FARM COMMONS

Direct Legal Education: We reached 15,000 agricultural community members with quality educational resources on farm law issues. We debuted new capacity to address emerging threats and legal uncertainty across the farm law landscape. Across 20 unique webinars, we reached 4100 community members with rapid response information. These webinars addressed terminated and frozen USDA contracts, using the NAD appeals process, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issues, the H-2A visa program changes, and new USDA general terms and conditions. These webinars alone reached 4200 farmers and their supporters. With partners nationwide, we developed 9 new guides and template documents to accompany our webinar outreach. These guides were downloaded over 1000 times, the majority for further distribution in local communities. We didn't just focus on emerging threats- we continued our work on chronic farm law matters with 16 new guides addressing purchasing land as a group of unrelated persons, developing botanical products, managing employee pay, providing employee benefits, and avoiding discrimination on the basis of ability. We continued partnerships with organizations and Extension offices by providing 29 webinars for these audiences on the most commonly encountered farm law issues. We deepened our collaborative relationships by with partners nationwide, and participated in weekly and monthly coordination sessions extending beyond the 2025 calendar year. 2025 was a year of tremendous instability for the agricultural community. Farm Commons rose to the occasion in providing dynamic, fast, responsive education that explained the knowns and unknowns in readily accessible language. This experience has prepared the organization to step into a new role as a rapid response provider of legal information, which the community greatly needs.

Non-Farmer Education: We trained 15 new farm support professionals in the basics of farm law through our Guiding Resilience program. This 5-week program orients supporters to the basic issues, empowering them to help farmers without going beyond the boundaries of professional responsibility. We deepened our investment in the leadership of 12 Legal Ecosystem Fellows. Fellows are trained across a 6 week program to deliver farm law education programming in their own communities and we provided continuing support and review of presentations. Third, we developed 3 new guides specifically to help farm supporters steer farmers through the processes of developing contracts like leases and governance documents. Lastly, we began a project to better empower educators that reach English Langauge Learners through low/no literacy required presentations.