Beginning farmer educators: Take our survey
Print
EmailTell us about your experiences as an educator to help improve the quality of beginning farmer education in Michigan.
Could you spare a few minutes to help new farmers? A team of Michigan beginning farmer educators from Michigan State University (MSU) Extension and partner organizations have received support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Beginning Farmer Rancher Grant program to develop curriculum and provide teacher training to support beginning farmer programs and educators like yourself.
There is a wide variety of beginning farmer programs across the state, providing education through formal programs and informal opportunities. We aim to create a curriculum that incorporates knowledge with hands on opportunities. We are asking you to share your experiences of the best approaches to teach beginning farmers about managing a farm, starting a farm business, and marketing products.
This survey will help us better understand the preferred teaching methods and tools of beginning farmer educators. It will also help us to evaluate, at the end of this grant program, how useful and accessible the materials and approaches are for beginning farmer educators.
If you are an educator who provides training, resources, and technical assistance to new and beginning farmers, we request about 15 minutes of your day to help us help new farmers by answering questions in the survey. Please note that your responses and your personal or business information will not be shared.
Please reach out to us if you would like to further discuss this project or are interested in accessing the materials once completed. The learning materials will be in English and Spanish and will include hands-on and virtual programming. These materials will be available to beginning farmer educators and individual beginning farmers.
You can reach us at sorrone@msu.edu and refer to the Beginning Farmer Rancher Program in the subject line.
We appreciate your time to complete the survey, so that we may develop useful materials for educators like yourselves!
More information about the project can be found in this article from the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems: USDA grant will engage Michigan farmers to create trainings for beginning farmers.
This work is supported by the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grant no. 2021-70033-35833 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
