Item No. 1 of 1

INVESTIGATOR: Zandi, H.

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

BUILDING BEGINNING FARMER RESILIENCE THROUGH HYBRID PARTICIPATORY EDUCATION, URBAN-RURAL NETWORKS, MENTORSHIP, AND INCUBATION

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: This collaborative project aims to advance economic viability, small farm production skills, and social resilience for under-resourced and socially disadvantaged beginning farmers. With an innovative hybrid online and in-person farmer training course, as well as on-the-job training, this project addresses the concerns of the Covid19 pandemic, the aging farmer population, and declining numbers of beginning farmers. It counters these pressing issues by building comprehensive and culturally relevant hybrid courses and on-the-job training with a diverse urban-rural network of mentors and employment pathways. This proposal also recognizes that professional farmers need support to fully achieve their potential in sharing their expertise with aspiring farmers. Our target audience includes 300 beginning farmers, including 200 formerly incarcerated, immigrants, and otherwise socially-disadvantaged/systemically-oppressed participants over 3 years. With the help of host-farm educators, mentors, and Merritt College faculty, 300 participants will benefit from 210 hours of course instruction (150 individuals from the hybrid on-farm and online courses, and an additional 150 from the online courses exclusively). Courses topics include ecologically-based diversified farming, food safety, risk management, and business development. 50 of these participants will also benefit from 225 hours of financially compensated on-the-job training for college credit. Graduates can receive mentorship from experienced farmers through one-on-one consultations, paid internships, employment, and/or financial, technical, land-access and administrative start-up support.

OBJECTIVES: Over the next three-year grant period, hybrid education specialists at Agroecology Commons and Agroecology educators Merritt College will develop a hybrid training program for beginning farmers that provides credit toward Merritt College's Certificate in Urban Agroecology that will include on-farm experiential training and online coursework for 150 participants, as well a virtual certificate program that is exclusively online serving an additional 150 participants. Planting Justice and Farmer Commons will augment the virtual training through coordinating on-the-job training and farm-based learning opportunities for participants with community partners and host mentor farms. Courses will introduce practical skills in ecologically-based food production, including annual vegetable production, production of culinary and medicinal herbs, animal husbandry, soil health, nursery management, orchard management, marketing, business development of micro-enterprises, record keeping, food safety, and product certification.This program's long-term goal is to increase pathways for socially disadvantaged and limited-resource beginning farmers to establish viable agricultural micro-enterprises along the urban-to-rural spectrum by developing a network of farmer-mentors, host farms, entrepreneurs, and interconnected enterprises to support the sustained success and endurance of these new farm businesses. This includes incubating small and cooperative businesses. In the next 10 to 20 years, we envision seeding over 100 new farming businesses owned and operated by socially disadvantaged and limited-resource beginning farmers.Participants who successfully complete either certificate course will qualify for on-the-job training and entrepreneurial support consisting of one-on-one mentorship, farm apprenticeships, and mini-grants. The goals to improve on-the-job training and entrepreneurial support in this grant period include (1) co-designing customized learning plans with partner farms for graduates who will apprentice or receive employment with them; and (2) design a virtual platform for participating host farmers to exchange their knowledge and best practices for the mentorship of aspiring farmers. The various PJ farms will be one of the first sites for on-the-job training.A. Basic livestock, forestry and crop farming practicesObjectiveA.1. To provide socially disadvantaged, limited-resource beginning farmers with comprehensive vocational training, multigenerational and peer-to-peer mentorship, paid training, and interactive online coursework to advance education and experience with regenerative crop farming, livestock, agro-forestry.C. Entrepreneurship and business trainingObjectiveC.1. To equip next generation farmers with innovative yet proven strategies to design and maintain a profitable new farming business, and to empower formerly incarcerated people, immigrants and under-resourced beginning farmers with paid trainings, entrepreneurial support, and living-wage urban farming opportunities.E. Financial and risk management trainingObjectivesE.1. To help beginning farmers access farm financing programs, learn about farm funding and credit options, develop systems for record keeping, and draft risk management plans.?F. Natural resource management and planningObjectivesF.1. To support new farmers in designing farms that protect and regenerate on-farm natural resources: soil, water, air, energy, native plants and forests, wildlife, pollinators, beneficial insects and microbes.G. Diversification and marketing strategiesObjectivesG.1. To develop assessment strategies and support new farmers to implement an array of distribution and marketing models including food hub sales, CSAs, Farmers Markets, farm-stands, value-added processing, farm to restaurant sales, farm to grocery store sales, and herd sharing.??H. Curriculum developmentObjectivesH.1. Enhance engagement via the development of robust and interactive online courses, improve experiential learning via more on-the-job training, and offer greater emphasis on small business development for participants by expanding the curriculum to align with Merritt College's Certificate in Urban Agroecology.H.2. Greatly expand accessibility by offering participants the unique ability to participate in BAFT's online certificate course if they cannot attend in-person sessions, as well as replicability to other farmer training programs.I. Mentoring, apprenticeships, and internshipsObjectivesI.1. To provide socially disadvantaged beginning farmers and agricultural students with comprehensive vocational training in urban and peri-urban agriculture through hands-on training, on-farm apprenticeship and multi-generational and peer-to-peer mentorship in BAFT's small farmer mobilization program.

APPROACH: Activities to achieve Objective A.1. Beginning in month #4 of the grant period, AC/PJ will recruit our first cohort of socially disadvantaged farmers through our community networks and ongoing in-prison farmer-training programs. Agroecology Commons/PJ will call upon the following committed partners for outreach support to immigrants and other limited resource beginning farmers.Between months #s 1 - 5, the Agroecology Instructor and Hybrid Education Specialist will have completed their review, edits, and enhancements to the 4-month curriculum previously developed. The curriculum will be enhanced by the creation of interactive online courses that can be taken in conjunction with courses offered by Agroecology Commons and Merritt College. These courses include no-till production, diversified tree and crop farming, agro-ecological production practices, on-farm soil and water conservation, diversified livestock rotation, edible insect rearing, and small-scale urban animal husbandry. Content will be reviewed by project partners.By month #6, the 40 participants of BAFT cohort #1 will begin the BAFT's Certificate of Completion in the practical agroecology course, which includes both a virtual online and a hands-on experiential training program, to take place on urban incubation farms in the BAFT network. A 1-month introduction to specific production systems will include rotations at the Agroecology Commons incubator farm on annual vegetable production, the production of culinary and medicinal herbs, and animal husbandry, while at PJ's farm sites rotations will focus on nursery management and orchard management. Each annual cohort of BAFT's Certificate of Completion will involve 360 hours of combined hands-on training and conceptual material. In total over the three-year grant period, we anticipate that of the 150 participants who attend hybrid in-person and online courses, and 150 who will attend the online courses exclusively.From grant years #2 - 3, select graduates will receive paid internships and employment as urban farmers; 50 graduates will be awarded on-farm apprenticeships, mini-grants, and one-on-one mentorship through the BAFT small farmer mobilization program (see Management Plan for host farm locations). Graduates will engage in evaluations at each stage of the program and all graduates will be invited to help improve and amend the curriculum.Activities to achieve objective C.1. Beginning in month #9 of the grant period, 40 beginning farmers in BAFT cohort #1 will begin training in farm entrepreneurship and business planning as part of the 360-hour Certificate in Urban Agroecology that includes classes on the following agri-preneurial subjects: land acquisition strategies, securing start-up farm financing, business planning, farm cooperatives, employment and human resources training, and legal considerations.Beginning in month #13 of the grant period, successful graduates in BAFT cohort #1 will begin 3 - 6 month paid apprenticeships with successful local family farms, to directly experience innovative and exemplary farming business models, in preparation for their own farm startup businesses. Exemplary graduates who have completed viable business plans with support from mentors will also begin receiving $2,000 mini-grants and the opportunity to farm on subsidized land through AC'sincubator farm. By the end of the three-year grant period, at least 10 new farmers will have launched their new farming enterprises.Activities to achieve Objective D.1. By month #7, Agroecology Commons and PJ educators will have refined and completed the following modules in its Certificate of Urban Agroecology program to help new farmers access financial support for their startup businesses and farm cooperatives: farm business planning; start-up financing; access to capital; access to land; and risk management planning. Each module will include publications, videos, worksheets, webinars, online discussion forums, and chatrooms.Beginning with our first 40 participants in cohort #1, beginning farmers will identify their financial needs, key success factors, risks and potential sources of funding as well as develop a risk mitigation plan, sample grant and loan application with debt, equity and low-interest financing. Participants will receive group support from their peers and the education team at Agroecology Commons and PJ through in-person workshops. They will also have access to online resources that support their financial and risk management training. In total, 150 beginning farmers will participate in the curriculum by the end of year #3.Activities to achieve Objective E.1. Beginning in month #6 with cohort #1, beginning farmers will be given hands-on training at Farmer Commons, PJ, and partner farms, with support from with classroom and online learning, in strategies for building topsoil fertility, rehydrating farm ecosystems through on-farm water harvesting and conservation strategies, increasing biodiversity, preserving and creating new wildlife corridors and pollinator habitats and reduction and mitigation of on-farm CO2. These activities will be accomplished through sustainable biomass recycling, mulching, on-farm water catchment, installation of water harvesting contoured swales, creating wildlife, pollinator, and beneficial predator habitats, and diversified planting strategies.Activities to achieve Objective F.1. Beginning in month #6 with cohort #1, course participants will begin to complete classes at PJ and Agroecology Commons incubator farms that teach them how to develop and choose from a diversity of distribution and marketing models to meet the specific market and strategy of their proposed farm business. Class topics will also include planting strategies and farm design to maximize economic yield and minimize financial inputs and value-added processing.Activities to achieve Objective G.1. The innovations to the existing BAFT curriculum created with the 2015-2018 BFRDP grant will leverage Agroecology Commons' and PJ's respective areas of expertise to offer 5 options for participants in the spring practical agroecology course to deepen their knowledge of annual vegetable production, the production of culinary and medicinal herbs, animal husbandry, nursery management, and orchard management over a 1-month period of time. The course on small farm and cooperative development will require expanding existing topics on product certification, direct marketing, and fundraising to cover new topics such as record keeping, food safety, customer relations, and local market analysis.These improvements to the BAFT curriculum will require an expansion of the existing 23 online learning modules to 48 modules by the BAFT educator team. By the end of month #24, the expanded 48-module curriculum will be given a Creative Commons License and shared on www.farmanswers.org.Activities to achieve Objective H.1. Vocational training and peer-to-peer mentorship will be achieved through hands-on training opportunities. By month #12, Program Directors, Experiential Education Coordinator andwill have operationalized a new model for a multi-stakeholder cooperative incubator farm with the sharing of governance and decision-making by incubatees, partner organizations, and Agroecology Commons staff. Twelve individuals will have the opportunity for continued hands-on experiential learning, mentorship, and subsidized land leases on three Bay Area incubator urban farm sites managed by Agroecology Commons and PJ starting in month #13. The Urban Agroecology Instructor, Mentorship Director and Incubator Director, supported by community partners, will facilitate learning programs for 50 exemplary BAFT graduates that will be matched with 3 - 6-month paid apprenticeships (at least $15/hour) on at least 10 urban and peri-urban farms across California, receive one-on-one mentorship, or mini-grantsto seed new farming start-up ventures.