Recipient Organization
GREENMARKET
COUNCIL ON THE ENVIRONMENT
NEW YORK,NY 10007
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Farming in the Northeast region is unique in that average farm size, cash receipts and number of workers are lower than other regions in the country, yet it contributes nearly $19 billion to the overall farm economy. While the agricultural industry in this region has always faced risk and uncertainty, farming has become increasingly risky over the years, due to factors such as market globalization, climate change, local, state, and federal government policies, and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, new and beginning farm businesses in this region are especially vulnerable, and small, start-up farmers have the lowest odds of survival as compared to other categories of farm size and years in business. Running a farm business in the greater New York area requires region-specific farm business and financial knowledge and skills. Our region has high demand for regionally and sustainably produced food and consumers here are able to pay a higher price than other parts of the country, but there are also very high costs of entry to farm business ownership, especially land and labor costs. In addition, our region's agriculture economy is primarily set up for products that have high cost of production, specifically specialty crops and dairy. In order to succeed at farming, producers must be savvy business people who know how to run businesses that can find a committed customer base, promote themselves effectively, and set up and manage business financial systems. Aspiring and early career farmers need access to ongoing educational training and technical assistance focused on marketing, financial planning, business regulations, and business planning to learn and maintain those skills and knowledgeOur organization has also fielded significant interest from Latin American immigrants in starting their own farm businesses, including farm workers and those who come from farming backgrounds. Yet there are very few training and technical assistance programs offered in Spanish. According to the USDA's clearinghouse of beginning farmer training programs at www.farmanswers.org, there are very few farm business training programs that cater to the unique needs of farmers in our region, and none are taught in Spanish. Many of the programs listed on that clearinghouse do not appear to be operating currently, and need and demand for such programs is still greater than existing program capacity. Additionally, there is a patchwork of trainings and resources offered to farmers who are beyond the initial year of production and are looking to build their skills in key areas, and none offered in Spanish.Moreover, in order to run successful farm businesses, it is increasingly necessary to have basic computer literacy skills, which many farmers, particularly Spanish speaking immigrants, lack. GrowNYC has worked with Spanish speaking producers for close to 25 years and we have found that the majority of them have limited to no computer literacy skills. Not only does this mean that they struggle with connecting to resources that are only offered online, but it also presents challenges to running their businesses, including communications, accessing capital, and complying with basic business practices such as renewing business insurance. Currently there are no farmer training programs that incorporate computer literacy skills, leaving this community of farmers behind in a significant way.In order to support our region's early career farmers, especially Spanish speaking farmers, in developing skills and knowledge critical to their success in running their businesses, our project will to do the following:Hold our Spanish language farm business fundamentals course annually. This is a 10-week class taught entirely in Spanish providing an overview on farm business fundamentals. As part of this course, we will conduct comprehensive outreach to reach Spanish speaking aspiring farm business owners who would benefit from this course but don't use email or social media.Hold a 10-hour computer basics course annual, in Spanish to provide participants with basic computer skills (email, word processing, basic spreadsheets, accessing virtual spaces, online applications, internet research)Hold a bilingual short course intensive (four sessions) to dig into one area related to farm business planning that will support beginning farmers with a few years of experience in growing and strengthening their businesses.Our goal, with these efforts is to ensure that aspiring and early career farm business owners in GrowNYC's six state service area in the Northeast agricultural region, especially those who speak Spanish, have access to comprehensive and specific business and financial planning training and tools they need to run successful farm businesses. The impacts we hope to have are the following:Farmers have increased knowledge, skills, and access to tools about various necessary aspects of running a farm business, such as business planning, financial planning, marketings, promotion, computer literacy, regulations and other similar areas.Farmers will use this information to improve their business, including but not limited to developing accurate and organized financial documents, clear bookkeeping systems, brand identity that appeals to their target customer base, and compliance systems for relevant regulations.Ultimately, we hope that our program will help make farming a viable career option and will strengthen our region's agriculture economy and rural communities.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this BFRDP project is to ensure that aspiring and early career farm business owners in GrowNYC's six state service area in the Northeast agricultural region, especially those who speak Spanish, have access to comprehensive and specific business and financial planning training and tools they need to run successful farm businesses. This project will expand our existing Farmer Assistance program, which currently serves both English and Spanish speaking aspiring and early career farm business owners, by offering them opportunities to deepen their skills in key areas of farm business management, while continuing our longstanding effort to offer La Nueva Siembra, our farm business fundamentals training entirely in Spanish to Spanish-speaking beginning farmers. This project will also expand a successful pilot program to provide computer literacy training to Spanish speaking beginning farmers to enhance their ability to efficiently manage their farm businesses. Our project is a high-touch, intensive support program committed to the long-term success of individual participants' respective farm businesses. Our objectives are as follows:Objective 1- Provide farm business fundamentals training and technical assistance in Spanish to individuals with production farming experience who are looking to start their own farm business.Objective 2- Provide training and technical assistance for graduates of our English and Spanish beginning farmer training programs to enhance their knowledge and skills in key areas of farm business management.Objective 3 - Support Spanish speaking farmers in becoming more comfortable with computers and using computers to manage aspects of their farm business.
Project Methods
This project includes four major areas of activities, described below:La Nueva Siembra, Spanish-language Farm Business Fundamentals CourseIn each year of the program, we will offer our Spanish-language farm business fundamentals Course, called La Nueva Siembra. La Nueva Siembra is a 10 week course, with some classes offered in person in New York City and New York State's Hudson Valley, and some offered online. The course content covers the following topics: strategic business planning, viability, and profitability; marketing; farm-related laws and regulations; sales strategy; farm business accounting; cash flow; land access; and capital access. The course is taught primarily in Spanish, or in English with simultaneous interpretation, by subject matter experts and experienced farmersEach class will have additional readings to support the in-class learning and homework assignments. The course will culminate with each participant creating a slide deck and a 10-12 minute presentation of their proposed farm business, covering the following areas: farm enterprises and products, three-year budget with overall expenses and revenue projections, target customer base, brand and story, and sales strategy. They will have the opportunity to receive feedback on their final presentations from a panel of experienced farmers and business consultants before presenting them at the course graduation.Outreach and recruitment is a critical and significant part of the work for this activity, as the target community does not necessarily use email or social media to consume information. Our outreach plan includes developing and disseminating email, social media, and web-based outreach assets; one on one outreach to organizations with networks of Latino and Spanish speaking farmworkers and to graduates of the program; promotion on radio stations and in print publications that serve the Spanish speaking community in our region; and posting flyers in retail locations that serve the Spanish speaking agricultural community.In addition to outreach and recruitment, this activity will have four areas of work: program design and logistics, outreach, application evaluation, course facilitation, and course evaluation. Program design and logistics includes designing the curriculum, recruiting instructors, compiling readings, developing homework assignments, and reserving spaces for in-person class meetings. Application evaluation includes reviewing all applicants for suitability to the class, Facilitating the course will include hosting either an in-person or online space (depending on the class), procuring necessary supplies (refreshments, audio-visual equipment), confirming with presenters and ensuring they have everything they need, and moderating the session. Post class evaluations typically include an online survey and phone interview to get feedback on the course, identify areas of improvement, and determine next steps and a technical assistance plan for each class participant.Computer Literacy TrainingDuring each year of the project we will also offer a 10-hour Spanish language computer literacy training. We are including this course in this project because, in our nearly 25 years of working with Latino farmers, we have noticed that many of them come to our training programs with little to no understanding of how to use a computer. It will be open to all current participants and recent graduates of La Nueva Siembra, who are either aspiring farm business owners or within the first 10 years of operating their business.Outreach and recruitment will be conducted as described above as part of La Nueva Siembra. Everyone who is offered a spot in La Nueva Siembra will be offered a spot in this training. We also maintain a WhatsApp group of past La Nueva Siembra graduates as most of them use WhatsApp to communicate, and we will promote this training to them in that group.This course will be offered the week before the first La Nueva Siembra class. The course content will focus on basic computer skills to support participants in managing their farm business, such as business communications (email and video conferencing), accessing and completing online applications and registrations, internet research, and basic spreadsheet and word processing. The first eight hours of this training will be offered in-person so that participants have the opportunity to receive face to face instruction while they are implementing their new skills on their laptops. The last two hours will be offered online, so that participants can get comfortable with using video conferencing platforms. Participants of this course will receive a basic laptop if they do not already have one. We will offer office hours to La Nueva Siembra participants throughout that course to provide them additional support with any challenges they incur with using their computers.This course will follow a similar timeline and set of tasks as described above for La Nueva Siembra. We will design the training based on participants' needs, which we will determine through a survey we provide them when we ask them to confirm their participation in the course.Short Course IntensivesDuring each year of the project, we will offer a four session short course intensive for any graduate of our farm business fundamentals programs within the first 10 years of running a farm business.These intensives will focus on a specific area of farm business management that recent graduates have identified as needing more support on. GrowNYC Farmer Assistance staff will also conduct a survey of recent graduates to determine what areas of farm business management they would like to dig deeper on and provide insight based on their interactions with beginning farmers. Based on needs identified by past cohorts of beginning farmer program graduates, topics are likely to include pricing strategy, sales channel strategy, target market and enterprise selection, branding and promotion, and financial planning. The approach we will use will be to work with a mix of subject matter experts (such as farm business consultants) and experienced farmers to provide content, and include opportunities for course participants to incorporate the tools and knowledge they are given into their farm business plan, providing them feedback in real time. The courses will meet both online and in-person. Simultaneous Spanish-English interpretation will be provided.This activity will have a similar set of tasks to La Nueva Siembra, with planning and program design taking place in the spring, outreach happening over the summer, applications accepted in the early fall, and the courses happening in the late fall over a four week period. The intensives will prioritize graduates of our beginning farmer programs and beginning farmers who sell to our Wholesale Program and at our Greenmarkets first. If space allows, we will invite beginning farmers in our region outside of these three groups to participate.Technical AssistanceWe will provide approximately 115 hours per year of start-up technical assistance in both English and Spanish to our beginning farmer program graduates in the first three years of their business.. At the end of our training programs, we will work with each graduate to determine their technical assistance needs so we know what to expect.Start-up technical assistance may include but is not limited to land access, capital access, lease negotiation, establishing LLCs, identifying sales outlets, determining product and enterprise mix, and branding and promotional strategies. We then work with them to create a project plan that includes a start date, estimated amount of time to complete the requested service, and expected deliverables.