MOFGA is bringing back our Spring Growth conference!
Building off the conversation that was created in the “Striving to Normalize Farm Financials” session at our Farmer to Farmer Conference last fall, MOFGA is hosting a one day event for diversified mixed vegetable farms in Maine, to generate and share open conversation about farm financial realities. The aim is to help identify common challenges as well as highlight potential solutions for farms that are struggling with their financial viability. Our Farmer to Farmer session in November allowed farmers to express an incredible generosity and willingness to be vulnerable in asking and answering questions regarding current financial realities — and we realized the many benefits to sharing our personal experiences or concerns with the greater MOFGA farming community.
Part of the Spring Growth conference will include a farmer panel where three vegetable farmers will present details of their farm’s finances, including annual sales, grant income, costs, debt, and owner’s draw. All attendees will be required to answer a brief survey aimed at capturing this same basic farm financial data (which will be kept anonymous), to deepen the conversation and add to our communal understanding of the realities. Bradley Russel from CEI and Nicolas Lindholm from MOFGA will lead a presentation on this aggregated, anonymized data from attendees, looking to highlight any comparisons and analysis based on differing farm characteristics like acreage, market channels, enterprises, etc. Breakout sessions will then be utilized to encourage deeper discussion among farms who share common characteristics (TBD by attendees at the event) — attendees will be asked to bring their survey data to be the common groundwork for these group conversations.
MOFGA intends this event to be one of many next steps in building space and encouraging comfort around the sensitive topic of farm financials, and will be looking to host similar programming for other types of farms, as interest and desire is identified in the future. In deepening this conversation, one long-term goal is to be able to build more universal support for farmers to address their common challenges (be it paying themselves better, labor, healthcare, childcare, etc.).
Attendance will be capped at 25 farms, two people per farm.
This event will be held in-person at MOFGA’s campus in Unity, ME, with no hybrid option available. Lunch is bring your own, but coffee and tea and a little warm soup will be provided for participants.
This event is hosted in partnership with Coastal Enterprises Inc (CEI).
