Humane Farming Program: A Year in Review
Larissa McKenna, Humane Farming Program Director
It feels strange to be sharing our ‘end of year accomplishments’ in the middle of June. Isn’t that something that usually happens in December? Well, the reason behind this mid-year info dump is that FACT’s fiscal year ends on June 30 – which puts us smack dab in the middle of a reporting extravaganza. My mind is chock full of all the activities we engaged in and the programs we spearheaded over the past 12 months. Allow me to elaborate … but first a little background …
FACT’s Humane Farming Program partners with and invests in livestock and poultry farmers to encourage the use of humane practices that improve farm animal welfare. We offer a number of programs and services that provide financial and training support to pastured-based farmers and ranchers. Every year we seek to improve and expand our programming, in no small part due to the ongoing feedback we solicit and receive from the farmers who participate in our programs.
Grazing at Medicine Creek Farm in MN, a 2022 Fund-a-Farmer Grantee
Many of you are familiar with our Fund-a-Farmer Grants. This past spring, we awarded a whopping 60 new grants totaling $170,068 to farmers located in 27 states. This was our most ever in 10 years of grantmaking and was made possible by our generous funding partners, including the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) and ButcherBox, along with hundreds of our amazing individual supporters. Since 2012, FACT has cumulatively awarded 521 grants totaling over $857,000 to farmers across 44 states, directly benefiting an estimated 735,000 animals. We look forward to expanding this funding opportunity even more next year! (Applications will be available in late fall – stay tuned.
Some of our other notable Humane Farming Program achievements include:
We created marketing materials and conducted outreach to media outlets on behalf of our new grantees to share the good news about their grant. Visit our media page to see some of our placements!
We offered 21 webinars in the last year as part of our Humane Farming Webinar Series - a 24% increase in the number of webinars compared to last fiscal year. We had the honor and pleasure of hosting many acclaimed presenters, including Corinna Bench of MyDigitalFarmer, Jeannette Beranger of The Livestock Conservancy, Steve Gabriel, author of Silvopasture, Mike Badger of the American Pasture Poultry Producers Association, and many of the awesome staff with NCAT/ATTRA.
We awarded 65 scholarships to 31 different conferences and training events in the past year. Based on post-conference reports, 100% of scholarship recipients reported increased knowledge and skills related to humane animal production as a result of attendance; 92% reported that they plan to implement some of the practices they learned about during the conference or workshop on their farm with their animals – not too shabby! Our scholarships are awarded on an on-going basis until funding is depleted. If you have a training event or workshop in mind, we invite you to apply.
We matched 22 new pairs of farmers who are working together this year as part of our Humane Farming Mentoring Program. We also added enrichment opportunities for the mentees and mentors in our cohort, including access to experts and more time for networking. Applications to participate in our 2023 program will be available in October!
We launched a new financial training program for livestock and poultry producers to help their farm businesses thrive. We partnered with the Food Finance Institute based out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison to provide free webinars, subscriptions on-demand online courses, and two intensive Financial Management Boot Camps last winter.
We engaged the farmers in our network and advocated for policies that would support pasture-based producers, including increased funding for the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI). Our ongoing work on the 2023 Farm Bill will continue as we increase awareness and build support for practices and policies that foster animal, human and environmental health.
We grew our farmer email list by 23% in the past year – we now have nearly 10,000 folks in our friendly network!
Two of our 2022 mentorship program participants: Corrine and Don
Across all of these projects, we seek to assess efficacy, respond to farmer needs, and identify ways we can promote racial equity in our food and farming system. We routinely conduct surveys and interviews to better understand and improve how we can serve our farmer constituents. We are always learning and incorporating this feedback into our programming.
Based on all of the above, we believe that there is a demonstrated need and deep desire for our program services. FACT fills a unique niche in the farming ecosystem, one that prioritizes farmers who are committed to raising animals in a healthy and humane manner. We have so many exciting things planned for the coming year – we hope that you will join us!
Kids at Pumpkin Vine Family Farm, LLC in Maine, a 2022 Fund-a-Farmer Grant recipient
If you or someone in your network could benefit from our farmer services, we invite you to sign up for our farmer newsletter. You’ll be among the first to receive news and announcements about upcoming funding and training opportunities. Please also consider making a donation to FACT in support of our programs that help humane farmers care for their animals. We couldn’t do it without people like you!