A huge thank you to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the Small Farms Conference for sponsoring three of our current students to attend the 15th Annual Small Farms Conference! They had the opportunity to network with professionals in the industry, learn about various topics related to small scale farming, and hear from several farmers.
Each of our students had a major takeaway from the conference, please see below.
First-year Agricultural Business Management student, Shana Burke:
"One thing I took away from this conference was when starting your own farm business always start with small goals. Don't set a goal that will take you months to achieve. In order to be successful you have to be able to show yourself that you are reaching your beginning goals. Like Jamie Tiralla said "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Another quote that she said that stood out to me was "Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." Every farm with have different trends."
Senior Agriculture and Resource Economics student, Peter Frantz:
"Jamie Tiralla realized a need for farmers early on, and leveraged her existing and learned skills to create the marketing services company “All Ag Media.” Her story resonated with me particularly in her discussion of the “Ps” of marketing. In class, we have learned about four of those Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place), but in her presentation, Jamie outlined five (adding “People” as another one of the Ps). However, she thought she could use her talents to help others and realized that farmers sometimes do not have the time or resources necessary to engage in marketing for selling their products."
