Not the End, Just the Beginning  

TSUAg’s Tennessee New Farm er Academy celebrates a decade of helping the state’s small farmers  

By Charlie Morrison

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This fall, over a hundred new and beginning farmers received their diplomas after graduating from the 2024 Tennessee New Farmer Academy lecture and event series. This year’s graduating class was the 10 th such group since the Tennessee State University College of Agriculture (TSUAg) Extension program first began offering the Academy in 2014. 

The members of this year’s graduating class joined hundreds of other Academy alumni who have grown their knowledge and skills at the program over the past decade on their way to becoming successful agriculture entrepreneurs.   

The Tennessee New Farmer Academy is a seven-month certificate program held annually at three locations across the state that focuses on teaching the concepts, providing the information and facilitating the hands-on experience needed to build solid, viable, and successful agricultural businesses.   

Typical participants in the program include those who are new to agriculture, those transitioning into agriculture from another field and those who are looking for a post-retirement opportunity. Tennessee Commissioner of Agricluture Dr. Charlie Hatcher has called the Adademy one of the best new farmer assistance programs in the country.  

Longtime Extension professional Finis Stribling, III founded the program back in 2014 along with TSUAg Cheatham County farm manager Chris Roberts, welcoming just 9 participants to the TSU campus for the first seven-month run. What started with nine however, grew each and every year. These days there is a waiting list for each run of the program.  

The Academy was born out of a series of lectures given by members of the lower middle Tennessee Extension community. Extension offices in lower middle Tennessee, like those in Maury, Giles and Bedford Counties where Stribling worked, were being approached regularly by new landowners wondering if they could turn a profit with farming. The group began to do lectures on various aspects of small farming and those lectures gave way to the full-fledged Academy that exists today.   s

After building the program over the first three successive years, in 2018 Stribling began taking the Academy to the state at large. The Academy began that year to be hosted at two other locations in the state, the Agricenter in Memphis, the site of the TSU Shelby County Extension Office, and as well to Wartburg, Tennessee, home to the Morgan County Extension Office.    

Students in the program learn farm business skills, marketing basics and agricultural production practices in the Academy. They get hands-on experience in the program, which is both classroom-based and hands-on in the field.   

sMuch of the curriculum is dedicated to educating participants on the regulatory bodies governing agriculture and securing financial assistance for capital and other investments. For Stribling, participants need to know what’s out there.  

“The key is understanding the resources. A lot of people who come through the program don’t know what Extension is. They don’t know the Farm Service Agency exists. They don’t know NRCS exists and what their purpose is,” Stribling says. “Understanding what resources are there, how to navigate those resources and being able to simply speak the language is what these entrepreneurs need.”  

After advertising the first year the Academy relied on word of mouth to spread the word on the program, with program graduates being their best marketers. Finis takes these graduates to events like the Pick TN Conference where they talk about and teach the program and the benefits of participating in it.  

2019 Academy graduate Danielle Buyton of Jade’s Elevation farm is one of those who participated then later taught elements of the program. In 2019 Buyton lived in Houston, but flew in each month to attend. She appreciated the comradery of being around dozens of other beginning agriculture entrepreneurs and the team spirit that permeated her group during the sessions.  

“It was a think tank for me. You had 50 people who were ready to jump in and solve problems that you may not have been prepared to solve but because you guys were working together, they had different approaches than I might have,” said Buyton, who in 2023 won the Small Farmer of the Year Award at TSUAg’s Small Farm Expo. “ Being hands on, being able to learn from experts, it opened my eyes.” s

For Rising Glory Farms’ Chris Carlough, a graduate of the class of 2019, the Academy was a boon to his operations. “Overall it was an excellent educational opportunity for a new farmer to get a jump start. Rather than struggling for years to learn on what’s available, what resources are available, new farmers get a jump start on that.”  

“I walked away from the program, got an FSA loan with a low interest rate, I’m working with the USDA on improving my regenerative farming  and increasing my infrastructure on my cattle operation,” he continues. “And you get to meet a lot of new farmers and network. Some of these folks even volunteer on my farm. There was a lot of support... farmers helping farmers.”  

For Stribling himself, each iteration of the Academy is a new chapter in his personal passion project.  

“One thing I tell each class is that though I’m with Extension and I’m considered the Director of the academy, I’m also a farmer,” he says. “I’m very passionate about farming and people tell me they can hear that passion in my voice and I’m a third-generation farmer myself, so I get it, I understand.”