Farm Commons

Non-Farmer Education: In 2024, Farm Commons enhanced its service to Extension Educators, nonprofit employees, and farm support persons nationwide to help farmers recognize and address legal vulnerabilities before a problem occurs. We supported 176 organizations nationwide with customized access to our resources and individualized webinars to their agricultural communities. We delivered our comprehensive online workshop, Guiding Resilience, to 32 professionals nationwide. This 5-week comprehensive workshop prepares professionals to guide farmers in their own communities. Our data show that for every one non-farming agriculture professional we reach, that person provides our information to 22 more farmers in their local community, significantly magnifying our ability to achieve our mission. We hosted another session of our Legal Ecosystem Fellowship program that trains partners to be able to lead farm law workshops in their own communities. 8 professionals went through the LEF program and successfully delivered farm law presentations in their communities. We also developed custom resources for 5 other organizations.

Research: Farm Commons provides essential services in doing complex legal research and in studying the impact and ramifications of legal realities on diverse farm communities. As part of our effort to learn about how farm communities understand and react to legal realities, we occasionally providing legal services to community members, where this service will help inform our educational resource development and other research efforts.