The Helping Tennessee Farmers
Evaluate and Implement New Enterprises and Marketing Strategies project
provided educational opportunities to help farmers assess and manage marketing
risk by evaluating new product, enterprise and market opportunities and
implementing new or improved marketing strategies. Tennessee farmers interested
in value-added food products, direct marketing and agritourism enterprises were targeted for three types of workshops including:
- Starting a Food Manufacturing Business in Tennessee workshops, helping farmers learn how to analyze, develop and market new value-added food products
- MarketReady workshops,
helping farmers learn what it takes to market products directly to
restaurants, grocery stores and other wholesale markets
- Exploring Agritourism for Your Farm workshops, helping farmers learn how to analyze, develop and market new agritourism enterprises
The project was originally designed to provide in-person, day-long workshops. Due to COVID-19, workshops were pivoted to online delivery through a series of shorter webinars. A total of 522 people participated with the following impacts:
- 208 reported an increased understanding of new enterprise or market opportunities and challenges
- 187 developed goals for implementing new or improved marketing strategies
- 118 used information learned to evaluate whether to pursue the development of a new product, enterprise or marketing channel
- 44 implemented new or improved marketing strategies