The Pathways to Small Farm Resilience program goal is to mitigate producer risks across Northwest Lower Michigan by helping them make sound risk management decisions about enterprise diversification, climate-smart conservation methods, and effective business and marketing practices. This program takes a multi-pronged resilience approach, focusing on production practices, financial acumen, legal compliance, producer wellbeing, marketing, and climate-smart farming. The strategy is four-fold: regenerate, integrate, network, and diversify.

Experienced partners across Northwest Lower Michigan collaborated on programs in peer planning cohorts, capacity-building for peer-to-peer farmer networks, farm diversification workshops, and technical assistance coaching and navigation.

The program included 28 events with a total attendance of 429. The audience included many identified in the grant announcement: traditional farmers; new and beginning farmers; farmers preparing to retire; minority producers; women; farmers marketing their products as part of a local/regional food system; livestock producers, organic producers; farmers converting production and marketing systems to pursue new markets; producers that demonstrate and document climate smart ag practices; producers using sustainable and/or regenerative practices; small farms; and value-added producers.

The result is a community of more resilient and connected farmers that are prepared to withstand market and weather shocks on their farm enterprises.