Whole Farm Planning For The 21st Century

FARRMS staff were selected to participate in a pilot program training farmer educators to help farmers consider childcare, healthcare, and health insurance when doing whole farm planning. Farmer Educator Jake Callendar and Executive Director Stephanie Blumhagen flew to Ohio in late October to participate in the training. They share their reflections here.  

Jake: Earlier this spring Stephanie and myself applied to be a part of a training on Whole Farm Planning for the 21st Century Farm Family: Integrating childcare, healthcare, and health insurance into farm planning. At first glance this greatly intrigued Stephanie and myself both for personal reasons and to be able to offer this education to our community of farmers here in North Dakota. These topics are not talked about in the agricultural community often and are not widely discussed in school. During the workshop we found out there are relatively zero resources in our country to help farm owners with these difficult questions and topics. That's why when we came across this workshop to learn more about integrating health care and childcare plans into the whole farm plan, we couldn’t walk away from the opportunity. 

Stephanie: Whole Farm Planning considers your family and your lifestyle, it’s bigger than just your business. Small farms are unique because the business and your household are intertwined. While it’s still wise to keep separate books for your household and your business, a successful farm business needs to consider the needs and lifestyle of the farmers and their family. Our options (or lack thereof) for healthcare, health insurance, and childcare influence the decisions we make about our farms and the risks we are able to take. I was really excited to see that this training was being offered and even more excited that we were chosen to participate and can bring these topics into our Farm Beginnings course.  

Jake: We found out in August that the program was overwhelmed with applications but fortunately Stephanie and I were accepted as the representatives for North Dakota. There were 25 participants from 13 different states in the SARE North Central Region that were in attendance. This training was an in person event hosted at the Ohio State University Secrest Welcome Center in Wooster, Ohio. Stephanie and I learned in one of our ice breaker activities that we traveled the farthest to participate in person. I traveled just shy of 1,000 miles and Stephanie traveled around 1,300 miles, and to me this education is absolutely priceless to bring back home and share with our community. 

Stephanie: We were one of ten teams each consisting of two farmer educators. We were learning alongside Extension educators and university staff from Iowa State, Purdue, Michigan State University, U of Minnesota, U of Missouri, Penn State University, South Dakota State University, and U of Wisconsin – Madison. FARRMS collaborate with NDSU Extension staff whenever we can. It was fun to meet Extension staff from other states. It’s nice to know we’re not alone out here in ND. Small farmers across the nation face many of the same challenges we do.

Jake: The participants in the training were extension agents, technical assistant providers, educators within the agriculture sector, and farmers - all with family ties and experience working in agriculture. This workshop was used as a way to train the trainer so that we as educators can go back to our home states and distribute this information to the farmers that can benefit from this knowledge. Stephanie and I spent three days in Ohio, diving into the subject material. On our first day, we did some ice breaker activities, learned about the background of the project, and went into a presentation about adult education. The second day, we dove into healthcare and insurance in the morning and childcare in the afternoon. The third day, we had group discussions about the material that was presented to us and we had planning time to determine how we will distribute this information to the farmers and individuals that need it in North Dakota. 

Stephanie: I most enjoyed the module called Best Practices of Adult Learning led by Beth Holtzman from U of Vermont. It’s important to me that FARRMS’s educational programming is not only high quality in content, but that we also present the material in ways that are easy for participants to absorb. I don’t ever want farmers to feel talked down to, or that the information is going over their head. Jake and I both come from a background of being farmers and business owners but neither of us has formal training as an educator. That’s why continuing education opportunities such as those offered by Extension and SARE are so important. We received a resource that is available online for free called Sustainable Agriculture Through Sustainable Learning: An Educator’s Guide to Best Practices for Adult Learning. https://www.sare.org/resources/sustainable-agriculture-through-sustainable-learning/ Our trainers did an excellent job of modeling the best practices of adult learning (make content relatable, engage positive emotions, give learners choice, identify mental models, and provide opportunities for practice and application).  

Childcare, health insurance, and health care are very personal topics and discussing these topics could be uncomfortable for farm families. Something I really appreciated about this training was that our trainers modeled best practices in how to lead discussions on these sensitive topics. At no point in this training will we tell farmers what they should or shouldn’t be doing as it relates to healthcare, health insurance, or childcare. This training has equipped us as educators to lead positive, open discussions where we can help farm families identify the options available to them, consider their own unique circumstances and make choices that will best serve their families and farm businesses.   

Jake: Since the training in August, our team at FARRMS is working on how we will implement this new material in our programming to help our network of farmers. We are currently planning to share this material in our 2025 Farm Beginnings course. There will be one class session on healthcare & insurance and a second about childcare planning. We are the first from our Ohio training to present this material in an online format so our 2025 students will be able to pilot this format before we launch this material to the public later in the year. As we refine this material to fit our communities needs, we plan to make healthcare and childcare a permanent session in our Farm Beginnings course into the future. 

The curriculum and training are funded by a current grant project from North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NC-SARE) to help provide more childcare and insurance information for the 21st century farmer. The contents of this training were developed by a team lead by Shoshanna Inwood and Joy Rumble from The Ohio State University along with help from Maria Pippidis from University of Delaware cooperative extension and Julia Freedgood from American Farmland Trust. This project also adapted previous work done by the Health Insurance Literary Initiative developed by University of Maryland and University of Delaware extension. There were many individuals that joined forces to put this project together neatly to train the generation of educators so they can distribute this information effectively and efficiently. 

You can learn more about this project here: https://u.osu.edu/farmplanchildcareandhealthinsurance/ 

Or here: https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/enc23-225/