Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience consists of Native youth involved or interested in food and agriculture who are members of American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian communities. These youth are aged 14-23 (including first time students, returning "fellows" and student leaders who are either in or graduated from college or university. These youth are focused on wide ranging agricultural production systems: livestock, diversified farming/ranching operations, specialty crop production, small to mid-sized farming and ranching operations, value added production systems, nutrition and health focus, traditional food systems, food sovereignty, and those interested in careers in the supportive professions that are essential to agriculture sector growth and success in Indian Country. All are involved or interested in some aspects of food production and food systems before they are admitted to the educational program as demonstrated by their own applciations for admission. Once admitted to the educational program, known as "Generation Indigenous" or also known as the "Native Youth in Food and Agriculture Summer Leadership Summit" (Summit) the target audience spends 10 days on the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus invovled in intensive educational instruction in the classroom, in field trip experiences, in leadership development programs, career exploration programs, and experiential learning. Over the course of this project, as of the date of this final report,the Summit has served nearly 400 (393) Native young beginning farmers and ranchers through this 10 day educational experience. Changes/Problems:Every year the IFAI staff examine participant's evaluations and use those comments to guide in preparing a new and improved approach (within the project deliverables, of course) that will continue to change or improve our approach. Feedback from our Summit attendees in 2017 ultimatley led us to explore a modified event model in 2018, where small groups of youth who had previously been through the Summit material gathered to do a "master class" in one of four subject matter areas: agricultural business & finance, conservation & land stewardship, agricultural law & policy, and nutrition & health. This smaller class size model facilitated deeper engagement with even more advanced material, and further allowed the attendees to learn from one another and network in a more meaningful way. During the writing of this report, USDA announced that our team and longstanding project partners IAC, FFA, and Farm Credit have been awarded a Beginning Farmer & Rancher Development Program: Educational Enhancement Team grant to explore and evaluate all existing curriculum targeted at Native BFR agricultural education. This grant will allow us to continue a modified "Master Class" for 2019, wherereturning students will help us to evaluate curriculum in these critical subject matter areas. We look forward to continuing this work in the coming year. We believe that there is always room for improvement in our approach to reaching this most important generation (Generation Indigenous) in Indian Country. Over the course of this project, we have seen many positive impacts in the lives of the young BFR we serve. Several have used what they've learned to obtain their first youth loans through USDA-FSA, two have been honored by Farm Credit for their operations, and many have been accepted to White House events around the President's "Generation Indigenous" initiative. Several of the young people have also gone on to win awards from various intertribal organizations for their business acumen and dedication to agriculture, including multiple students who have won the Intertribal Agriculture Council's youth essay contest. Summit students come from a variety of backgrounds with regards to income and food security, and for many of them, college never really seemed like a viable option. Those attitudes have changed every year of our program. Being physically on a college campus for ten days, sitting in college classrooms, and successfully learning high-level material from recognized experts has been a game-changer for our students. They can seethemselves going to college, and the majority of them have, once they have graduated from high school. Several of them are even pursuing degrees close to home while still maintaining their own operations. Our students are pursuing degrees in agricultural fields from programs around the country that will only help increase their opportunities for future success as farmers and ranchers. The students are also working to change their communities, and they aren't waiting until they graduate from college to do it. One of the students began a food sovereignty assessment initiative for her Tribe, which will help survey her Tribe's current food system and then work to restore it through traditional production methods as well as more contemporary agricultural production. Her work has inspired her peers, several of whom are working to start similar programs in their own communities. Being able to get an accurate picture of what Native farming and ranching looks like in individual Tribal communities will be crucial to their success going forward. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Because food production is so deeply tied to culture in Tribal communities, Native BFR benefit the most from a learning environment that encourages them to celebrate the diversity of their Tribal cultures. Summit programming is designed in a way that embraces that critical relationship between food and culture. For example, business planning exercise is done utilizing traditional Native food products available in today's commercial marketplace: bison, wild rice, salmon, blue cornmeal, and more. Summit activities occur in large groups but Summit assignments occur in small groups, which also helps BFR maximize their learning potential. Students who may start out feeling somewhat uncomfortable in the larger group really bond with their small group over the ten days of the event, which encourages them to engage more with the curriculum, our speakers, and with their peers. All students are expected to have leadership roles within their small groups, specifically with regard to assigned aspects of their small group exercises. This also leads to sustained peer-to-peer learning even after they leave the event. Summit students remain in touch with one another through social media and other avenues, and provide a solid base of support for one another as they work to achieve their goals in food and agriculture. That robust peer network, bolstered by periodic communication from IFAI youth outreach team assists students with scholarship applications, loan information, and more. These aspects are crucial to their continued success, especially for those who may lack support from their communities. The Summit educational opportunity has provided the target audience with glimpses into the important risk, financial, marketing, production, and legal issues that must be mastered in order to support successful food systems in Indian Country. Those professionals who assist IFAI with programming and curriculum development are enhancing their own work by reaching this important beginning farmer audience for Indian Country. The Summit experience is grounded on advanced and challenging professional development for the BFR audience as well as training and leadership development opporutnities and expectations for all participants. In addition to this professional development and the specialized training the Summit offers Native BFRs, the Summit in its final year of BFR funding was able to offer a full Grower Training on the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule to every attendee. All attendees in the final year of the Summit received a certificate for completing this training, ensuring that any operation they are a part of that may be covered by this regulation will be in compliance with the requirement to have one staff member attend a training on the rule. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We will publish our full findings and data from all Summit years including the years of BFR funding on our website, www.indigenousfoodandag.com, before the end of the calendar year. Additionally, IFAI team members have presented on the Summit during BFR funding years at various national intertribal and national non-tribal agricultural education events outside the NIFA PD meetings,including multiplenational Risk Management Education conferences. Further,IFAI and Summit social media presence greatly augments the team's abilities to reach our target audience as this BFR age group are predominately reachable through social media. IFAI was able to reach every Bureau of Indian Affairs region in the country through post-Summit activities following the 2016 Summit and the activities on social media and the IFAI website and our team's ongoing presentations throughout the year concerning the Summit itself. These visible and ongoing efforts to promote the improtance of the Summit have resulted in applications being received from each of the BIA Regions in 2017 and all BIA regions represented in the 2017 Summit participation group. Students from the Summit have accomplished significant leadership and community assessment activities. Multiple students have undertaken anti-hunger activities through increased food production; multiple students have started small farming operations that feed elders in their communities; other students have begun agricultural education at the college level while still attending high school. Throughout the Summit, we encourage the youth to think about the potential in their own communities, or the things that their Tribes are already doing in food and agriculture, to help ground their learning in real-world examples and help them envision themselves as leaders in their own communities. Some youth are working as interns for their or other Tribes in their region; others are working for Tribal nonprofit organizations working to increase local food production. In the year between the 2016 Summit's end and the beginning of the 2017 Summit, our Summit page on our website (www.indigenousfoodandag.com/youth-summit) had 5,768 hits. Over half of those hits (3,837 to be exact) were from new users--people who had not visited that page before. The balance of users (1,931) are returning users to that page. Users who visit our Summit page made up around 14% of total visitors to our website from the period of 7/1/2016 to 7/31/2017. This made our dedicated Summit page the most popular page on our website during that time period. Throughout the year, our dedicated Summit Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/nativeyouthsummit/) reaches hundreds of people with each post. As we ramp up to the Summit in April and May of each year, we notice a big upswing in both our organic (non-paid) and boosted (paid) Summit-related posts: posts during this time period regularly reach over 2,000 people. Through the actions of the Summit participants themselves as well as the ongoing media presence of the Summit, we continue to disseminate results to all of Indian Country. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Overall we calculate nearly 400 participants over the life of the Summit program during its BFRDP funding years. In each project year the Summit was delivered successfully to a cohort of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian youth. These young Native beginning farmers and ranchers received comprehensive training in all aspects of farm and ranch business management, agricultural risk management, leadership development for careers in food systems and agriculture, and legal and land tenure skills necessary to success in Indian Country farming and ranching. Over the course of the BFRDP funding years for the Summit, participants received over 300 hours of instruction in these topic areas both in the classroom and in experiential learning opportunity settings from recognized leaders in Indian Country food and agriculture as well as leadership from national agricultural organizations such as Farm Credit and National FFA. The BFR funding for this program has allowed us to prepare over 300 young Native people for careers in agriculture. Our evaluation data indicate that we met the goals we articulated for the Summit. We have carefully tracked evaluation data on these goals over the course of the Summit. The Summit provides an intensive educational experience across multiple subject matter areas, all of critical importance to success in agricultural production in Indian Country. We track multiple types of outcomes across these subject matter areas for the Summit and solicit both qualitative and quantitative data from participant to assess outcomes. Overall, our data show that Summit students are better prepared to succeed in the business of agriculture after attending the Summit and receiving specialized education from recognized experts on the unique complexities of food production in Indian Country. We base this assessment on key indicators across several subject matter areas, each of which is critical for success in Indian country agriculture. The indicator data, which address knowledge and skills gained in the areas of business planning, financial management, legal issues, and land stewardship as well as leadership development and engagement in agriculture, are explored below. 1. Summit students indicate that they are more prepared for the business of agriculture after attending a Summit.This is an indicator directly related to success in farming and ranching. For example, 99% of students in 2016 and 97% of students in 2017 reported gaining knowledge of agricultural business management at the Summit. 98% of combined Summit 2016/2017/2018 participants indicated they had learned more about agricultural business management at the Summit. 2. Summit students have gained critical risk management knowledge from attending the Summit that will help them succeed in agricultural careers.Risk management across all five areas of risk as defined by USDA-RMA has been a key component across the Summit since it began in 2014, and that has continued in all three years of BFR funding. A farmer or rancher's ability to adequately assess and manage the risks to their unique operation promotes sounded business and financial management and ultimately supports the longevity and sustained productivity of the business enterprise.The 2017/2018 cohorts received robust training in this area. 99% of Summit 2016 attendees and 71% of combined 2017/2018 attendees indicated they had learned more about risk management for agricultural production at the Summit. 3. Summit students indicate that they have a greater understanding of legal issues such as the need for a will and estate planning after attending a Summit. The need to use wills and estate plans to prevent further land fractionation, a legal problem that represents a significant barrier to agricultural production in many checkerboarded reservation areas, has been a staple of the Summit curriculum since 2014 and continuing in all BFR funding years. Tribal producers need to be advised early in their careers how to pass their farms and farm businesses in a way that preserves their operation and the land. 86% of Summit students in 2017/2018 reported that they had learned more about the importance of a will for themselves and their families from attending the Summit. 94% of 2016 students and a combined 62% of students attending the 2017/2018 event reported they had learned more about general legal issues affecting their farms and ranches. This included discussions of liability for food safety, contract disputes, agricultural labor issues, and of course discussion of the many different characterizations that land in Indian Country can legally have and the issues arising from that. Preparing youth to face these issues with solutions in hand will secure their success for the future. 4.Summit students indicate that they are more prepared to get involved in agriculture and conservation planning after attending a Summit.When asked to rank their preparedness for getting involved in agriculture on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being least prepared and 10 being most prepared, 86% of students ranked themselves a 7 or higher, with 36% ranking themselves in the highest category. We asked the 2018 "master class" of students how prepared they felt to get involved in conservation planning and rank this preparation on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most prepared. After day one, moststudents placed themselves around a 6. After the end of the week, over half of the students reported in at a 10, and 33% reported in at an 8. 5.Summit students developed an understanding of tools and strategies that will help them be successful in agricultural business, including AgPlan, credit monitoring tools, and financial risk management tools. 100% of 2016 students and87% of students in 2017 reported learning more from the Summit about business planning tools they could use online, such as AgPlan, that will help them in their operations. The "Master Class" business students in 2018 reported overwhelmingly that they will use what they learned in their own operations: 100% said they would apply it immediately or that it would be applicable in the very near future. 6.Summit students indicate that they have a better understanding of food safety practices and their importance to agricultural operations after attending the Summit.94% of students in 2017/2018 indicated they had learned more about food safety principles and how to include them in their operations from the Summit. 7.Summit students indicate that they see a role for themselves in Indian Country food and agriculture right now, and they are likely to participate in local agriculture after attending a Summit.Although this is not a measure of skills gained or knowledge transferred, this indicator is nevertheless a critical one for our program and participants. Native youth must see a role for themselves in this field. If they don't, the likelihood that they will utilize the knowledge measured in the previous indicators by entering agricultural production is low.79% of 2017/2018 students overall said youth had a significant role to play in Indian Country food and agriculture. When asked to rank the significance of the role they saw for youth in Indian Country food and agriculture on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being lowest and 10 being highest, 100% of 2018 students placed the significance of youth at an 8 or higher.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience consists of Native youth involved or interested in food and agriculture who are members of AmericanIndian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian communities. These youth are aged 14-23 (including first time students, returning"fellows" and student leaders who are either in or graduated from college or university. These youth are focused on wideranging agricultural production systems: livestock, diversified farming/ranching operations, specialty crop production, smallto mid-sized farming and ranching operations, value added production systems, nutrition and health focus, traditional foodsystems, food sovereignty, and those interested in careers in the supportive professions that are essential to agriculturesector growth and success in Indian Country. All are involved or interested in some aspects of food production and foodsystems before they are admitted to the educational program as demonstrated by their own applciations for admission. Once admitted to the educational program, known as "Generation Indigenous" or also known as the "Native Youth in Food and Agriculture Summer Leadership Summit" (Summit) the target audience spends 10 days on the University of ArkansasFayetteville campus invovled in intensive educational instruction in the classroom, in field trip experiences, in leadershipdevelopment programs, career exploration programs, and experiential learning. The 2017progress reporting period, the Summit accepted applications from 165 students, admitted 150 students and 136 students from 76 tribes participated. Changes/Problems:Every year the IFAI staffexamineparticipant's evaluations and use those comments to guidein preparing a new andimproved approach (within the project deliverables, of course) that will continue to change or improve our approach. Wehave found no major problems in our approaches to date, nor have we done major changes in our approaches as we appearto be not only reaching and achieving impacts in our intended audience beyond our own expectations. However we do believe that there is always room for improvement in our approach to reaching this most important generation (GenerationIndigenous) in Indian Country. Over the course of this project, we have seen many positive impacts in the lives of the young BFRwe serve. Several haveused what they've learned to obtain their first youth loans through USDA-FSA, two have been honored by Farm Credit fortheir operations, and many have been accepted to White House events around the President's "Generation Indigenous"initiative. Several of the young people have also gone on to win awards from various intertribal organizations for theirbusiness acumen and dedication to agriculture, including multiple students who have won the Intertribal Agriculture Council'syouth essay contest. Summit students come from a variety of backgrounds with regards to income and food security, and for many ofthem, college never really seemed like a viable option. Those attitudes have changed every year of our program. Beingphysically on a college campus for ten days, sitting in college classrooms, and successfully learning high-level material fromrecognized experts has been a game-changer for our students. They can see themselves going to college, and the majorityof them have, once they have graduated from high school. Several of them are even pursuing degrees close to home whilestill maintaining their own operations. Our students are pursuing degrees in agricultural fields from programs around thecountry that will only help increase their opportunities for future success as farmers and ranchers.The students are also working to change their communities, and they aren't waiting until they graduate from college to do it.One of the students began a food sovereignty assessment initiative for her Tribe, which will help survey her Tribe's currentfood system and then work to restore it through traditional production methods as well as more contemporary agriculturalproduction. Her work has inspired her peers, several of whom are working to start similar programs in their owncommunities. Being able to get an accurate picture of what Native farming and ranching looks like in individual Tribal communities will be crucial to their success going forward. For 2017, we noted the following: 102.5 hours of educational learning time, both experiential and classroom combined (separately it is 50% experiential and 50% classroom). 46 hours of "networking time" with one another and with speakers/guests. 12 effectively, professionally prepared mock loan interviews presented to real financial loan officers from the Farm/Ag Credit systems. 8 regional conservation management plans. 15 community-based grant plans drafted. 12 capstone business plan projects. 2 youth, inspired by the Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger mobile exhibit entitled "This Is Hunger," went home and founded a hunger awareness organization in their community immediately. 1 young person has already started a community food sovereignty assessment for her Tribe using tools she learned at the Summit. 1 Student Leader has started working with a neighboring Tribe to her own on conducting a food sovereignty assessment. Multiple youth are on the planning boards for regional youth summits in their regions and will serve as Student Leaders at those events in the coming year, training more of their peers all throughout Indian Country on the importance of Indian food and agriculture, the opportunities to strengthen the physical and economic health of their communities through agriculture, and the means by which to begin a thriving ag business through risk management, business planning, conservation planning, food safety, and more. 10-15 youth who have never before attended the IAC Annual meeting have reached out to the IAC to attend and participate more strongly in the IAC youth activities. Multiple youth have gone to their Tribal Councils to present what they learned at the Summit and ask for their Tribe to sponsor youth to attend regional Summits--at least one of those young people has been successful in securing that kind of Tribal support. 2 students have applied for college scholarships through the IAC Scholarship Program, which gives college scholarships for American Indian and Alaska Native students who are studying in an ag-related field. 15 students in the Great Plains region have applied for an FSA youth loan. 1 Student Leader has applied for a Native Food Sovereignty VISTA position. 1 Student is interning with a Tribal Conservation District and focusing on increasing food sovereignty efforts through a community food sovereignty organization that he founded in his Tribe. Multiple students from Alaska have come together to begin plans for a future reindeer farm and recently attended a training course on reindeer raising which included food safety and animal health. These accomplishments speak to the importance of the Summit in the lives of these Indian Country BFR. Theseactions taken by Summit BFR will continue to guide and form all future Summit activities. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Because food production is so deeplytied to culture in Tribal communities, Native BFR benefit themost from a learning environment that encourages them to celebrate the diversity of their Tribal cultures. Summitprogramming isdesigned in a way that embraces that critical relationship between food and culture. For example, business planningexercise is done utilizingtraditional Native food products available in today's commercial marketplace: bison, wild rice, salmon,blue cornmeal, and more. Summit activities occur in large groups but Summit assignments occur in small groups, which also helps BFR maximize their learningpotential. Students who may start out feeling somewhat uncomfortable in the larger group really bond with their small groupover the ten days of the event, which encourages them to engage more with the curriculum, our speakers, and with theirpeers. All students are expected to have leadership roles within their small groups, specifically with regard to assigned aspects of their small group exercises. This also leads to sustained peer-to-peer learning even after they leave the event. Summitstudents remain in touch withone another through social media and other avenues, and provide a solid base of support for one another as they work toachieve their goals infood and agriculture. That robust peer network, bolstered by periodic communication from IFAIyouth outreach teamassists students with scholarship applications, loan information, and more. These aspects are crucialto theircontinued success, especially for those who may lack support from their communities.The Summit educational opportunity has provided the target audience with glimpses into the important risk, financial,marketing, production, and legal issues that must be mastered in order to support successful food systems in Indian Country.Those professionals who assist IFAIwith programming and curriculum development are enhancing their own work by reachingthis important beginning farmer audience for Indian Country. The Summit experience is grounded on advanced and challenging professional development for the BFR audience as well as training and leadership development opporutnities and expectations for all participants. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?IFAI and Summit social media presence greatly augments the team'sabilities to reach our target audience as this BFR age group are predominatelyreachable through social media. IFAI was able to reach every Bureau of Indian AFfairs region in the country through post-Summit activities following the 2016 Summit and the activities on social media and the IFAI website and our team's ongoing presentations throughout the year concerning the Summit itself. These visible and ongoing efforts to promote the improtance of the Summit have resulted in applications being received from each of the BIA Regions in 2017 and all BIA regions represented in the 2017 Summit participation group. Students from the Summit have accomplished significant leadership and community assessment activities. Multiple students have undertaken anti-hunger activities through increased food production; multiple students have started small farming operations that feed elders in their communities; other students have begun agricultural education at the college level while still attending high school. Throughout the Summit, we encourage the youth to think about the potential in their own communities, or the things that theirTribes are already doing in food and agriculture, to help ground their learning in real-world examples and help them envisionthemselves as leaders in their own communities. Some youth are working as interns for their or other Tribes in their region; others are working for Tribal nonprofit organizations working to increase local food production. In the year between the 2016 Summit's end and the beginning of the 2017 Summit, our Summit page on our website (www.indigenousfoodandag.com/youth-summit) had 5,768 hits. Over half of those hits (3,837 to be exact) were from new users--people who had not visited that page before. The balance of users (1,931) are returning users to that page. Users who visit our Summit page made up around 14% of total visitors to our website from the period of 7/1/2016 to 7/31/2017. This made our dedicated Summit page the most popular page on our website during that time period. Throughout the year, our dedicated Summit Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/nativeyouthsummit/) reaches hundreds of people with each post. On average, our posts reach around 500 people each time our communications team posts to this Facebook page. As we ramp up to the Summit in April and May of each year, we notice a big upswing in both our organic (non-paid) and boosted (paid) Summit-related posts: posts during this time period regularly reach over 2,000 people. Through the actions of the Summit participants themselves as well as the ongoing media presence of the Summit, we continue to disseminate results to all of Indian Country. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to offer the Summitevery year we are able to secure funding. The 2017-2018 time period is the last time period for which we will have BFRDP funding so between the 2017 Summit and the end of the proejct in 2018 we will have to singifcantly ramp up our fundraising work to replace potentially lost funding from BFRDP. We will re-apply for funding for the Summit as we are the only national intertribal Summit of this type in the US. We take the feedback wereceive from our previous attendees very seriously, and we also work with a team of Native BFR youth advisors throughoutthe year to make sure that we're offering a program that meets our audience's needs. Through this process, we are alwaysmaking adjustments and refinements to our program. For the 2017program, we retained our previously successful format,promoting our returning students (called "Summit Fellows") to a smaller class with a more advanced curriculum track. Whileall the Fellows embraced the new advanced curriculum, which allowed them to deepen their training as farmers and ranchers,the majority of them noted that they missed interacting with the first time attendees, especially on the first full day of the event. We provided enhanced curriclum in 2017 based on 2016 comments from BFR students and we will continue to do so as we prepare for 2018 Summit activities.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As of July 2017, the project team has successfully delivered Year Two of the program utilizing BFR funding. 165 potential Summit attendees submitted applications to the program; 150 students were admitted and 136 students from 76 Tribes and all 12 BIA regions were in attendance at the 2017 Summit. American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian BFR were admitted to the program. The Native BFR spent 10 days engaged in comprehensive risk management education, classroom and experiential learning in all aspects of successful farming and ranching and food business enterprises. All learning wasled by recognized agricultural experts from throughoutIndian Country. Thirty of these 132 students were returning students, designated as Fellows, who participated in all of the same educational opportunities as the first-year students but on an advanced track designed to further deepen their knowledge, particularly concerningfinancial management for agricultural businesses and conservation management on working farms and ranches. All students were responsible for the development of an agricultural business plan that addressed all five areas of risk (production, legal-- especially food safety, financial, marketing, and human) as well as conservation planning. All students received hands-on business planning training in AgPlan. Over 20 Student Leaders attended the Summit event and arrived several days before the other students. These student leaders are all multi-year attendees at the Summit event and generally are college-aged students or students/young adults engaged in significant leadership activities in Indian Country food and agriculture. All students also participated in a financial planning activity at the beginning and end of the week that evaluated their pre and post event knowledge of agribusiness planning. All thirty returning Fellowswere additionally responsible for conducting a mock loan interview with Farm Credit/Ag Credit loan officers so that they developed firsthand experience in this skillset that is so important to their future success in farming and ranching. At the conclusion of the event in July 2017, each BFRreceived a certificate of graduation from the program denoting their progress and program completion. During the event the IFAI project team also conducted a comprehensive evaluation of performance from event participants. These evaluations are still being processed and are available upon request. Finally the IFAI project team is also working to continue the important follow-up work of mentoring attendees post-Summit. This is a critical outreach component of the program that offers attendees ongoing weekly assistance with achieving their short and long-term goals related to food and agriculture, including extending knowledge gained at the Summit into new or existing farming and ranching operations, such as completing a loan application through entities like FSA or Farm Credit, writing a business plan to support such loan applications, completing scholarships for ag-related studies as the students matriculate into college, launching food sovereignty and food/farm/ranching operations within their community, or taking significant leadership steps to coordinate food access, healthy food production, hunger alleviation, or other related activities within their communities.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience consists of Native youth involved or interested in food and agriculture who are members of American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian communities. These youth are aged 14-23 (including first time students, returning "fellows" and student leaders who are either in or graduated from college or university. These youth are focused on wide ranging agricultural production systems: livestock, diversified farming/ranching operations, specialty crop production, small to mid-sized farming and ranching operations, value added production systems, nutrition and health focus, traditional food systems, food sovereignty, and those interested in careers in the supportive professions that are essential to agriculture sector growth and success in Indian Country. All are involved or interested in some aspects of food production and food systems before they are admitted to the educational program as demonstrated by their own applciations for admission. Once admitted to the educational program, known as "Generation Indigenous" or also known asthe "Native Youth in Food and Agriculture Summer Leadership Summit" (Summit)the target audience spends 10 days on the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus invovled in intensive educational instruction in the classroom, in field trip experiences, in leadership development programs, career exploration programs, and experiential learning. This progress reporting period, the Summit admitted over 100 students to the program with 94 attending the 10-day educational program (loss of these students was attributable to family situations or last minute health-related cancellations precluding their attendance). Changes/Problems:Overall, we do our best to evaluate our participant's evaluations and use those comments to guide us in preparing a new and improved approach (within the project deliverables, of course) that will continue to change or improve our approach. We have found no major problems in our approaches to date, nor have we done major changes in our approaches as we appear to be not only reaching and achieving impacts in our intended audience beyond our own expectations. However we do believe that there is always room for improvement in our approach to reaching this most important generation (Generation Indigenous) in Indian Country. Over the course of this project, we have seen many positive impacts in the lives of the young people we serve. Several have used what they've learned to obtain their first youth loans through USDA-FSA, two have been honored by Farm Credit for their operations, and many have been accepted to White House events around the President's "Generation Indigenous" initiative. Several of the young people have also gone on to win awards from various intertribal organizations for their business acumen and dedication to agriculture, including multiple students who have won the Intertribal Agriculture Council's youth essay contest. One of the stand-out changes for us as educators, however, has been seeing the change in our students around pursuing a college degree. Our students come from a variety of backgrounds with regards to income and food security, and for many of them, college never really seemed like a viable option. Those attitudes have changed every year of our program. Being physically on a college campus for ten days, sitting in college classrooms, and successfully learning high-level material from recognized experts has been a game-changer for our students. They can see themselves going to college, and the majority of them have, once they have graduated from high school. Several of them are even pursuing degrees close to home while still maintaining their own operations.Our students are pursuing degrees in agricultural fields from programs around the country that will only help increase their opportunities for future success as farmers and ranchers. The students are also working to change their communities, and they aren't waiting until they graduate from college to do it. One of the students began a food sovereignty assessment initiative for her Tribe, which will help survey her Tribe's current food system and then work to restore it through traditional production methods as well as more contemporary agricultural production. Her work has inspired her peers, several of whom are working to start similar programs in their own communities. Being able to get an accurate picture of what Native farming and ranching looks like in individual Tribal communities will be crucial to their success going forward. "Start young. It only takes one person to start a chain reaction that makes a change in Indian country. Be courageous!" "I really loved the Farm Credit loan agents mock interview. It gave a better idea for a real loan interview." "Agriculture is no game, people need our food, and risk & business management." "I learned that no matter what you decide to be, there is no reason for you to say you can't be involved in food and agriculture." "Agplan.com is the best site I've ever been on. It really helps narrows down your ideas and project insights." "I will make a change in my community." "Doing the business planning definitely put into perspective how much fine detail actually goes into farming." These are examples of the types of comments we reveive which all push us to constantly reexamine the content of our curriculum and the best way to reach our target audience and improve their experiences and successes in Indian Country agriculure and food. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Because food and the production of it is so frequently inextricably tied to culture in Tribal communities, Native BFR benefit the most from a learning environment that encourages them to celebrate the diversity of their Tribal cultures. Our programming is designed in a way that embraces that critical relationship between food and culture. For example, our business planning exercise is done around traditional Native food products available in today's commercial marketplace: bison, wild rice, salmon, blue cornmeal, and more. We do a great deal of work at the Summit in small groups, which also helps our young people maximize their learning potential. Students who may start out feeling somewhat uncomfortable in the larger group really bond with their small group over the ten days of the event, which encourages them to engage more with the curriculum, our speakers, and with their peers. This also leads to sustained peer-to-peer learning even after they leave the event: our students remain in touch with one another through social media and other avenues, and provide a solid base of support for one another as they work to achieve their goals in the space of food and agriculture. That robust peer network, bolstered by periodic communication from our youth outreach team who assists our students with scholarship applications, loan information, and more, is crucial to their continued success, especially for those who may lack support from other areas. The Summit educational opportunity has provided the target audience with glimpsees into the important risk, financial, marketing, production, and legal issues that must be mastered in order to support successful food systems in Indian Country. Those professionals who assist us with programming and curriculum development are enhancing their own work by reaching this important beginning farmer audience for Indian Country. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Our social media presence greatly augments our abilities to reach our target audience as this age group are predominately reachable through social media. And our loudest voices for dissemination of our results is through our beginning farmer participants themselves as they return to their communities. This past year our reach was to communities in every Bureau of Indian Affairs region of the country. In addition,20 of the 84 2015 Summit participants entered this year's Intertribal Agriculture Council (one of our project partners) youth essay contest, with 2 Summit students placing in the top 3 spots of the contest. Of the 9 Honorable Mentions, 6 went to Summit graduates. 10 students were selected to attend the National FFA conference as delegates from their chapters, a high honor for FFA students; 2 of those 10 were selected for special recognition during the closing ceremonies. 3 of the students have already been accepted into their top college of choice, and every high school senior is presently on target for graduation. These successes of our students disseminate our results in ways that other "reports" could never achieve. Throughout the Summit, we encourage the youth to think about the potential in their own communities, or the things that their Tribes are already doing in food and agriculture, to help ground their learning in real-world examples and help them envision themselves as leaders in their own communities. Most of the youth are proud of their communities, and most of the goals they set for themselves involve strengthening their communities through food and agriculture, whether by increasing food security through their own operations, helping out with community gardens, working to make healthy food access a possibility for everyone on their reservation, or improving their Tribal economy through agribusiness. The youth have set all these long term goals and more out of a sense of pride in their communities. Parents frequently tell us that their youth come home energized about not only food and ag, but their Tribe, in a way that they were not when they left. One of our goals for the program is to give the youth a space where they are encouraged to celebrate their cultures-- only by doing that and feeling that sense of pride and connection will they want to take the next step and grow to be the leaders that their Tribes need in food and agriculture. As one of our students reported recently, "Meeting such outstanding youth from some of the most impoverished lands in the nation really hit home for me. I realized that what I dealt with back home happened all throughout Indian Country, and that my career in tribal food and agriculture was JUST getting started. Luckily, I met over 90 youth that are doing the exact same thing. We will impact Indian Country in a positive way, and we now know how to do so, because of our experience at Summit." What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to offer this project every year, and our team is already planning for the 2017 Summit. We take the feedback we receive from our previous attendees very seriously, and we also work with a team of Native BFR youth advisors throughout the year to make sure that we're offering a program that meets our audience's needs. Through this process, we are always making adjustments and refinements to our program. For the 2016 program, we tried a slightly new program format, promoting our returning students (called "Summit Fellows") to a smaller class with a more advanced curriculum track. While all the Fellows embraced the new advanced curriculum, which allowed them to deepen their training as farmers and ranchers, the majority of them noted that they missed interacting with the first time attendees, especially on the first full day of the event. They felt that they were missing an opportunity to mentor their peers and model best practices for them. Our team is definitely taking this advice to heart in planning the 2017 event. We will be retaining the advanced curriculum piece that our returning students enjoyed, but to the extent possible, we want to listen to their feedback and allow them to spend much of the first day of the event in the large group where they can meet the first time attendees, mentor them, and be the great leaders in Indian Country food and ag that they already are. With each advancing year of the project we are enhancing our numbers of new and beginning farmers reached, improving our curriculum, enhancing our social media reach, and finding new ways to improve our activities. This is essential with our audience as they expect improvements and new efforts every year and with every engagement.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As of July 2016, the project team has successfully delivered Year One of the program utilizing BFR funding. 100 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian BFR were admitted to the program. They represented 51 Tribes and all 12 BIA regions. The Native BFR youth spent 10 days engaged in comprehensive risk management education, both classroom and experiential, led by recognized agricultural experts from around Indian Country. At the conclusion of the event in July 2016, each youth was named an Ambassador for Indian Country Agriculture. The project team is currently working to mentor previous event year cohorts, assisting Native BFR attendees with achieving their short and long-term goals related to food and agriculture, including: loan applications for existing operations, business planning for future/existing operations, college scholarship applications for ag-related majors, and more. The project team is also working to plan next year's event, which is scheduled for July 16-25th, 2017. Applications are available now for this event and the project team is working with project partners and collaborators, including Intertribal Agriculture Council and National FFA, to broadcast the application process. The application process will remain open until April 2017, or until all 125 spaces have been filled, with a waitlist if necessary (as has been the case in previous years). The Summit this year reached a new high in the number of students reached and our ongoing year-round engagement with our youth audience continues to grow and maximize our reach throughout Indian Country.
Publications
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