For more information about the program, please visit Organic Grain Mentorship, or learn more about the TOPP program here.
The Land Connection is pleased to share updates about our pilot year of the Organic Grain Mentorship Program. This program has been in development since as early as 2021, when The Land Connection partnered with farmers to build a model for supporting conventional row croppers as they transition some of their acreage to organic practices. Based on our years of outreach and collaboration with farmers in central Illinois and our experiences since the development of our pilot program, there is increasing demand from farmers to transition their land towards organic, for both the economic and environmental benefits for the farmer and their community. We began this process by reaching out to individuals leading mentorship and apprenticeship programs around the US and those especially focused on grain in the Midwest region. The goal of this outreach and research phase was to learn from the experiences of other programs and their practitioners to make the program most effective and accessible to the farmers we serve. Additionally, we consulted farmers in central Illinois about their experiences with mentorship, especially in the organic transition.
Ultimately, these conversations, research, and information gathering were the foundation of our Organic Grain Mentorship curriculum, to provide an outline of educational goals and resources for the transitioning producers. Our timing was fortuitous as the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) was just beginning to kick off a five-year investment with non-profit organizations to provide technical assistance and wrap-around support for transitioning and existing organic farmers. Our vision was right on time with the USDA’s larger vision to invest in organic and transitioning farmers. Ultimately, with all our research, conversations with farmers, and support from the TOPP program, we developed the building blocks of what the Organic Grain Mentorship program looks like today.
The purpose of the mentorship program is to support seasoned conventional farmers as they transition portions of their acreage into organic production. The goal is to connect those farmers with other experienced organic farmers who can act as mentors. Mentors have the opportunity to guide and support producers as they transition to organic, providing them with valuable insights, practical advice, and industry best practices. Mentors serve as a resource to answer questions, offer guidance, and provide support throughout the growing year with the mentor’s training, time, and travel compensated as part of the program. The mentee farmers gain support, guidance, and development from an experienced organic producer, and together, the mentors and transitioning producers set goals for the mentorship year and form a strong network of organic producers across the region. Both receive free attendance to The Land Connection’s Organic Grain Conference where they’ll explore challenges and opportunities across the organic grain value chain while learning from and connecting with farmers, researchers, and other agronomic experts in the field of conventional and organic grain production.
In addition to the one-on-one farmer-to-farmer support, the program also includes a series of online webinars to improve the mentee’s skill sets and professional development on a variety of subjects related to grain production. Classes so far in 2024 have included: Farm Financial Planning with Paul Dietmann of Compeer Financial, Marketing Organic Grain with the Organic Farmers’ Agency for Relationship Marketing (OFARM), Quality Grain Production (OFARM), Developing and Conducting Sales (OFARM), Business Planning and Management with Andy Larson of the Food Finance Institute, and Shipping Grain (OFARM). Lastly, the program includes seasonal check-ins between mentors and mentees, regular opportunities for evaluation, digital resources related to organics and organic transition, and seasonal events and field days related to organic production practices.
With this new financial and programmatic wind at our backs thanks to TOPP, we began recruiting farmers for our Organic Grain Mentorship program last fall. We looked high and low for our first cohort of mentors and mentees and made sure to be creative. Outreach occurred via email, social media, and advertising across platforms to reach farmers digitally, putting out flyers at grain elevators and cooperatives, phone calls and letter writing, word of mouth discussion at farm field days and workshops, and from farmers sharing the program with each other. Building a community like this is all about trust so having farmers reach out to each other was critical.
That said, first-year recruitment was somewhat difficult and complex because we had to find mentees and mentors at the same time. It was important to make sure these farmers were good fits for each other personality-wise, had similar cropping systems and scales, and were geographically close enough to make mentorship feasible. Despite the challenges, we have a total of 5 mentors and 5 mentees, two of whom are women farmers. From this small group we are hoping to build momentum and double our participation for next year, with a goal of hosting 10 mentor and mentee pairs. We are excited about this challenge and believe the momentum from this year’s cohort and the network of organic farmers we are cultivating will help us reach these ambitious goals.
We officially kicked off the Organic Grain Mentorship program at the Organic Grain Conference during the Rigg’s Brewery Mixer in February. Mentees were very excited to attend and shared they had a great experience at the conference and the networking, trade show, and educational programming were very helpful. Any mentors and mentees who had not yet met in person, met together at OGC and exchanged contacts. Relationship building between mentors and mentees really kicked off at the conference and it was important to connect and build rapport in person – participants appreciated that. The mentee curriculum was distributed to all mentees and resources for mentor training were distributed to mentors.
By March we hit the ground running, hosting our first-ever webinar series introducing the mentorship program. It was a great first session where everyone introduced themselves and shared about their farm operation. We completed an online pre-season survey to identify and reflect on their skills and abilities in organics to help compare to the middle and end of the season. Since then we have hosted 6 online sessions and out in the field, mentors and mentees have been meeting and visiting each other’s farms. Just last week I visited one of our mentees in northern Illinois, though we have farmers from all across the state. During the visit, the farmer shared about her many calls with her farmer mentor, how accessible and helpful he has been, and his consistent efforts to connect her to farmers in her area who could help with harvests or other equipment needs. We also toured her exciting grain trials of Barley, rye, an ancient wheat variety, and some flax, to name a few.
Now that fields are planted and the chaos of spring has mostly subsided, we have several field days and workshops on the calendar and can’t wait to see our mentor and mentee farmers connecting and learning with their peers in the field. We are especially excited for our Midwest Mechanical Weed Control Field Day on September 11th which will be free to farmers in Illinois courtesy of TOPP. We hope to see you at one of our many field days and workshops and look forward to expanding organic acreage across Illinois and the Midwest.
