Progress 01/01/21 to 08/19/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The audience for the project are 2-year Associate Degree students, recent graduates, and other post-secondary aspiring entrepreneurs. The workforce need addressed by this project is for a cadre of entrepreneurs with skills specifically developed to respond to rapidly changing times. The project addresses the AFRI Farm Bill Priority area of focus on agriculture economics and rural communities. By the end of the 5 year grant period, we expect to: launch a new 21st century, market-responsive entrepreneurship curriculum and training program with academic credit equivalencies and certification; graduate more than 500 associate degree students and other participants from across Central NY with certificates recognized by Farm Credit East as "industry ready"; successfully support at least 60 certified participants who access grants and loans to build or expand profitable agribusinesses; and influence at least two lenders to adopt new lending approaches based on future business and market trends. Entrepreneurship is the driver of new job creation in the agriculture and food sectors of upstate New York. Conventional farm and food businesses have become increasingly consolidated and mechanized for decades in the region, reducing the number of job opportunities in these sectors. New markets, technologies, and social/consumer trends now support the emergence of a highly diverse set of enterprises that promise opportunities for a workforce with a different and updated set of skills. It is the nature of these emerging opportunities that they are complex, rapidly changing, and risky. CADE's analysis of this new entrepreneurship landscape is detailed below in the section headed 2020 Foresight - Business Planning in a New Era . Educational programs that help new entrepreneurs succeed in this context, including for two-year Associate Degree students and graduates entering the workforce, will need to provide participants with an approach to business planning and management reflective of the realities of 2020 and beyond. Changes/Problems:our project came to an abrupt stop around the midway point of the first year of the grant because: our SUNY Cobleskill / community college partner, Dr. Jason Evans, left the college and there was a leadership change who had a different vision; when we tried to pull in a different community college partner (Mohawk Valley Community College, which is part of the State University of New York or SUNY system) we learned that the community college Teachers Union which exists Statewide, now requires college faculty get "first dibs" on teaching credit bearing courses, which meant that CADE would no longer be allowed to be the university's contracted partner to implement the work; we were informed of a new policy that all credit bearing courses must be paid for by students (our program co-conceived by Dr. Jason Evans at the time was designed to be "free"); and after much deliberation over whether we might "hand over" this grant to SUNY Cobleskill, given CADE's lack of capacity to implement it, CADE leadership and Board concluded that we were not prepared to hand over the grant because our curricula and work products are our own intellectual property. CADE contacted our Grants Officer Carlos Ortiz on March 14, 2022, to explain our dilemma and ask his guidance. We agreed that CADE would consider how the project might be restructured, so that CADE could continue independent of the university system, as long as we continued to target 2 year associate degree students in our outreach efforts, and proceed with building in the "industry readiness" verification (which in our case, was always going to be a certificate of "Credit readiness" endorsed by Farm Credit East). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During this period, especially in the first two quarters, CADE focused on: building the curriculum for our "Business Planning in a New Era" educational programming for 2 year associate degree students, as well as website infrastructure that would support delivery of this innovative distance learning content. engaging our industry partners connected to the project to create the project's building blocks (i.e., outreach to SUNY Cobleskill faculty for content and accredidation badges aligned with university requirements; Farm Credit East to establish a certification of "industry readiness" or "credit readiness"; and our tech contractor for technology infrastructure and website backend/systems, etc.). However, our project came to an abrupt stop around the midway point of the first year of the grant because: our SUNY Cobleskill / community college partner, Dr. Jason Evans, left the college and there was a leadership change who had a different vision; when we tried to pull in a different community college partner (Mohawk Valley Community College, which is part of the State University of New York or SUNY system) we learned that the community college Teachers Union which exists Statewide, now requires college faculty get "first dibs" on teaching credit bearing courses, which meant that CADE would no longer be allowed to be the university's contracted partner to implement the work; we were informed of a new policy that all credit bearing courses must be paid for by students (our program co-conceived by Dr. Jason Evans at the time was designed to be "free"); and after much deliberation over whether we might "hand over" this grant to SUNY Cobleskill, given CADE's lack of capacity to implement it, CADE leadership and Board concluded that we were not prepared to hand over the grant because our curricula and work products are our own intellectual property. CADE contacted our Grants Officer Carlos Ortiz on March 14, 2022, to explain our dilemma and ask his guidance. We agreed that CADE would consider how the project might be restructured, so that CADE could continue independent of the university system, as long as we continued to target 2 year associate degree students in our outreach efforts, and proceed with building in the "industry readiness" verification (which in our case, was always going to be a certificate of "Credit readiness" endorsed by Farm Credit East). Carlos offered that he would share our proposed new approach with his colleagues within NIFA to approve, recognizing it would be important not to duplicate the work of USDA's BFRDP. On March 24, 2022, CADE PD Phoebe Schreiner sent an email to Carlos reflecting our proposed new approach. The following is an excerpt from the email with our proposal: "We appreciate your offer to allow us to reconfigure the project to be able to continue, assuming it can be approved by your colleagues. In sum, we request proceeding with the project "as is", but tweaking it as follows: instead of having the community college affiliation, offer the same market-responsive entrepreneurship curriculum and training program branded solely by CADE. do not offer academic credit equivalencies, but proceed with a CADE/Farm Credit East Certificate (reminder that Farm Credit East, as an agribusiness lender, was going to be our "industry ready" affiliate and "recognize" a CADE certificate of training completion as an indicator that participants were well positioned or "credit ready" to take an agribusiness loan). proceed with recruiting 2 year community college students with an interest in food/agriculture, but not as having a college affiliation or academic credit equivalencies. We could do this by working with and promoting the training program to the campus career or workforce development center, food/ag business faculty, and extracurricular groups on campus. Because we would not offer the training program for academic credit, the college faculty would not see this as "competition". we believe that it's mission critical to proceed with an advisory group of 2 year degree students, together with industry experts, to inform the project to meet their needs, but this would be outside the college affiliation. We would therefore pay the student advisors. Note I'm attaching our original narrative proposal for your easy reference. Also note--I want to respond to your concern that the reconfigured project might be "too similar" to the USDA BFRDP grant program. Having studied their requirements, our project is not intended to support beginning farmers in their first 10 years of operation as BFRDP requires. It is targeting and supporting 2 year degree students CONSIDERING an agribusiness venture--a food or supply/value chain business entrepreneur is included in this, not only farm businesses--delivering on their capacity to be "credit ready" to do so, if that's what they chose. In terms of going forward, please let us know where we should go next. If you and your colleagues approve the above changes, please let us know if you need us to update the proposal narrative, or if we can just reflect the changes in our ongoing grant reporting. We would then jump back into project implementation. If the community college requirement cannot be bypassed, we will need to discuss with you the details of closing out the grant and relinquishing the remaining funds." CADE is currently awaiting Carlos' feedback on how we might proceed.
Publications
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Progress 01/01/21 to 12/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:PROJECT TARGET AUDIENCE DESCRIPTION: The audience for the project are 2-year Associate Degree students, recent graduates, and other post-secondary aspiring entrepreneurs. The workforce need addressed by this project is for a cadre of entrepreneurs with skills specifically developed to respond to rapidly changing times. The project addresses the AFRI Farm Bill Priority area of focus on agriculture economics and rural communities. By the end of the 5 year grant period, we expect to: launch a new 21st century, market-responsive entrepreneurship curriculum and training program with academic credit equivalencies and certification; graduate more than 500 associate degree students and other participants from across Central NY with certificates recognized by Farm Credit East as "industry ready"; successfully support at least 60 certified participants who access grants and loans to build or expand profitable agribusinesses; and influence at least two lenders to adopt new lending approaches based on future business and market trends. Entrepreneurship is the driver of new job creation in the agriculture and food sectors of upstate New York. Conventional farm and food businesses have become increasingly consolidated and mechanized for decades in the region, reducing the number of job opportunities in these sectors. New markets, technologies, and social/consumer trends now support the emergence of a highly diverse set of enterprises that promise opportunities for a workforce with a different and updated set of skills. It is the nature of these emerging opportunities that they are complex, rapidly changing, and risky. CADE's analysis of this new entrepreneurship landscape is detailed below in the section headed 2020 Foresight - Business Planning in a New Era . Educational programs that help new entrepreneurs succeed in this context, including for two-year Associate Degree students and graduates entering the workforce, will need to provide participants with an approach to business planning and management reflective of the realities of 2020 and beyond. PROGRESS DURING THIS REPORTING PERIOD (Jan 1-Dec 31, 2021): During this period, especially in the first two quarters, CADE focused on: building the curriculum for our "Business Planning in a New Era" educational programming for 2 year associate degree students, as well as website infrastructure that would support delivery of this innovative distance learning content. engaging our industry partners connected to the project to create the project's building blocks (i.e., outreach to SUNY Cobleskill faculty for content and accredidation badges aligned with university requirements; Farm Credit East to establish a certification of "industry readiness" or "credit readiness"; and our tech contractor for technology infrastructure and website backend/systems, etc.). However, our project came to an abrupt stop around the midway point of the first year of the grant because: our SUNY Cobleskill / community college partner, Dr. Jason Evans, left the college and there was a leadership change who had a different vision; when we tried to pull in a different community college partner (Mohawk Valley Community College, which is part of the State University of New York or SUNY system) we learned that the community college Teachers Union which exists Statewide, now requires college faculty get "first dibs" on teaching credit bearing courses, which meant that CADE would no longer be allowed to be the university's contracted partner to implement the work; we were informed of a new policy that all credit bearing courses must be paid for by students (our program co-conceived by Dr. Jason Evans at the time was designed to be "free"); and after much deliberation over whether we might "hand over" this grant to SUNY Cobleskill, given CADE's lack of capacity to implement it, CADE leadership and Board concluded that we were not prepared to hand over the grant because our curricula and work products are our own intellectual property. CADE contacted our Grants Officer Carlos Ortiz on March 14, 2022, to explain our dilemma and ask his guidance. We agreed that CADE would consider how the project might be restructured, so that CADE could continue independent of the university system, as long as we continued to target 2 year associate degree students in our outreach efforts, and proceed with building in the "industry readiness" verification (which in our case, was always going to be a certificate of "Credit readiness" endorsed by Farm Credit East). Carlos offered that he would share our proposed new approach with his colleagues within NIFA to approve, recognizing it would be important not to duplicate the work of USDA's BFRDP. On March 24, 2022, CADE PD Phoebe Schreiner sent an email to Carlos reflecting our proposed new approach. The following is an excerpt from the email with our proposal: "We appreciate your offer to allow us to reconfigure the project to be able to continue, assuming it can be approved by your colleagues. In sum, we request proceeding with the project "as is", but tweaking it as follows: instead of having the community college affiliation, offer the same market-responsive entrepreneurship curriculum and training program branded solely by CADE. do not offer academic credit equivalencies, but proceed with a CADE/Farm Credit East Certificate (reminder that Farm Credit East, as an agribusiness lender, was going to be our "industry ready" affiliate and "recognize" a CADE certificate of training completion as an indicator that participants were well positioned or "credit ready" to take an agribusiness loan). proceed with recruiting 2 year community college students with an interest in food/agriculture, but not as having a college affiliation or academic credit equivalencies. We could do this by working with and promoting the training program to the campus career or workforce development center, food/ag business faculty, and extracurricular groups on campus. Because we would not offer the training program for academic credit, the college faculty would not see this as "competition". we believe that it's mission critical to proceed with an advisory group of 2 year degree students, together with industry experts, to inform the project to meet their needs, but this would be outside the college affiliation. We would therefore pay the student advisors. Note I'm attaching our original narrative proposal for your easy reference. Also note--I want to respond to your concern that the reconfigured project might be "too similar" to the USDA BFRDP grant program. Having studied their requirements, our project is not intended to support beginning farmers in their first 10 years of operation as BFRDP requires. It is targeting and supporting 2 year degree students CONSIDERING an agribusiness venture--a food or supply/value chain business entrepreneur is included in this, not only farm businesses--delivering on their capacity to be "credit ready" to do so, if that's what they chose. In terms of going forward, please let us know where we should go next. If you and your colleagues approve the above changes, please let us know if you need us to update the proposal narrative, or if we can just reflect the changes in our ongoing grant reporting. We would then jump back into project implementation. If the community college requirement cannot be bypassed, we will need to discuss with you the details of closing out the grant and relinquishing the remaining funds." CADE is currently awaiting Carlos' feedback on how we might proceed. Changes/Problems:Please see all previous descriptions. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?CADE is currently awaiting our NIFA grants officer Carlos Ortiz's feedback on whether and how we might proceed with the project. If the project is allowed to proceed, we will pick up again. We would then proceed with the following activities in the coming year: continuing to build out the curriculum for distance learning delivery pulling together 2 year student advisors for the project to ensure it continues to meet their needs continued work to build our technology infrastructure outreach to industry experts and Farm Credit East to also serve as advisors to the project identifying our promotion/outreach strategy to 2 year college students to ensure we build a pipeline of youth to participate (including by mapping and connecting with the campus career or workforce development centers, the food/ag business faculty on all the community college campuses, extracurricular campus activity groups, etc.); and launching the "Business for a New Era" curriculum. If proceeding is not approved, CADE will work with Carlos and other NIFA staff on details of closing out the grant and relinquishing the remaining funds to USDA. In sum, we would like to convey how very much we hope to continue! This is a wonderful grant project, and we deeply appreciate these precious resources to help us build a new community of agribusiness entrepreneurs among NYS youth who are enrolled in our community colleges. These students are frequently glossed over by 4 year degree programs, they are frequently lower income, more likely to BIPOC students, and deserve EVERY opportunity to become agribusiness entrepreneurs for a NEW ERA. We hope NIFA shares this commitment and will support our continued work, despite the challenges we have faced in the last 6 months which caused us to come to a halt. We are ready to pick up again with your support!
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As noted previously, in the first two quarters, CADE focused on: building the curriculum for our "Business Planning in a New Era" educational programming for 2 year associate degree students, as well as website infrastructure that would support delivery of this innovative distance learning content. engaging our industry partners connected to the project to create the project's building blocks (i.e., outreach to SUNY Cobleskill faculty for content and accredidation badges aligned with university requirements; Farm Credit East to establish a certification of "industry readiness" or "credit readiness"; and our tech contractor for technology infrastructure and website backend/systems, etc.). However, our project came to an abrupt stop around the midway point of the first year of the grant for reasons described previously.
Publications
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