The overarching goal of this cooperative agreement is to support socially disadvantaged farmers and other economically distressed and underserved farmers and their communities, by connecting immigrant and refugee farmers in the Northeast with the tools, trainings, and services needed to support their farming businesses; supporting farmers through financial and tax literacy; market planning for cultural crops; expanding understanding and representation of cultural crops by working with the USDA to get them on the federal crop list; providing culturally sensitive technical support for immigrant and refugee farmers. Our work includes the following objectives for providing technical assistance, program development, curriculum development, deployment, and evaluation of impact in the following areas:
Financial Literacy: Provide historically underserved, economically distressed farmers of color in learning financial planning, business planning, and tax planning through technical support, training, and individualized support.
Introduction to USDA programs: Increase awareness and access to the numerous programs at USDA to benefit growth of the producers who are historically underserved and economically distressed in farming; including farm ownership and operation loans and microloan programs.
Market planning: Support farmers through market planning, business development, and technical support around specialty cultural crops to ensure they have economic and financial success in the markets that they engage with. Simultaneously World Farmers will work closely with the USDA to add cultural crops to the federal crop list- further providing capacity and support for these crops.
Technical Support: World Farmers will offer technical support and training in business development, marketing techniques, and agricultural production. Equally important to these services is that we offer a safe space where farmers can learn from peers. Our programming is delivered in a respectful environment through cross-cultural co-learning and mentorship among farmers and World Farmers staff, with whom farmers have developed relationships built on trust and understanding.