Small Farms - Services
The Small and Minority Farm Program within General Administration provides services to small, limited-resource and minority farmers who are traditionally underserved. These services are provided through outreach and education to assist this audience in making informed decisions and providing advocacy for those who do not have a voice.
Examples of these services are:
- Serve as a liaison to 1890 Institutions and Small Farm community-based and advocacy groups.
- Informational meetings on landownership, marketing, financial issues (estate planning), policy development and farm bill issues, as well as providing assistance for an Annual Conference for Small Limited Resource and Minority farmers to address issues pertaining to this audience.
- Partner and serve on USDA advisory committees, such as the Food & Agriculture Council committee.
- Provide help with grant applications as well as locating grant funds. Ex: Farmland preservation grants, USDA Rural Development “value-added producer grants.”
- Provide help with marketing farm products such as food stamp program for farmers markets, direct marketing of vegetables, free range meats and processing.
- Farmland preservation outreach and education. Ex: Providing assistance to non-traditional audiences about conservation easements.
- Develop marketing strategy and infrastructure for limited-resource program crop growers such as grain crops. Ex: Educating farmers on futures contracts and grain storage.
- Created new programs to minimize farm risk, for example the AGR-Lite program, a program to protect against natural disasters and market fluctuation.
- Recruiting and empowering beginning and new farmers. Ex: providing information on USDA programs in the Farm Service Agency that helps them.