We are looking for climate-smart farmers with big goals to transform their farms and local food systems.
In January, we are hosting a week-long, in-person strategic sprint* to provide farmers with the tools and resources they need to become change-makers and succeed in farming.
*Strategic Sprint is a condensed, accelerated period of time that organizations use to set goals, identify challenges, clarify values, and create direction for their teams.
After decades of teaching social entrepreneurial education & food systems change, we noticed farmers were missing out on the resources & support.
So, we created…
Upcoming FARMpreneurs Sprints*
January 5-10
Bishop's Ranch
Northern California
January 19-25
Carnation Farms
Redmond, Washington
*Farmers, please apply even if you don’t live in these states. We are accepting farmers nationwide. We will expand our program to Tennessee, New York, Arizona, and Central / Southern California in the future.
Application Process
Will Rosenzweig discussed with a group of farmers the why behind FARMpreneurs, what a strategic sprint is, and how past alumni are making impacts in their communities. Emma Jagoz, an alum from a previous cohort, joined and shared how her farm has transformed since this program.
Watch Q&A Webinar
Alumni Success Stories
Emma Jagoz & Moon Valley Farms
When Emma Jagoz joined the program, she was farming 7 separate leased plots. She arrived with a big vision to create local jobs, build a resilient food hub, and grow healthy food for her community in the Chesapeake Bay.
Since the program, she has purchased her own farm and profitably scaled her business 5x — all with grant funding. And we are proud to say that Emma Jagoz of Moon Valley Farm, holds the first organic seat for the Governor's Agricultural commission in Maryland.
Our Alumni's Impacts
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White Buffalo Land Trust
Value Added Products
Jesse Smith developed and refined a strategy for value-added products made from the fully-regenerative production at White Buffalo Land Trust. The program helped him develop a rubric for testing and prioritizing new product opportunities, while creating a clear strategy and presentation for the benefit of his organization's board and funders.
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Masumoto Family Farms
Succession Planning
The FARMpreneur program gave Nikiko Masumoto an opportunity to explore and work through key issues with respect to her assuming responsibility for this fourth generation farm. The cohort provided a safe space to explore generational transitions and put together a proposal for her family to consider.
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Meadowlark Organics
Vertical Integration
John Wepking arrived at the program in the midst of complicated, high potential generational transition with a long-time Wisconsin grain farmer and developed a solid business strategy that involved creating a vertically integrated farm to bakery business featuring on-site milling.
This is not a program teaching you how to farm better.
This is an immersive, in-person gathering where farmers are supported and guided by business experts in creating an actionable strategic playbook on how to achieve their
“Big Hairy Audacious Goals”.
Farmers are very busy people, we know.
That’s why we condensed decades worth of social entrepreneurship education into 7-days.
Farmers need this information.
This week will be profoundly transformative.
We are looking for farmers who have the belief, hope, and inspiration to create a better, healthier food system.
This will be an intense week.
But if transforming your farm and gathering the skills to increase your impact in your local food system excites you, we invite you to apply.
Nikiko Masumoto
— Masumoto Family Farm, California
“The program helped me think bigger and take myself and my farm more seriously.
It was a great opportunity to learn and gain the resources from the business world that aren’t usually available for farmers.”
What Farmers Gain By Attending
You will leave with a strategic playbook that outlines your farm’s vision and values that will guide your impact upon returning home.
This program is action-based and very iterative.
We learn concepts and frameworks by immediately applying them to your farm’s current circumstances.
Mentors will be guiding you through a collaborative process to clarify your farm’s unique opportunities and identify the hurdles that are holding you back.
In the final days of the retreat you will deliver your strategic playbook as a presentation to panel of experts who are there to help you move forward on your goals.
Most importantly, you will gain lifelong relationships.
Our ethos centers on community and collaboration.
“We create a safe and focused environment for climate-smart farmers to hone their business strategies and refine the mindsets, skill sets and tool kits they use to grow and operate their businesses. We bring the best practices of leading-edge entrepreneurial education to farmers—giving them dedicated time and support to think bigger to expand their profitability and increase their triple bottom-line impacts.”
— Will Rosenzweig
FARMpreneurs Faculty Leader
Faculty Director, UC BerkeleyHaas Sustainable Food Initiative
Founding Dean, Food Business School, Culinary Institute of America
What Makes This Program Unique
We bring decades of experience in entrepreneurship education, organic and sustainable farming, running restaurants, and food system transformation across our team.
Our goal for this week and beyond is to provide you with actionable business tools, resources, and connections we have so you can take your farm to the next level and transform your local food system.
Beyond the in-person event, farmers will have access to self-paced, online courses focused on specific business goals:
Building institutional relationships of Farm to School Supply Chains
Collaboration for successful farmer-led cooperatives
Influencing Policy
Leading change while growing capacity
And more on the way!
We’ve cultivated close relationships with partners, including leading sustainable agriculture organizations and regional farms and over 30 years of social capital in entrepreneurial and food systems transformation, including the Haas Sustainable Business School at Berkeley.
We are expanding our network to help attending farmers to continue to be supported in their work to transform their local food system and practice climate-smart agriculture.
Farmers who attend the retreat and online courses can receive an optional certificate of completion from Swette Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture at Arizona State University.
This is intended to serve as "investable" to capital providers and prospective strategic partners to build you and your farm credibility.
Meet Your Teachers & Mentors
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Elaine Hsu
Lead Operations , Planet Fwd
Elaine was Co-Facilitator of the 2020 FP Stone Barns program. Elaine is an experienced supply chain executive with a passion for sustainable agriculture and supply chains. She is a former management consultant with strong analytic, communication, and project management skills.
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Anna Nakamura Knight
Farmer
Anna is a fifth-generation, Japanese American farmer stewarding 80 acres in Southern California. She farms with her family, and runs California's oldest Farm to School food hub. With 10 years of off-farm experience (5 at an investment bank!), Anna now works to help small to mid-sized farmers find ways to keep farming forever.
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Kathleen Merrigan
Executive Director, Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems
Kathleen A. Merrigan is an expert in food and agriculture, celebrated by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2010. Currently, she serves as the Kelly and Brian Swette Professor in the School of Sustainability and executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University.
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Will Rosenzweig
Founder
Will is an internationally recognized entrepreneur, educator and master gardener. He’s spent more than 30 years cultivating thriving startups while teaching and mentoring mission-driven entrepreneurs around the world. He is a recipient of the Oslo Business for Peace Award, representing “the highest distinction given to a businessperson for outstanding accomplishments in the area of ethical business.”
Jayne Merner
— Earth Care Farm, Rhode Island
“The value of connecting with other farmers, having Will guide us, being at an abundant farm, treated with such care and fed so well is really priceless.”
P.S. - This Program is Free for Farmers*
*Fees for all farmers were paid thanks to our generous donors, sponsors, and funders.
Farmers are only responsible for travel-associated costs if selected.
FAQ
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FARMpreneurs is a week-long, in person, residential intensive program that brings entrepreneurial education to farmers of (and transitioning to) regenerative, sustainable, organic, climate smart practice.
We have condensed a Berkeley-level graduate school of entrepreneurial education and mentorship for farmers practicing and transitioning to Climate Smart Agriculture into one week. This course is an intensive retreat in how to make climate smart farming better business. This is not a course teaching you how or what to farm. This is a course that works with the issues and ideas you bring to the table to help solve for better financial strategy, connect you to resources and do better business for and with the planet.We are bringing you off farm to work with peers and a network of industry experts that help navigate to better, more sustainable business models grounded in social, community and environmental wellbeing. Through this course alumni report feeling “validated”, “instilled with confidence” to take necessary risk, “connect to peers and the larger farming community” and infused with a “spirit of boldness' in a dedicated space where they can really focus and accomplish more than they can imagine in the dedicated time.
We aim to cocreate pathways where business and community and ecology can thrive. We are investing in farmers because they are our best investment in the planet.
The FARMpreneurs Strategic Sprint Guides Farmers to:
Develop a strategic plan to create and capture value from your farm
Articulate a clear long-term vision with concrete steps to successfully achieve it
Practice and integrate key principles of mission-driven, values-centered entrepreneurship
Engage in peer learning and collaboration with inspiring FARMpreneurs alumni
Learn proven collaboration methods that build and foster robust partnerships that mitigate risks and support sustainability
Explore meaningful models of farmer-led food hub collaborations
Identify unmet needs in a region's farming ecosystem, and identify how to create long-term value from those business opportunities
Review and analyze product/market fit and distribution- know what to stop doing
Develop and implement an organizational plan to grow your team and its capacity
Design a charismatic, financially-viable business plan to attract and engage stakeholders: employees, partners, landowners, community leaders, lenders, investors
Present your plan to our panel of accomplished farmers, investors and food system experts who will give valuable, constructive feedback and networking opportunities
Continue beyond the January sprint, with monthly peer-learning cohort conversations and mentorship and continuation course opportunities
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Northern California
January 5–10, 2025Washington
January 19–25, 2025Coming Mid-2025
Central California
New York
Tennessee -
Applicants must:
be 21 years of age
3-10 years Farm Leadership Experience
50K + in annual revenue
Owner or co-owner of a farm or farm related project
Deal primarily with growing food, wine or spirits for humans in soil
Engage in or be transitioning to Climate Positive Farming Practices that build and protect soil and aim to enhance the wellbeing of people, community and planet through soil care, acreage transition, wildland management
Applicants must also:
Embody a growth mindset
Be competent in basic financial literacy skills
Have constraints of capital, land, connections and confidence
Are prepared to engage in an intensive entrepreneurial program providing training and leadership development
Are committed to mandatory attendance to days of in person sessions and two of the three preparatory zoom meetings
Are committed to filling out mandatory follow up surveys immediately upon completion of the program and an annual survey 5 years post-program
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Will Rosenzweig and his team facilitate the curriculum alongside national and regional experts in the field. Topics include mission vision and values alignment, entrepreneurial mindset, communication strategy, ecosystem cultivation, team growth and management, market assessment, value creation and human centered design. Each of these topics is applied with mentorship to the individual issues and goals of our participants. There is nothing general about this work. You work on your project in real time, applying the entrepreneurial skill set to the growth you want to achieve.
Peer integration is key to this formative experience. As alumni of this course you will stay connected on our virtual platform to continue to share experiences and cross pollinate ideas.
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You will be given a playbook to capture your progress and bring your plans back to implement on your farm. Over the course of the week you will create a business plan. In the final days of the course you will make a brief presentation of this plan to a panel of experts that are positioned to help you move forward on your goals. In an effort to maximize impact and the number of farms that we reach through this program, we ask that no more than one participant from a particular farm apply. Throughout the program, we make a conscious effort to support participants in sharing their learning with their business partners and teams during and after the program. On completion of the program you will have created a strategic business plan to share with your farming team.
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Curriculum focus varies in each region. Examples of focus topics may include:
Institutional Relationships with: Education K-12 , University, Hospitals and Prisons
Regional Food Hub Cooperatives
Show me the money
Financial Literacy
Diversified farm enterprise
Different forms of capital and risk
Grant Funding cycles
What do you have to have in place to succeed
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This fellowship is generously funded by both individual and foundational support and comes at no cost to farmers. Farmers must cover the cost and logistics of their travel to and from the host farm or retreat center. The true cost of this program is 5K per farmer. We are raising scholarships and working towards honorariums for all farmer participants. We know investment in your local farmers has a direct, exponential community, planetary and personal health impact. An investment that our diversified network of funders benefit from directly. Investing in the growth and success of your farmers ensures regional food security, access to nutrient dense, diverse and delicious fresh foods available in your favorite restaurants, farmers and other local markets. Many of our alumni have gone onto create nationally distributed CPG brands that are as sustainable for the planet as they are for their lives. FARMprenurs focuses on how Climate Smart Agriculture is better business and builds capacity for farmers to increase their ability to contribute to the social wellbeing of their regions and the world.
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