In this Guide to Finding, Assessing, and Securing Farmland in Massachusetts, written in Plain Language, you will learn about:
•Determining the right kind of farmland for you
•Deciding what type of land tenure situation is right for you
•Starting the networking process
•Conducting farmland site visits
•Understanding your land by using the Web Soil Survey and other online information tools
•Negotiating with landowners and signing an agreement to use the land
•Beginning to farm your land!
Tips for advocating for beginning farmers in local food policy. This fact sheet is based off a webinar that New Entry Sustainable Farming Project and the Johns Hopkins Food Policy Network hosted in July 2017. The webinar explored how local food policy efforts can raise awareness of the needs of beginning farmers and create conditions favorable to help new farm businesses succeed. Advocates from three organizations described their recent initiatives and successes to support beginning farmers and provided tips on how to make the next generation of farmers and ranchers a policy priority. This fact sheet summarizes the shared tips.
This guide describes the most important challenges for profitable niche poultry enterprises in New England and some ways that producers have overcome those challenges. Through interviews and direct farm research, New Entry worked with several small-scale poultry growers to track best practices and build enterprise budgets for alternative poultry enterprises in New England. For purposes of this guide, the focus is primarily on two chicken enterprises: laying hens, with fresh eggs as the primary product; and broilers, with whole roasting birds as the primary product.
Developed by the Ag Apprenticeship Learning Network, this toolkit is a comprehensive guide to establishing or improving an agricultural apprenticeship on your farm or ranch. This resouces includes tools, suggestions, and external links to supplementary resources.
A handbook developed by NOFA_NY for farmers interested in sustainable farming internships. The toolkit discusses the role of a farmer as a teacher and whether or not they are a good fit. Chapters detail designing an internship program and the selection process and provide overviews of living arrangements, how to provide a high-quality learning experience, and applicable labor regulations.
This brief, prepated by Drummond and Wilson, reviews current trends in Wage and Hour enforcement and reviews differences in types of labor performed on a farm, and what qualifies as agricultural work.
This multi-level survey tool is designed to assist IFPs in identifying and evaluating core non-production skills by focusing on outcomes necessary for farmers to run their own farm businesses after graduating from the IFP. NIFTI’s hope is that this specific tool can support your project in providing the best opportunities for success possible for your participants during the time you have with them, and gently guide your project towards measuring a set of core skills that have been determined to be of particular importance to successful commercial farmers. Our vision is that IFP’s can focus their training on core skills that are realistically achievable given time and resource constraints, and work to connect participants with the mentors and communities that will supplement learning on the IFP and support them as they grow.
The calculator tool, also available below, can be used by program staff to aggregate individual farmer responses in order to complete the Incubator Farm Project Report.
Background Information on New Americans’ is a compilation of resources about refugees and special immigrants actively participating in refugee agriculture programs at the International Rescue Committee in Charlottesville, VA. The information originates from a variety of sources including the IRC itself and the Department of Health and Human Services. It provides abbreviated information about the cultural practices and context from which resettled people hail, with an emphasis on diet, food traditions and agricultural
background.
This document lists the newly developed and enhanced teaching resource created for projects working with New American farmers, and includes an overview of the core skills taught in that lesson. Core skills refer to concepts and skills that are central to farmer training programs. The teaching resources reference here were developed collaboratively by the Institute for Social and Economic Development (ISED Solutions) and 18 refugee farmer training programs across the country.
Building new relationships for collaboration, funding or staffing often requires explaining what your program is and how it works. The refugee Ag. 101 packet aims to equip you with enough resources and ideas that you can adapt to your program and share with others.
