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INVESTIGATOR: Raders, G.

PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
Planting Justice
996 B 62nd street
Oakland, CALIFORNIA 94608

ADVANCING NEXT GENERATION URBAN FARMERS: EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION, MENTORING, AND EMPLOYMENT

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: This Standard BFRDP project presents an innovative model to advance economic viability, land stewardship, and social equity for beginning and socially disadvantaged beginning farmers. This proposal directly addresses urgent trends conveyed in the 2012 USDACensus: the aging farmer population and declining numbers of beginning farmers. This project counters these trends by building comprehensive and culturally relevant training/employment opportunities for beginning and underserved farmers, while strengthening the mentoring capacity of experienced farmers to pass on their knowledge. Our target audience includes 120 beginning farmers, including 90 formerly incarcerated, immigrants, and otherwise socially disadvantaged participants, in 6 cohorts over the 3-year grant period. Successful program graduates will complete 150 hours of on-site, hands-on training as part of our Applied Agroecology and Beginning Farmer Curriculum, and receive the opportunity to be mentored by pioneering local farmers through paid 3-6 month apprenticeships on local farms in the MESA network, living-wage employment as urban farmers with Planting Justice, and/or substantial financial, legal, technical, and administrative support to access land and launch their own farming startups. These comprehensive services will spur the next generation to launch and sustain successful careers in urban and peri-urban farming. Planting Justice is a national leader in re-entry green job placement and urban farming training for formerly incarcerated people, and this project will build upon their success helping former inmates obtain inspirational employment as new urban farmers. MESA is internationally recognized as a pioneering sustainable agriculture training organization with 18 years running experiential and farmer mentorship programs.Advancing Next Generation Urban Farmers stands out as the first BFRDP project to incentivize formerly incarcerated peoples to become successful beginning farmers, and the first BFRDP project to directly link the empowerment of re-entry and new-entry beginning farmers, simultaneously uplifting two groups that have been historically underserved and disconnected from one another. In urban areas, re-entry and new entry groups often struggle and compete to access limited jobs, land, housing and community resources. This project will encourage and implement collaborative community building by bridging people across cultural divides and creating opportunities to strengthen individual and community resilience, food security and economic viability. Growing food together can be used to heal trauma and forge the personal relationships rooted in nourishing individuals, their families and communities. While many educational materials in sustainable farming are more targeted at participants with an academic background; this project is distilling and condensing information andusing multimedia materials such as videos, infographics, podcasts, tip-sheets and social media. Lastly, it is key for socially disadvantaged beginning farmers who are competing in a market-place soon-to-be densely occupied by millennials to have basic knowledge in computer literacy, social media and online marketing.

OBJECTIVES: Over the three-year grant period, this project's goals encompass the following: A) Train 120 new farmers in sustainable and profitable urban and periurban farming; B) Mobilize 20 socially disadvantaged farmers to launch new urban and peri-urban farm startup businesses; C) Employ five new farmers in an established community-based organization, D) Link 15 beginning farmers with experienced farmersfor paid on-farm apprenticeships, and E) Empower participating Host farmers to advance their mentorship capacity and pass comprehensive skills on to the next generation.