Marketing & Business Skills for Beginning, Refugee, & Immigrant Farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: technical assistance, workshop
• Farm Business Management: agricultural finance, budgets/cost and returns, business planning, community-supported agriculture, farm-to-institution, farm-to-restaurant, farmers' markets/farm stands, financial management, marketing management, Brand Identity, Local Funding Opportunities, Taxes

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 new American 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,” focused on providing a series of educational workshops that connected beginning and new American farmers, in the Lincoln, Nebraska area to a network of qualified instructors.  

This project offered farmer education about topics related to marketing, making small farms profitable, and developing sustainable business models. 12 unique educational workshops on business and marketing related topics for small-scale specialty crop farmers in the Lincoln, Nebraska region were offered over the course of the project, with two sessions of classes held over the course of the project that increased the confidence and knowledge of small-scale specialty crop farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska region on business planning and marketing for their farm businesses. This project also developed an educational curriculum that is available to be shared with other organizations serving similar communities in our region, ensuring farmers have access to the full toolbox of skills they need to build sustainable farm operations. Our educational model included partnering with successful local farmers and community experts 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. Farmers that signed up for the full series were provided with laptops that became their own to use for their farm business if they graduated.  

Overall, we found that class content and format was effective in improving knowlege on all topics. Based on pre and post survey data, we saw improvement in self reported attitudes and knowledge per class for all farmers who completed pre and post surveys. All farmers who completed post surveys reported intent to adopt practices covered in classes. We had 29 graduate farmers in total from the two series, and 48 total farmers who attended classes. 

While many farmers who took these classes are still working on growing and developing their businesses, we wanted to highlight one story in particular. One farmer, a new American farmer who is in their second year of production and graduated from the first class series, has gone on to establish his own LLC. We were also able to help this farmer apply to be a vendor at one of the local markets in town. They were accepted into the market and have been vending independently at this market during the 2025 season! This farmer is also pursuing steps to be able to sell value added products, specifically culturally important fermented goods, using their produce. We are also helping one other farmer that graduated from the first year of the series pursue a farm number application in order to access NRCS programs and resources.  

Objectives:

1. Offer 12 workshops ( 2 years with 6 classes each) on business planning & marketing for small-scale speciality crop farmers in the Lincoln, Nebraska region.
2. Increase confidence and knowledge of small-scale specialty crop farmers in Lincoln, Nebraska region on business planning & marketing for their farm businesses.

While our objectives did not change, we were able to offer more than the 12 workshops originally planned, effectively running a second modified series with a no cost extension through 2025. In total we ended up offering 20 classes between the two class sessions. Pre- and post-surveys were utilized to understand the baseline knowledge, confidence, and educational needs of the farmers for each course. The curriculum developed, including translated materials and lesson plans, is available to other farmers and programs in the North Central Region.