2008 Annual Report for FNC07-665
Farmer-Led Networking Groups to Support New Vegetable Growers
Summary
WORK ACTIVITIES
Our goal was to hold two on-farm field days in Spring/Summer 2008 to introduce our project. Despite the floods and closed roads in eastern Iowa, we were able to hold our first field on the farm of Susan Jutz on June 12th. (We had a 100 year old barn go down in a severe wind storm on June 8 and had been accessing our 100+ Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members in Cedar Rapids via lengthy circuitous routes but decided to go ahead with the field day as planned.) There was good attendance (35 attendees) considering the flood issues many of us were facing.
The second field day we had planned at the farm of Laura Krouse was cancelled due to continuing weather/flood related issues. Similar issues continued to challenge our ability to recruit and establish networking groups in our area.
We did begin work with potential new vegetable growers on a one-to-one basis. Three of our experienced growers began working one-on-one with potential new vegetable farmers. In November of 2008, tragically one of our young farmers was killed in a farm related accident.
The weather challenges affected our group of established farmers as well and one of them dropped out of the project early on while another grant participant, Jean Donohue expanded her role in the project and has been mentoring a young woman in her neighborhood. Jean also decided to become a grower herself in late 2008 and entered into the role of mentee.
As we began to recognize that the original model we had outlined for this project might not work exactly as planned we took a different approach to networking and facilitating our goal of recruiting and providing support for new and inexperienced vegetable growers.
Three of our farmer participants actively promoted new vegetable farmers on the land via various venues.
12/19/08 Laura Krouse (farmer participant) sponsored and facilitated a networking meeting focused on variety selection. Pooled orders to save money. Attendees: 5
1/9 – 1/10/09 Used farmer mentor grant money to pay registration for 2 new growers and carpooled with them and a third to attend Practical Farmers of Iowa Annual Conference
2/08 – Laura Krouse launched “ Women caring for the land” project. We used this as a venue to identify potential new vegetable growers. Susan Jutz began working with 3 potential new growers. (sponsored and promoted by WFAN)
3/6/09 Susan Jutz facilitated networking meeting for 4 potential new growers. Maintain support via email and phone calls to date. (Begin farm exchange visits in July 2009)
3/13/09 Laura Krouse organized trip with 3 farmer mentees to local foods workshop in NE Iowa at Calmar. The 5 hour workshop and 4 hour round trip drive ended up being a great networking session. (Workshop sponsored by NE Iowa Food & Farm Coalition)
3/18/09 Appeals hearing for Susan Jutz farm. This brought over 80 people together including many farmers to support my request that I should not need a conditional use permit to hold farm tours and other educational events on my farm. Planning and zoning argued that my farm tours were non agricultural (ie., vegetable production) and were somehow different from corn field days, Farm Bureau on farm events, extension events etc. We sought support via emails and attendance at the hearing. This obviously was not a planned event within the parameters of our grant but it proved to be a great networking event for farmers and non-farmers.
3/25/09 As part of Krouse’s Caring for the Land project she led a conservation tour with one of her stops being at the farm of Jutz. 25 attendees including 3 farmer mentees.
4/8 – 4/9/09 Laura Krouse field day. 2 day workshop building a 30’x96’ hoophouse (sponsored and promoted by PFI) We used this as a venue to identify potential new growers as well as support/network opportunity for mentees we are already working with. 60 attendees
4/15/09 Final gathering of Krouse’s Caring for the Land project included 2 farmer mentees.
RESULTS
What we have learned is that although there are individuals out there who want to get started in vegetable production and say they are interested in participating in a group this does not easily translate into action on their part. It has taken us more time than we anticipated to identify individuals who want to be participants in group meetings. There is a willingness to work one-on-one but less commitment to network session participation. Because of this we shifted our focus to encourage participation with us in the PFI conference, the NE Iowa local foods workshop, the Caring for the Land sessions/tour and the PFI Hoophouse building event at Laura Krouse’s farm. This approach has proved to be more successful to date in bringing together new and existing farmers. We have not been as successful in bringing together the number of new farmers in a small group setting as we had proposed.
WORK PLAN FOR 2009
• Request one-year extension of grant.
• Hold our second field day August 2, 2009, to continue to recruit and support new growers.
• Our plan is to continue to use existing events to bring our mentees together and to continue to recruit new mentees.
• June through October – make visits to mentee farms and exchange visits to farms of experienced farmers.
• Continue one-on-one mentoring.
OUTREACH
Information sharing has been via multiple sources. Each of the major events identified above were sponsored by state or regional organizations and were promoted via press releases, mailings and multiple list serves. In addition, we used personal emails and phone calls and flyers to share information about events. There were follow-up stories on many of these events in our local media as well.