Jefferson County Extension Horticulture has partnered with Common Earth Gardens (CEG) for the past four years to support people who arrived to the United States as refugees or immigrants to re-establish farm businesses in Louisville, Kentucky. During the 2021 growing season we supported a record number of 14 farm businesses in Louisville through the Incubator Farm Program.

Business participants attending winter business classes (February-April 2021) and received onsite farm and business support (May-Nov. 2021) to aid them in executing their respective business plans. Total sales among all farmers in 2021 was estimated to be $27,200 a 54% increase from 2020 sales.

The Horticulture Agent and CEG were able to support this sales growth by supporting farmers to expand their marketing channels. Eight of the farm teams sold at one or more farmers market in Louisville while four teams developed marketing strategies to better reach customers in their cultural communities. The Hort. agent and CEG supported farmers to apply for and meet criteria for being vendors at local farmers markets while also supporting farmers to seek more creative sales outlets. Farmers learned to utilize online marketing opportunities along with leveraging personal connections within their cultural communities to increase sales. One farm team re-designed their entire farm business plan to cater to the Somali community of which they are apart and this farmer increased their sales by over 50% while also reducing their time spent at farmers markets because of the change in their business plan. One farm team spent the fall of 2021 working on value-added recipes and will be attending the Homebased MicroProcessor Training hosting by UK Extension in the winter of 2022 to further expand their business opportunities.