Bringing the UMass Mentor Farm Model to Urban Agriculture

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.

Mentor Farms will be BIPOC-run and/or BIPOC-serving, as will many
participants in on-farm events. UMass Extension personnel will
have opportunities for anti-racist training designed to help them
unlearn some biases and approach their engagement with new
audiences with respect and humility.

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, and who are BIPOC and/or working in BIPOC-serving
organizations.

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 DEI
training and to subsequently use best practices in engaging
with  urban farming audiences.