Progress 01/01/24 to 12/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:This project serves a diverse target audience of historically underserved producers (HUP) that includes three groups as defined by the USDA: (1) beginning farmers; (2) socially disadvantaged farmers; and (3) farmers who focus on specialty crop production, among the most popular crops for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers. Changes/Problems:Ther are no changes or problems in this project at this time. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?VF offered a workshop with farmer and consultant, Josh Volk: Invest In Your Farm: Making Decisions About Investing in Tools, Equipment and More. This was offered in response to farmers asking for guidance on when to invest in new equipment to scale their businesses, and how to assess the financial implication of investments. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We share the results of our work with incubating farmers monthly at farmer meetings. Broader dissemination will occur with industry partners towards the end of the grant. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? An annual assessment of each farm conducted as a parallel farmer self-review and staff review of farm businesses will be conducted in Q1 2025. TA curriculum development will begun via information gleaned from farmer assessments and surveys. Continued outreach and partnership with USDA on increasing access to programs. VF has been working with another local non-profit regardingthe sale of their property via a request for proposal process. VF has provided feedback on the process and will be providing TA to several farmers to apply in2025. VF staff will complete partner Grow America's Economic Development 101 and 201 courses.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1: Provide bilingual outreach and technical assistance to historically underserved farmers that increases adoption of best practices in agricultural and business management. VF developed and deployed the 2025 Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture information and applications. Both Spanish & English websites for the PSA were updated for clarity and 2024 specifics and materials were circulated to regional partners. VF finalized our farm progression stages aligned with the newly defined competencies framework, which will form the foundation of the next phase of curriculum development in 2025. An annual farm business assessment was created with both a farmer self-review and staff review to be conducted in Q1 2025. To date, the project has provided 897 hours of technical assistance via 1,018 sessions to 452 unique participants in over 30 topic areas including business planning, fertility management, taxes, marketing, land and capital access. Objective 2: Reduce barriers to long-term land tenure for historically underserved farmers. VF explored the feasibility and appropriateness of creative land tenure options by consulting with Land for Good. The sessions covered land tenure models, supporting farmers in determining the best tenure model for their circumstances, and helping farmers come up with a plan for accessing land beyond VF's incubator program. These consulting sessions will inform VF's land access TA going forward. The bilingual Cooperative Land Purchase and Financing Guides were completed and promoted via the Farm Commons' website: https://farmcommons.org/resources/books/cooperative-purchasing-and-financing-guide-for-farm-and-ranchland and printed in the Viva Farms office library. To date, the project has supported 19 producers in securing long-term land tenure (5+ years) through ownership, long-term lease, or other contractual agreements; and supported 62 producers in securing short-term land tenure. This included VF facilitating a farmer to acquire a property they have leased for a long time via a 10-year lease with purchase option. This project brought together a capital partner and an attorney, along with VF staff, to support the farmer in this land acquisition. It also includes an anonymous donation that is going toward paying the farmer's first year of lease payments. It is an excellent success story of innovative capital and innovative land access coming together. Objective 3: Increase access to adequate and appropriate capital for historically underserved farmers. The Business Work Team reviewed baseline assessment and identified the following areas of greatest need: Business Administration & Management, Crop planning, Farm Business Rules/Regs/Licensing, Financial Literacy & Recordkeeping Knowledge, and Invoicing systems. VF gathered eligibility and evaluation criteria from different lending programs to inform how VF designs its criteria for the Revolving Loan Fund and any other capital access programs. VF connected Grow America with WSDA to discuss bridge loan options for WSDA's grant funding programs. VF met with Grow America on October 17th to discuss implementation of RLF. Out of this meeting, GA recommended that VF staff complete GA's Economic Development 101 and 201 courses, which will likely be completed in Q1 2025. In addition, GA wants to share with VF about their project in the Hudson Valley, which is similar to the programs VF wants to launch. VF invited the VP of AgWest's AgVision program for young, beginning and small farmers, to present at the Ag Park farmer meeting. She shared information about AgWest's various grant, loan and educational programs, including the FSA guaranteed loan programs. VF created abusiness planning process to be incorporated into the Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture program. VF also revised and delivered business planning and business administration classes as part of PSA in Skagit. To date, 158 producers have been connected with USDA programs, grants and services. The project has helped producers apply for $3,168,042 in non-USDA funding resulting in $1,439,018 in awards, in addition to applying for $1,497,354 from USDA resulting in $819,484 in awards.
Publications
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Progress 01/01/23 to 12/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:This project serves a diverse target audience of historically underserved producers (HUP) that includes three groups as defined by the USDA: (1) beginning farmers; (2) socially disadvantaged farmers; and (3) farmers who focus on specialty crop production, among the most popular crops for beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers. The project also places particular focus on serving Spanish-speaking Latino and Hispanic immigrant farmers, who fall within the HUP designation but who will be highlighted explicitly, given their enormous role in U.S. agriculture, VF's and the Project Team's unique expertise serving this population, and the project's geographic scope of WA, where Latino farmers and farmworkers are a key stakeholder group. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Viva Farms attended eight USDA Cooperator sessions in year one of the project including RVS trainings, cohort learning opportunities via the ARPTA webinar series and the annual project dorectors meeting. 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?We will start year 2 by completing a number of our foundational outputs including the Farm Viability Milestones Map, Baseline report re: agricultural and business health assesments, the Gap Analysis of ag credit and capital access programs. That will conclude the Awareness phase of our project, and lead us to the Engagement phase where we will focus on thethree following annual outcomes: 1) HUP decide which agricultural and business management best practices to adopt 2) HUP determine land tenure goals; project team understands goals 3) HUP understand how to and begin to access low-cost capital through new revolving loan fund through bilingual outreach and access
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
?Objective 1: Provide bilingual outreach and technical assistance to historically underserved farmers that increases adoption of best practices in agricultural and business management. VF developed and deployed the 2024 Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture information and applications. Both Spanish & English websites for the PSA were updated for clarity and 2024 specifics: https://vivafarms.org/practicum-in-sustainable-agriculture-2/ and https://vivafarms.org/practica/. Spanish information posters with FAQs were distributed to regional partners. The Communications Team has continued to refine alumni outreach lists and gathered all VFKC alumni contacts, which will be imported into Mailchimp (newsletter program) before the release of the January 2024 newsletter. 20 farmer meetings occurred with groups from the incubator and AgPark. Resources were shared in each meeting and a number of feedback sessions on a range of topics were held about Viva Farms programs effectiveness and farmer needs. VF initiated a formal process of "Work Teams" to revise and customize TA curricula. There are 5 work teams: Production, Sales, Marketing, Business, Land & Capital. Each work team is made of up several staff who work most closely in the given area. The Work Teams conducted a "SOAR" analysis/ self-assessments for their topic area. These analyses document the current state of technical assistance and will inform new curriculum and TA approaches in future years. The farmer and self-assessments will be used to inform the revision of agricultural and business TA curricula according to key business stages: launch, growth, and long-term business resilience. The data will also identify needs and help inform viability metrics. The final farmer assessment questions, which combines questions for agricultural and business health; sales and marketing; land and capital were completed. 2 farmer interviews have been conducted thus far and the rest will be completed in Q1 2024. The project team provided a total of 231 hours of TA this year via 202 engagements to 193 unique historically underserved producers across 20 different topic areas. Objective 2: Reduce barriers to long-term land tenure for historically underserved farmers. Partners Sustainable Law Group (SLG) and Washington State University along with the VF team have conducted research to explore different land tenure models. Once farmer assessments indicate farmers' preferred land tenure arrangements, more targeted research will continue. In terms of land access resource development, Farm Commons completed the first draft of the "Cooperative Land Purchase and Financing Guide" and VF provided feedback. Project team is now waiting for FSA comments. Many Land for Good resources which were originally intended to be translated for this project have already been translated since the writing of this proposal. VF will check in with Land for Good in early Y2 to find out what additional resources would warrant translation. VF has done extensive financial TA to get farmers ready for financing. In addition, VF has been doing extensive partnership development with capital partners who will be integral to the eventual land tenure arrangements, laying the groundwork for land acquisition. VF focused on strengthening individual partnerships with land access organizations. An important new land access partner is Skagit Land Trust (SLT). VF and SLT have not historically worked together much because SLT has not typically worked with agricultural lands. But SLT was bequeathed a farm property and is strongly considering selling it to VF. VF and SLT staff met on the site on 11/3/23 to do a site visit and discuss a potential partnership. On 12/18/23, SLT submitted a proposal to Viva to take ownership of the site. 25 TA sessions were provided to HUP this year on land access, land evaluation and due diligence, the highlight being that a farm signed a 5-year lease on a 19-acre property, thanks to VF's support connecting with the landowner and navigating land evaluation, due diligence, and lease signing. This property also has the potential to be sold to the farmer in a few years. The project team also provided TA to review and negotiate leases, and on financing options based on lease terms. VF provided extensive financial support to one farm in particular that is looking for financing for a lease to own or land purchase. This has included developing multi-year cash flow projections, updating the business plan, and filling out application forms. Objective 3: Increase access to adequate and appropriate capital for historically underserved farmers. VF focused on developing individual relationships with many capital partners, including but not limited to: Dirt Capital Partners, Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, Foodshed Capital, Fractal, Steward, and others this year. VF evaluated current Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) with North Coast Credit Union and concluded that it is valuable for small, short-term operating capital. For larger, long-term capital needs, whether for equipment, infrastructure, or land purchases, the current RLF is likely too limited. A major objective of Year 2 will be to develop another capital program with other capital partners to meet this need. The project team provided 42 TA sessions to HUP focused on capital access this year. VF connected one farm seeking capital for a farm purchase with two impact lenders: Dirt Capital Partners and Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT. Both lenders are interested providing creative capital to historically underserved farmers, and are enthusiastic to work with VF. Loan applications have been submitted to both lenders and we are awaiting responses. The project team provided TA for farmers to apply for $964,720 in (non-USDA) funding this year including programs such as the USHUD Community Development Block Grant, WSDA Infrastructure Grant, WSDA Compost Reimbursement Program, the Skagit Conservation District Cover Crop Grant Program and other state and private programs. So far, farmers have been awarded $318,492 to help them grow and strengthen their businesses.
Publications
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