Young farmers have until the end of October to sign up for a mentorship program to develop their skills, knowledge and confidence to manage their farm businesses.
Eligible farmers from across the four western provinces can apply to be part of the Young Agrarians Business Mentorship Network to develop their business skills, improve their financial literacy and meet other young farmers, said Tori Ames, network co-ordinator.
The program began in British Columbia in 2013 and expanded to the three Prairie provinces in 2022. It has worked with 163 farmers on 118 farms, pairing them with 75 mentors.
During their mentorship year, mentees report an 87 per cent increase in revenue, 65 per cent increase in food produced and 42 per cent increase of land in production.
When the program was developed, the new farmers felt they had production in hand but needed help with the business side of farming. Eligible farmers are in their first to fifth year in business and can be taking over a family farm or starting a new operation.
“The ideal candidate is someone who’s done two or three seasons of actual production on their farm,” Ames said.
“After that, they’ve realized they need help in calculating profitability and figuring out their cost of production and figuring out how to lower their expenses.”
Each new farmer is paired with an experienced producer for 30 hours of one-on-one mentorship.
“The farmers have been so enthusiastic. They’ve been so excited to have the chance to share their knowledge,” said Ames.
The program includes an opportunity to take part in an eight-week financial literacy webinar series to help develop business skills and operate a financially viable farm. The webinars discuss such topics as applying for a GST number, how to register a business, understanding agricultural taxes, risk management and insurance options, registering for Workers Compensation and doing proper staff training.
“We go through the webinars at the beginning of the program and then they work with their mentor for the year,” Ames said.
“They have got the educational piece to be able to ask their mentors specific questions about what they learn in the webinar. They work on creating documents, work on creating a business and then actually putting those things into practice.”
Young Agrarians of Canada is one of the country’s largest educational farmer-to-farmer resource networks focused on developing new and young farmers.