We’re happy to announce that Farmer Campus, along with our organizational partners
CAFF, received funding to continue our Farming through Wildfire Season program! Thank
you to our collaborators for your support in garnering those resources. We’re thrilled to offer viable,
actionable solutions for addressing the challenges of farming in wildfire country.
In Phase II of this program we’ll be launching a new website, expanding to three new
high-risk regions with 90 new producers; hosting 20 live targeted online workshops
combined with in-person townhalls; publishing producer case-studies and new videos
to augment our online course. We’ll also add a downloadable “Workbook” highlighting
best practices and applied activities that farmers can apply on-farm to improve their fire
resilience right away. Finally, we’ll be partnering with UC Davis to launch a statewide
mixed methods study on how farmers are being impacted and responding to wildfires.
As you know, the past year was a uniquely challenging time, from fires to COVID-19.
However, we were rewarded by seeing that our participants returned to our online
learning platform, Farmer Campus, to share updates with each other during subsequent
fires, and reported feeling more prepared when they had to evacuate – from confidence
in building their go-bags, preparing their livestock, to having a farm-wide emergency
plan to follow – the course prepared them. Many even completed much of the practical
changes on their land from fuel load reduction and infrastructure hardening. It was
heartening to know that our participants were already able to respond to this
unprecedented early and intense fire season.
The fact that they returned to Farmer Campus during and after such transformative
disasters as a place of connection, solace, resource sharing and direct farmer-to-farmer
knowledge sharing was incredibly profound and beyond what we dreamed of when
creating our wildfire program. From our alumni:
“Now that I have taken this course, I feel less afraid of fire and more respectful of it. I feel more confident on how to coexist with fire, how to prepare, recover, and how to work with the community.”
We were also reminded that this issue is too large to tackle as individuals, making us ever
more grateful for our partners’ work. We’ll keep you in the loop as we move forward and
we hope you do the same. Thank you for your support and the work you do in the world.
If you’d like to be in touch with us about updates, please email contact@farmercampus.com