Mentoring small fresh produce farmers who want to increase farm revenue by selling value-added products through direct-market channels

Mentoring small fresh produce farmers who want to increase farm revenue by selling value-added products through direct-market channels

Summary

This project is designed to successfully help twelve farmers who are growing fresh produce on the Delmarva Peninsula increase their farm revenue by selling value-added product through any direct marketing channels available. These farmers have been involved in a commodity marketing model for years and in some cases for generations. The project is targeted to work with a group of twenty farmers who understand the collaborative process of the project and have the motivation and commitment to achieve the performance target.

After an initial meeting with each farmer collaborator to jointly draw up a plan for their individual operations we schedule monthly one-on-one mentoring sessions with each of the farmer collaborators. These sessions last two to four hours and are designed to help the farmers work their plan. Each session starts with a review the progress to date and ends with action items to be completed by the time of the next session. This mentoring process helps the farmer collaborators to identify and overcome barriers they face in selling value-added products through direct market channels.

The mentoring process is the key in empowering the farmer collaborators to take ownership of the process and gain confidence through each step they take toward achieving the target outcome. The farmers are eager to increase their revenue and believe they can be successful if they can learn new skills in direct marketing.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Of the 20 farmers engaged in this project, 12 will be using the new added-value direct marketing model within 2 years of the start of this project and be selling value-added products through one or more direct channels.

We will measure success based on each of these farmers reporting sales of value-added products through one or more direct channels resulting in increased income to the farmer over previous years.

As part of our outreach commitment, we will share our methodology, data and lessons learned with all cooperative extension organizations of all universities on the Delmarva Peninsula. We will also send out a newsletter to all the farmers that were not part of our project to encourage them to participate when we reach out to mentor others in the years beyond our project.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The project recruitment brochure mailing in the first month of the project was not successful as the response was minimal.

Follow up telephone calls in the second month to non-respondents was also fruitless. We then adjusted our recruitment activity to recommendations of candidates from agricultural contacts on the peninsula. We eliminated our project kick-off meeting and then proceeded with one-on-one personal interviews that yielded some great farmer collaborators. Thus far we have a group of fifteen farmer collaborators toward our targeted amount of twenty from this amended process and have additional interviewees coming up to reach twenty in the January/February time frame.

Out of the group of fifteen, ten have selected their projects and we have been actively engaged in the monthly mentoring process for seven of them for two months. Five Candidates will be selecting their projects early in January and three other candidates will have their projects selected by the end of January.

The lesson we have learned so far is that it takes significant one-on-one contact to gain the trust needed for the farmer collaborators to commit to the process. Once that trust is built the farmer collaborators roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We are still too early in the process to have outcomes to report. The significant activities we are engaged in with the farmer collaborators that we are in the mentoring process with lead us to believe we will successfully reach our targeted outcome.

Collaborators: