May 2002

While the attendance at the recent insurance meeting was low, the information that Jay Payne, Farm Family Insurance presented was essential for all small-scale farmers to understand. He reviewed the different items on the homeowner policies that we all carry to cover our basic insurance needs on our dwellings, other structures, personal property, personal liability and expenses to others. He talked about how different things are insured. For example, actual cash value vs. replacement cost vs. agreed value. He talked about named perils vs. all risk with exclusions.

Did you know that there are only three insurance companies in the state of Maine that cover farming operations? Also did you know that your basic homeowner policy does not cover any commercial farm enterprise that you may be conducting on your farm?

Jay talked about how farm insurance policies are structured. The categories are actually similar to a homeowner policy and include residences and contents, buildings in contents, business and personal property, scheduled personal property, and liability. The liability section covers personal liability, farm liability, farm stand liability, pick your own liability, and businesses other than farm liability. Jay talked about the difference between employer's liability vs. workers compensation.

If you missed this important farm insurance meeting you can also contact your personal insurance agent and have them go over your insurance policy to be sure that you are adequately covered for the types of farm operations or enterprises that you're conducting on your property.

The Maine Farms for the future program is an economic development strategy targeting farms. Although commonly viewed as an industry without much future, Maine agriculture actually has enormous potential for growth. This program supports farms that are trying to innovate or improve. The Maine Farms for the Future Program provides selected farms with assistance in developing new business plans aimed at increasing farm viability and a grant of 25% of the funds needed to implement the plan. In exchange, farms must enter into farmland protection agreements that prevent their land from being developed for non-agricultural purposes for either five or ten years. If you are interested in more information or in applying for round 2, contact Mort Mather at 772-5356 extension 114 or email: mkm@ceimaine.org

If you have an idea for an on-farm research project, call your county extension office to talk about with Donna, Gleason, Rick or Kathy about opportunities with SARE.

New Partnership Grants for Agricultural Professionals Working Directly with Farmers

The Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE) will now offer grants to Cooperative Extension, NRCS, and other agricultural professionals who work directly with farmers and who would like to conduct on-farm research or demonstrations in partnership with a producer.

The purpose of the Partnership Grant program is to build knowledge farmers can use, to encourage the adoption of sustainable agriculture techniques, to strengthen partnerships among growers and agricultural professionals and to explore how agriculture can be made more profitable through good stewardship.
Applicants must be affiliated with Cooperative Extension, NRCS, state departments of agriculture or private crop consulting firms, or represent an agriculturally oriented non-governmental organization that operates in the Northeast SARE region and works directly with farmers. The region is made up of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. For more information contact:

Helen Husher

publications and public information
Northeast SARE
10 Hill Building
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405

Tuesday & Thursday
802/656-0554
hhusher@zoo.uvm.edu

Monday & Wednesday
802/728-3085
hhusher@sover.net

If you are interested in joining the Maine Poultry Breeders list serve, you can either go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mebreeders or send a blank email to mebreeders-subscribe@yahoogroups.com . If there are any questions you can send an email to

mebreeders-owner@yahoogroups.com with the question. This moderated list serve is for poultry breeders in Maine to discuss issues or problems of interest.

If you need information on agricultural topics you can search more than 750,000 agricultural web pages at http://www.web-agri.com. More pages are added to the site regularly.

Access high quality information on plants at http://plants.usda.gov. In addition to Calflora and CalPhotos, other links include the Native Plant Journal and the Wisconsin Vascular Plants databases.

Need to identify that weed? Go to http://invader.dbs.umt.edu/Noxious_Weeds/ and find out what it is.

Got a disease problem? Try http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/Default.htm This site has plenty of photos and a diagnostic protocol to follow as well as references and fact sheets.