Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:As an Educational Enhancement proposal, this project focuses on intermediaries - BFR educators and service providers. But the ultimate beneficiaries are the BFRs themselves. Working with a small, carefully selected group of Land Access Trainers (LATs) from USDA's 10 farm production regions, we have tested and validated the curriculum through pilot trainings to over 1,000 BFRs. Based on the results, we made revisions and adjustments to address additional gaps or issues identified and use the final curriculum and used trained 230 agricultural educators and BFR service providers, including for non-English speaking audiences. A key element of our approach was to use a third-party evaluator, a curriculum development expert and an Educational Enhancement Team to achieve multiple objectives. This is particularly important because of the inevitable tension between the efficiency of a national approach and the specific needs of individual states, populations and agricultural systems. Evaluation also was used to identify the best available curricula and resources as a foundation for setting core competencies, learning objectives, goals and standards to guide curriculum development for both BFRs and trainers. Changes/Problems:In Year 2, the major change was that instead of leveraging existing curricula and resources and filling gaps, we realized we had to create a comprehensive new curriculum from scratch. Based on requests from our LATs, in year 3, we added a capstone training and formal certification process. We also developed a shorter, 1-day training program to introduce additional trainers to the curriculum (rather than delivering the full 2 ½ day program to them.) In year 4, the major change was to reconsider our approach to delivering train-the-trainers programming. Instead of each LAT delivering individual train-the-trainer events, they worked in teams to deliver more complete trainings at larger venues. We concentrated on about 10 national and regional events based on the most appropriate venues and where LATs are located. Using this approach, we have reached twice as many trainers as we originally proposed. We also did not have the budget to translate the entire curriculum into Spanish as originally planned so are working with our LATs to find other ways to address translation. Problems mainly have been focused around turnover in LATs who changed jobs and a few who did not fulfill all their commitments. This latter problem is twofold: first, LATs who did not deliver any pilots and second, LATs who did not deliver complete curriculum modules but only used PowerPoint presentations, worksheets and other components as stand-alone resources or activities. We have worked individually with these LATs and their organizations to offer guidance and support to help with transitions and to fulfill their commitments. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As per above, working with the LATs we have trained over 1,000 BFRs. We provided four trainings to the LATs in Denver, CO, Atlanta, GA, Albany, NY, and Louisville, KY. To sustain the knowledge and networking gained in this project, the capstone LAT training in Louisville provided an opportunity for the original 25 LATs to become formally certified through an examination in order to acknowledge their multi-year commitment to this project. In addition, we facilitate monthly LAT Networking Calls to provide a platform for on-going networking, resource sharing, and technical support. We have completedthe final piece of professional development and are working with the LATs to deliver "train-the-trainer" trainings. We have reached 200 additional agricultural educators and service provides through trainings in 21 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are two communities of interest: internal and external. The internal communities of interest include the LATS, Educational Enhancement Team (EET) members, and American Farmland Trust-affiliated land access, tenure and transition projects, including the NY Navigators and NJ Farmland Advisors, which include funding by NE-ERMC and NE-SARE and matching grants. The results created in this project are in final draft form and disseminated through Podio, a shared workspace which is available to all the trainers who have been trained through this project so they can use and adapt them in their own BFR trainings. This includes the 200 additional trainers who so far have received "train-the-trainer" training from AFT and the LATs. We also have shared them with partners as we have pursued funding to extend these trainings after the end of the project. In addition, several LATs have leveraged the curriculum into beginning farmer programming including a Specialty Crop Block Grant Program proposal, an Extension 1890 Capacity Building grant award and an English-Language Learners translation of selected lesson plans from the LAT Curriculum for refugee and New American farm seeker audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The ultimate outcome of this project is to help BFRs secure land from retiring farmers and ranchers as well as institutional and non-operating landowners. The first project-term outcome is a curriculum and training resources which addresses gaps to serve the unique needs of diverse, and often underserved, populations. The second is a tested and validated national curriculum made widely available for use by qualified land access trainers (LATs) to deliver to BFRs in their regions. The third is a national network of LATs to sustain the project and provide ongoing support to BFRs seeking to secure agricultural land. The project's goals are twofold. First, they are to evaluate existing training programs and curricula, identify gaps, create standards, leverage existing materials and create new ones to fill gaps and to develop, deliver and disseminate a national curriculum on BFR land access training. Second, they are to build the capacity of agricultural educators and service providers working with BFRs to provide continuing education and launch a national network of mentors to sustain the project and provide ongoing support to BFRs seeking to secure agricultural land. To achieve these outcomes and goals, the project completed the followingfive inter-related objectives: Complete a national evaluation of existing farmland transition and land access programs, curricula and training resources; Create a comprehensive national curriculum that uses the most effective existing materials and approaches and adds new content to address identified gaps to meet the needs of diverse populations, regions and agricultural systems across the country; Deliver and test the comprehensive curriculum and training methods with 25 experienced agricultural educators and service providers from across the country (LATs) who are identified as leaders in their regions or with specific populations; Field test the curriculum with BFRs and ultimately extend the trainings to other trainers; Sustain the knowledge by laying the foundation for a national network of service providers and making the curriculum, resources, materials and training modules widely available to USDA, Extension, BFRDP project leaders, BFR educators and other agricultural educators and service providers through Farm Answers and AFT's Farmland Information Center.

Publications

Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:As an Educational Enhancement proposal, this project focuses on intermediaries - BFR educators and service providers. But the ultimate beneficiaries are the BFRs themselves. Working with a small, carefully selected group of Land Access Trainers (LATs) from USDA's 10 farm production regions, we have tested and validated the curriculum through pilot trainings to over 1,000 BFRs. Based on the results, we made revisions and adjustments to address additional gaps or issues identified and use the final curriculum and used trained 230 agricultural educators and BFR service providers, including for non-English speaking audiences. A key element of our approach was to use a third-party evaluator, a curriculum development expert and an Educational Enhancement Team to achieve multiple objectives. This is particularly important because of the inevitable tension between the efficiency of a national approach and the specific needs of individual states, populations and agricultural systems. Evaluation also was used to identify the best available curricula and resources as a foundation for setting core competencies, learning objectives, goals and standards to guide curriculum development for both BFRs and trainers. Changes/Problems:In Year 2, the major change was that instead of leveraging existing curricula and resources and filling gaps, we realized we had to create a comprehensive new curriculum from scratch. Based on requests from our LATs, in year 3, we added a capstone training and formal certification process. We also developed a shorter, 1-day training program to introduce additional trainers to the curriculum (rather than delivering the full 2 ½ day program to them.) In year 4, the major change was to reconsider our approach to delivering train-the-trainers programming. Instead of each LAT delivering individual train-the-trainer events, they worked in teams to deliver more complete trainings at larger venues. We concentrated on about 10 national and regional events based on the most appropriate venues and where LATs are located. Using this approach, we have reached twice as many trainers as we originally proposed. We also did not have the budget to translate the entire curriculum into Spanish as originally planned so are working with our LATs to find other ways to address translation. Problems mainly have been focused around turnover in LATs who changed jobs and a few who did not fulfill all their commitments. This latter problem is twofold: first, LATs who did not deliver any pilots and second, LATs who did not deliver complete curriculum modules but only used PowerPoint presentations, worksheets and other components as stand-alone resources or activities. We have worked individually with these LATs and their organizations to offer guidance and support to help with transitions and to fulfill their commitments. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As per above, working with the LATs we have trained over 1,000 BFRs. We provided four trainings to the LATs in Denver, CO, Atlanta, GA, Albany, NY, and Louisville, KY. To sustain the knowledge and networking gained in this project, the capstone LAT training in Louisville provided an opportunity for the original 25 LATs to become formally certified through an examination in order to acknowledge their multi-year commitment to this project. In addition, we facilitate monthly LAT Networking Calls to provide a platform for on-going networking, resource sharing, and technical support. We are in the process of completing the final piece of professional development and are working with the LATs to deliver "train-the-trainer" trainings. So far, we have reached 200 additional agricultural educators and service provides through trainings in 21 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are two communities of interest: internal and external. The internal communities of interest include the LATS, Educational Enhancement Team (EET) members, and American Farmland Trust-affiliated land access, tenure and transition projects, including the NY Navigators and NJ Farmland Advisors, which include funding by NE-ERMC and NE-SARE and matching grants. The results created in this project are in final draft form and disseminated through Podio, a shared workspace which is available to all the trainers who have been trained through this project so they can use and adapt them in their own BFR trainings. This includes the 200 additional trainers who so far have received "train-the-trainer" training from AFT and the LATs. We also have shared them with partners as we have pursued funding to extend these trainings after the end of the project. In addition, several LATs have leveraged the curriculum into beginning farmer programming including a Specialty Crop Block Grant Program proposal, an Extension 1890 Capacity Building grant award and an English-Language Learners translation of selected lesson plans from the LAT Curriculum for refugee and New American farm seeker audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?To wrap up the project, we will complete the train-the-trainer trainings, certify a handful of LATs who were unable to attend the capstone training, finalize the curriculum and training manual, and make all our resources available on the Farmland Information Center with a link to Farm Answers. We will continue to facilitate monthly peer-to-peer networking calls and provide the LATs with technical assistance and support as they deliver their own trainings to BFRs and other BFR educators and service providers. And we will complete a final evaluation of the project. To sustain the knowledge and networking gained in this project, we are exploring ways to extend the nascent network of LATs to additional agricultural educators and providers.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The ultimate outcome of this project is to help BFRs secure land from retiring farmers and ranchers as well as institutional and non-operating landowners. The first project-term outcome is a curriculum and training resources which addresses gaps to serve the unique needs of diverse, and often underserved, populations. The second is a tested and validated national curriculum made widely available for use by qualified land access trainers (LATs) to deliver to BFRs in their regions. The third is a national network of LATs to sustain the project and provide ongoing support to BFRs seeking to secure agricultural land. The project's goals are twofold. First, they are to evaluate existing training programs and curricula, identify gaps, create standards, leverage existing materials and create new ones to fill gaps and to develop, deliver and disseminate a national curriculum on BFR land access training. Second, they are to build the capacity of agricultural educators and service providers working with BFRs to provide continuing education and launch a national network of mentors to sustain the project and provide ongoing support to BFRs seeking to secure agricultural land. To achieve these outcomes and goals, the project seeks to achieve five inter-related objectives: Complete a national evaluation of existing farmland transition and land access programs, curricula and training resources; Create a comprehensive national curriculum that uses the most effective existing materials and approaches and adds new content to address identified gaps to meet the needs of diverse populations, regions and agricultural systems across the country; Deliver and test the comprehensive curriculum and training methods with 25 experienced agricultural educators and service providers from across the country (LATs) who are identified as leaders in their regions or with specific populations; Field test the curriculum with BFRs and ultimately extend the trainings to other trainers; Sustain the knowledge by laying the foundation for a national network of service providers and making the curriculum, resources, materials and training modules widely available to USDA, Extension, BFRDP project leaders, BFR educators and other agricultural educators and service providers through Farm Answers and AFT's Farmland Information Center. We have achieved the following objectives: Working with an outside evaluator, we completed a preliminary evaluation of over 100 somewhat related curricula (mostly focused on succession planning for senior generation farmers and ranchers), narrowed to those closest to our project goals, and fully evaluated 19. We wrote a report to summarize the findings of a thorough evaluation of these training programs and resources and used it to inform the development of a comprehensive, performance-based land access curriculum. Where we thought we would just assemble resources and fill gaps, we found that we had to start from scratch to create a new curriculum to meet the needs of our target audiences of BFRs as well as LATs. Based on the evaluation, and with support from our Educational Enhancement Team, the evaluator and a professional curriculum developer, we created the curriculum based around core competencies and learning objectives and subsequently produced a training manual to inform its use and delivery to both BFRs and other agricultural educators and service providers. It includes eight units or "lesson plans" to reflect the core skills BFRs need to acquire to secure a suitable land tenure arrangement: Assess your readiness to pursue land tenure opportunities Assess your financial readiness to explore land tenure options Determine appropriate land tenure options Find available land for farming or ranching Assess the suitability of a land parcel for your farm or ranch operation Prepare to secure land through leasing Prepare to secure land through purchasing Participate in succession planning for land transfer We trained and validated the curriculum with 25 LATs and worked with them to pilot and evaluate it with over 1,000 diverse BFRs from across the 10 USDA production regions. We selected the LATs through a competitive application process and chose candidates who are leaders in their regions and/or with specific populations and agricultural systems. AFT and the LATs are in the process of completing trainings with over 200 additional trainers from across the country. We also are working with a couple of LATs to simplify the language into Plain English for non-native speakers and less literate audiences.

Publications

Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience:As an Educational Enhancement proposal, this project focuses on intermediaries - BFR educators and service providers. But the ultimate beneficiaries are the BFRs themselves. Working with a small, carefully selected group of Land Access Trainers (LATs) from USDA's 10 farm production regions, we have tested and validated the curriculum through pilot trainings to BFRs. Based on the results, we are making revisions and adjustments to address additional gaps or issues identified and use the final curriculum to train agricultural educators and BFR service providers, including for non-English speaking audiences. A key element of our approach is to use a third-party evaluator, the Educational Enhancement Team, to achieve multiple objectives. This is particularly important because of the inevitable tension between the efficiency of a national approach and the specific needs of individual states, populations and agricultural systems. Evaluation also will be used to identify the "best of the best" existing curricula and materials, and as a foundation for setting goals and standards to guide curriculum development for both BFRs and trainers. Changes/Problems:Changes include reconsidering the methods of delivery for train-the-trainers programming. This would include concentrating these trainings to 5-10 regional events where LATs are located, which include the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest thus far, in order to be as comprehensive in our delivery of the curriculum as possible. Further changes include a formal LAT certification program and corresponding LAT network. Problems mainly have been focused around LATs who are not fulfilling their LAT pilot commitments. This problem is twofold: namely, LATs who have not delivered any pilots or LATs who have not delivered curriculum modules in their entirety to include the learning cycle, and instead have only used PowerPoint presentations, worksheets and other components as stand-alone resources or activities. As result, we have individually reached out to these LATs to offer guidance and support for them to fulfill their commitments. ? What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Opportunities for training and professional development include: three national Land Access Training (LAT) trainings in Denver, CO, Atlanta, GA, and Albany, NY. We will deliver a fourth and final national LAT training in May 2019 in Louisville, KY. In addition, we a facilitating monthly LAT Networking Calls. So far, the LATs have completed beginning farmer and rancher trainings in Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Kentucky, Washington, South Dakota, Ohio, Idaho, Montana, and Colorado. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?There are two communities of interest: internal and external. The internal communities of interest include the LATS, Educatinal Enhancement Team (EET) members, and American Farmland Trust-affiliated land access, tenure and transition projects, including the NY Navigators and NJ Farmland Advisors, which include funding by NE-ERMC and NE-SARE and matching grants. The results created in this project are still in draft form but have been shared with our internal audiences who are using and adapting them in beginning farmer and rancher trainings. External communities of interest will be established in 2019 with the delivery of the train-the-trainer programming. In addition, several LATs have leveraged the curriculum into beginning farmer programming including a Specialty Crop Block Grant Program proposal and an Extension 1890 Capacity Building grant award What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, we will complete an evaluation of draft curriculum, revise, finalize it and then translate it into Spanish. We will then create a final curriculum package and trainers' guide and train up to 100 additional Land Access. We will continue to facilitate monthly LAT networking conference calls and provide the LATs with technical assistance and support as they deliver their own trainings to BFRs and other BFR educators and service providers. Lastly, in order to sustain the knowledge and networking gained in this project, we are exploring a formal certification program and will extend the nascent network of LATS to additional agricultural educators and providers. Finally, we will make the curriculum, resources, materials and training modules widely available to USDA, Extension, BFRDP project leaders, BFR educators and service providers through the CTC and FIC. ?

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Current goals which have been completed include: an evaluation of existing training programs and curricula related to land access for BFRs; creating and validating a comprehensive national land access curriculum to BFRs. We are in the process of completing a third goal of and testing the comprehensive curriculum and training methods with 25 experienced agricultural educators and service providers from across the country (LATs) who are identified as leaders in their regions or with specific populations. The draft land access curriculum, which the LATs are piloting with beginners in their respective regions includes eight lesson plans to reflect core competencies: 1. Assess your readiness to pursue land tenure opportunities 2. Assess your financial readiness to explore land tenure options 3. Determine appropriate land tenure options 4. Find available land for farming or ranching 5. Assess the suitability of a land parcel for your farm or ranch operation 6. Prepare to secure land through leasing 7. Prepare to secure land through purchasing 8. Participate in succession planning for land transfer

Publications

Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience reached during this reporting period was 25 Land Access Trainers selected through a competitive process to test and validate the newly created comprehensive, national curriculum and provide feedback to the curriculum development team. This curriculum is intended to serve diverse beginning farmers and ranchers across the country. Changes/Problems:The major change this year was to hire a curriculum development firm to help us create the curriculum instead of basing the curriculum on existing materials. This is because we learned from the evaluation that there were not adequate resources available upon which to base a national land access curriculum. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As per above, we offered a train-the-trainer training for the LATs. This was held in conjunction with the Changing Lands, Changing Hands conference (also supported by BFRDP) and the project offset the costs of participation in that conference as a way to provide additional professional development to LATs and AFT staff working on the project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results will be disseminated in Year 3. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Complete a revised draft of the core curriculum Conduct second Land Access Training in December 2017 Launch a peer-to-peer Land Access Trainers network with project partners Revise if necessary and make available for use in beginning farmer and rancher trainings Develop and pre and post training evaluation surveys for participants Conduct pre and post training evaluations Land Access Trainers will pilot the core curriculum with 125 beginning farmers and ranchers in 2018 Provide peer-to-peer technical assistance and support as the trainers deliver the trainings Revise core curriculum based on feedback from the trainings Translate the core curriculum into Spanish and pictures (for less literate audiences) Prepare train the trainer materials Lay ground work to expand the network to external partners and trainers in year 4

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? A) Evaluation of existing training programs and curricula related to land access for BFRs: Major Activities: Finalized evaluation report of existing curricula Data collected: American Farmland Trust (AFT) searched USDA databases of research, extension and education projects, including: Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (accessed through the Current Research Information Service database), Risk Management Agency, Extension Risk Management Education, Conservation Innovation Grants and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. AFT used a list of 17 key words based on suggestions from the project's Educational Enhancement Team (EET) and USDA to identify relevant work. In general, staff looked back to 2009, the first year of BFRDP, but if no relevant projects were found, back to 2006. Based on this, AFT identified, reviewed and vetted more than 175 projects which addressed land succession, access and tenure and selected completed projects with deliverables that were readily available for further review. To track the identified projects, AFT created five workbooks and shared summary lists with the EET. The EET identified additional projects and highlighted any that resulted in a well-developed curriculum, and/or included quality resources related to land access for beginning farmers; and/or covered specific topics, demographics, situations or other factors believed to be important. Five EET members provided in depth feedback and additional members were contacted for responses to specific questions. At the same time, AFT took a closer, more qualitative look at the 175+ projects on the list and narrowed it down based on their depth and breadth, the relevancy of topics covered and the suite of available deliverables. This resulted in a list of 24 projects, which were shared with the EET and independent evaluator. Based on their feedback, staff selected 19 land access projects with curriculum content and resources for external evaluation. The evaluator started with 19 projects but ended with a final sample of 18 (N=18) as one was delivered through electronic videos (webinars) and thus could be assessed. 3. Summary of Statistics: The independent evaluation included a content analysis to inform curriculum mapping and an assessment of the effectiveness of each project. He evaluated and rated the effectiveness of each project using an assessment instrument developed by Finkbeiner and Braun (2013). In the end, he analyzed and described 24 sections, evaluated and assigned them values of 1 to 4 (1 = ineffective, 2 = fair, 3 = good, and 4 = effective). He ran descriptive statistics to describe the findings including Means (M), Standard Deviations (SD), and Modes (MO). Overall, the evaluation found most projects were rated as fair, resulting in a mean = 2.42, (SD = 1.01). Based on the five constructs (Content, Audience, Readability, Utility, and Evaluation) the content construct produced a mean of 2.47 (SD = 1.01), and the construct of audience a mean of 2.82 (SD = .98). Readability revealed a mean score of 3.19 (SD = .92) and produced the highest rank of the five constructs. Utility was evaluated at a mean of 2.08 (SD = 1.04) with evaluation producing the lowest construct score mean of 1.38 (SD = .81). 4. Key outcomes or other accomplishments realized. AFT used the findings from the evaluation report to create a curriculum map and outline for a new national curriculum on land tenure and access which addresses the major recommendations of the report. These included: Including meaningful and measureable learning objectives for the curriculum. Including instrumentation and assessment measures to evaluate the knowledge gained and impact of the curriculum. Creating an instructor's guide with sound information, resources and instruction on educationally sound practices that can be adapted to address diverse needs - agricultural, demographic and regional. Noting references and integrating them as seamlessly as possible to aid the instructors and learners to validate materials and to allow for further knowledge acquisition. B) Creating, testing and validating a comprehensive national land access curriculum Major Activities: Developed a draft core curriculum Data collected: AFT identified, reviewed and vetted 175+ projects which addressed land succession, access and tenure and selected completed projects with deliverables that were readily available for further review. AFT with input from the EET the reduced the list to 18 for independent evaluation. Summary statistics and discussion of results: With input from the EET, the initial list of main topics was reduced to four and the topics and subtopics are prioritized using a Delphi process. AFT then worked with a curriculum developer to transform the topics into performance-based competencies with related learning objectives. AFT created a five-part core curriculum. Key curriculum materials include a Course Outcome Summary, Student Learning Plan, Teaching Plan, Storyboard (content for presentations), Worksheets, Assessment Tools and Resource lists. Key outcomes or other accomplishments realized. We conducted two webinars and a two-day in person training to test and validate the initial draft curriculum with the LATs. The trainings included instruction on the learning cycle, learning methods, on how to use the curriculum and materials, and training on the subject matter content. Based on this we expanded the curriculum to cover eight core competencies and began to revise materials to reflect them. C) Building the capacity of agricultural educators and service providers working with BFRs to provide continuing education Major activities: Identify and select Land Access Trainers (LATs) Data collected: We conducted a competitive national search to identify potential LATs. Interested individuals submitted an electronic application and questionnaire to provide information on the follow kinds of qualifications: Type of organization applicants work for; Years of experience working with BFRs; Years of experience working on land access; Areas of expertise; States/regions served; Demographics of the BFRs they serve; Type and size of operations they work with; and Types of trainings they conducted and relevant networks/affiliations that could help extend the work. Summary statistics and discussion of results: Among the 101 applicants, 45% were from non-governmental organizations, 32% were from community-based organizations and 25% were from Cooperative Extension. Much smaller percentages worked for state agencies or local governments. More than two-thirds of the applicants had more than five years of experience working with BFRs but only 47% had more than five years of experience working on land access issues. Individuals applied from all 10 USDA production regions. AFT received the most applications from the Northeast (20); the Pacific (19); Appalachia (14) and the Corn Belt (14). Key outcomes or other accomplishments realized: After a careful and comprehensive review process, we invited a core group of 25 candidates to participate in the project. Theyrepresent all 10 USDA production regions, reflect substantial diversity in agricultural production systems - from livestock, specialty crop, dairy and grain production, to conventional and organic management systems. The selected LATs have experience working with diverse populations from traditional farm families, to refugees, from veterans to black family farmers in the south to Native American ranchers in South Dakota, to Latino farm workers in the Central Valley. Nearly all (93%) reported working with young farmers; 89% work with women; and 82% serve limited resource farmers. Large percentages reported that they work with veterans (58%); African American producers (46%) and Hispanic farmers (43%) specifically. These highly qualified people reflected the geographic diversity we sought and also reflected/represented agricultural and demographic diversity.

Publications

Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16

Outputs
Target Audience:The first full year of the project was devoted to collecting and evaluating existing curricula and resources related to land access and farm transition. This evaluation will provide the basis for a new, comprehensive, national curriculum intended to serve diverse beginning farmers and ranchers from across the country. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?American Farmland Trust created the opportunity for Beginning Farmer and Rancher educators and service providers who are identified as leaders in their regions or with specific populations to become Land Access Trainers (LATs). LATs will help us pilot the new curriculum and improve content through an iterative process. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, we have only presented preliminary findings at the BFRDP PI meeting in August 2016 and at a meeting with USDA on land tenure in July 2016. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period we will finalize the evaluation report by and select the LATs by the end of the calendar year. We will complete the first iteration of the national curriculum and hold an in person training in for the LATs in June. We will solicit feedback and make revisions to the curriculum in anticipation of their first round of trainings with beginning farmers and ranchers.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? American Farmland Trust (AFT) created and convened an Education Enhancement Team of 16 leading experts in land access and beginning farmer issues to advise us on the project. AFT also completed a review of 175+ USDA-funded projects that address land access to inform the development of the new, national curriculum. AFT prepared a draft evaluation report that summarized findings from a content analysis of a subset of training projects/curricula and evaluated their effectiveness.

Publications