Rural Coalition, in collaboration with various partners, proposes a cooperative agreement to address business risk management needs of  historically underserved, limited resource farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.  Rural Coalition is proposing a multi-state effort, covering eight states in the southeastern, south central, and western regions of the country.  Through our proposed work, “Farmer-Mentor Technical Assistance Network: Building Resilient Agriculture and Rural Economies of the Future”, we will continue to build on our life-long work of advancing the interest, success, and empowerment of socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.  This agreement will also contribute to the enhancement of our community partners’ expertise and capacity to support farming communities.  The goals are to expand our technical assistance model developed to eliminate barriers that producers face in receiving technical federal assistance; assist in addressing longstanding systemic discrimination; identify and leverage USDA resources to support farming operations; enhance our capacity to respond to persisting program access, financial planning, market development, and land issues; and to contribute to resilient and regenerative underserved farming communities.   

The objectives are to provide outreach, technical assistance, program development, deployment, and evaluation of impact in financial literacy, market planning, technical support, and USDA programs. Utilizing a needs assessment, we have identified specific topics areas that are of significant importance to our target audience, including debt relief under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022.  Rural Coalition, and our partners, under this agreement, focuses our immediate attention on providing the information, education and technical assistance needed to navigate the debt relief program, which is critical to the survival of a number of farmers and ranchers we serve. In addition, the project team is focused on USDA program opportunities, enterprise and market-ready business planning, market assessment and access, tax planning, financial record keeping, and ways to save and protect farmland.  

The overall purpose is to increase knowledge, improve decision making skills, and increase the capacity of agricultural business owners.  We anticipate that farmers and ranchers, through this work, will increase participation in federal programs, maintain financial and legal record, manage risks, plan for the future of their operations, stabilize and adapt to ecological and economic changes, collaborate with each other to build capacity, and improve the financial viability of their operations.