Notes from IN SARE Advisory Committee
Conference Call 6/24/14
Conference call began at 7pm
Those in attendance (best memory):
 Laura Hormuth
 Jodee Ellett
 Lisa Holsher
 Chad Martin
 Tamara Benjamin
 Cissy Bowman
 Michael O’Donnell
 Kyle Edgell
 Roy Ballard
 Other???
Call began with a quick overview of SARE and the IN SARE PDP program and the role of
advisory committee members in providing guidance and structure to the program.
1) Update on NCR-SARE grant programs
New partnership grant program - preliminary plan is a due date of October 30th, dollar cap of
$30,000 for projects of up to 2 years, projects will be led by an "ag professional" and normally
be required to have at least 3 farmers involved in on-farm research, demonstration, or education
project activities. All projects expect to have outreach component. Call for proposals to be
released in early August. Amount of funds available will be $240,000 with probably match of
$100,000 from Buffett Foundation, for total pool of $340,000, with some of the funding (40%?)
likely prioritized for cover crop and soil health projects (pending Administrative Council
approval). We will work to develop a preliminary overview of this new grant program that can
be shared with others in your state beginning in June.
The PDP competitive grants will not be offered this spring due to changes in our other grant
programs and front-loading funding for the two year state plans of work. The tentative timeline
for the next round of PDP grants is to have a call for proposals released by December, 2015, with
proposals due on March 12, 2015, award notifications in early August, 2015, and funds available
by October 1st, 2015. We are dropping the pre-proposal component of the PDP grants going
forward and will just have full proposals. General guidelines will be the same as in the past, with
funding of up to $75,000 for projects up to 3 years in length. Buffett Foundation has also offered
to provide some matching funding to next year's PDP grants pending NCR-SARE
Administrative Council approval.
Graduate student programs came in recently and the quality was very good. Research and
education full proposals have also been received and will be reviewed by the technical
committee in mid-June with votes at the July Administrative Council meeting and notification by
early August (as will be the case for the graduate student grants).
Next deadline for youth educator grants is November 13, 2014.
Next deadline for farmer rancher grants is November 20, 2014.
2) Other regional and national SARE news updates
The next SARE Farmers Forum (presentations by SARE grantees) will be held in conjunction
with the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Association on January 22-25 in Aberdeen, SD.
Discussion was held about possible locations for the NCR-SARE farmers’ forum for 2016, but a
decision is probably some months away. Feedback was that we might pursue this as a part of the
2016 small Farm Conference.
3) Due date for the two year plans of work for 2015/16 will be Friday, October 10th. Plan is
for funds to be available to states starting January 1st, 2015. 10% indirect will be allowed this
year and it is likely Purdue will gladly accept that.
Annual reports will be due (online) in the window of January 15-30th, 2015.
4) The 2014 "Food, Fuel and Fiber" study tour event will be the Extension Energy and
Environment Summit at Iowa State University - September 23-25
Agenda for the event is available at https://www.2014e3.org/agenda/
Registration information will be available in early June and will be sent out at that
time. Attendance at this year's event will be capped at 80. We will be able to provide travel
scholarships as appropriate to educators from our state, extension educators will be encouraged
to attend this event. They should let us know if they have an interest.
5. We are challenged with developing a 2 year Plan of Work for 2015-2016 biennium…
The next step is to identify broadly the Initiatives on which we will focus… we can be thinking
about specifically how to address those between now and our next meeting in September.
These are some rough ideas! We will need to refine and reduce these to 4 (no more than 5)
initiatives.
1. “Beginning” farmer
 Pair educators with “new” farmers to attend trainings in other states.
 New farmer training
 Consider use of day prior to Small farm conference
 Facilitate Land access…access to resources…expertise…”matchmaking”
 Plan to complement the Beginning farmer grant when it is funded or be the mechanism
for delivery if it is not… plan sustainable ag farm tours around Indiana.
2. Cover Crops/Soil Health
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Consider CCA as potential audience…seed dealers, fertilizer sales staff etc…
Field trips to cover crops and soil health related demo plots in IN and surrounding states.
We've done some small group trips to the likes of Dave Brandt in OH, which works well.
Consider recent publication by Linda Prokopy
Suggest research plots- How to engage Purdue research staff in trials
Cross agency “road trips” study tours as in the Rodale trip.
Find ways to open the doors of communication with researchers to make sure the
message is consistent and based on research…
Suggest having student do literature search of the research to share with campus staff…a
synopsis of the current research. Identify a faculty member be the advisor on a project for
SARE for 15 weeks x 10 hours per week x $12/hour = $1800? Once the report is
complete, could we bring in a speaker from another state and have a workshop at the SFC
2015? Student conducts a meta-analysis of current research in cover crops and presenting
at the conference along with a practitioner like Joel Gruver? Let's record it or also have
some webinars?
Permaculture- There is more interest around farm-scale permaculture, which Mark Shepard has
called ‘restoration agriculture.’ Mark is really the leading voice and farmer, nationally, even
internationally, on this type of production system, managing his own farm (New Forest Farm in
WI http://www.newforestfarm.net/ ), speaking and consulting internationally, and developing
research farms with different organizations, including University of Illinois
(http://web.extension.illinois.edu/units/event.cfm?UnitID=629&EventID=65381 ). He spoke at
Acres in 2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_t-sVVzF0 ), and has been seen as a leader
since then in the alt agriculture realm. I think it would be great to visit his farm, or perhaps the
University of IL research farm in the near future. Engage the FNR specialists/faculty in small
farm programming. Would be a nice topic for SFC.
Training in putting on webinars
Work with seed companies to get cover crop plots out at high schools. A couple already did this,
and had field days! Work with vo-ag teachers at their annual conference.
3. Farm Tours for educators
 Suggested locations/focus topics –Michigan/Wisconsin
4. Outreach to Vo-Ag teachers and vets
5. Scaling Up
 Wholesale Success
 Market Ready
To include Enterprise budgets (Partnership grant?), Decision tools (Chris Blanchard?)
Business training (BTW… there is interest in renovating the New Venture program)
 Farm to School
 Infrastructure development
 Building collaboration- Cooperatives/Market Associations
 Cross training with other states (Hoop houses…TSP…Train the trainer…)
 High Tunnel “Hub” farm---what works, when, how, efficiency, food safety, rotation,
profitability
 All may cross over with “beginning farmer”
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Growing for Wholesale - partnership grant with this Old Farm, Green BEAN and HHM
for training growers to grow for their distribution systems. This could include a F2S
component. It would create that 'network' that all three of those companies need, but do
not necessarily want to do because they are in competition with one another. The point of
the grant would be to create a training tool for growers to make strategic business
decisions for scaling into wholesale and training them on the types of equipment that can
help them in the field and post-harvest. Identify vital tools needed by growers to be
successful…write a SCBG to secure access to those tools.
6. Carbon Energy Climate
 Topic to date has been difficult to deliver on for a number of reasons… farmer interest,
expertise/ interest of educators…it takes time to build a meaningful program.
 May consider moving away from the head on approach and taking a more indirect route
to focus on energy conservation, alternative farm energy…greening your farmstead, tree
planting (economic impacts), geothermal, alternative energy sources, solar well pumps.
 Look at Mobile bio diesel facility that MI operates
7. Entrepreneurial
 Emphasis on Marketing… not just selling
 Penn State Food for Profit program.. Indiana food product development
program…session for educators?
 Tour incubator sites…Cleveland, Athens others???
 Relationship with Ivy Tech?
 Market Ready… cross over with Scaling up…
 Possibility of fostering an organic grower’s organization/association? Like OEFFA
IMPORTANT…
Next meeting of the IN SARE Advisory Committee will be held on Friday, September 5, 2014
from 10 am-2pm at the State NRCS office on the NW side of Indianapolis… I will send specific
address and directions as we get closer to the date…Thanks to Tony Bailey for offering and
confirming the use of this great facility… Ideas for lunch welcome…
Thanks to all for your great input… the door is open… as you have thoughts or ideas…
PLEASE share them…don’t wait for the 5th!