National Farm Viability Conference: Full Schedule

1:30pm MDT

Loan-Ready Clients: A Workshop for Service Providers Who Help Make It Happen

Tuesday September 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm MDT

Service providers play a critical role in helping farm and food business producers access capital. In this interactive workshop, participants will build the skills needed to move producers from "not yet" to "loan ready." Through real-world examples and hands-on discussion, explore financial analysis, business planning, business health assessments, and long-term strategy—to better prepare your clients for lender expectations and improve financing outcomes. Participants will also learn how to identify common barriers to loan readiness and develop practical strategies to address them. The workshop will highlight effective ways to support producers in organizing financial information, strengthening their business narratives, and building realistic, growth-oriented plans. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with tools, resources, and a clearer framework for guiding producers through the loan preparation process and increasing their chances of securing financing. Learning Objectives: 1. Identify the key components of loan readiness for farm and food business producers, including financial, operational, and strategic factors. 2. Analyze basic financial documents (cash flow, balance sheet, income statement) to assess a producer's readiness for financing. 3. Evaluate overall business health and pinpoint common gaps that may hinder access to capital. 4. Apply practical tools and frameworks to support producers in strengthening business plans and financial positioning. 5. Prepare producers to effectively communicate with lenders and meet common underwriting expectations. 6. Develop actionable next steps to move producers from "not yet" to loan ready within their own service context.

Speakers

Andrea Krahmer

Director of Ag Business Support, Oregon Agricultural Trust

Andrea's lifelong passion for agriculture began on her family's small farm in rural Oregon. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Business Management from Oregon State University and began her career as an agricultural lender shortly after graduation. After 19 years of... Read More →

Tuesday September 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm MDT
Weavers

Accessing Capital

3:30pm MDT

Perceived vs. Real Risk: Why Good Farm Deals Don't Get Funded

Tuesday September 22, 2026 3:30pm - 5:00pm MDT

Weavers

Risk is a four letter word in the food and farm lending ecosystem that often inhibits traditional and alternative non-food lenders from lending to more food and farm businesses. Over the years, real and perceived risk has limited access to capital for enterprises that are working to strengthen local and regional food systems. As lenders dedicated to investing in the food system, Foodshed Capital, California FarmLink, and Fair Food Network have developed risk management tools that support and guide our lending and investing strategies. In this session we will share a case study and engage participants in discussions of risk and risk mitigants for lending to food and farm businesses. We would begin by introducing the session, the presenters, and a simple farm financing case (e.g., expansion into a new market or equipment investment). As a full group, we'll present the case and allow time for clarifying questions before breaking into three facilitated small group sessions, where we'll ask participants to assess risk from different perspectives. In breakout groups, participants will be asked to map out where perceptions diverge (execution risk, market risk, financial risk, etc.) and then from there, we'd shift into solutions: what tools actually reduce risk and help get deals done? To close out, the groups would reconvene and share approaches (TA, guarantees, flexible repayment, ongoing financial support), and we'd build a collective "risk mitigation toolbox" with the diverse perspectives and experience in the room. Learning objectives: Share experience of successful ways the presenting organizations reduce risk and support their borrowers pre and post loan. Provide insight to business advisors on how lenders see risk and how they can support their clients who are seeking capital. Identify risk mitigation strategies outside of traditional credit improvement advice.

Speakers

Asia Hampton

Business Skills Advisor, California FarmLink

Asia is a Business Skills Advisor specializing in financial operations, strategy and capital access for farmers. She supports clients navigating loan readiness, standing up or standardizing their bookkeeping practices and business planning through California FarmLink. A practitioner... Read More →

Indy Brahm

Chief Operating Officer, Foodshed Capital

Indy Brahm is the COO of Foodshed Capital, where she leads lending, business support programming, and operational strategy. Since joining in 2020, she has underwritten dozens of loans to growing farm businesses and brings hands-on farm experience from three seasons at a diversified... Read More →

Joel Moyer

Director of Investments, Fair Food Network

Over the last 13 years, Joel has worked on most of the 71 mission aligned food and farm investments and loans Fair Food Network has made through the Fair Food Fund. As Director of Investments, Joel leads the team in underwriting, and structuring loans, and he leads portfolio management... Read More →

Tuesday September 22, 2026 3:30pm - 5:00pm MDT
Weavers

Accessing Capital

9:00am MDT

Build your Capacity to Meet Clients' Marketing Needs

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

Weavers

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

8:00am MDT

Driving Farmer Outcomes with Tax & Investment Strategy

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

Weavers

This interactive workshop positions tax and investment planning as core financial levers for farmers that can shape outcomes as meaningfully as production, pricing, or marketing decisions. This session introduces a practical framework for using tax and investment strategy to influence cash flow, healthcare access, and long-term wealth building. Participants will walk through a simplified farm scenario and understand how key decisions flow through tax forms and create financial outcomes. Using a live, interactive tool, the group will test real-time scenarios - adjusting income, depreciation methods, retirement contributions, and other planning levers - and observe how these decisions affect four key outcomes: Tax due or refund, marketplace health insurance eligibility, wealth built through retirement accounts, and long-term tax savings. Participants will see how effective strategies differ across low-, medium-, and high-income years. Following a group demonstration, participants will break into small team to analyze additional scenarios and develop recommended strategies. They will present their strategies and rationale to the group. Learning Objectives: - Recognize tax and investment planning as core personal and business levers - Evaluate how decisions impact multiple outcomes simultaneously - Identify how different strategies shift across income levels - Facilitate peer conversations around financial strategy This session is designed to teach core tax and investment strategies and how they can be applied by farm business technical advisors without requiring deep technical expertise in these areas.

Speakers

Michael Robertson

NY FarmNet and/or Shelterbelt Advisors

Michael Robertson is the Farm Business Management Specialist at NY FarmNet. He also runs Shelterbelt Advisors, a small investment advisory and tax preparation firm that serves farmers. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York on a sheep farm.

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

Farm Financial Management, Business Planning and Development

10:00am MDT

Strengthening Farm Resilience Through Farmer-to-Farmer Learning

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

Weavers

In this time of mounting stresses impacting farm viability, this session explores the critical importance of farmer cohort learning in building farm resilience. Farms are struggling to navigate the volatility of the climate crisis and the shifting economic landscape. An effective and emerging method to facilitate learning for farmers is peer-to-peer cohorts in which the same group of farmers come together on multiple occasions to share and compare their experiences around a specific issue or practice, creating an information network that leads to deeper understanding. It is well documented that farmers trust information learned from other farmers and are most willing to adopt new management strategies/innovations if learned from a fellow farmer and/or see it working on a farm. Farmer-to-Farmer led cohort-based learning centers social and personal resiliency as a strategy for longer term economic and ecological resiliency. Farmer cohorts are dedicated to co-learning, sharing ideas, and relying on peers for information and inspiration. Being in community with peers is a balm to the isolation that many farmers feel - delivering programming that fosters connection, crowd-sourcing solutions, and shared learning provides deep benefits. We will share brief examples of cohort programs from each of our organizations and talk about best practices for facilitating farmer-driven lateral learning. OGS: Farm Beginnings and Journeyperson uses a values based approach to business development. When farmers understand their farming motivations and social connections, they are able to create economically and ecologically viable farms that are also built to withstand disruptions and disasters within a grounded and community based ecosystem. NOFA-VT: Climate Adaptation Planning Program taps the proven power of farmer-to-farmer learning by facilitating small peer groups of farms to develop adaptation plans grounded in the collective knowledge and experiences of the farmers with a strong focus on building social cohesion. AFT: Women for the Land Circles combines research-based, participatory methods to create peer-to-peer spaces for women in agriculture to share their expertise and experiences with each other while connecting with resources that can assist them in navigating challenges. To support long term learning and fun - participants in this session will do a few cohort activities from OGS, NOFA-VT, and AFT programs. Participants will - Investigate examples of an array of formats for inclusive peer learning - Understand innovative & best practices for facilitating successful values-based cohort - Engage in a peer activity exercise like cohort students

Speakers

Nicole DelCogliano

Director of Programs, Organic Growers School

Nicole DelCogliano is the Director of Programs with the Organic Growers School, She has been passionately teaching beginning farmers and supporting existing farmers to thrive personally and professionally since 2015. Nicole facilitates OGS's year long farmer cohorts, Farm Beginnings... Read More →

Nancy LaRowe

Farmer Services Director, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont

Nancy has been delivering programming that advances farm viability, fosters healthy ecosystems, and builds community resilience for more than 25 years. Service provision focus includes climate adaptation planning, farmer cohort facilitation, and educational event development. Nancy... Read More →