Innovative Technology to Help Historically Underserved Farmers with Establishing, Maintaining and Evaluating Organic Practices

 The purpose of this project is to help historically underserved producers establish, maintain and evaluate organic practices on their farms, and to create innovative technology tools that support organic management decisions, systems and strategies for historically undeserved producers. This project will build on thesuccess of a prior CIG award providing training and technical assistance to the same audience of producers in organic production methods, and will addressa keybarrier identified in thatproject, which impacts historically underserved producers throughout the country. The goals of this CIG project are to: 1) Make cutting-edge technology accessible for historically underserved transitioning and organic producers by adapting and building on existing software tools for farm data and organic certification management; 2) Improve farm educators’ ability to train historically underserved producers in organic systems and evaluate results through use of interactive technology tools; 3) Educate historically underserved farmers in the use of reduced tillage systems for organic crop production, and use software tools to monitor results; and 4) Develop and demonstrate the use of innovative crop rotations for organic transition on a semi-urban site used for land-based farmer training.