Bringing the UMass Mentor Farm Model to Urban Agriculture

View the project report

Commodities

Practices

• Crop Production: nutrient management, season extension
• Education and Training: extension, farmer to farmer, networking, technical assistance
• Pest Management: integrated pest management
• Soil Management: soil quality/health
• Sustainable Communities: partnerships, urban agriculture

This project will develop a Mentor Farm model within the new UMass Extension Urban Agriculture initiative. It will identify three Mentor Farms per year for three years who will receive stipends, soil and disease diagnostic services, and intensive education from Extension Urban Agriculture Educators and experts in disciplines including soil health, pest management, and horticulture. In exchange, the Mentor Farms will host on-farm education events for other urban farmers and service providers, as well as provide key feedback and guidance to UMass Extension.

UMass Extension personnel will participate in training specifically designed to help them engage with new audiences with respect and humility and to work with urban farmers.

We anticipate that in addition to the three farms per year we engage with intensively, 6 on-farm events per year will attract at least 20 participants per event, or 120 per year. We also expect to direct 20 inquiries per year to each Mentor Farm, or 60 in total.

These extended audiences will be comprised primarily of individuals who are both farmers and service providers.

Key objectives of the project are to:

1. build trust between UMass Extension and those who support urban agricultural practitioners;
2. improve UMass Extension’s ability to deliver expertise to new audiences in a respectful way;
3. demonstrate material benefits of Extension expertise to urban farmers; and
4. support peer-to-peer learning within urban agriculture networks.

Over 3 years, 9 Mentor Farms represented by at least 9 ASP’s will gain comprehensive science-based farming knowledge that improves productivity and efficiency of farm operations, and results in increased knowledge and improved practices for participating employees, volunteers, and trainees whose number are too difficult to predict. In Collaboration with UMass Extension, these 9 Mentor Farms will educate 120 ASP’s and 240 urban farmers at on-farm events, resulting in reported increases in knowledge of relevant farming topics and expected behavior change that can lead to greater resource efficiency, productivity and food safety. Of those 120 ASP’s and 240 farmers reached, we expect at least 30 to subsequently report that they have passed knowledge they learned on to at least 50 other urban farmers. Finally, we expect at least 6 Extension personnel to participate in training and to subsequently use best practices in engaging with urban farming audiences.