Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25
Outputs Target Audience:The primary audience we are reaching is undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Minnesota. Additional beneficiaries include graduate students enrolled at the University of Minnesota, undergraduate students enrolled at other colleges and universities who participated in a summer research experience in food systems at the UMN, alumni of the UMN Student Organic Farm, and certified organic & emerging farmers in Minnesota. Changes/Problems:Teaching responsibilities for HORT 3131/5131 have shifted due to the promotion of professor Julie Grossman to Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education for the college. As a result, we have been working closely with instructors hired to teach this course, and our curricular activities and goals remain unchanged. Following debriefing with the primary instructor and a review of student evaluations from fall HORT 3131, the time devoted to business planning and finance was deemed inadequate. For Fall 2025, HORT 3131/5131 Student Organic Farm Planning, Growing and Marketing will include two dedicated lectures and four hours of lab time on this topic. Asynchronous lectures will be created in Voicethread, divided into smaller, more digestible segments. In August 2025, instructors completed Voicethread training to support this transition. Labs will remain in-person, emphasizing hands-on activities that utilize the new University of Minnesota My Market Profit specialty crop software for profitability calculations. Our original plan was to revise our spring course, FDSY 3093: Practical Approaches to Diversified Organic Production Systems, to offer starting in spring 2025. However, this timeline was not feasible given the undergraduate program review committee schedule, so we had to offer the course as a "special topics" offering. Special topics courses are not listed in the course catalog, making it difficult to reach students. We focused on revising the course at the 4XXX level to serve both undergraduate and graduate students, which we expect will increase enrollment. It is also approved for spring 2026 and will be listed in course catalogs, in addition to serving as an approved elective for the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems program. In year 1 we intended to raise two batches of 250 broiler chickens (500 per year); however, market opportunities for the SOF have changed with the closure of our campus farmers market. Consequently, we raised a single succession and strategized new market opportunities next year. This offers an additional learning opportunity for students to grow their market. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Six undergraduate students and seven university staff/faculty completed training for handling poultry following the SOP on Small Flock Organic Poultry Production. Training included understanding perimeter buffer areas and maintaining a line of separation for reducing risk of disease transmission, biosafety entry protocols, manure and litter management, morbidity and mortality, wild birds, rodents, and insects, research and occupational health safety training, animal use tutorial, and respirator training as well as training on daily chicken production tasks such as feeding, watering, moving huts, monitoring bird health, and how to report issues. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?A presentation was given at the annual University of Minnesota Extension Organic Fruit and Vegetable Field Day on July 15, reaching 51 attendees. Attendees were a mix of beginning growers (32%), gardeners (44%), and aspiring growers (8%). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In year 2, we will continue to engage with students in HORT 3131/5131 and increase class time to focus on business planning and finance. We will instruct FDSY 4050: Practical Approaches to Diversified Organic Production Systems (2 credits) in Spring 2026, and promote the class to multiple programs in the college. New interns will be recruited for 2026, and we will complete another year of integrated chicken production. For 2026, we will implement a smaller-scale system to produce fewer chickens and demonstrate the diversity of breeds and hut designs. We will also raise chicks outdoors, which will reduce biosecurity concerns associated with raising chickens in the Poultry Teaching & Research Facility and is more reflective of real-world settings. This will expand opportunities for student learning and outreach materials. We will also continue our Farm Buds work and learn events, which were highly successful and valued by students. In year 2, we will also develop our online course materials and present learning outcomes to the broader community.
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
Accomplishments by objective Objective 1.1: Integrate small business management and marketing learning outcomes into our pre-existing curriculum and use the Student Organic Farm as a model Activity 1: Develop a new business planning basics module for the current Student Organic Farm class Business planning and enterprise curricula were developed, tested, and recorded for the fall HORT 3131 course. A one-hour lab on business planning principles and software was delivered to HORT 3131 students, alongside a one-hour lab covering marketing principles and production finance. Activity 2: Revise and update a practicum course for the SOF A new course was developed and approved by the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems curriculum committee and the collegiate undergraduate program review committee. This two-credit course, titled FDSY 4050: Practical Approaches to Diversified Organic Production Systems, will serve upper-division undergraduate students in CFANS or graduate students who want to learn more about the applied aspects of organic agricultural production systems. The course will be offered for the first time in spring 2026 by Drs. Mary Rogers and Anup Johny and Research Fellow Gigi DiGiacomo. Objective 1.2: Develop new technical skills and leadership competencies for undergraduate students during paid summer internships on the Student Organic Farm Activity 1: Diversification via integrated horticulture and small-flock meat chickens New movable huts were constructed, and a flock of 250 Cornish Cross broiler chickens were raised from young chicks in our Poultry Teaching & Research Facility and finished growth and development on pasture on the SOF. Chickens were processed, labeled, and packaged on July 22nd and are currently being sold through the UMN Meat and Dairy Store. Activity 2: Co-create robust recordkeeping skills to guide economics-based decision making within a diversified farming system During summer 2025, recordkeeping instructions and software tools were delivered to SOF interns. Square recordkeeping software was introduced and demonstrated for marketing report generation along with the University of Minnesota Crop Cost software for individual specialty crop enterprise analysis, and the University of Minnesota My Market Profit software for assessing overall farm financial performance and identifying the most profitable market channels. Activity 3: Provide opportunities for learning from more experienced organic growers via a "work & learn" summer series Three Organic Farm Buds events were held in summer, 2025. The first event was held on June 5th with 21 participants on the SOF to construct new chicken huts. This gave people engaged in the project as well as other community partners a hands-on, collaborative experience in building different models of chicken huts. The caterer for the meal was a farmer leader who shared about the work she does through her farm, in support of other farmers and in her local food distribution efforts for food-insecure community members. At least one of the participants is an international student and has since volunteered with the caterer's locally grown food distribution efforts. The second event was held at the Women's Environmental Institute in North Branch, MN on June 12th and engaged 25 participants. Participants learned from the director of the farm about its mission, its operation (growing food, flowers and the added value of its agritourism efforts), got some hands-on experience with managing weeds, harvesting market produce of a working farm, and then got time to connect around food. Aside from the student organic farm interns, this trip brought together the [JiJYs students], Hamline University's student farm, two farmers from Big River Farms, providing opportunities to connect and learn from one another. On the way back home, participants got to stop at Heirloomista vegetable farm and learning about how the farmer started a farm on 5 acres without electricity and to the protest of her neighbors who she said didn't see her as a valid farmer. Lastly, we visited Mhonpaj's Garden in Hugo, MN, run by Hmong farmer leader Hmonpaj Lee, on August 11, with 10 attendees in attendance. Participants got an intimate tour of Mhonpaj's organic farm, learning about culturally specific crops, integrating revenue-building agritourism opportunities from flower gardens, the challenges of farming organically amidst development pressure and more. We got to enjoy Hmong food using vegetables harvested from the farm. Objective 2: Disseminate new resources and knowledge to the broader organic educator community beyond Minnesota Activity 1: Develop an online Coursera course on 'Foundations of Organic Agriculture' Three meetings were held with the UMN Office of Distributed Learning to create a proposal and timeline for a Coursera specialization in Foundations of Organic Agriculture. Objective 3: Reinforce connections between the Student Organic Farm and Outreach and Extension Programs in Organic Agriculture Activity 1: Expand our organic field day to include producers interested in learning more about chickens The Alternative livestock systems Extension educator and food safety Extension educator delivered a presentation for 4 groups of attendees during the University of Minnesota Extension Organic Fruit and Vegetable Field Day. The presentation provided discussion on chicken mobile hut housing designs, soil fertility benefits of chicken litter, proper biosecurity practices for chickens and maintaining produce safety when raising livestock. Of those who attended the field day, 86% reported learning about integrating chickens into a vegetable farm, and 39% reported learning a lot. 18% of attendees intended to change a practice around integrating livestock into their farm. This project has spurred new collaborations between the Extension livestock and food safety teams. A proposal has been submitted to present at the Minnesota Organic Conference to train more organic growers on safe integration of vegetables and livestock. Activity 2: Generate short videos on small flock meat chicken production for new and current organic producers The construction process of both a DIY mobile chicken hut and prefabricated mobile chicken hut was recorded. The transportation of chickens from indoor enclosures to the mobile huts as well as the raising of chickens in the huts was also recorded. Video footage is currently being edited to create educational videos documenting the differences in construction and use of a prefabricated mobile chicken hut compared to a do-it-yourself (DIY) mobile chicken hut. This footage will also be used to create additional organic pastured poultry and chicken and vegetable integration videos. Activity 3: Connect online resources to the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) An amendment to our TOPP proposal was submitted to pursue activities related to workforce development, increasing funding available to support student internships, and developing content addressing knowledge and training gaps included in the 2025 Workforce Development Needs Assessment for the Organic Industry.
Publications
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