Download free curricula for beginning farmers
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EmailTeach practical farming skills through hands-on activities and participatory learning methods.
Free curricula and resources for beginning farmers and beginning farmer educators are now available to download and use by anyone at beginningfarmercurriculum.org. Whether you are a new farmer looking to learn some new skills in the off season or an educator working with beginning farmers, you’ll find materials and resources you can adapt to your needs.
A team of beginning farmer educators from Argus Farm Stop, American Farmland Trust, Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology, Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network, Growing Hope, Michigan Food and Farming Systems, Michigan State University and MSU Extension developed new curricula and resources for teaching practical farming skills using hands-on activities and participatory learning principles. The curricula are primarily designed for beginning fruit and vegetable farmers, but several of the modules are applicable to any type of farm and are inclusive of rural and urban farm settings.
Each topic’s curriculum follows a standard template, with various approaches for learners that offer flexibility and creativity. The template was designed to include essential information on the topic as well as address questions to engage the learners in reflection and discussion.
Topics are organized into modules, with each module including engaging activities designed to teach practical skills and encourage peer-to-peer learning. The modules are designed as stand-alone packages, so users can choose the ones that are most relevant. The technical level of the information aims to be relevant to beginning farmers, offering learning opportunities for all levels of farming expertise.
Each module has three key components:
- A facilitator’s guide, which provides an overview of each module and activities, including background information to help facilitators understand the content, and detailed step-by-step instructions for each activity, along with materials needed and preparation guidance.
- Participant handouts, which include define key terms and provide step-by-step instructions for the activity. They may also offer additional diagrams or worksheets to supplement the activity. Participant handouts are organized to be easily printed and distributed to facilitate the learning experience.
- Additional resources are provided to support further learning, which have been reviewed and recommended by beginning farmer educators from the project team for inclusion in the curriculum activities.
The curricula cover farm management topics for beginning farmers, including:
- Land access: Explores various ways to find and access urban or rural farmland, including leasing, owning, cooperative ownership, and partnerships, helping you determine the best options for your community and farm goals.
- Soil health: Guides learners to assess soil using their senses, observations, and testing. They will explore how soil affects crops, develop farm management plans, and use crop rotations to improve long-term soil health.
- Produce safety: Provides an overview of produce safety on the farm. Participants will explore the farm through the lens of food safety and learn how to assess and mitigate risks to ensure safe fruits and vegetables.
- Integrated pest management: Learn to identify common plant diseases, insects, nutritional disorders, and weeds in vegetable crops through field walks and classroom instruction. Demonstrate insect feeding patterns and disease signs and predict causes while exploring potential solutions.
- Pollinators: Explores the role of insects in pollination and the pollination needs of different vegetables through hands-on, field-based learning and classroom discussion.
- Farm financials: Provides resources to learn about farm recordkeeping, accounting concepts, and using financial information to support farm growth and assess financial health over time.
- Marketing: Introduces market types relevant to beginning farmers, helping them identify options that align with their capacity and interests while outlining the requirements for entering those marketplaces.
- Urban agriculture and policy: Explores the civic and community impacts of urban farming, preparing participants to engage with land-use policies, regulations, elected officials, and neighborhood associations while considering environmental, economic, and social benefits for a successful urban farm.
Additionally, there are two topics which may be more suited for leaders and facilitators of farmer groups and formal farmer training programs rather than individual farmer learners:
- Peer-to-peer learning: Provides interactive learning opportunities and guidance for educators to connect new farmers with experienced mentors, supporting the formation of sustainable learning communities focused on agricultural livelihoods and land management.
- Engaging diverse farmers: Provides instructional guidance on best practices for addressing interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics on farms as a way to build healthy work cultures, team ethics and greater operational efficiency. This topic serves as a resource for anyone who is working towards whole farm systems that include social, cultural, emotional and mental dynamics to address the human aspects of farming.
For more information on the curricula, reach out to Vicki Morrone at sorrone@msu.edu or Mariel Borgman at mborgm@msu.edu.
Beginning Farmers Curricula © 2025 by Michigan Beginner Farmer Curriculum Team is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. This means you are free to adapt the materials to your needs and share them freely if you give appropriate attribution and do not charge a fee to access or utilize the curricula. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
This work is supported by the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grant no. 2021-70033-35833 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
