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[Music] [Music] all right well I think we could get started really have some other people wandering in but I'm Annie Heiser I work for the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition in Missoula and we manage the farm like Montana program so we my role is I work with beginning farmers and ranchers all over the state helping them get started so we have business planning workshops so we offer those just wrapped up all over the state and we got a bunch of other resources that I'll let you know about but I'd like to start out by kind of hearing what you guys are interested in getting out of this talk because at the end that you feel like I didn't hit on enough and you want me to come back to please feel free to let me know but I'm gonna talk start out by talking about a few financing resources that we in particular offer and I'll touch on a couple of the other resources that are kind of the primary financing tools that we connect people with around the state and then from there we'll go in and talk about Farm link and kind of how you can find all the other resources as you as you grow and move your farm so this program I'm going to touch on super briefly but the mini grant program actually is out of funds for 2017 and I'm not sure if we'll have funds for 2018 so we have a booth downstairs it's a farm link Montana booth you'll see a lot of the same looking stuff on there but I'd encourage you to sign up for our e-newsletter because that's kind of the best way that we get the word out about when there are additional funds available so but I'll talk a little bit about this real briefly and for when we have funds available these are grants that we partner with the Department of Agriculture to offer so you work with me directly to I kind of can help you get the application done and then I'm sort of the first round of review and then the Department of Ag is the final review for it and it's just for specialty crops so it's not gonna work for hay grain any kind of livestock unfortunately but if you're growing any of this kind of stuff even if you're growing both if you're doing livestock and fruits and vegetables or something like that as long as the grant money is just going towards the fruit and vegetable part then that's fine it's just the project itself has to fund specialty crops and the this is it's it's kind of a tricky set of things that it's a bit that it can be used for so the best thing to do when we do have funds available again is to just give me a call and we can set up a time or shoot me an email we can set up a time to chat and we can kind of talk about what the range of things is that you are looking to fund and what pieces of that might be fundable through this program because supply therefore up to $500,000 and they're at 1.8 percent almost all the time so this is cheap money livestock forage program if you have any livestock that you're raising for sale for you know not for fun enlist in this program this program is one of those like relics of the like just random programs where you get paid for not really doing too much if you have a livestock and they have they have had a drought in any part of your county for a certain number of months they you know they have a different kind of rating scale you get paid so it's a drought assistance program for forages so if there is a place in like quorum that has a drought for six weeks in the summer and it gets to a certain level of drought anybody in Flathead County is eligible for a payment so this one you have to register in advance go in sometime in the spring talk to your FSA agent it's great to go in and talk to them anyway they have a wealth of information and you have to go in to register your farm with them to be able to talk to NRCS about any of their programs anyway so great to get get listed get your farm registered with them and get in a program if you have livestock so that's kind of a range of their programs the the other thing that Farm Service Agency does on a big scale is lending and I'm just gonna throw all of these up right now oops okay so Farm Service Agency you used to be known as the lender of last resort they don't like to be known as that anymore but basically they're not going to loan to you if a commercial lender will loan to you because they don't want to be competing in the lending market but small-scale agriculture is oftentimes something that bankers will not lend you money for so if you're having a hard time getting financing or if you think you might have a hard time getting financing go to FSA and talk to them about their loans or call us and talk to us about their loans because they've got great rates and they will always work with farmers that's all that they work with so they understand the challenges that we go through I'm not gonna say that they're gonna let you not pay your loans back but they you know they they get it and they're really willing to work with folks I know that they just got a new loan agent in Lake County who's really excited about working with specialty crop producers and she covers this whole area right yeah she does I think I'm remembering that right everywhere from Missoula County south and east from there is out of Dillon but the Lake County agent is out of roan Anna and she covers Flathead County so you've got a local office that's your County office but all the lending goes out of Rome and so all these programs go out of there so farm ownership loans they're up to three hundred thousand dollars they have some other benefits for for beginning farmers and ranchers they also have downpayment assistance so if you are buying especially bare land you know bare land your down payment can oftentimes be thirty forty percent of the loan amount was crazy really hard to do if you're going with a commercial lender and they're saying to you you got to give me 20% down Farm Service Agency can create a loan with you where you only have to pay 3% down and they'll pay that other 17% so this is a really great resource they have farm operating loans which can be up to seven years one to seven years for any equipment they're really used to giving people an operating loan every year so if you find that there are some costs on your farm that are seasonal you know it still has interest on it but if you have some seasonal cost you know you're gonna be able to pay off at the end of the year every year and it's just a cash flow issue they do a lot of that they do a lot of equipment the micro loan program is up to fifty thousand dollars and it also has some kind of special things for beginning farmers and I should actually say all the things in FSA that are benefits or where they have special rates or terms for beginning farmers are also for socially disadvantaged farmers and veterans on some of them so definitely go in and see if any of those apply to you and then they also do guaranteed loans so guarantee is where if you've got a bank that's willing to lend to you but they're kind of on the fence about it or maybe they are not quite comfortable with with lending to you FSA will guarantee the loan so they'll say hey if this person defaults we'll pay for it so that often times can motivate a conventional lender quite a bit to help them to give you money so but a lot of people go to their local bank first and then hear about the guaranteed loans and they're like oh that's great I can get a guaranteed loan knowing not knowing that these loans can still often be there gonna be a conventional lender rates right so five six percent whatever check with them on the Direct Loans first go to your FSA agency and check with them because they if you can get a direct loan they sometimes will lump structures in with farm ownership because they're a longer term they can be up to 30 years but some of like smaller structures they can be used for a lot of different kinds of things so yeah but you know Farm Service Agency is definitely a lender where you know they're still relying on kind of the community model where they are used to letting they're used to lending to people based on that they know their dad and they know like their whole family structure and all that kind of stuff so they know whether they're reliable and gonna pay it back so the more that you can be going into that office years in advance of when you want money from them and just letting them know hey this is what I'm doing I'm a legitimate business I know what I'm doing I know how to farm I'm making a profit like isn't this great and building a relationship with them the more likely you're gonna be to able be able to get a quicker turnaround on your loan when you apply and have just a better better lending process with them so building a relationship I don't think there's I don't think you can start early enough with reaching out to them Farm Service Agency used to have a lot of these programs especially their farm ownership loans they didn't have as much money in them and so people would apply have you know because when you do take one step back when you do a farm ownership alone you have to have a buy-sell in hand so you can't get pre-approved like you can get at a conventional lender so you've got to already have the property saina buy sell and then you can take your application into the Farm Service Agency so that's another reason why it's good to build up the relationship in advance and a lot of a lot of times people would be submitting their applications waiting three or four months on this property thankfully the other person the you know the seller hopefully was willing to wait with them and then finding out that the program had run out of money that has not happened in a few years the operating loans ran out of money last year and they were able to relocate some other funds over to it so they were still able to make loans and farm ownership they haven't run out of money in a few years but it does still take 60 to 90 days so if that's something that you can work into your buy sell you know always I hope I'm not repeating things that everybody already knows but in your buy sell you can make a contingency for if the house is totally rundown and you're not going to be able to fix it or if your lender won't lend you and won't give you a loan for it there's always a financing contingency in there so just know that if you're planning on going to the FSA you're gonna need to set that out at least three months from your buy sell date but you can definitely start working on an application in advance and have all that stuff lined up and everything but they won't look at it until you've got a buy-sell in hand that's all I have on I have a whole bunch of other Farm Service Agency materials at our booth downstate yeah I'm happy to help for it pretty early on and help brainstorm and figure out like where you need to go and what what are your next steps I mean kind of the way that I do my technical assistance appointments is just like I want to hear about your long-term goals where you where you hoping to get the farm in five years where you hoping at the farm this year okay what do you need to do to get there and then helping to like kind of set some goals and then we meet again that kind of stuff so yeah really free whoa killing consultants all over the face yeah your tax dollars you're already paid for it basically all right I'm gonna hop really quickly through some programs that are not related to me but are just some other great programs in Montana who's already heard about growth through agriculture oh yay growth through agriculture is so awesome so grow through our culture is a grant that's managed by the Montana Department of Agriculture and they they the goal of the grant is to support value-added production which can include local marketing as a form of value-adding and anything you have to be able to create and retain jobs so there's some kind of odd questions in there but there are some folks who can help you out with a application process it is a dollar-for-dollar match but this is kind of the other big the main big grant program in Montana it's a competitive grant they're not eating easy to get some people apply you know two or three years before they get them but you can get up to $50,000 so it can make a pretty big difference on your farm yep you can't have that first dollar be something that's another federal grant but as long as it can be alone it can be your personal money it can be any other kind of stuff so the best people to contact on this there's your food and AG development centers there's food and egg development centers all over the state there's four of them right now there's one in Ronan at mission Mountain food Enterprise Center which is a great resource if you're thinking about doing any kind of value-added project this year they're only having one deadline it's due September 15th and it takes about a month to put together an application if you're like part timing it so I would definitely recommend if you're thinking about this one get in touch with them before August 1st and they can help you to put through the application and help you understand kind of what the Department of Ag is looking for and whatnot and then there are some other grants and cost share programs USDA Rural Development is another USDA agency they offer two grants that are really great for farmers a value added producer grant so this is this can be quite a bit of money and they're always looking for proposals to come from Montana you compete in Montana and then you compete nationally so it's a pretty competitive grant program but if you're thinking about making a value-added product this can be quite a bit of money this can be quite an investment so great on that and then they also have a rural energy for America program which can help to fund yes thank you sorry yeah yeah so if you're thinking about making a juice from your apples or you know whatever rural energy for America is about getting sustainable energy on farms so if you're thinking about putting in solar panels or wind or you know micro hydro something definitely look into that one it can help a lot if you want to do research or test varietals on your farm Sarah grants is this a sustainable agriculture research and education grant you can partner with three to five to ten farmers in your area if you want to test varietals of something and work with extension to help to do the research right and all that kind of stuff that can be a pretty cool one especially if you're going along with your with your day I'm farming and you're like man I wish I had the capacity to test this other thing because I really think it would work better it's a great way to use the funds specialty crop Block Grant that comes up in January or February it just they just closed their deadline for this year but that is something where you have to have an industry impact a little bit it's tough as an individual farmer to get that one but if there's something where you're gonna be marketing Flathead Valley specialty crops it's a great way to use the money especially mom Flathead Valley vegetables or Flathead Valley apples or whatever it is that can provide a lot of funds they're red ants pants as a foundation the red ants pants festival basically takes all of their funds and all of their a lot of their profits and reinvest it into through a grant program around the state they really like funding women-led projects they really like funding projects that build self-sufficiency in the community so if you're doing those kinds of things they just released their grant application and it's due in the next couple months and I think they usually fund about 1 or 2 grand but they can go up to 10 grand so that can be pretty cool and NRCS is an amazing resource if you haven't reached out I'm not just saying that cuz andrew is here if you haven't reached out to your NRCS agents please do it it's there the number one thing that I direct people to it's a Natural Resources Conservation Service and one of the programs that they offer is a cost share program where if you have a conservation project that you want to do on your property they will share the cost of doing that so they will grant you a certain they don't like to use the word grant but they'll give you a certain portion of money and you supply the rest so h gh tunnels have been a big thing that they've been funding over the last few years they have an organic initiative that can provide some additional support to organic producers but they have like lists and lists of the things that they can fund so you know trees that can be used as wind breaks or sometimes some kinds of irrigation projects there's a ton of different things that they can fund and the great thing is that an NRCS agent will come out to your property and walk around with you and help you to figure out what programs you could access did I say anything that's a lie [Laughter] yeah that's a USDA agency they're the natural resources conservation assistance through extension and your NRCS agents your USDA agents so we really try and focus on providing some farm specific business planning resources so there's a lot of that kind of stuff on here but there's help for how to find accountants that are farm specific there's help for how to find attorneys some of that stuff is still in development with some of our partners but it's constantly growing we're always adding more resources and we'd love to add resources that are beneficial to you so if there are things that you can't find please let us know we'd love to add that kind of stuff on here oh the only other thing is that in addition to this we also offer I guess that's not in oh yeah it isn't here we also offer a couple of different kinds of events we offer planning for on-farm success which is a business planning workshop thanks okay it's just business planning workshops that were offered all over the state they just wrapped up but they will be being offered again next year we didn't offer them here in Kalispell because they're extension led so we kind of go to wherever an extension agent calls for it so if you would like to see this in cows let your Extension agent know they're downstairs you can tell them today that you'd like to see this and we'd be happy to have it here next year as well next week we're having sustainable farm wah 101 and we actually just launched a scholarship process for this because we had the last minute the group of funds so if the cost was holding you back from applying please consider applying applications are only being accepted through Monday evening and this is for next weekend but a lot of different legal stuff especially I know somebody as something about lease writing and accessing farmland in general and that's gonna be covered in depth this is a one-time-only thing that she's coming here as a person from from Illinois who's coming here to offer the workshop so that's not something I mean all those resources will get added onto Farm link but in terms of one workshop where all that information is all at once and you got an attorney there to ask questions of that's kind of a one-time thing mmhmm yeah though all the resources that come out of it will and there's a quite a few legal resources on there as well and then in two weeks we're having a farm and ranch site assessment workshop so that'll be in Missoula as well but talking about how to use the web soil survey how to use the water rights query systems with some of the online tools that are available in Montana can help you to evaluate a piece of property as well as going out to a site and doing some light soil sampling and talking having a rancher and a farmer talk about what they look for when they look at a site we're also gonna be having field days in partnership with farm hands up here in the Flathead we hope this summer we have field days every year but usually a little bit further south so if you're interested in that feel free to visit our booth downstairs and sign up for our e-newsletter and we can keep you apprised of all of that kind of stuff as well as any new grants and whatnot if you have any more questions I'm happy to stick around and I will be downstairs I'm also doing the farm marketing workshops that's in the afternoon so um happy to answer more questions but I want to let you guys get to where you're going so thanks so much for coming [Music]