Intended Audience: Service Providers

This will be a raw and frank discussion about working directly with farmers in a coaching/TA capacity across diverse cultural communities, and what allyship looks like in action for technical assistance and agricultural business/production advising. This session aims to be an honest and vulnerable exploration of what allyship means on the ground within programs that seemingly pit “experts” against “students” in the advisor-producer relationship and are targeted in underserviced, BIPOC, immigrant, or marginalized communities of growers.  

We will collectively learn pathways to advising that do and don’t work well through anecdotal storytelling from all sides, including audience discussion and participation. This discussion will ask some hard questions of its panelists and the audience, and we will not be afraid to pursue challenge and discomfort inside our dialogue in order to invite open learning from each other. Voices will be from multiple types of thought practitioners including USDA Extension, non-profit based farmer services providers, independent educator/consultants, along with farmers who have participated in non-profit programming or received private/public funding from the USDA and other organizations for their farms.  

This Intensive will touch on themes such as: positions of power, feelings of overwhelm, active and adaptive listening, meeting people where they are, inviting people to their own table, celebrating success, “failure” as success, working across racial, economic, rural/urban, religious, and cultural differences.