This guide can be used by trainers who want to assist pre-literate and/or English- as a second language-speaking farmers with including cover crops in vegetable production and other crop rotation schedules. It covers three major types of cover crops (mustards, legumes, and ‘other’), and the potential benefits and costs of cover crops. It leads farmers through the process of identifying what they want to accomplish via cover cropping, assists them with identifying opportunities within their production schedule for insertion of cover crops, and assists farmers with selecting the cover crop or mixture of cover crops which best match their needs and goals. Some data is specific to the Southeast region of the United States, but links to resources where data appropriate to other regions can be accessed are provided. This teaching resource was developed by Lauren Bailey of The Nashville Food Project in Nashville, TN in partnership with the Institute for Social and Economic Development (ISED Solutions). 

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. 

Allows both the apprentice and mentor to evaluate apprentice progress in various domains on a 5 point scale. There is also a section for comments to be completed by the mentor.

This tool, developed by Vilicus Farms, is used for apprentice and manager performance evaluation. The tool facilitates evaluation of the apprentice and host farm, from the perspective of both the apprentice and the mentor.

A worksheet developed by the New England Small Fams Institute which lists the motivations for becoming a mentor, which can be ranked by a prospective mentor. This serves as a tool for a farmer to assess their desire and need for an apprenticeship program.

Describes the partnership between Unity College and Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Associatoin - allowing apprentices working with MOFGA to earn academic credit. Certain academic coursework must be completed alongside the apprenticeship hours.

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 fact sheet, published by the United States Department Of Labor, defines employment under the The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and outlines what conditions must be met for an intern to qualify as unpaid. The fact sheet further discusses factors that need to be considered by “for-profit” internship programs.

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. 

These best practices are the result of a collaborative process between ten New American farmer training programs. Over a three year period, these programs implemented new teaching resources and methods. These practices represent effective and relevant teaching practices for farmer training with farmers with educationally and linguistically diverse backgrounds