Cultivating Sustainable Farm Law Leadership in the Southern Region

Commodities

Practices

This project results in the development and support of 8 Legal Ecosystem Fellows who will deliver at least 8 farm law workshops in the Southern region on legal issues of importance to sustainable producers. The Legal Ecosystem Fellows will be equipped with additional resources that empower the Fellow to continue supporting producers who attend the workshops. As a result, 240 farmers attending the 8 workshops (30 attendees each) will have more resilient stable businesses and improved quality of life. 

We will achieve these outcomes by hosting a Legal Ecosystem Fellowship- a train-the-trainer program for Extension educators, farm education nonprofit staff, farm business service providers, and post-secondary instructors to lead farm law workshops locally. The training curriculum emphasizes risk-reducing action steps and accurate, clear legal explanations. The program also trains (and requires) Fellows to use peer-to-peer training techniques and incorporate local producers in their presentations.

This project was piloted in the North Central region in 2023. Three applicants from the Southern Region applied (despite little outreach)- we had to turn them away. This is our opportunity to improve and adapt the program for Southern sustainable agriculture communities. As a nonprofit devoted exclusively to teaching agricultural communities farm law, we are deeply skilled in creating educational materials that accommodate all state-specific nuances that are necessary to the curricular goals. Through our pilot program, we proved that it is safe and effective to train laypersons in legal matters without violating any rules on practicing law.

The Fellows trained through this project will:

1. Improve their skills, tools, frameworks, and practice for increasing legal resilience in their agricultural community.
2. Acquire confidence in delivering up to 5 educational presentations (from 5 templates) that help farmers take specific, risk-reducing action steps, without overstepping any bounds of their position as non-attorneys or creating additional risk for farmers and ranchers.
3. Acquire confidence in creating excellent presentations that are accurate, and motivate farmers to undertake 1 or 2 specific risk-reducing actions while being mindful of the varied relationships disadvantaged/underrepresented community members may have with legal systems. 
4. Learn to incorporate farmer-to-farmer learning and peer engagement around legal issues in a presentation environment. 

The mentor farmers participating in the Fellowship program will:

1. Support the training curriculum and the individual workshop presentation development of the 8 Fellows. The mentor farmers will share their stories about farm law experiences where they’ve managed real risks, articulating their decision-making process and the resources they utilized for support. 
2. Identify ways they can contribute to the Fellowship group’s workshops (8).

The Fellows will use their learning to:

1. Deliver 8 (1 per Fellow) educational presentations or workshops (at conferences, etc.) in the Southern region that empower 240 farmers to take specific risk-reducing action steps. 
   • The target audience are direct-to-consumer operations including CSAs, U-picks, those selling at farmers' markets or doing other direct marketing as well as operations using organic methods. These folks have unique legal concerns not necessarily experienced by their conventional peers. 
   • In past programming, these presentations attract 75% female participants and 30-50% underrepresented audiences overall, as these audiences have less access to traditional legal services as compared to their male and white farmer peers.

The 240 farmers attending the Fellows’ programming provided will:

1. Increase their knowledge of the subject matter (business structures, farm employment law, liability and insurance, farmland leasing, and food safety), 
2. Form an intention to adopt the specific risk-reducing action step(s) presented and 
3. Express confidence in their ability to undertake the action in the near term.