Abstract
Beginning farmer training and program development in United States is one of the most significant yet poorly understood areas of agriculture, food system, and community development research and practice. This article offers a review of the social context in forming recent beginning farmer educational programming in order to shed light on its development, purpose, and future trajectory. We provide several illustrations of best practices to support our main point that adult agricultural education for beginning farmers is taking on new forms and patterns to support and sustain a new generation of famers. As such it is vitalizing new opportunities to generate and exchange information and knowledge for sustainable agriculture. While these examples appear promising, the article concludes with recommendations for researchers and practitioners to expand the boundaries of what constitutes meaningful education for beginning farmers who are interested in sustainable food system models and practices.
Highlights
Beginning farmer training and program development is growing at a rapid rate throughout the United States.1 Development practitioners, educators, researchers, students, and farmers alike are currently experiencing the largest policy and Volume 1, Issue 1 / August 2010program response aimed at creating new opportunities for people who have an interest in agriculture to begin farming
We might think of the history of adult beginning farmer education in terms of the emergence of programs and services to enhance opportunities in sustainable agriculture, which is financially attributed to the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program (Poincelot, et al, 2006) and private foundation support (Hesterman, 2006)
We found that beginning farmer initiatives across the country provide targeted programs for such groups as immigrants and refugees with farming experience, new urban agriculturists, women in farming, mid-career changers, individuals interested in small-scale farming, exiting and entering farmers, farmers between the age of 18 and 35, and even farmers who are starting to explore the idea of farm startup
Summary
Beginning farmer training and program development is growing at a rapid rate throughout the United States. Development practitioners, educators, researchers, students, and farmers alike are currently experiencing the largest policy and Volume 1, Issue 1 / August 2010program response aimed at creating new opportunities for people who have an interest in agriculture to begin farming. In fall 2009 the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded roughly $19 million through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) This first-time competitive grant program signifies an important point in time in the movement to support local and regional training, education, outreach, and technically based initiatives to address the critical needs of beginning farmers across the United States. Such a movement rests on a robust foundation built by many educators, scholars, and decision-makers whose advocacy aims are to develop viable community food systems that meet the needs of the generation. It is further important to recognize the evolving participation of the land grant university and Cooperative Extension system in the history of beginning farmer research, education, and outreach through its many transformations since the 1862 and 1890 Morrill Land Grant acts, as well as the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 (Danbom, 1986; Rasmussen, 1960)
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