Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
Challenges faced by Southern organic farmers: Organic farming plays a critical role in addressing challenges of global climate change, food safety, and the local/regional food supply chain. In 2022, organic fruit and vegetable sales generated $60 billion in revenue, ~15% of all US retail produce sales. Despite the growing demand for organic products because of their environmental, economic, and health benefits, it has its challenges that are more pronounced in the Southern US. Climates and geology result in different types of soil nutrient cycling than the Midwest causing yield reduction, increased market price, weed, pest, and pathogen pressure. The complicated nature of historic inequalities in the south has led to socioeconomic knowledge gaps and a dearth of certification training amongst small-scale, limited resource, underserved, and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers, Ranchers, and Veterans (SDFRVs). Other critical needs for organic farmers in the south are technical assistance, a consistent flow of information, and an organic farmers' network to discuss the issues and challenges faced by the southern farmers.Problem faced by small-scale, minority, and underserved Southern farmers: The ripple effects of structural inequity, rooted in slavery and perpetuated by Jim Crow laws, are apparent throughout society, including our agricultural economy. In the Southern US, the preponderance of small-scale farms are disproportionately owned by SDFRVs. These SDFRVs face barriers in accessing resources such as, training programs, technical assistance, technologies, and socio-cultural networks especially related to organic farming. Additionally, these farming communities are predicted to be the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Organic Farmers in the Southern US are faced with multiple farming issues such as poor quality or degraded soil, low nutrient holding capacity, high weed pressure, and increased pest and disease infestation. Due to socio-economic barriers and complex certification processes, these stated issues are more prominent for small-scale, limited resource, underserved, and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers, Ranchers, and Veterans (SDFRVs), including Black and Native American, female, and beginning farmers. There is a need to address these complex issues by providing proper education, consistent knowledge sharing, real-time technical assistance, and region-specific management guidance. Our project team is proposing to build a strong, regional, organic SDFRV growers' network to share ideas, information, knowledge, challenges, and solutions to adopting an organic production system at the farm level.The goal of this conference proposal is to enable SDFRVs to participate in the conference workshops through paid incentives that also allow the farmers to attend the SOWTH conference organized by Georgia Organics. We will leverage our strong institutional connection through the 1890s (HBCU) cooperative extension and Small Farm Resource and Innovation Center of NCA&T, the inaugural SOWTH Annual conference by Georgia Organics, and the Southern Piedmont Climate-Smart Project by Rodale Institute. We will provide four bilateral and interactive and farmer participatory workshops for southern organic growers on (i) climate-smart organic production, (ii) marketing strategies and policy relevance, (iii) socio-economic assessment, (iv) organic certification. Our team will provide real-time technical assistance through a "speed dating" event on: (i) Soil and nutrients, (ii) weed, (iii) pest and disease pressure, (iv) integrated livestock, (v) organic certification. The outcomes from this project will provide the USDA with evidence-based, farmer-led recommendations for socio-economic and marketing support to SDFRVs that will promote small-scale organic agriculture in the Southern US.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
We need more regional support for the small-scale, limited-resource, underserved, and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers, Ranchers, and Veterans (SDFRVs) organic farming community in the Southern US through a strong regional stakeholder network consisting of fellow early adopters/mentor organic farmers, extension staff, USDA-NRCS staff, non-profits, and researchers. To address this stakeholder's need, our conference proposal offers train-the-trainer training through farmers-engaged interactive workshop sessions. Four proposed workshops and a technical assistance "speed dating" event will be held during SOWTH: A Regional Small Farms, Big Community Conference that will cover (i) climate-smart organic production, (ii) marketing strategies and policy relevance, (iii) socio-economic assessment, and (iv) organic certification for Southern organic farming. The overall long-term goal would be to at the grassroots of organic farming issues and provide direction to solve them. Our conference team will provide real-time technical assistance through a "speed dating" event with experts on the following aspects of Southern organic farming management: (i) Soil and nutrients, (ii) weed, (iii) pest and disease pressure, (iv) integrated livestock, (v) organic certification. TheOur conference project objectives are four-fold:i) Provide four bilateral and interactive train-the-trainer training and farmer participatory workshops identifying knowledge gaps on the following aspects of organic farming in the Southern US: (1) climate-smart organic production, (2) marketing strategies and policy relevance, (3) socio-economic assessment, (4) organic certification.ii) Create a white paper and extension bulletins outlining the knowledge gaps identified in the four workshops to be shared with the farming community in all 13 Southern states to help move the organic movement forward.iii) Provide free, real-time technical assistance and access to further resources to farmers via a technical assistance "speed dating" event focused on the following aspects of organic farming: (1) Soil and nutrient management, (2) weed management, (3) pest and disease management, (4) integrated livestock management, (5) organic certification.iv) Assemble a regional Organic Workforce Advisory Committee. Our conference team will identify a group of organic farmers and experts in the field who attended the conference and showed the drive and interest needed to initiate change.
Project Methods
Approach: We will have four interactive workshops and one Organic Technical Assistance 'Speed Dating' Event as a track of this conference. The PD and all Co-PDs will participate in all activities as a team to promote stakeholder involvement during the proposed conference workshops while writing the white paper, extension bulletins, and reports as required by the USDA-NIFA-OREI-RFA for FY-2024.Interactive workshops: The proposed train-the-trainer and farmer participatory workshops will consist of an expert panel (3 panelists per workshop). The PD and all Co-PDs will participate as either panelists and/or facilitators. We will identify our panelists from 13 experts and subject matter specialists who are partners in our Southern Piedmont Climate-Smart Project (13 institutions) or beyond. The project team will capture the farmers' views (both quantitative and qualitative) during the workshops through Mentimeter surveys and documenting open discussions. Our goal is to engage farmers to voice real-world issues and knowledge gaps to better our understanding of SDFRVs research and programming needs. The workshops will begin with a list of feeder questions prompted by the moderator to the panelists. The audience will be encouraged to interact via Mentimeter with real-time questions and open discussion. We chose Mentimeter because it allows farmers to answer questions in real-time while maintaining anonymity. In this way, farmers can be comfortable to respond honestly to sensitive questions. Additionally, these types of surveys tend to open audience members up enabling more free open discussion.The proposed workshops will focus on four critical topics related to Southern organic agriculture: (i) Climate-smart organic farming: Identify stakeholder perspectives and knowledge gaps on what climate-smart organic farming is, how to support farmers transitioning to more climate-smart agriculture, and discuss simple approaches farmers can take to have a more climate-smart operation (e.g., cover crops, no-tillage, amendments, etc.). (ii) Marketing strategy and policy relevance: Receive farmer feedback on the status of supply chains, market availability, financial institutions, and public conservation programs. Identify knowledge gaps and actionable steps to facilitate transitioning to organic agriculture for a profitable, resilient production system.(iii) Socio-economic Assessment: Identify economic and social challenges, opportunities, and knowledge gaps for Southern farmers transitioning to and maintaining organic production.(iv) Organic Certification: Identify knowledge gaps for Southern organic farmers trying to find local and regional resources for organic certification.We will provide travel stipends to 2 selected mentor SDFRVs farmers from all 13 Southern states (26 farmers total) to attend the SOWTH conference. The selected farmers must attend all proposed conference workshops; the workshops will also be open to all SOWTH attendees.Organic Technical Assistance 'Speed Dating' Event: We propose two Technical Assistance on Organic Farming as Speed Dating events. These 90-minute events will be held on Days 1 and 2 of SWOTH. We will have 10 TA coordinators with expertise in soil health, weed and pest management, integrated livestock, organic certification, and USDA funding opportunities. We will utilize our resource TA coordinator from our existing Southern Piedmont Climate-Smart Project (13 institutions) and beyond as per the need of the conference planning. There will be two TA coordinators per 5 expertise categories. Farmers will meet with one TA coordinator per expertise topic for 8 minutes. After 8 minutes, the group will move on to the next table/topic for another 8 minutes. This process will repeat until the farmers have visited all TA stations. Through this this event, farmers will obtain rapid TA for all aspects of their operation while, simultaneously, being introduced to a series of TA coordinators in their region they can call on in the future and a plethora of resources relevant to their operation.