Free money for your small farm or homestead

A surprising source of money helping farmers share the costs of addressing natural resource concerns. Is there free money from the government for your small farm or homestead?

That's the pitch from many business opportunity promoters about making money from your land. While some of it is true, this episode covers the harsh reality of these programs.

This is your podcast as someone running a small farm or homestead. If you were to have a question, ask them here, https://www.prosperityhomestead.org/contact/

#SmallFarm #FarmingGrants #GovernmentGrants

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So you've heard about government programs thatwill pay you money to farm on your
land. Some of these programs arebeing pitched as helping you to be able
to acquire land. Other programs arebeing pitched to help you acquire seed and
other materials. What I'm going totalk about here is typically how a small
farm or a homestead might use theseprograms to supplement their costs in order to

(00:22):
provide for a better plan of thefarm. So I'm justin hit with prosperity
homestead. Now, the first thingyou gotta understand is there's a reason why
I have a systematic approach, adesign plan, and other like orientation.
Running a small farm or a homesteadlike a business, even running your household
like a business is because not onlydid I grow up like that, but

(00:46):
I've been in the professional world,and farms that operate like a business tend
to function more smoothly. So,for example, if you've got a farm
and you have a chicken operation.Now it doesn't have to be an industrial
farm, it doesn't have to bean operation like a factory, but you've
got chickens. Chickens have certain needs, they have certain costs associated with them.

(01:07):
They take up a certain amount ofspace, they require a certain amount
of work in labor, and ifyou package all that up into your quote
chicken operation or your chicken project,you'll be able to see from inputs to
outputs, what are you're putting inand what are you taken out? And
then this is not necessary to justify, but it's to budget so that your
household can really care for those chickensover time. And then of course the

(01:30):
methodologies that you use. Are youdoing a chicken tractor. Are you doing
a building that you're alternating between twodifferent runs so that areas don't get too
compacted. Are you doing deep mulch. There's all these different ways that you
can operate the chicken project, andyou want to be clear about it because
if you're doing it six different waysor you're just simply winging it, then

(01:53):
you're going to end up with unhealthychickens, low quality eggs, and problems.
You know, beyond the raccoon andpossum problems, you will have problems
if you don't treat your farm orhomestead like a business and then clearly identify
the different things that you're going todo, because what happens is a lot
of small farms will start doing differentprojects. They'll have the chickens, they'll

(02:15):
have the llama, they'll have fivedogs, they'll have a goat program,
they'll have a hog program, they'llhave some horses and cows. Next thing
you know, it's like a it'slike a petting zoom. So we want
to first understand the mindset of approachingyour farm, small or large. With
the organized business focused approach, theresources that you put into the farm will

(02:40):
be significantly less than what the farmproduces for your family. Now again,
this works with the farm produces allyour food and meat needs, or this
farm produces enough to start selling inthe community. Now we're starting to talk
about the income opportunity. So there'sa lot of pitches going around about the
income opportun of starting your small farmor even just owning land. A lot

(03:02):
of these are bs. But ifyou have the business based approach, you
work with projects and different areas ofoperation on the farm. You design your
farm so that the outputs of onearea are now inputs to the other.
Let's say you've got a big marketgarden and you're overproducing in the market garden.
Your local farmers market isn't buying enoughproduce, and you decide to add

(03:25):
a pig operation. So you haveyour market garden operation actually having a waste
product which is surplus vegetables going intoyour pig operation, which is reducing the
costs of feed. Do you seehow that works. Now, when we
have this mindset, we have thestructure, we have this organization, your
day to day chores will be easier. You'll have a better understanding of what's

(03:46):
going on around your property and whatneeds to happen to meet the needs of
different seasons. And then ultimately youwill finally be able to use these incentive
programs. So the USDA has incentiveprograms, the Environmental Quality Incentive Programs EqP
EQIP. There's all kinds of incentives. There's conservation incentives, there's land where

(04:14):
you set aside land incentives. Theseincentives can lower your taxes. Now,
of course you have to have someincome to lower taxes, but they can
also cover some of the costs ofoperating that farm. They can provide you
free resources. Even your extension officeis paid for by tax dollars. If
you're paying taxes, you might aswell use these resources. Now, there's

(04:34):
two concerns that you should have usingthese resources. Number one, if the
resource is tax money set aside,usually that means a congress persons has wrote
this into a bill that money maynot be available for the long term.
So these incentives are not something thatyou depend on. They are like icing

(04:55):
on the cake. You can eatthe cake without the icing, but the
icing makes it better. The secondthing is is many of these programs are
tied to either quotas, inspections,or specific means of operations. So,
for example, if you become acertified organic producer, it gives you access
to different markets. The certification allowsyou to sell the grocery stores. In

(05:17):
many cases, you'll have certain requirementsas far as where the food came from
and the tracking of the food itself. Unfortunately, a lot of these requirements
move towards industrial farming, and alot of folks here don't want to do
that. And that's okay because industrialfarming is running a factory. We're not
talking about running a factory. We'retalking about a highly efficient and effective family

(05:38):
and community. And so while we'reobserving business planning, business implementation, and
best practices for a holistic business thatsupports your community, we don't want to
go so far that we have tobuy a certain tractor, we have to
spare food with certain chemicals, becauseeven the organic Producers certifications are doing things

(05:59):
that are really not acceptable. Ifanimal care, land care, human care,
the permaculture principles are there, thenthese incentive programs you do have to
be careful with them. However,many incentive programs can pay up the fifty
percent or more of your cost.Now, these are costs sharing programs,
very often managed at a state level. So where do you find these programs

(06:23):
where we can talk about it atanother time. What's even more important is
to have the foundation in place inyour farm operation so that you know,
without the incentives, that you've gota good balance of money coming in and
the money going out is significantly less. Why is that the case, Well,
because if you're not going to havecrop insurance, if you're not going

(06:45):
to be growing commodity crops, ifyou're not going to be a large industrial
operation, then you're self funded.Now, there are ways, and we've
talked about this in more advanced programsof creating a community sponsored agriculture, not
just the CSA where you're providing bundlesof food and people are on a subscription
but actually having community investors to helpyou acquire land and community investors to help

(07:10):
you retain and maintain that land.But these incentive programs can very often help.
In fact, I'm looking at oneright now that is a wildlife habitat
development, including pollinator habitat. Sowhat does that mean? That means you
could have bees if they're native toyour region. It also covers the design,
materials, equipment, installation, labor, maintenance, and management of that

(07:34):
particular implementation. And it pays upto fifty percent for most qualified farms.
But what's the qualifications? Do yousee the farm Bill when it hits Congress,
it isn't helping farmers necessarily, butit does include earmarked programs that may
be in your state that you canapply for that might, for example,

(07:55):
allow you to plant sweet potatas.Now is it a hybrid GMO se potato
or is it a sweet potato they'retrialing in your area. So you have
to know these things. And whenI work with farmers to look at these
programs and design these programs and qualifybecause I have a risk management background and
I'm you know the laws, rulesand regulations. These programs are nuanced.

(08:16):
But when we work with these programs, what it could mean is it if
you're spending fifty thousand dollars to getinto a certain operation. So, for
example, you're going to grow nativeplants to seed. So you're gonna take
good crop acreage, good market marketgarden acreage, and you're going to turn
that into just a field of wildflowersand native grasses and you're going to grow

(08:37):
them the seed. And you're gonnaget the equipment to harvest the seed,
and you're gonna get the little nurseryarea to produce the plants, and you're
going to go out and do this, and you now have a contract with
the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service.Then that land is not doing something else.
So the mindset of the operation canhelp you see should be we'd be

(09:00):
running chickens on this land. Well, if we're raising native plants the seed,
then we can't necessarily graze the land. Now, you could graze it
in the first couple of years.You could graze it. Sees partially,
you could apply animal pressure for tramplingbecause some native plants require that. Again,
it really depends on your area.However, if you write up a
project plan. So you find oneof these incentives, you find a local

(09:22):
grant, you find something, youwrite up a plan, and of course
we can help you write up theseplans. We do this all the time.
If you write up a plan,you can see whether or not it's
going to be viable for your farmby comparing it against the other activities that
your farm is already doing. Soa small homestead may have a market garden.
They have you may have a fewsmall livestock, You may have composting

(09:46):
operation, you may have other thingsthat are only differential by scale. That
means if you were a big farm, you would have a composting operation because
the maneuver has to go somewhere.Again, outputs from the cattle operation or
the outputs from your horses. Wheredoes the manure go, Well, instead
of it being waste, it becomesa resource. It goes into a composting

(10:09):
operation. And then where does thecompost go, Well, it goes into
your market garden. Now, ifyou'd like some diagrams, we do have
some graphs. I know this isan audio podcast, but we do have
some graphs and pictures that show youthat energy cycle. So when we're doing
an energy audit on your property.We want to make sure that we have
a station or an operation for eachof these things so that you're cycling the

(10:31):
product through your farm and creating agreater abundance. Again, before you start
working with these incentives, these incentiveprograms very often are bureaucratic. So somebody
behind a desk is going to tellyou how to operate your farm. Somebody
behind a desk is going to tellyou what product to grow and what product

(10:52):
not to grow. Now, sometimesthat's useful. Perhaps you're in a pork
co op and you're going to raisefive or ten hogs, and you're going
to raise a heritage breed hog,and you're going to raise five or ten
hogs anyway, but as part ofthe coop, you can make better price
decisions when it comes to buying feed, or price decision when it comes to

(11:13):
selling animals, or you know,you may be able to bring enough to
a butcher to actually get their attentionso that your meat can be processed for
a reasonable price. That co opis going to have certain rules, regulations,
certain things that it needs. Now, the typical farm could be working
with five or six different markets.Again, you could be running vegetables.

(11:33):
You could have honey. You couldhave an on farm business which is providing
an eco tourism visit. You couldhave an educational element. Running a small
farmer homestead is a lot more complexthan people make it to be, and
that's why there is such a highfailure rate. People come in all excited
about the you know, the meditationretreat that they're going to have and the

(11:54):
baby goats walking on people's back,and they ignore the sales, the marketing,
the opera rations and the other elementsthat are necessary. So why not
approach your farm or your homestead asa business. It's a home based business.
It's going to give you the flexibilityand the freedom and all the things
that they talk about, except youwill be putting out fewer resources than you're

(12:20):
taking in, so you'll earn enoughto keep the farm. You won't have
to partner with banks, you won'thave to have shady deals because again you'll
be serving your community and ultimately buildingout that infrastructure. And I know I'm
using these words like infrastructure and operationsand stuff like that. It doesn't have

(12:41):
to be a factory, but itdoes have to run smooth. There will
be times when you, as thefarmer, will not be able to do
the chores that are necessary for thewelfare of your animals. We don't want
that to happen. There'll be timesas a farmer, equipment will break down,
a major storm will come through,and you will need help. That's
why we advocate building a community aroundyour farm, or using your farm to

(13:07):
establish and build a community within yourfarm. And again that could be the
help that you hire. That couldbe having a family involved in your farm,
that could be family farming. It'sa lot of different things. But
again what I want you to takeaway from this is, yes, there
are incentive programs that have billions ofdollars available for small farms. In fact,

(13:30):
they'd rather give the money to smallfarms because many of these programs are
designed to control food agriculture. Theyhave to go and say we're helping ten
thousand small farms, because if theywent in and said we're helping five conglomerates,
they're not going to get any moremoney. And all the overhead of
these programs relies on all this newmoney. But what is available today in

(13:50):
farm bills include so this is theEnvironmental Quality and Incentives Program funding for twenty
twenty three, it's two point twobillion dollars. Now, do you want
some big factory farm to get thatmoney. No, we want it to

(14:11):
be applied in holistic ways, withgreat animal welfare, with quality meats and
vegetables, food that's raised, it'sworth your family eating it, eating it,
And that might mean not following theUSDA specification. That might mean not
following what a lot of these factoryfarms recommend and going a different way.

(14:31):
Now, if you're going to buildthat parallel economy, these funds can help
you get started, they can helpyou maintain it. But again we have
to be aware of state side specifications, federal regulations, and other factors.
Now you might be saying, well, justin I don't want to touch any
of that because I'm just going torun my farm, my homestead. I'm
gonna be off grid. I don'tneed to worry about that government but their
fingers and stuff. Well, littledo you know that these laws, rules

(14:54):
and regulations apply to your farm anyway. There's Clean Water Act, There's a
lot of other factors that you tobe considered. So why not invest the
time and effort up front to doa great design plan to look at energy
flow as it moves through your property, the flow of resources, to figure
out ways to minimize the inputs thatyou've got to buy into your farm and

(15:15):
maximize the outputs that your farm createsas far as fresh vegetables and good quality
meets and other products. Why notlook at the different ways your farm can
sustain income. Because this is anew lifestyle. It could be an existing
lifestyle for a lot of you guysstruggling, but we want to have a
farm that lasts for generations. I'mjust a hit with Prosperity Homestead, and

(15:41):
I know we cover a lot ofdifferent things. I do have a different
approach to these activities. I wantyou to succeed. I want to hear
your success stories. But if youhave any questions, visit me at www
dot prosperity homestead dot org. Thesequestions that come in on the contact page
over there, or from newsletters subscribers, or are how I come up with

(16:02):
content. In fact, this particularprogram was passed along to me and it
just sparked the interest to answer someof the questions that had come in about
the people who want to just basicallyrun in centives and grants. I will
tell you again, the mindset matters, the approach matters, the plan matters.
And then after that, yeah,it's living like the dream. It's

(16:26):
waking up early in the morning doingyour chores, spend in the middle of
the day relaxing, and then goingback and doing some more chores in the
evening. You don't have to workin town, you don't have to struggle,
you don't have to do a lotof the things that are reality for
most small farms. But it takesa little planning, it takes a proper
approach, and we're here to helpyou do that. Again, I'm just

(16:48):
a hit with Prosperity Homestead. Visitus at www dot prosperity homestead dot org.
Be sure to join the newsletter andagain ask you questions. I'd love
to hear it from you.