YFC 2023 Wrap Up

- 2023 Wrap Up -

In this newsletter:

Growing capacity to grow our community of young farmers
We are back on Instagram
Strategic Planning
Got Land? Farm Links
Chapter Coordinators - Expressions of Interest
Garlic Harvest
Merch

YFC leadership team and strategic support : Back row from left to right; Grace O'Connor, Venetia Scott, Joel Orchard, Trish Smith, Matt Pfahlert (ACRE), Thuch Ajak, Lynn Anderson (VFFF). Front row from left to right; Madison Roland-Evans, Chez Orchard, Amy Carrad, Thanisa Adams, Simeon Ash. Not pictured: Tanya Massy and Brad Darkson.

Growing capacity to grow our community of young farmers

Young Farmers Connect (YFC) has seen a lot of change this year. Bouncing back from a long spell of inactivity following the catastrophic floods of 2022, this year has allowed us to regroup, rebuild our core team and renew our strategic plan and direction.

We have brought on a fantastic new leadership team, elected a new board of directors and created a number of part time roles to deliver key projects into 2024.

Our aim is to continue to build our regional chapters throughout Australia and continue the primary projects that we have delivered over the past few years including:

Education Fund : this has supported young farmers to access reduced cost training in holistic management, biodynamics, business skills and more.
FarmLinks : our pilot land matching service which has offered a number of farmers a supportive pathway into land sharing arrangements.
Legal Support Toolkit : to provide contextualised and relevant resources for small scale farmer engaging in lease arrangements, share farming and alternative land sharing agreements
Field days and social events : including social events, networking opportunities and industry development programs to link young farmers, provide peer-support networks, build solidarity and create a thriving social ecosystem for new and young farmers around the country.

YFC has engaged the Australian Centre for Rural Entrepreneurship (ACRE) to support us to develop a plan to build the capacity of the organisation and key team members. This work was kicked off with a rare opportunity for our YFC team to travel from across Australia to spend time together at a weekend intensive and brainstorming session and strategic planning workshop.

We now look forward as we continuing to build our business plan, with a focus on partnerships, social enterprise and a national survey to identify the needs and aspirations of Australia’s young and aspiring farmers.

We're back on socials! 🌱

And excited to keep sharing opportunities and education with you all. To get going, we'd LOVE it if you can follow and share our new account so we can reconnect with the thousands of young and aspiring farmers in our network.

Follow

Strategic planning

Our new strategic plan encompasses much of our previous direction with renewed focus on building our organisational capacity, future planning, building stronger relationships with Traditional Owners and seeking ways to activate better policy in support of our local food and farming systems.

We have included a number of key and guiding values to help steer our practice and theory of change.

Read more here

Farm Links

Do you have land that could be more productive or are you looking for land?

Farmlands is a simple platform to help connect young farmers with land access and develop small farm enterprises. In order to be able to connect land holders to new farmers we have been utilising this simple platform for bringing need and opportunity together.

You can list your opportunity or request for land on our website and we will distribute throughout our social media network.

Read more here

Chapter Coordinators - Expressions of Interest

Keen to be more involved and bring your farming community together ?

We are currently seeking passionate individuals to support and represent new and young farmer issues, creating collaborations and contributing to our network, events and activities. YFC are calling for expression of interest to help fill positions as chapter coordinators at a number of our YFC groups around Australia.

If you are interested in helping admin your local FB group, coordinate field days and local events, build relationships and community, network and support our national network - we would love to hear from you.

While these positions are currently volunteer-run, we are actively seeking funding to resource these roles as paid positions.

Find out more and leave your details here in the form below:

Chapter Coordinator EOI

Garlic harvest

It's been a while since we last asked you to #showusyagarlic! Garlic harvest is an epic time - some of you might have had friends or community members pitch in to help out this year, or perhaps rigged up an ingenious drying rack technique. Whatever it is, we want to see your 2023 haul. Tag us and add #showusyagarlic so we can see all the harvests from around Aus.
.
The pic above comes in from market gardener Hannah Axelsen at the Farm It Forward X Blue Mountains Food Co-op micro-plot in the Blue Mountains. Thanks Hannah!

Magazine and merch

Our magazine and tshirts are still for sale in our online shop.

The Changing Face of Farming

A provocative food system publication filled with the voices, thoughts, dreams, and creative spirit of those in our community with a connection to the land.

160 pages, printed in Australia under ISO 14001 – Certified Environmental Management on Forest Stewardship Council certified paper.

A$25.00

Shop

Hope you all get to hang up your boots and enjoy the fruits of your labour. We look forward to connecting with you all in 2024.
Wishing you a safe and festive season.
- from the team at YFC.