On Friday, October 28, USDA announced $13.5 million in grants to support crop insurance education and outreach in 47 states to ensure that small and underserved producers get the information they need to effectively manage their risk and remain productive.  The grants were awarded as part of the fiscal year 2011 funding cycle for two programs administered by USDA’s Risk Management Agency: the Risk Management Education and Outreach Partnership Agreements program, and the Risk Management Targeted States Partnership Agreements program.

The purpose of these cooperative partnership agreements is to deliver crop insurance education and risk management training to U.S. agricultural producers to assist them in identifying and managing production, marketing, legal, financial and human risk, including States where there is a low level of crop insurance participation and availability.

These two programs give priority to partnerships that provide education and outreach to specialty crop producers (who are not currently insured under Federal crop insurance); underserved commodities (such as livestock and forage); and limited resource, socially disadvantaged and other traditionally underserved farmers and ranchers.

Many of the organizations that received grants from these RMA partnership programs offer risk management education to underserved producers and focus on crop diversification, farm viability, and place an emphasis on sustainably grown products.  Of the 104 grants awarded this year, 21 went to NSAC member organizations, including:

• Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (Salinas, CA) – to prepare socially disadvantaged and beginning farmers to confidently manage sources of regulatory and legal risk
• Center for Rural Affairs (Lyons, NE) – to help 100 veterans gain knowledge about managing farm and ranch startup strategies and managing business risk
• Kansas Rural Center (Whiting, KS) – to fund a sustainable agriculture risk management strategies conference
• Land Stewardship Project (Minneapolis, MN) – to train beginning, immigrant, women and existing farmers seeking to diversify their enterprise at the whole farm or field level
• Michigan Food and Farming Systems (East Lansing, MI) – to improve and expand African American and Hispanic producers’ strategies to reduce risk on their specialty crop family farms
• Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services (Spring Valley, WI) – to provide information and resources on sustainable farm management to new farmers, women farmers, and young farmers
• National Center for Appropriate Technology (Butte, MT and nationwide) – to deliver a risk-management training series for small-acreage specialty crop and livestock producers in various regions of the country, train women and Hispanic farmers and ranchers in Oklahoma, and do pastured poultry training in California;
• Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides (Eugene, OR) – to do risk management education at specialty crop producer conferences in Idaho
• Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (Rochester, NY) – to deliver on-farming training to farmers in NYS
• Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Fayetteville, AR) – to provide risk management education on direct marketing strategies for producers of specialty horticultural crops and/or livestock in various areas of the South
• Wallace Center at Winrock International (Arlington, VA) – to educate producers about new business enterprise models for local and regional markets

NSAC will be advocating for increased funding for this important program that serves beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers across the country in the upcoming farm bill debates.  NSAC has worked with champions in Congress to incorporate provisions into The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act of 2011 [HR 3236] that, if rolled into the farm bill, would expand and strengthen risk management education programs and place a particular emphasis on beginning farmers.  To learn more about the bill, click here.

To learn more about RMA’s Risk Management Education and Outreach Programs, click here.

For a complete list of awards, click here.