Farm Beginnings Recap

This winter KRC offered our first Farm Beginnings training program, which is focused on walking with farmers and ranchers on their journey of “whole farm management” for their agricultural business. During 2024’s session we had seven farmers/farm families join us to learn about business start-up and management over eight weeks of classes, where we focused on learning about and building pieces of a business plan each week to culminate in a presentation of the plan to the other students at the end of the class.

  Our classes focused on developing a holistic view of the farm operations, from the equipment and infrastructure needed to the people and processes involved. My motto for the class is that we want to strive for the farm to work well for everyone involved; that it can be a place with good care for the crops and livestock, where workers are valued and protected, and where the family runs the farm instead of the farm running the family.  That’s no easy feat! Certainly, there exist opinions that realistically the farm must run the family to survive economically, but we want to challenge the beginning farmers in our program to consider what quality of life they want for themselves and how to set their farms up for success in that respect from the beginning. For some students that may mean they end up deciding that farming isn’t the right vocation for them, which I also consider a success if it means they don’t sink large amounts of time and money into an endeavor that in the end, doesn’t help them to feel happy and fulfilled.   

We had wonderful farmers and agricultural professionals join us from across the state to speak about their successes, challenges, and the lessons they’ve learned while working with their families and other farmers. In particular, what stuck out to me were several farmers with young children who talked about how rewarding it was to share life on the farm with their children, but also how difficult it was to not be able to spend time with their kids due to the demands of their farm business.  That’s a challenge we know is common to a lot of farm families.

KRC is looking to host our Farm Beginnings training program for at least one cohort of students a year, which is designed for farmers who have a few years of experience under their belts already and may be looking to formalize their businesses. We are also planning to host several shorter “Farm Dreams” trainings to help aspiring farmers think through their hopes and dreams to determine whether they want to dig deeper and start farming. If you’d be interested in attending one of our trainings or potentially being a speaker and sharing your experience with beginning farmers and ranchers, please reach out to me at ryangr@kansasruralcenter.org.   

I anticipate publicizing and opening our registration for the 2024-2025 Farm Beginnings Training soon, so stay tuned to KRC’s email newsletters and kansasruralcenter.org/farmbeginnings for more information if you want to join us or know someone else who might!

Article by: Ryan Goertzen-Regier - Program and Administrative Manager, KRC