Outcome of Building a Farmer-to-Farmer Network for Idaho’s Organic Farmers

The Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) organized farmer-to-farmer exchanges for organic farmers to share their successes and challenges with each other. This education and outreach program reached over 90 organic farmers in southern Idaho in 2011 and 2012. Farmers learned new production and marketing techniques directly from their peers. About 1/3 of farmers (12 out of 38) who participated in 2011 implemented a new production or marketing practice that they learned at the conference. NCAP ran the workshops using "open space" facilitation, allowing farmers to take leadership roles and build their own community.