BRANCHING OUT: HELPING SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE FARMERS TAP INTO EMERGING MARKETS, DIVERSIFY LAND MANAGEMENT, AND GROW NEW NETWORKS

Measure potential interest and current participation among farmers in emerging carbon and ecosystem service markets, agroforestry practices, and tree-planting, non-timber forest products, and woodland management.We will examine the individual and structural (e.g. policy and program) issues that shape farmers' adoption and willingness to adopt practices and programs for the following:carbon & ecosystem services (biodiversity, water, wildlife) markets that provide greater rewards to farmers who invest in the wooded parts of their property;agroforestry practices and tree-planting (e.g., riparian buffers, silvopasture) to diversify their activities; and finallynon-timber product markets (maple, mushrooms, hunting leasing) to support the use of forests as a vehicle to improve income on farms;woodland management for more traditional timber revenue or other objectives.Understand agricultural and natural resource professionals' perspectives on policies, practices, and opportunities to support more integrated agricultural and farmer woodland and agroforestry management.Under this objective, we seek to understand the implementation of current policy and programs, including unintended consequences, barriers, and opportunities associated with agricultural programs to facilitate use of forests and trees to improve farm viability and farmer quality of life and farm environmental quality. Policies and programs include:Carbon and biodiversity market supportProperty taxesFederal agriculture & forest conservation programsPolicies to support new and beginning farmersPolicies to support land transferThrough these first two objectives, we will intensively engage stakeholders to identify emerging opportunities and new policy tools to overcome barriers and more effectively support farmers' use of woodland and agroforestry practices (e.g., conservation finance). We will examine the effect of local professionals and networks on farmer adoption and willingness to adopt tree and woodland practices.We will simultaneously build innovative Extension programming in parallel with Objective 3, that will iteratively inform research Objectives 1 and 2, and will likewise integrate research results into core Extension activities.Develop and test innovative collaborative extension programs that connect farmers with agricultural and natural resource professionals to support ecosystem service markets, woodland management, agroforestry, and tree-planting practices.Our Extension program will focus on hands-on learning and on-going engagement with landowners and managers (learning circles, peer-to-peer learning; on-farm field days; small/medium sized farm workshops). We will also provide a venue for collaboration and discussion among professionals in agriculture and forestry, via the focus groups, and potentially the field days to shift the focus toward helping farmers develop diversified farms, breaking through the existing silos by land cover and production type.In addition to learning circles, we will assemble, modify, and create decision-support tools and budget support tools for farmers on agroforestry and woodland practices that are currently in use in our focus areas, as identified by Objectives 1 and 2.