RED WING, Minn. — Professionals who help farmers to have viable businesses won’t want to miss the National Farm Viability Conference this October 22-24 in Red Wing, Minnesota. Registration by Monday, September 16 is advised for taking advantage of the Early Bird discount.
The three-day conference includes workshops and tours focused on keeping farms profitable over the long-term. Topics are geared towards those who do business planning, financial planning, agricultural financing, farmland conservation, agricultural market development, and other farm and food business technical assistance.
“Those who come will have the opportunity to network and learn from industry leaders and other professionals in their fields, develop new knowledge and skills, and tour nearby farms and value-added processing facilities,” says Jan Joannides of Renewing the Countryside, one of the many organizations contributing to the planning. The 45 workshop sessions on the schedule are a result of honing and combining 92 proposals that were submitted from across the country.
As expressed by a 2017 attendee, “I heard new ideas and available resources for technical assistance that I hadn’t thought of before. Also now have a network of others in this landscape that I know I can reach out to. Loved the openness of learning and sharing and educational focus of the event.”
Day two of the conference features an array of farm tours to highlight important topics like farm succession, industry clusters, and farm finances. One tour, hosted by Organic Valley, will visit O’Reilly Organic Dairy in Red Wing for a discussion of viability in the face of market fluctuations and the importance of peer groups like Organic Valley’s Farmer Profit Circles. Another tour will visit and hear from an industry cluster around meat and poultry in Cannon Falls.
Hosted this year by the Minnesota-based nonprofit Renewing the Countryside, the conference was first created in 2008 by the Vermont Farm & Forest Viability Program to bring together agricultural business advisors and other professionals working with farmers to learn from each other. This will be the 4th National Farm Viability Conference, and the first time it will be held outside of the Northeast.
Learn more and register at https://www.farmviabilityconference.com/.
— Renewing the Countryside