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INVESTIGATOR: Craven, R.

PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
UNIV OF MINNESOTA
ST PAUL, MINNESOTA 55108

BEGINNING FARMER AND RANCHER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM CLEARINGHOUSE

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: This project will develop a Clearinghouse that will help beginning farmers and ranchers be more successful. The Clearinghouse will assemble educational materials, online courses, software tools, stories, and the ability to connect online into a well-organized website where beginning producers can quickly obtain the information, training, and connections they need. It will:Help individuals and families exploring, beginning, establishing, and managing farms or ranches quickly and easily access the information and training they need.Support BFRDP programs by facilitating sharing, collaboration, and communication and by providing programs better access to educational materials.Help BFRDP projects better disseminate their educational materials so they can reach more beginning farmers and ranchers.Enhance focus on outcomes by assisting BFRDP projects improve outcome-based reporting.The Clearinghouse will leverage CFFM's existing Ag Risk and Farm Management Library and Results Verification System to provide more powerful resources for beginning farmers and ranchers and those who serve them.The Clearinghouse will offer multiple means to help beginning farmers and ranchers learn, including the ability; to find materials on topics of importance to them, to ask questions of other producers, to learn from online videos and courses, to find BFRDP programs in their geographic region, and to read stories about other beginning producers. They will be able to choose the method to find answers, ideas, and information that works best for them.Technologies used by young farmers and ranchers are rapidly evolving, so the Clearinghouse will be built to be accessible on a variety of platforms including PCs, tablets, and phones.

OBJECTIVES: Build and maintain an online library that will provide beginning farmers and ranchers one-stop source of information and training materials that will help them succeed in their chosen agricultural endeavors.Collaborate with BFRDP Standard and Educational Enhancement projects to identify and share appropriate educational materials, knowledge gaps and how to facilitate meeting the needs identified across the broad array of agricultural and forestry enterprises.Collaborate with NIFA to help BFRDP projects improve outcome-based reporting that will help BFRDP projects effectively communicate accomplishments, provide valid data for stakeholders, and the allow the public to learn more about BFRDP projects.

APPROACH: BFRDP Library. CFFM will develop and maintain an online beginning farmer and rancher Library. The BFRDP Library will be modeled on the very successful Ag Risk and Farm Management Library, www.agrisk.umn.edu, which was developed and is maintained by CFFM. The Ag Risk and Farm Management Library contains more than 3,000 documents, organized and designed for anyone to quickly locate information. Features of the BFRDP Library will include:Ability for every BFRDP project to upload the materials they develop and use in their training programs. Project directors will be able to upload, edit, replace, delete and manage their materials in the Library. All materials will be archived.Ability for any other author to submit materials to the BFRDP Library and manage their materials. All materials submitted to the Library will be reviewed by CFFM staff to determine if they are appropriate for inclusion in the Library.Materials currently in the Start2Farm and Ag Risk and Farm Management libraries will be evaluated and appropriate materials will be included in the BFRDP Library.A regular scan of university, Extension, government agency, and non-profit organizations working in agriculture, and specifically with beginning farmers and ranchers, to find new educational materials applicable to beginning producers.Some materials are developed as a part of a workbook, course, or training program. The Library will have a section to store and find these larger sets of materials under Collections. Many materials in collections may be valuable as standalone materials also, and will be available both under a collection and as an independent material.The Library will help producers retain a set of materials relevant to their interests that they can return to at any time. Anyone will be able to bookmark and save materials they have found valuable. If they choose they can share their bookmarks with others.Producers will be able find the most relevant document by sorting for most viewed, most likes, publication date, or author. Users will be able to click on authors to see everything that is in the Library from an author.The Library will instantly allow producers to share documents with others via email, Facebook, Twitter, or Google docs.Mobile access will be developed to facilitate producer's ability to find answers anytime from anywhere via their phones or tablets.Organization. Numerous organizations focus on helping beginning farmers and ranchers. One challenge is how to organize information about these efforts and the training materials they produce so that beginning producers can quickly and easily gain access to them.The Clearinghouse will use a sophisticated organization of materials so that producers can quickly locate materials relevant to their particular need or question. Multiple search methodologies will be incorporated into the Library so that producers can scan through lists of topics, search by keywords, or conduct Google type searches.Different types of resources will be segmented so beginning producers can easily find the types of resources they want. Segments will include written materials, online videos and courses, links to organizations serving beginning producers, tools, stories, and information on USDA resources.Online videos and courses. Many people, particularly younger people, are more comfortable and familiar with learning by watching short YouTube type video or an online course versus reading an article. The rapid expansion of online videos has changed people's ability to learn and the way an online library needs to function. The proposed BFRDP Library will have a strong emphasis on video-type materials in addition to written materials. There are two types of online videos, both will be included in the Library. One are short one to three minute videos on very specific topics, ie. YouTube. The other are online courses that may be a few hours to many hours long.Tools. In addition to written materials and videos the BFRDP Library will provide tools to beginning farmers and ranchers to help them plan, evaluate decisions that they will need to make, and develop documentation to apply for financing. The Library will provide a set of recommended tools for beginning farmers and ranchers to use. Initially,The Library will include a small set of highly relevant tools for beginning farmers and ranchers. The set of tools will focus on issues related to starting a new business and business management skills for agricultural businesses.One of the primary tools will be AgPlan, an online business planning tool. AgPlan was developed by CFFM. It has been used to initiate more than 35,000 business plans during the past few years. A good business plan can improve beginning producer's management skills and help them apply for financing. The Clearinghouse will encourage producers to develop a business plan and will encourage Standard BFRDP projects to include business planning in their programs. The Clearinghouse will include comprehensive training videos on how to develop a business plan.Another tool that will be made available are crop and livestock budgets. Often beginning farmers and ranchers need to develop budgets for what they want to produce to determine the potential revenue, costs, and net returns. Many Extension Services develop typical crop and livestock budgets. Links to these budgets are available in the Ag Risk and Farm Management Library and will be included in the BFRDP Library. The budget library contains 555 crop budgets for 170 different crops and 128 livestock budgets for 42 different livestock enterprises. These typical budgets provide a starting point for beginning producers to develop their own budgets.Connections. The Clearinghouse will provide means for beginning farmers and ranchers to connect and communicate with one another with the-end goal to learn from one another. The Clearinghouse will make use of a variety of social media tools in effort to facilitate connections among experienced and beginning farmers & ranchers.Identification of gaps. The Clearinghouse will work closely with Educational Enhancement and Standard projects to identify gaps in materials, knowledge, and other gaps that may exist or emerge relative to the needs of beginning farmers and ranchers.Communication and collaboration. Communication, collaboration, and training between the Clearinghouse, Educational Enhancement projects, and Standard BFRDP projects will increase the assistance provided to beginning farmers and ranchers and will increase the outcomes they accomplish as a result of participating in BFRDP programs.Outcome-based reporting. The Clearinghouse will facilitate outcome-based reporting through training and by building upon the existing Risk Management Education Results Verification System to collect data that will allow reporting and communicating outcomes.Public access. The Clearinghouse will provide public access to the accomplishments and outcomes of BFRDP projects in a searchable format to help the pubic learn about the accomplishments of BFRDP projects.Disseminate information about BFRDP projects. The Clearinghouse will disseminate information on BFRDP programs, accomplishments, needs, and activities to the national BFRDP community and to the broader public.

PROGRESS: 2014/12 TO 2019/11
Target Audience: Audience Emphasis Organic producers Small farms Specialty crop producers Traditional commercial producers Urban producers Participants Served Record the total number of unique participants who participated in your program: Total Number of Participants: 86,558 Enter the actual cumulative number of participants who as a result of your program: Started farming: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Helped prepare to start farming: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Improved farming success: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Delivery Total Meetings: 0 Total Meeting Participants: 0 Total Webinars: 16 Total Webinar Participants: 628 Total Website Visits: 114441 Total Online Course Participants: 0 Webinars 11/4/2015: Number of Attendees 46 12/8/2015: Number of Attendees 31 1/19/2016: Number of Attendees 56 3/31/2016: Number of Attendees 25 5/4/2016: Number of Attendees 35 6/8/2016: Number of Attendees 29 7/20/2016: Number of Attendees 22 11/9/2016: Number of Attendees 31 1/18/2017: Number of Attendees 56 5/18/2017: Number of Attendees 22 11/1/2017: Number of Attendees 34 2/13/2018: Number of Attendees 26 12/7/2017: Number of Attendees 150 6/5/2018: Number of Attendees 22 10/24/2018: Number of Attendees 23 10/29/2019: Number of Attendees 20 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? Nothing Reported

IMPACT: 2014/12 TO 2019/11
What was accomplished under these goals? Results: What Producers Learned, Achieved, Applied Result 1. Beginning farmers and ranchers will access materials, tools, information or other Clearinghouse resources, to learn about topics or find information about starting, growing, or continue farming. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Business and strategic planning When measured: Continuously Estimated Number: 500, Actual Number: 86561 How verified: Google Analytics Result 2. Beginning farmers and ranchers will connect with other producers to find information and answers using the Clearinghouse. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Mentoring, apprenticeships, and internships When measured: End of project Estimated Number: 200, Actual Number: 0 How verified: Google Analytics

PUBLICATIONS (not previously reported): 2014/12 TO 2019/11
No publications reported this period.

PROGRESS: 2016/12/01 TO 2017/11/30
Target Audience: Audience Emphasis Organic producers Small farms Specialty crop producers Traditional commercial producers Urban producers Participants Served Record the total number of unique participants who participated in your program: Total Number of Participants: 37,865 Enter the actual cumulative number of participants who as a result of your program: Started farming: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Helped prepare to start farming: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Improved farming success: Target - 0, Actual - 0 Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Delivery Total Meetings: 0 Total Meeting Participants: 0 Total Webinars: 13 Total Webinar Participants: 538 Total Website Visits: 53156 Total Online Course Participants: 0 Webinars 11/4/2015: Number of Attendees 46 12/8/2015: Number of Attendees 31 1/19/2016: Number of Attendees 56 3/31/2016: Number of Attendees 25 5/4/2016: Number of Attendees 35 6/8/2016: Number of Attendees 29 7/20/2016: Number of Attendees 22 11/9/2016: Number of Attendees 31 1/18/2017: Number of Attendees 56 5/18/2017: Number of Attendees 22 11/1/2017: Number of Attendees 34 2/13/2018: Number of Attendees 1 12/7/2017: Number of Attendees 150 How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Farm Answers Informational Materials Educators to promote Farm Answers. Contains PDF handout, PowerPoint slides and site badges. Farm Answers Promotional / Tear-off Card This handout informs audience about the FarmAnswers.org website, the different sections of the site, and provides a tear-off business card for sharing with others interested in the resources it provides. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period we will be working on several items to accomplish the goals set in our project. Our team has also been very busy adding resources and programs as well as reviewing for broken links, out of date resources, etc. We will be commencing on a review of the taxonomy and be looking for more logical breaks of resources in order to make documents easier for users to locate. We will be exploring developing new toolboxes and adding appropriate tools to them. In the next reporting period we will be releasing a reports section within the BFRDP Projects section of FarmAnswers.org. Our team has been working on developing the final development piece of our project, the forum. Our team has been researching forum tools as well as developing a plan to pre-populate the forum with topics in order to stimulate usage upon released. Part of that process is identifying BFRDP partners to seed topics and discussion. As development work has decreased, our team will be busy in terms of promotion of FarmAnswers.org. Our team has developed and began to implement a promotion plan for the coming year. We will be continuing to provide training for clearinghouse tools in addition to providing webinars and other venues to increase collaboration between all BFRDP funded projects.

IMPACT: 2016/12/01 TO 2017/11/30
What was accomplished under these goals? Development and promotion of FarmAnswers.org, the BFRDP Clearinghouse website, has continued since the last submitted report. Our team has completed development work that has enhanced the site's usability as well as additional features. For example, we have developed Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) which increase search engine optimization for Farm Answers as well as allowing additional users to connect with resources at FarmAnswers.org. Perhaps the most beneficial tool that was added to Farm Answers was the addition of the Budget Library. Beginning farmers who need to know how much an enterprise can generate and the expenses associated with it can easily go into the budget library, narrow the list by state, crop or livestock enterprise and quickly find a budget they can use for planning their operation. Our team has also been very busy adding resources and programs as well as reviewing for broken links, out of date resources, etc. We will be commencing on a review of the taxonomy and be looking for more logical breaks of resources in order to make documents easier for users to locate. In terms of outcome based reporting, we have continued to lead the effort to have BFRDP funded projects use the Results Verification System (RVS) in order to submit their project initialization and complete project reporting prior to their REEport requirements. During the last project year, we completed and released the BFRDP Projects section in Farm Answers which now includes not only project awards, but project reports. BFRDP projects who submit reports through RVS will have their project appear in FarmAnswers.org in the BFRDP projects section. This allows for other projects to see their success and be able to replicate or revise and replicate successful projects in other areas. Farm Answers has had an increase in number of resources that have been submitted by BFRDP partners indicating their increased usage of Farm Answers as well as the growing partnership between partners and the BFRDP Clearinghouse. Since the last submitted report, FarmAnswers.org contains 5,142 Library resources, 343 producer programs, 9 Toolboxes, 102 BFRDP Funded Projects who have submitted their initializations in RVS and 89 BFRDP Funded Projects who submitted project reports through RVS. In the last year, the FarmAnswers.org site has had: · 19088 Site Users · 3.55 Pages visited Per User Session · 3 minutes and 19 seconds Average Session Length · 23.9% of all site traffic from searches (Google, etc.) We continue to provide training and technical support to assist BFRDP funded projects in using RVS to submit reports. Our team continues to work with NIFA staff to encourage funded projects to enter information into RVS in order for it to be displayed in the BFRDP Projects section of FarmAnswers.org. Results: What Producers Learned, Achieved, Applied Result 1. Beginning farmers and ranchers will access materials, tools, information or other Clearinghouse resources, to learn about topics or find information about starting, growing, or continue farming. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Business and strategic planning When measured: Continuously Estimated Number: 500, Actual Number: 37589 How verified: Google Analytics Result 2. Beginning farmers and ranchers will connect with other producers to find information and answers using the Clearinghouse. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Mentoring, apprenticeships, and internships When measured: End of project Estimated Number: 200, Actual Number: 0 How verified: Google Analytics

PUBLICATIONS: 2016/12/01 TO 2017/11/30
No publications reported this period.

PROGRESS: 2015/12/01 TO 2016/11/30
Target Audience: Audience Emphasis Organic producers Small farms Specialty crop producers Traditional commercial producers Urban producers Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Delivery Total Meetings: 0 Total Meeting Participants: 0 Total Webinars: 9 Total Webinar Participants: 331 Total Website Visits: 26652 Total Online Course Participants: 0 Webinars 11/4/2015: Number of Attendees 46 12/8/2015: Number of Attendees 31 1/19/2016: Number of Attendees 56 3/31/2016: Number of Attendees 25 5/4/2016: Number of Attendees 35 6/8/2016: Number of Attendees 29 7/20/2016: Number of Attendees 22 11/9/2016: Number of Attendees 31 1/18/2017: Number of Attendees 56 How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Farm Answers Informational Materials Educators to promote Farm Answers. Contains PDF handout, PowerPoint slides and site badges. Farm Answers Promotional / Tear-off Card This handout informs audience about the FarmAnswers.org website, the different sections of the site, and provides a tear-off business card for sharing with others interested in the resources it provides. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Steps taken to help participants In the next reporting period we will be working on several items to accomplish the goals set in our project. First, we will be continuing to locate library resources and producer programs in order to help beginning farmers and ranchers improve their farming or ranching success. In addition, we will be continuing to find and fix broken links. In terms of new development work, our team will be developing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) and other resources which will increase our search engine optimization and better enabling us to connect with potential users. We will be developing and deploying a budget library as part of Farm Answers. We will be exploring developing new toolboxes and adding appropriate tools to them. In the next reporting period we will be releasing a reports section within the BFRDP Projects section of FarmAnswers.org. We will also be adding a forum. As development work has decreased, our team will be busy in terms of promotion of FarmAnswers.org. Our team has developed and began to implement a promotion plan for the coming year. We will be continuing to provide training for clearinghouse tools in addition to providing webinars and other venues to increase collaboration between all BFRDP funded projects.

IMPACT: 2015/12/01 TO 2016/11/30
What was accomplished under these goals? Results: What Producers Learned, Achieved, Applied Result 1. Beginning farmers and ranchers will access materials, tools, information or other Clearinghouse resources, to learn about topics or find information about starting, growing, or continue farming. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Business and strategic planning When measured: Continuously Estimated Number: 500, Actual Number: 17840 How verified: Google Analytics Result 2. Beginning farmers and ranchers will connect with other producers to find information and answers using the Clearinghouse. Producer action: Understand, Topic: Mentoring, apprenticeships, and internships When measured: End of project Estimated Number: 200, Actual Number: 0 How verified: Google Analytics

PUBLICATIONS: 2015/12/01 TO 2016/11/30
No publications reported this period.

PROGRESS: 2014/12/01 TO 2015/11/30
Target Audience:During this reporting period, our efforts have been focused on reaching BFRDP partner educational grants in order to foster relationships and improve outcome-based reporting. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Since the start of the project, our group has held one webinar for partner BFRDP projects. This webinar was training on using the Results Verification System (RVS) for outcome-based reporting. BFRDP funded projects are being asked to report on their projects using RVS. Projects first need to initialize their projects in RVS, which was the topic for training. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have held informational webinars to discuss collaboration with FarmAnswers. In addition, our project team attended the Beginning Farmer Project Director meeting in Reno, NV in September 2015. We discussed both use and collaboration of FarmAnswers.org and held an informational presentation of the Results Verification System. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?In the next reporting period we will be working on several items to accomplish the goals set in our project. First, we will be continuing to locate library resources and producer programs in order to help beginning farmers and ranchers improve their farming or ranching success. In addition, we will be releasing new sections of FarmAnswers.org as they are completed. In the next reporting period we will be releasing the BFRDP Project Search section of FarmAnswers.org in addition to completing, releasing the Toolbox section, and a site search powered by Google We will also be completing profile pages in addition to the logged in features of FarmAnswers.org. We will be using these features to build collaboration between our team, BFRDP funded projects and other educators around the country. One of the strong features of the profile pages is that authors will have all of their publications listed on their page including the number of views. We will be completing the reporting template to use within RVS. Once it is completed we will be developing a tool for funded projects to complete their reporting requirements and generate a report that will be easy to copy data and paste into REEport. We will also be developing training documents in order to help funded project complete reporting requirements. We will be continuing to provide training for clearinghouse tools in addition to providing webinars and other venues to increase collaboration between all BFRDP funded projects.

IMPACT: 2014/12/01 TO 2015/11/30
What was accomplished under these goals? Since the start of the project we began to build the online library of curated content by collaborating with the former grant holder of the BFRDP clearinghouse grant. We took their data, sanitized it for consistency and used that as our base of library materials. We then developed the resource record and a set of filters Library users can use to quickly find resources for their situation. We then began to import the data received from the prior grant holder by reviewing and importing programs designed for beginning farmers and ranchers into the Producer Program section of Farm Answers. During the import process we examined 380 programs given to us and kept about 280. After importing was complete our team found and created records for additional producer programs. Our team then built the records for the library of resources. This process involved creating a list of categories and commodities for website users to quickly filter the resources to find the information they are looking for. Once this was created, our team imported resources from the previous grant holder in addition to locating resources outside of this collaboration. We started with 490 documents, but kept only 155. Many of these links that were not kept either had bad links or were links to pages full of data as opposed to single resources. Both the Producer Program section and the Library are located at FarmAnswers.org. As of the end of November 2015 there were 300 producer programs in the site and over 2,300 resources in the site. Other sections of FarmAnswers.org that have been completed include the Blogs & News section and Library Collections. Our team has also worked to implement outcome-based reporting using the Results Verification System (RVS). BFRDP funded projects have been requested to report on their project using RVS in order to facilitate outcome-based projects. To accomplish this goal, our team developed a template in conjunction with BFRDP leadership. The first step for project directors is to initialize their project in RVS. This step is in-process as of the end of this reporting period. Once projects have been initialized and approved in RVS, the projects will be displayed in the Project Search section of FarmAnswers.org.

PUBLICATIONS: 2014/12/01 TO 2015/11/30
Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Craven, R. H., Klair, K. S., Reisdorfer, J. K., Mahnken, C. L., Dickinson, L., & Nordquist, D.W. (2015). Farm Answers. University of Minnesota. Retrieved from http://farmanswers.org