Beginningfarmers.org was launched in August 2008, with a small amount of grant money from USDA-SARE and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station connected to my doctoral dissertation research and outreach project on first-generation farmers in Michigan. This money was used to purchase the domain name www.beginningfarmers.org, pay for two years of web hosting, and to hire a student employee to help with the initial web design.
This money has since been exhausted, the student’s time used up, and the web hosting service will come due again within in just over 6 months.
Because I believe that the site is important, I continue to volunteer my own time to administer it. Today, Beginning Farmers hosts over 400 visitors daily, has an archive of over 550 blog posts, includes resource pages featuring comprehensive information on more than 20 topics including farm financing, job listings, mushroom production, farmer training programs, agricultural policy, finding farmland, raising chickens, business planning, urban agriculture, raising goats, rotational grazing, and much more.
It’s clear that beginningfarmers serves an useful role for many people with a wide range of interests, experience levels, and opinions. And the process of building and maintaining it has been extremely rewarding. Yet despite the rewards and excitement, the project is extremely time intensive for a graduate student struggling to complete his dissertation. And for this reason, it is necessary it has become necessary to employ someone part time to keep up with the daily web posts, e-mails, and page updates that make the site what it is. We also need to continue to pay for hosting the site, and occasional technical help with it’s design.
I believe that it is important for beginningfarmers to continue to develop as an information clearinghouse: gathering, updating, developing, housing, and presenting information resources on the many issues important to beginning farmers, potential farmers, and the researchers, educators, activists, and policymakers who support them; as well as the many members of the small farm, sustainable agriculture, organic, urban farming, local food, backyard and community gardening movements who have found it a useful resource and forum for many of their issues, ideas, and needs.
The bottom line is that we need to raise some money in order to to continue providing regular quality posts, pay for hosting and maintenance. For this reason, we find it necessary to ask for your donation. We hope that you will help to keep Beginning Farmers going. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions. Thank you very much.
Taylor Reid
