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From Surviving to Thriving: Financial Risk Management Strategies for Urban Farm Success

Neith Little

Summary

The purpose of the project has been to help current and aspiring commercial urban farmers in in the Baltimore and Washington, DC metro regions move from crisis-management to proactive risk management.

In our work with urban farmers we have observed their struggle with this transition. Many farmers get overwhelmed by the daily challenges of farming, spending their time seeking short-term financial solutions to keep their urban farms afloat.

Established urban farmers participated in to share their experiences with financial risk management strategies. Then a series of Urban Farmer Field Schools offered urban farmers practical education and challenged them to commit to learning and action using a learning contract tool. The learning contract was used to follow-up with participants later, to assess whether they had implemented the goals they ahd set. Finally, the project collaborators wrote an introductory urban farming risk management guidebook, which was revised based on feedback from additional urban farmer focus groups.

This financial risk management education project was funded by a Northeast Extension Risk Management grant. Grant authors were Neith Little, Kim Rush Lynch, Nicole Cook, and Ginger Myers.

Details

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