Other Ag News:

Nichole Espineli is studying for her master’s degree at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her determination, borne from her personal experience with food insecurity, led her to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL) internship this past summer with the USDA Agricultural Research Service.

There is always more to learn when starting or expanding your farming operation. If you want to improve your technical or business skills to benefit your farm dreams, then consider joining one of our nearly three dozen online courses during live instruction this upcoming online course season.

The Cornell Small Farms Program is excited to announce that our courses will begin live webinars this fall, including newer additions to our online course suite and more learning opportunities in Spanish. Our growing team of online course instructors includes experienced farmers, extension educators, and agriculture service providers.

Our courses are offered on a user-friendly platform, which grants registrants permanent access to their course content. In our ongoing commitment to equitable access to education, we have maintained tiered pricing for our courses based on household size and income. We also offer scholarships for eligible farmers in New York who face an entry barrier to farming, and for military veterans in New York.

Registration is now open for all courses, with live content starting in September for our first block of courses.

• BF 101: Cómo Iniciar su Negocio Agrícola
  • ¿Está pensando en comenzar un negocio agrícola propio, pero se siente confundiso por todas las decisiones que esto involucra? Este curso esta diseñado para ayudar a los agricultores nuevos y aspirantes a dar los primeros pasos para iniciar su propio negocio agrícola (finca, rancho, granja) ya sea que tenga acceso a la tierra o no.
• BF 101: Starting at Square One
  • So you’re thinking about starting a farm, but feeling overwhelmed by all the decisions? This course was designed to assist new and aspiring farmers in taking the first steps in thinking through farm start-up (whether you already have land access or not).
• BF 112: Reading the Land
  • This course is a 4-week exploration of how you can confirm and/or measure improved land health. You will learn how to read the land, and how to conduct various biological monitoring practices, from simple to more complex.
• BF 149: Identifying and Partnering with Mushrooms in Farms, Gardens and Forests
  • Gain an overview of foundational knowledge needed to understand how mushrooms might play a role in your farm and/or greater community. You will learn the basic biology and life cycle, how to properly harvest and identify a specimen, and receive basic information and examples of ways humans are using mushrooms successfully depending on their goals and context.
• BF 204: QuickBooks for Farmers
  • Are you a beginning farmer? Or are you a current farmer with the desire to switch to an online accounting system? Then our quick guide to Quickbooks is for you. Learn the software’s basic features, such as sales tax, inventory, invoicing, adjustments, and year-end procedures.
• BF 233: Beef Cattle Management
  • This course will show you how having a successful cattle business is about much more than just buying a few head and putting them in a field. Learn about appropriate breeds, marketing strategies, and many more aspects of starting a beef enterprise.

Our program offers nearly three dozen online courses to help farmers improve their technical and business skills. These courses cover a range of topics any farmer needs to succeed, such as access to capital, stress reduction for farmers, poultry production, vegetable farming, and so much more. Experienced farmers, extension educators, and agriculture service providers guide students through course content, including weekly live webinars, videos, and resources.

In recent years we added “Growing Uncommon Fruit,” which will help you determine whether incorporating uncommon fruit into your operation is the right decision for you, “Goat Production,” which will guide beginning farmers through the production and marketing of goats for dairy, meat and fiber, and “Identifying and Partnering with Mushrooms in Farms, Gardens and Forests” to teach you basic ID, species, life cycle, and potential applications of mushrooms to solve community-level challenges. Other newer additions include “Stress Reduction for Farmers,” which offers strategies for streamlining your farm; “Access to Capital” for anyone seeking funding for a farm enterprise; “Cut Flower Production” on the business of flower farming; a course on “Beef Cattle Management;” a primer on “Social Media & Online Marketing” for your farm business; and a 4-week intensive in how “Reading the Land” can help you monitor its health.

In addition to new courses, we have expanded our Spanish-first online course offerings with our “BF 101: Cómo Iniciar su Negocio Agrícola” and “BF 102: Mercados y Rentabilidad.”

The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings, and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, webinars will be woven into the interface of the course for a dedicated time slot each year to allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real-time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.

You can browse all of our course offerings on our website. You can learn more about our courses, including answers to common questions, on our course FAQ.

The post Enroll Now for Small Farms Online Course Season Beginning this Fall appeared first on Cornell Small Farms.

NSAC members gathered once again for our annual summer Coalition meeting, this time on the banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul, Minnesota on August 5-8, 2024. Over the course of the meeting, NSAC members and staff strategized collectively about current campaigns and future Coalition activities. NSAC members also had the chance to hear from Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie and received a surprise visit from USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres-Small. To highlight the work being done by Coalition members in the region, NSAC members visited local farms that exemplify and embody our shared values and advocacy. As Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi powered the flour mills dotting the Twin Cities in the late 19th century, the summer meeting in St. Paul energized NSAC members to continue working on our shared priorities.

The gathering was bracketed by special appearances from federal agriculture policy leaders. On the opening night of the meeting, Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota and USDA Under Secretary Robert Bonnie spoke to NSAC members in a panel moderated by NSAC’s Policy Director, Mike Lavender. Their conversation focused on the need to ensure that farm policy and programs serve all farmers, especially considering the increasing challenges and extreme weather conditions farmers face due to a changing climate.

On the last day of the meeting, USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres-Small offered remarks over breakfast and took questions from NSAC members. In her remarks, Torres-Small referred to NSAC as a crucial partner, nodding to the influence the Coalition had on the positive strides the Biden USDA has taken. She acknowledged that much work remains to be done to address the challenges of underserved farmers and communities, and doing so remains one of her priorities.

Torres-Small also recognized the need to increase accessibility to USDA programs and pointed to the need to lower entry requirements, and the need to invest in local and regional food systems like small meat processors and the Local Food Purchase Cooperative Agreement (LFPA). She noted that another one of those challenges is making sure that disaster assistance programs are expanded to include farmers who are not enrolled in the commodity insurance program. Torres-Small implored NSAC members to continue to share its vision of federal programs with USDA. 

The “DC Report”, an NSAC meeting tradition, offers the opportunity to get up to date on recent legislative activities and to preview possible next steps the Coalition may take over the next six months. In this summers’ DC Report, NSAC Policy Director, Mike Lavender summarized recent legislative movement towards a new farm bill, including the Senate framework released by Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Stabenow (D-MI) and a House farm bill that went through Committee markup in late May before the legislative process in both chambers stalled. The report also highlighted recent agricultural appropriations developments in the House and Senate, as well as possible scenarios we may see after the November 5th elections. 

The report shared important agency updates related to our shared work with USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service release of the 2022 Agricultural Census that reported more small farms and beginning farmers in Minnesota in 2022 than in 2017. Another notable USDA highlight included the release of its Equity Commission’s Final Report and the announcement of one of the Packers and Stockyards Act final rules, designed to protect the rights of livestock and poultry producers. The report also touched on FDA’s final rule on Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water to a science- and risk-based approach that is adaptable to different scales of farming and models.

During strategy sessions, NSAC members received updates on recent advocacy efforts and took time to move forward the Coalition’s three grassroots campaigns: Climate Change and Agriculture, Farm Safety Net, and Local and Regional Food Systems. The Climate Change and Agriculture campaign advocates for programs that address climate change through support and implementation of climate friendly agricultural practices in programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The Farm Safety Net campaign focuses on making crop insurance more accessible to small and diversified crop farmers who lack access to resources following climate disasters and not just the large agricultural operations that grow cover commodities and have base acres, as outlined in NSAC’s Unsustainable: The State of the Farm Safety Net, released earlier this year. Lastly, the Local and Regional Food Systems campaign seeks to strengthen local food systems by investing in local infrastructure and food supply chains while purchasing food from small, local farms and from farmers from socially disadvantaged populations that can go to schools and food pantries.

Farm tours have become a beloved feature of NSAC summer meetings. Collaborating with our local members who work directly with farmers and organizations building a more equitable and sustainable food system, we identify and ask local farms to host members to learn how our collective work translates on the ground. These visits demonstrate the challenges farmers and food businesses face and the innovative programs that help build stronger food systems. This year members visited four farms in central Minnesota.

Big River Farms is an incubator farm about 20 miles northeast of the Twin Cities in St. Croix, dedicated to fighting hunger by facilitating farmer learning through sustainable food production that is culturally appropriate for groups suffering from the most dramatic effects of limited food access. Big River Farms traces its roots to a 1970s Hennepin County effort to fight hunger.  It partners with organizations distributing fresh local produce and frozen meat to individuals and communities with limited food accessibility in the region.

Located in Falcon Heights, within the Twin Cities metropolitan area, The Good Acre serves as a food hub committed to farmer equity, food quality, and the environment. Their work is grounded on community well-being and sustainability.

Working to build a more equitable food system that centers and amplifies BIPOC voices, The Good Acre provides technical assistance to prepare farmers for wholesale production through their own Local Emergency Assistance Farmer Fund (LEAFF) program while living up to its sustainability tenets.

Seeds Farm is an organic farm located just south of Northfield where farmer Becca Rudebusch is making use of federal programs available for farmers like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to implement climate resilient practices such as high tunnels and cover crops.  The farm has also recently installed solar panels. They also provide organic produce to local food coops, food banks, restaurants, public schools, and regional distributors, as well as host occasional farm dinners for community members. 

Another farm incubator members visited is Sharing Our Roots, also near Northfield. Sharing our Roots is located on recovered wetlands and is invested in building community by providing land access to farming teams looking to make a living through resilient agricultural practices. They do this on the more than 100 acres of farmland serving 13 teams of farmers that include people of color and immigrants. The facilities include a space to water seed for starting and planting trays, and shipping containers turned into refrigeration units.

The full day of farm visits concluded at Bang Brewery, where organic ales and lagers are brewed and served in a grain bin brewery and tap room in Saint Paul. It was a lovely summer evening in the beer garden and members and staff got to sample Bang’s beers, many of which are crafted with certified organic malts, grains, hops and yeast. Some members sampled beer made from Kernza® – a perennial grain being developed by the Land Institute in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and other research partners. Bang Brewery has been brewing with the grain since 2017. NSAC members dined on delicious artisan pizza prepared on site by Farina Rosa, whose chef uses a blend of organically produced flours freshly milled right in the Twin Cities.

As the meeting closed, NSAC members made commitments to continue working towards shared priorities and build on previous efforts to create a more equitable food system. With the election on the horizon, members took pause to consider the Coalition’s recommendations for new members of Congress and a new presidential administration. Our work will be reshaped and reassessed at our winter meeting in Washington, DC in February 2025. In the meantime, our commitment to securing a farm bill that uplifts all farmers and centers climate resilience and racial equity remains unwavering. 

The post Summer in Saint Paul: NSAC Members Meet, Reenergize in Minnesota appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Vanessa Valencia is a recent graduate from Oregon State University who majored in marketing. She is one of 14 students accepted into the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) High School Equivalency Program (HEP)/College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) internship program.