Sharing Tools for Success: Small Organic Farmer Marketing Toolkit Workshop in Riverside

On the evening of Wednesday, July 16 at 4:00 PM, approximately 55 participants gathered in a classroom space at the beautiful campus of the Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District, just West of downtown Riverside.  The focus of the event was to present the Small Organic Farmer Marketing Toolkit, a relatively new resource developed by the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) in collaboration with CAFF, made possible by funding from the Organic Market Development Grant (OMDG) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Brandon Wickes from CAFF presents the advantages of a U-Pick operation during the Small Organic Farmer Marketing Toolkit event.

The Toolkit focuses on a variety of topics relevant to marketing for small organic farmers, but is primarily broken down into sales channels and marketing channels for either direct-to-consumer, wholesale, or business to business models.  For the sake of this event, we tried to focus on direct-to-consumer business models, and we discussed both sales channels and marketing channels for direct-to-consumer businesses.  The sales channels component of the presentation was presented by Brandon Wickes, an Organic Project Contractor for CAFF based in Southern California.  The sales channels the toolkit focuses on include on farm retail stores, farmers markets, farm stands, U-pick, CSAs, and online (website) stores.  The marketing channels component of the presentation was presented by Sean Kelley, Principal and Founder of the Nebula Department, an online marketing firm based in Yucca Valley, California.  The marketing channels the toolkit focuses on include physical marketing, digital marketing, email marketing, social media, paid Google ads, search engines, and search engine optimization (SEO).

Sean Kelley from the Nebula Department presents the basics of farm business website design during the Small Organic Farmer Marketing Toolkit event.
Following the presentation of the toolkit, we had a lively Q&A discussion, followed by a delicious meal catered by Conchita, a local caterer in Riverside who offered our guests delicious tacos, salads, and aguas frescas.
Following the discussion, Conchita served delicious aguas frescas to event participants.
If you were unable to attend the event, please consider downloading a copy of the toolkit at this link: Small Organic Farmer Marketing Toolkit.

For marketing training and technical assistance, email farmerservices@caff.org or attend our office hours every Monday (except National holidays) from 3:30-4:30 PM PT via Zoom (click here for meeting link).

If you are interested in attending events like this in the future hosted by CAFF, please consider following the CAFF events page at this link: CAFF Events. And, if you’re interested in any funding or grant opportunities, especially related to Organic Transition, please consider visiting the funding opportunities database hosted by CAFF: Funding Opportunities.