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Are you currently an agricultural educator or service provider working with beginning farmers or young farmers? Are you addressing issues of farm viability, farm succession, or farm mental health?
Join these upcoming online sessions to learn about new, farmer-tested resources you can use to help farmers and ranchers integrate childcare, health care, and health insurance into their business and risk management plans.
USDA and CDC research shows that childcare, healthcare, and health insurance impact farm economic development, risk management, farm safety, and quality of life. To address these issues Ohio State University and American Farmland Trust (AFT) are developed curriculum, tools and resources to help you offer farmer-focused education and technical assistance on childcare, health care, and health insurance decision making. No prerequisite knowledge about health care, health insurance or childcare is required.
- September 15, 2026
- 1-2pm EST/ 12-1 pm CST/ 11-12pm MTN/ 10-11am Pacific
- September 17, 2026
- 1-2pm EST/ 12-1 pm CST/ 11-12pm MTN/ 10-11am Pacific
In these sessions, you’ll learn about six high-impact, interactive and open-access tools and resources for integrating health care, health insurance, and childcare into farm business plans.
You’ll also learn how you can use these materials to help farmers identify trade-offs in time, energy, and resources to meet farm and household needs, and guide them towards strategies and solutions to improve farm profitability and quality of life.
Decision-making tools can be used for 1) farmers and their families, and 2) farmers as employers who must make health care, health insurance, and childcare decisions in regard to their employees.
The curriculum is funded by NCR SARE and has been pilot tested by educators in the North Central Region.
Your benefit as an educator:
- Gain new tools to address the human aspects of agricultural risk management.
- Increase your knowledge, confidence, and ability to offer programs that address health care, health insurance, and childcare issues to assist farmers increase productivity, profitability, sustainability, and quality of life.
- Learn about the suite of open access tools you can insert into your existing farm curriculum and programming. You choose which tools to keep and which ones to adapt to the particular farm audiences you work with.
- Expand your network of allied professionals.
Who should attend?
- Educators and technical service providers who work directly with farming audiences.
- Individuals who work for Extension, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and private consultants.
- Individuals who have expertise in: agriculture business, whole farm planning, risk management, beginning farmers, small and medium farms, women in agriculture, farm mental health, community development, rural health, public health, family and consumer sciences, etc.