On March 12th at the Learning Farm, we wrapped up the first ever Ag & Food Producers Academy. Over the course of 8 weeks Academy participants had the opportunity to attend a variety of business and marketing classes tailored to small scale food and farm businesses. Four courses were held online during weeknights for 3-4 weeks. Topics led by specialists and educators included, Social Media Management, Business and Financing, E-Commerce For Producers and Food Businesses and Making Food Products in New York State. As a fairly new Educator here at CCE, who works with food producers and farmers looking to boost their marketing, I found myself teaching and leading the social media course. It was a great opportunity to blend the online social media marketing world with the realities of running your own food and farm business. You can read more about the specific topics and instructors HERE. While the majority of the learning took place online, the closing event allowed us to meet each other in-person and share conversations over some delicious food.
We had a wide range of guest presenters and speakers such as Lissa Goldstien of Wild Work Farm talking about her ECommerce platform and Chrissy Claudio of Simply C Farm explaining how she organizes her finances. Participants were also able to watch an interview with Food And Ferment co-owner Carly Dougherty explaining how they’ve scale their value added food business and hear from Dillion Kleepetar of Farmstead catering talking about how to best approach a social media strategy, just to name a few. It was a pleasure to hear all of their insights and stories and allowed for some great questions and conversations, and proved to be some participants favorite part of the classes. One participant shared, “The guest speakers were very inspiring, and hearing how they incorporated different e-commerce platforms into their businesses was very informative.”
Read more First Ever Ag and Food Producers Academy: Complete!