Soil Sisters: Increasing women farmer-led education and opportunities through local network building and learning circles

View the project final report

Commodities

Practices

• Education and Training: decision support system, demonstration, display, farmer to farmer, focus group, mentoring, networking, study circle, technical assistance, workshop
• Farm Business Management: agricultural finance, agritourism, budgets/cost and returns, business planning, community-supported agriculture, cooperatives, farmers' markets/farm stands, marketing management, new enterprise development, value added
• Production Systems: organic agriculture, organic certification, permaculture
• Soil Management: composting, earthworms, nutrient mineralization, organic matter
• Sustainable Communities: analysis of personal/family life, community development, community planning, community services, employment opportunities, ethnic differences/cultural and demographic change, food hubs, infrastructure analysis, leadership development, local and regional food systems, new business opportunities, partnerships, public participation, public policy, quality of life, social capital, social networks, sustainability measures, values-based supply chains

In this project, Soil Sisters, a program of the Minnesota-based non-profit Renewing the Countryside (RTC), will launch eight new women-led local networks and learning circles in Minnesota and Wisconsin alongside creating a Toolkit for women farmers anywhere interested in establishing such a peer-based network. 

Soil Sisters originated in southern Wisconsin in 2012 thanks to an NCR-SARE Youth Educator Grant as a single tour day championing women farmers. It has grown to one of the largest and longest running sustainable agriculture women farmer networks nationally  with over 240 members and was awarded the 2019 Top Rural Development Initiative by Wisconsin Rural Partners. Renewing the Countryside is now the fiscal agent for Soil Sisters and that original tour day is a full annual weekend of on-farm events on women-owned farms.

Given Soil Sisters’ successful track record, this project will support the eight-member Farm Partner team to replicate this Wisconsin network concept in their local communities, collectively hosting 24 meetings involving 400+ women farmers.  This project will also create a Toolkit curating best practices to support additional network launches, stemming from the dozens of women farmers beyond our partner team wanting to start a Soil Sisters group and asking RTC for resources.

Final Report (10/31/22)

Once the Omicron COVID-19 wave subsided in spring of 2022 and we headed into the warmer/safer season for gathering outdoors, we were very excited to finally have a window to move forward with the in-person women farmer pilot network meetings that were an integral part of the original proposal.  Our team of seven women farmer new network leads each held a minimum of two events, with several hosting more and, importantly, already planning additional events past the cycle of this grant. This is an important result to see the self-organized and self-motivated aspect of farmer network building in action, and we are very pleased to see evidence already of the potential longevity of this one project.

Highlights include (more detail in More details in Educational & Outreach Activities):

• With final movement of the in-person events, we were also able to finalize the Toolkit, which we were able to expand and include an additional twelve farmer case study stories compiled from members of the founding Soil Sisters group in southern Wisconsin, providing grassroots organizing ideas and inspiration. We see this Toolkit as a strong start for a larger, on-going outreach effort to support additional networks (we already have six interested) and will as a next step review and develop a plan for areas to expand.
• Additionally, thanks to the return of in-person events, we were able to reboot our Soil Sisters weekend event Aug. 5-7, 2022 which included a day-long women farmer educational event based on the learning circle/peer-based learning which attracted over 70 women, the vast majority not only beginning farmers but this was the first ag event they attended.
• The Soil Sisters August event also provided a great opportunity to amplify this project's story through the media, including a feature on Wisconsin Public Radio/Larry Meiller Show along with a front page article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal (the largest circulation newspaper in Wisconsin), A network of Wisconsin women farmers preach the value of sustainable agriculture and living connected to the land — and each other. Article PDF uploaded (online article is behind MJS paywall) MJS article.  Additionally, our women farmer network building story was featured in an Around the Farm Table Show produced by PBS Wisconsin. 

Again, we are very grateful to NC-SARE for support and understanding as we facilitated this project during the COVID-19 pandemic, clearly not the ideal timing for a project based on multiple in-person gatherings. But thanks to what became an opportunity to creatively reinvent, our farmer team could draw on and adapt with various different project components and people to collaboratively create something even better. Bottom line, we met our original project objectives by this adaptation and adding and experimenting with new elements, which brought in even more new learning and insight to create an even stronger end product.

Progress Report Update (3/1/22)

The unfortunate reality of COVID-19, particularly the Delta and Omicron waves, again delayed and detoured this project in ways not initially planned nor expected. We appreciate NC SARE's understanding in extending the timeline for this grant as now, heading into summer, 2022, we finally feel comfortable and safe with outdoor gatherings and can fully immerse in and wrap up this project, while creating tangible resources and tools that will live beyond this grant cycle.

We left the 3/1/21 updates in this report right now for a history and reference point for our team as to where things started and evolved due to the pandemic. In our final report once the summer activities take place, we will be able to better merge and collect these updates into a more cohesive, helpful final report. While we still will definitely meet our overall project deliverables and outreach goals, as we've all been experiencing during COVID-19, we're needing to pivot and embrace new tools beyond the original proposal, such as the virtual space which we didn't even refer to in the original proposal and have found a very helpful tool.  Fortunately, building these resources off an existing vibrant founding Soil Sisters network in south central Wisconsin has enabled us to test various outreach and engagement strategies using Zoom and various partnerships.

Progress Report Update (3/1/21)

The onset of COVID-19 right as this project was originally scheduled to caused us to regroup and reevaluate our strategies and timeline for fulfilling the goals and deliverables of this project. While the pandemic felt like a curve ball at the time (especially for a project originally rooted in face-to-face connections in person), the reality is today's situation adds up to what will be in the end an even stronger project in ways we couldn't have imagined originally. 

Two key updates to the project include:

•  An extension request through 8/31/22 (currently being processed), which will enable our team to fully achieve the intended outcomes and impact of this project both in the virtual COVID-19 space with increased opportunity to incorporate in the original in-person component as safety protocols allow into late 2021 and more realistically into 2022.

In April, 2020, we originally requested and received a six-month extension which would have had this original one-year grant wrapping up 10/31/21. Although we didn't realize it when we made the request in April, 2020 (as we like many thought this wouldn't last this long!) this original extension deadline would have caused us -- given the unknowns of gathering during summer, 2021 -- to reinvent the whole project in the virtual space.  This new and final extension gives us the needed time and space to both utilize virtual as we have been while moving toward returning (gratefully and enthusiastically!) to in-person components.

Additionally, this enables us to tie in this project to our larger, annual Soil Sisters August in-person event, now realistically scheduled for August 5-7, 2022.  The original 2021 event was canceled due to COVID-19 and we are currently researching possibilities for some form of broader virtual education/outreach for August, 2021, given the uncertainties of events and gatherings during vaccine distribution.

We very much appreciate NCR-SARE's understanding, support and ideas on how to best manage this project under these unprecedented times and look forward to the final result being an even strong product and outcomes.

•  Continuing to research, incorporate and test various networking components in the virtual space. As we navigate the pandemic-motivated virtual space, we have been employing a strategic lens on decisions and focus on creating tools and elements that will last beyond COVID-19.  Utilizing the virtual space can be a very successful element of on-going networking. In-person gatherings in the winter, for example, have historically been a challenge due to unpredictable weather and geographic distance to travel in rural areas.  By curating and learning about virtual spaces and how to create interactive, safe spaces via Zoom (versus just webinar/lecture formats) and incorporating this learning into the final Toolkit will create resources that last and grow long into the future.

• Establish 8 new women-farmer led networks (5 in Wisconsin; 3 in Minnesota).

• Facilitate 24 learning circle educational network meetings. Each of the eight women farmer partners will lead 3 sessions, providing feedback and input.

• Directly involve 400+ women farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This will be accomplished by each of the 8 new networks reaching 50 women farmers in their region, roughly an hour radius.

• Capture best practices and ideas from the Soil Sisters Wisconsin group and our Farm Partners team into a downloadable Toolkit that will compile curriculum/meeting topic, agendas, tour day ideas, outreach learnings.

Final Report (10/31/22)

Thanks to the creativity and commitment of the farmers involved with this project and our full team, we were able to both achieve our original deliverables amidst a pandemic as well as add in multiple additional educational and outreach elements to this project not planned for in the original grant, like virtual events and print/newspaper column. Please see Educational & Outreach Activities for details.

In the spirit of these Partnership Grants, we are pleased to have been able to involve 19 farmers in a paid capacity who directly provided input, insight and collaborative leadership in this project.

Additional impact of this project beyond the original grant:

• We have both strong interest and commitment from our pilot farmer network team to continue gathering for networking, farm tours and resource sharing already beyond the official 8/31/22 project end date with events planned through the rest of 2022 and beyond. Additionally, these groups have self-organized their own on-going local farmer communications channels, from listservs to Facebook groups, to keep the learning circle education going. 
• We are very excited to also have over six additionally women farmers ready to organize networks beyond our pilot project, representing the continued need and interest both across the US and internationally (we have a woman farmer from Slovania wanting to organize!). The Toolkit is a strong starter resource, which we will keep adding to and refining. Our next steps with RTC in an organizational support role is to use the next six months to determine the best on-going structure and administration process for RTC to collaboratively amplify and collectively bring together these new network initiatives.
• The final new pilot network farmer team represented young and aspiring leadership beyond what we had originally planned for, which wonderfully added strong organizing energy. For example, two of the farmer team members in the original grant (Kathy Zeman & Mariann Holmes) intentionally stepped aside and identified a new, young women farmer in their community to take on this role (Theresa Bentz & Erin Link) -- with them now in a support role.  This collaborative support demonstrated the importance of mentoring and identifying new leadership in cultivating strong farmer communities running financially viable businesses.

Progress Report Update (3/1/22)

Key focus areas & updates (again, we will merge all of this in a more helpful/cohesive final report):

• We are currently editing the Network Toolkit content, including feedback and insight from the pilot networks as they launch in-person events this summer. The Toolkit will graphically model a past RTC project, Amplify Our Voices, that was a Toolkit for media awareness and engagement for organic women farmers.  The different downloadable PDFs on network building topics (learning circle formats, communication strategies, start-up challenges/opportunities, longevity, community engagement, farm tours/ag education, etc) will enable us to readily edit and expand past this grant's life cycle.  The Toolkit will also include case studies of the new networks including their insight and advice as well as input from peer-learning experts such as Jean Eells of E Resources, the leading researching nationally on learning circles.
• The eight new networks are being rebooted with a plan to host events this summer. Our original team member, Kathy Zeman of Simple Harvest Farm Organics (MN) has generously stepped down from the team in order to give a farmers newer to organizing and enthusiastic on bringing women farmer together in her region: Theresa Bentz of Get Bentz Farm.  She has been a great addition to the team.

Progress Report Update (3/1/21)

We will continue to work toward these original objectives and will readily meet the 400+ final deliverables, with this now hybrid of both in-person and virtual space.  While the original proposal focused specifically on outreach via the eight local networks, we now can embrace a wider educational platform that is still based on the women's learning circle, collaborative model.

A big component of this that we have focused on the past six months has been researching and learning about creating more intimate/safe space and "conversations" in the virtual space that enable peer-to-peer information exchange between women farmers. While a creative challenge to facilitate such spaces, as platforms like Zoom garner wider acceptance this is much more of a reality that, again, we see creating tools and resources that will be used long past the pandemic.

We will be piloting a series of "virtual potlucks" for the original Green County Area Wisconsin Soil Sisters group launching in March, 2021 and continuing through December with various women farmer hosts doing a skill-share and farm tour and utilizing Zoom's growing list of features such as break-out rooms for networking and connections. When safety protocols allow, hopefully at some point into later 2021, we will switch back to in-person formats. This process will be documented via surveys and informal farmer feedback on what is working (or not) and added into the Toolkit.  We have already surveyed the farmers on meeting preferences, finding Zoom the strongly preferred platform over ones like Google Meet.  There was no consistent answer on the best days/times of days to gather so we will let the farmers hosting each session decide what is best for them. An interesting challenge (with learnings documented in the Toolkit) is both the Green County group and other new start-ups will intentionally seek out and have a diverse group of women farmer participants, from younger/beginning farmers that are quite online savvy to older and more seasoned farmers in the field, but newer to the tech components.

The learnings from these virtual gatherings will be in the Toolkit that the farmer team will use to launch the eight new networks into later 2021/2022, depending on COVID-19.

We have also done one-on-one interviews and communications with the project Farmer Team (the eight women farmers who will be launching local networks) to explore virtual alternatives and other communications options before we can return to in-person.  While our Farmer Team is deeply committed to network organizing and connecting local women farmers, doing so exclusively in the virtual space will be challenging, per farmer team input.  As we develop the Toolkit and move to returning to in-person gatherings, we are exploring other creative ways to tap into/collect and share the expertise of the our Farmer Team through interviews and case study story collection which can be used in various educational outreach and online.