first full project year were to develop partnerships with farmers' market organizations and agricultural resource providers and their agencies to design and conduct at least three training programs; solicit three mentoring projects and begin mentoring up to seven resource providers in at least three New England states; repeat the process by planning for a second cycle of workshops, solicit three more mentoring projects and an additional 8 people to mentor in 2007.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Of the sixty agricultural educators participating in the Farmers' Market Business Training Program held around the region, 10 Cooperative Extension, NRCS and other rural, community and economic development resource providers will provide technical assistance that results in the strengthening of a local farmers market by farmers and/or market managers. Two participants will help farmers develop or strengthen a state farmers market association.

We are halfway to our target.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Milestone 1: Three hundred Cooperative Extension and other rural, community and economic development resource providers and 400 farmers markets in New England receive information about the Farmers' Market Business Development training program.

This milestone was achieved through program releases distributed by e-mail to farmers' markets, farmers' market organizations, public agencies such as Cooperative Extension, RD, NRCS and RC&D, Main Street programs, non-profit agricultural/small farm organizations and to the agricultural media. We have followed up with telephone conversations and site visits. We continue to reach out to this database as new trainings are offered.

Milestone 2: Sixty resource providers and 60 farmers and/or managers, attend the farmers' market business training courses held in each New England state.

We began the year targeting the three northern New England states: VT, NH and ME. Two farmers' market business planning training sessions were conducted at NOFA VT’s Direct marketing Conference in January, one on board effectiveness and one on market funding, and we facilitated a panel discussion on manager roles, responsibilities and challenges. Twenty farmers' market vendors/board members attended each of the training sessions, in addition to five service providers. As a result of the sessions, the project agreed to mentor a staff person from NOFA-VT in her efforts to develop a statewide farmers' market association, with support from staff from the Agency of Agriculture and Resource Conservation and Development. A December workshop brought four resource providers together to assist five farmers' market representatives in a planning session for the organization.

A training session held at the February 2006 Farm and Forest Expo in Manchester NH focused on “Business Planning for Farmers' Markets" and included "Toolkit for Doing Your Own Farmers' Market Research" and "Financing For Farmers' Markets." The material was well-received by the audience of farmers’ market vendors/board members (10) and agricultural staff (5). A mentoring project with a Cooperative Extension educator focused on board development of a farmers' market that operates four weekly markets, is in the planning stages.

A follow-up to the 2005 region-wide farmers' market training involved two resource providers in a planning discussion with state farmers' market representatives from MA, CT and NH about the feasibility of establishing a New England-wide farmers' market association. This resulted in a mentoring project in Maine led by an Agriculture Department staff person, supported by Cooperative Extension, Main Street and a farmers’ organization to consider a Farmers' Market Partnership Council in Maine.

While we have not reached the milestone of involving 60 resource providers in farmers’ market trainings (we have involved 21), we have exceeded our milestone of involving 60 farmers' market vendors or board members and expect the involvement of as many as 60 more in 2007, indicative of the need for and interest in training content. As we turn the project focus to the southern New England states, we project the participation of at least 20 additional resource providers in 2007 training sessions, giving us the needed pool from which to draw mentorships.

Milestone 3: Fifteen resource providers use mentoring assistance to develop and deliver business training programs for farmers markets.

To date we have engaged four providers from VT, one from NH, two from Maine, one from MA and one from CT in farmers’ market technical assistance efforts. Participants in the mentored projects have taken leadership in the regional direct marketing conference set for February 2007. Thanks to that input, four of 20 workshops focus on farmers’ market business development topics. In addition to our outreach efforts in northern New England, we are collaborating with individuals/agencies from MA, CT and RI to assist in getting a good turnout from markets and providers in southern New England and to help us identify additional mentoring candidates. Several conference booths will distribute information about the project to further support recruitment.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

This year we added to the four modules created in 2005 (Market Planning, Business Planning, Financing/Fundraising, Board Effectiveness), trainings on Resolving Market Conflicts, Legal Structures, Building Alliances and Evaluating Market Operations and Contributions, exceeding our project proposal. All will be featured at the February conference. In 2007 we start the process of posting the modules on the web.

We created partnerships and established systems for communicating with farmers' markets and resource providers in all six New England states.

We brought farmers’ business development needs to the forefront of training and technical assistance. We worked with a regional team of farmers and resource providers to develop farmers' market programming for a regional direct marketing conference and recruited presenters for the sessions.

While not in our target region, we provided mentoring assistance to a New York market on legal structuring and board/manager roles and responsibilities (a referral from the NOFA-VT training) and we are in discussion with staff from Cornell University about working with Extension in that state to bring the training program to NY markets.