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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is awarding nearly$4.1 million to organizations and outreach efforts to educate underserved, small-scale, and organic producers on farm risk management and climate-smart farm practices. The funding from USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) provides assistance through its Risk Management Education Partnerships (RMEP) for organizations, such as nonprofits and land grant universities, to develop training and resources for producers about risk management options. The announcement was made during a virtual event that RMA Administrator Marcia Bunger led from her farm in South Dakota.
“We’ve never done it this way before. We’ve typically selected a spot or a location with one of the partners. This time, though, we had everyone join virtually and they were able to then read out a little bit and share what their work is going to look like,” Bunger said. “And I think it ended up being a really collaborative way to do this.”
She says the platform enabled all the programs to engage with each other, after a little encouragement.
“When we were listening to the different presentations from the individual partners, I quickly put in the chat, ‘please share your contact information with others’. And they quickly did. And so, I think it now begins another level of relationship building. It was really amazing to see everyone sharing in the chat their contact information because I don’t think they’ve ever realized before, at all of the other partnership announcements, what the other organizations did.”
She says all 50 states will benefit from the outreach efforts that were funded. To find a farm risk management program in your area, you can visit the USDA RMA website.
Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.