Completed Project Report


Partnering to Increase Resiliency for Specialty Crop Farmers

  • Award Amount: $49,965
  • Regional Center: North Central Extension Risk Management Education Center
  • Grant Program: 2023 Education Projects

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Project Overview

In our project Partnering to Increase Resiliency for Specialty Crop Farmers we set out to address the fact that farmers are on the front lines responding to weather-related risks created by increasing weather variability and extreme events. Our project was designed to support a diverse network of specialty crop farmers to overcome barriers and adopt climate-smart practices that address: environmental and weather-related risks; diversification of products, enterprises, geography; accessing State and Federal farm programs that help producers manage risk; and financial analysis. This project was carried out in partnership with The Good Acre and the University of Minnesota Extension and Climate Adaptation Partnership. Due to some very well attended workshops and conference sessions, we were able to reach over 230 specialty crop farmers, greatly exceeding our proposed goal and demonstrating the need to provide climate resiliency trainings for specialty crop farmers in our region. In this project we worked directly with farmers through four stand-alone workshops, a field day, a webinar, and 1-1 on-farm technical assistance to 25 farmers. We also published an article in our print newsletter, the Land Stewardship Letter, which has a readership of nearly 4,000 households, as well as a video which has been viewed 78 times to date, and a podcast that to date has been downloaded 8,000 times. LSP and partners have shared these resources widely and they will remain available for future use by farmers. One of the greatest outcomes of this project was directly connecting specialty crop farmers to state and federal agencies that can support farmers with both technical and financial resources to create more resilient farms. Many of our participants commented that these direct connections were very important and made a positive impact on their farm businesses. We will continue to build on the work performed under this project to continue to support specialty crop farmers to build their climate resilience.

Number of Participants: 238

Outcomes

Project Steps

PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS

There are no promotional materials available for this project.

EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

There are no educational materials available for this project.

REPORTS & EVALUATIONS

There are no reports or evaluations available for this project.

DELIVERY AREA

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INDIVIDUAL STORIES / EXAMPLES OF SUCCESS / QUOTES