National Farm Viability Conference: Full Schedule

arrow_back View All Dates

8:00am MDT

Developing a Marketing Strategy with Farm and Food Businesses

Thursday September 24, 2026 8:00am - 9:30am MDT

Rose Wilson of Rose Wilson Consulting with Sara Armstrong Donegan and Christine Porcaro of the Intervale Center are proposing this session on how to develop a marketing strategy with farm and food business owners. Through the lens of farm business goal setting, we will walk participants through how to work with farmers to develop core competencies around market research and demand, to test assumptions, to use sales goals to define approaches, to create easy to measure metrics, and to gather that information to build a coherent marketing strategy. Throughout the session, participants will learn a clear framework for building a farm marketing strategy and practice guiding farmers through market research and assumptions testing, translate farm business goals to actionable marketing tactics, identify easily measurable metrics tied to sales goals, and familiarize themselves with existing tools to facilitate this process with farmers in their own work. The session will reinforce how the process does not end with creating the plan, step two is implementing and step three is following up to review and analyze actuals to assumptions, and update the plan for the new year.

Speakers

Rose Wilson

Principal, Rose Wilson Consulting LLC

Over the past 22 years, Rose Wilson has helped more than 500 farms and food producers with business launch, expansion, and exit; enterprise analysis; market development; and grant writing/capital raise. Rose brings a broad set of technical and people skills to each client and project... Read More →

Christine Porcaro

Farm Business Specialist, Intervale Center

Christine Porcaro is a Farm Business Specialist at the Intervale, where she supports farm and food businesses in strengthening their marketing, sales, and overall business management. She previously served as a co-owner and Marketing & Sales Manager at Fat Toad Farm, working with... Read More →

Sara Armstrong Donegan

Farm Business Specialist, Intervale Center

Sara Armstrong Donegan has been working as a farm business consultant with the Intervale Center for over six years. She works with farmers across Vermont with a focus on business planning, financials, and marketing. Sara also owns a diversified vegetable farm with her husband, Trillium... Read More →

Thursday September 24, 2026 8:00am - 9:30am MDT
Alvarado G

Food and Farm Marketing and Distribution, Business Planning and Development

10:00am MDT

Case Management Approach for Farm Viability

Thursday September 24, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT

Alvarado G

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW We are proposing an interactive workshop that explores using case management and farmer training program design and evaluation strategies to assess farm viability — particularly for beginning farmers. We will share Viva Farms' experience developing and implementing a case management framework for farmer support, adopting and iterating Salesforce CRM to track farmer progress over time, and identifying meaningful metrics for program management and evaluation. We will structure the session as part lecture, part group discussion. After sharing about Viva Farms' work, we will facilitate a group discussion on the themes of case management, program design, and evaluating farm viability. We encourage attendees to come ready to share their experience with case management, farm viability program design, and evaluation metrics. Ultimately, we envision this session as a hybrid of a workshop and a roundtable discussion. We have a lot to share but we also have a lot to learn. We are not experts in case management or farm viability program design and evaluation. Therefore, we want to offer Viva Farms' experience as a case study on these themes that serves as a jumping-off point for a group discussion with other practitioners who bring their own experience and are grappling with similar questions. LEARNING OBJECTIVES We hope to offer attendees new perspectives on the value of using a case management approach to support farmers as they pursue farm viability. In addition, we will offer examples of the farm viability metrics and frameworks we have identified, and will create space in the session for others to share examples from their own work.

Speakers

Anna Chotzen

Director of Farm Viability, Viva Farms

Anna has nearly 15 years of experience supporting beginning and immigrant farmers to build thriving farm businesses. As Viva Farms' Director of Farm Viability, she leads the organization's land access, capital access, and business management programs. She works closely with capital... Read More →

Rob Smith

Chief Programs and Operations Officer, Viva Farms

Rob has over 20 years of experience working at the intersection of sustainable agriculture, farm business management, and social advocacy. Prior to joining Viva Farms in 2014, he worked as a manager of Happy Boy Farms, a 400-acre, certified organic farm in California's central coast... Read More →

Micah Anderson

Director of Programs, King County, Viva Farms

Micah has spent the past 15 years teaching experiential, hands-on sustainable agriculture courses and has facilitated many participatory workshops, in multiple languages and cultures. His work focuses on bridging and strengthening diverse communities through programs that foster a... Read More →

Thursday September 24, 2026 10:00am - 11:30am MDT
Alvarado G

Program Design Development Management and Funding