US: Minnesota farmers host USDA beginning farmer grant announcement

Program to 'make sure beginning farmers and ranchers have access to the resources they need to succeed,' official says

It's not going to be easy.

That's one of the first things Lisa and Eric Klein tell young people who want to farm when they come to their workshop on direct marketing.

More than a decade ago, the Kleins were among the first students of the Land Stewardship Project's Farm Beginnings program in Minnesota. Today, they run Hidden Stream Farm LLC, selling chicken, beef and pork from their grass-based farm not far from the bluffs of the Mississippi River. And, in a program that was designed to help young people with advice from a group of mentors, the Kleins have now become a source of ideas and advice for a succeeding generation.

"We're just starting, after 11 years, to feel that maybe we're a little bit successful," Lisa told Agriculture Online.

And this week, the Kleins' hard work got some recognition, when Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan paid a visit on Tuesday.

Merrigan came to announce the first $17 million in grants from a new $75-million five-year effort in the 2008 farm bill called the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. The Land Stewardship Project got a $413,000 grant from that program that will be used to help spread its approach to training beginning farmers to nine other groups in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North and South Dakota and Wisconsin.



Source: agriculture.com

Publication date: 11/6/2009

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