Other Ag News: Enroll Now for Small Farms Online Course Season Beginning this Fall

There is always more to learn when starting or expanding your farming operation. If you want to improve your technical or business skills to benefit your farm dreams, then consider joining one of our nearly three dozen online courses during live instruction this upcoming online course season.

The Cornell Small Farms Program is excited to announce that our courses will begin live webinars this fall, including newer additions to our online course suite and more learning opportunities in Spanish. Our growing team of online course instructors includes experienced farmers, extension educators, and agriculture service providers.

Our courses are offered on a user-friendly platform, which grants registrants permanent access to their course content. In our ongoing commitment to equitable access to education, we have maintained tiered pricing for our courses based on household size and income. We also offer scholarships for eligible farmers in New York who face an entry barrier to farming, and for military veterans in New York.

Registration is now open for all courses, with live content starting in September for our first block of courses.

• BF 101: Cómo Iniciar su Negocio Agrícola
  • ¿Está pensando en comenzar un negocio agrícola propio, pero se siente confundiso por todas las decisiones que esto involucra? Este curso esta diseñado para ayudar a los agricultores nuevos y aspirantes a dar los primeros pasos para iniciar su propio negocio agrícola (finca, rancho, granja) ya sea que tenga acceso a la tierra o no.
• BF 101: Starting at Square One
  • So you’re thinking about starting a farm, but feeling overwhelmed by all the decisions? This course was designed to assist new and aspiring farmers in taking the first steps in thinking through farm start-up (whether you already have land access or not).
• BF 112: Reading the Land
  • This course is a 4-week exploration of how you can confirm and/or measure improved land health. You will learn how to read the land, and how to conduct various biological monitoring practices, from simple to more complex.
• BF 149: Identifying and Partnering with Mushrooms in Farms, Gardens and Forests
  • Gain an overview of foundational knowledge needed to understand how mushrooms might play a role in your farm and/or greater community. You will learn the basic biology and life cycle, how to properly harvest and identify a specimen, and receive basic information and examples of ways humans are using mushrooms successfully depending on their goals and context.
• BF 204: QuickBooks for Farmers
  • Are you a beginning farmer? Or are you a current farmer with the desire to switch to an online accounting system? Then our quick guide to Quickbooks is for you. Learn the software’s basic features, such as sales tax, inventory, invoicing, adjustments, and year-end procedures.
• BF 233: Beef Cattle Management
  • This course will show you how having a successful cattle business is about much more than just buying a few head and putting them in a field. Learn about appropriate breeds, marketing strategies, and many more aspects of starting a beef enterprise.

Our program offers nearly three dozen online courses to help farmers improve their technical and business skills. These courses cover a range of topics any farmer needs to succeed, such as access to capital, stress reduction for farmers, poultry production, vegetable farming, and so much more. Experienced farmers, extension educators, and agriculture service providers guide students through course content, including weekly live webinars, videos, and resources.

In recent years we added “Growing Uncommon Fruit,” which will help you determine whether incorporating uncommon fruit into your operation is the right decision for you, “Goat Production,” which will guide beginning farmers through the production and marketing of goats for dairy, meat and fiber, and “Identifying and Partnering with Mushrooms in Farms, Gardens and Forests” to teach you basic ID, species, life cycle, and potential applications of mushrooms to solve community-level challenges. Other newer additions include “Stress Reduction for Farmers,” which offers strategies for streamlining your farm; “Access to Capital” for anyone seeking funding for a farm enterprise; “Cut Flower Production” on the business of flower farming; a course on “Beef Cattle Management;” a primer on “Social Media & Online Marketing” for your farm business; and a 4-week intensive in how “Reading the Land” can help you monitor its health.

In addition to new courses, we have expanded our Spanish-first online course offerings with our “BF 101: Cómo Iniciar su Negocio Agrícola” and “BF 102: Mercados y Rentabilidad.”

The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings, and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, webinars will be woven into the interface of the course for a dedicated time slot each year to allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real-time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.

You can browse all of our course offerings on our website. You can learn more about our courses, including answers to common questions, on our course FAQ.

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