Celebrate “culture” in agriculture & share skills like growing, cooking, canning

Starting a Small-scale farm incubator

Victory Acres is recruiting five Partner Farmers for our "Growing Growers" program. If you are interested in small-scale, alternative agriculture, then this program may be your ticket.

The Growing Growers Program is a small-scale agricultural incubator at Victory Acres Farm that will work with five partner farmers to develop the production of small-scale, specialty crops. The long term goal will be for these five farmers to either transition to their own independent farms or to continue farming at Victory Acres and contribute to the program as mentors to new farmers.

Victory Acres will provide these fledgling farmers with:

An experienced Agricultural Coach,
A Community Liaison to assist in marketing,
Affordable land, durable tools, water,
A pre-existing market through Victory Acres’s established CSA base, and
Weekly instruction emphasizing sustainable farming techniques, farm management, marketing, and nutrition fundamentals.

Since some of the greatest barriers for new growers are access to affordable land, lack of knowledge and experience, and the lack of a reliable market base, the Growing Growers Program will address each of these critical issues enabling our partner farmers to establish a solid foundation before transitioning to their own farm.

We are now accepting proposals (up to three pages) answering the following questions:

What would you do with 1-4 acres of quality farm ground? Be as detailed as possible.
What crops would you like to grow?
What experience do you have with growing (none is required)?
How would this opportunity fit into your life’s goal?
Why are you the right person for this pilot program?

Sound interesting? Email me for the full scoop.

vacsa@vicm.org

Thanks,

Eric

Tags: agriculture, farm, growers, growing, incubator, small-scale

Attachments:

Growing Growers Program Flyer.pdf, 208 KB
GrowingGrowersFAQ-2012.pdf, 114 KB

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Permalink Reply by DB on December 9, 2011 at 1:00pm

just read your listing about this over at the Farm Dreams site. sounds like a great opportunity for newbies...good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Caroline Malcolm on December 9, 2011 at 2:39pm

What a great opportunity for beginning farmers! How long has the Growing Growers program been running? There are lots of farm incubator programs in my neck of the woods, and all are excellent models for training and supporting new farmers. You might want to post this to the Newbies Group here on HOMEGROWN. Good luck!