National Farm Viability Conference: Full Schedule

arrow_back View All Dates

9:00am MDT

Build your Capacity to Meet Clients' Marketing Needs

Wednesday September 23, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT

Effective marketing can play an essential role in achieving farm viability, yet many TA business planners have limited capacity to help farm and food clients use marketing to achieve their business goals. The learning objective for this workshop is to provide training and tools to build staff capacity to meet clients' marketing needs, such as attracting and retaining customers and increasing sales. The workshop will briefly introduce the 'train-the-trainer" marketing curriculum developed for the Rio Grande Colonias Regional Food Center in 2025. The presenter will demonstrate how she used AI to develop the training and role-play exercises that support the curriculum. The four curriculum modules and related exercises will be freely available for farm viability organizations to adapt for their own training needs. Workshop participants will break into small groups to role-play different exercises from the curriculum, then report back on how they might use the tool or approach for capacity-building. They'll also be asked to share their organizations' own approaches and resources for marketing training. Participants will walk away with the tools and knowledge to customize their own marketing training.

Speakers

Myrna Greenfield

Top Egg, Good Egg Marketing

Good Egg Marketing founder Myrna Greenfield has provided business and marketing TA to farm and food businesses since 2010. She's a frequent presenter at conferences and events, including the Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference, the Harvest New England Agricultural Marketing Conference... Read More →

Wednesday September 23, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am MDT
Weavers

Food and Farm Marketing and Distribution, Program Design Development Management and Funding

11:00am MDT

Sustaining and Funding an Ecosystem - How Four Organizations are Coming Together to Strengthen Small-Scale Farming Businesses in the Salinas Valley

Wednesday September 23, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm MDT

Weavers

Four farmer serving organizations are working together to fuel the economic viability of small-scale farms and ranches in the Salinas Valley region in Central California. Kitchen Table Advisors (KTA) is leading this collaboration in partnership with California FarmLink, Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), and The Cultiva, to support access to wealth building opportunities for primarily Latino immigrant organic farmers throughout this region. We would like to present lessons and best practices on our partnership over the years and how we are working together as service providers to support farmers on each step of their lifecycle to ensure that they have the tools, training, and opportunities for their businesses to thrive. We will also discuss how we work together from a fundraising perspective to ensure that not just our individual organizations are resourced, but our network across the region as well. We hope that attendees come away with new perspectives on how to work together in collaboration on common goals.

Speakers

Andrea Levy

Senior Program Manager, California FarmLink

Nathan Harkleroad

ALBA

Rui Bing Zheng

Director, Resource Partnerships, Kitchen Table Advisors (KTA)

Rui Bing Zheng is Kitchen Table Advisors' Director of Resource Partnerships. She works alongside staff, community partners, and stakeholders to meet KTA's annual goals and mission of ensuring the economic viability of small-scale farms and ranches in California.

Wednesday September 23, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm MDT
Weavers

Program Design Development Management and Funding