Rural Resiliency Peer Navigator Program

January 2025 -

“Farmers don’t reach out and share intimate details with nonfarmers, but they trust other farmers.”

The Rural Resiliency Project kicked off the Peer Navigator Program in 2025. This is a small group of people learning to work with farmers and other agriculturalists and coach them through the challenges of agriculture.

Farmer Angel Network board members Dorothy Harms, Vicky Meinholz and Lynae Schott and several other partners are participating in this pilot program. Peer navigators each bring their own levels of expertise to the program and are being trained in a number of areas including:

• Communication styles

• Active listening

• Stress management

• Mental health awareness

• QPR suicide prevention

• Entrepreneurship support

• Farm finances basics

• Business transitions

• Risk management and more

Navigators will be there to listen to, understand and guide farmers/farm families/ag businesses to the resources and experts they need to help them be successful and sustainable.

The pilot program is helping build the program, work with farmers/farm families and potentially other agriculturalists, and develop a resource list for support and referrals. After training, the Peer Navigators will be matched with farmers/farm families/rural ag businesses. Having a trained, trusted peer with lived experience will assist them in finding the resources that they need.

Farmer Angel Network is excited to participate in this effort. This is the exact role many of our volunteers fill on a day-to-day basis with farmers and families facing challenges.

Funding for the Rural Resiliency Peer Navigator Program is provided through WiSys through the Type I National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engine.

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Why Peer Navigators? In a series of interviews, conducted by the Rural Resiliency Project in 2020-21 with twenty-one farmers who had undergone the stress of a transition/transformation in their farming operation, many farmers underscored the importance of peer support: “the problem is people that are giving advice don’t have any experience...They don’t understand what it is like to farm.” The bottom line, as another farmer put it, is that “farmers don’t reach out and share intimate details with nonfarmers, but they trust other farmers.” Several of those interviewed indicated the need for having someone to talk to that had similar experiences.

Wisconsin farmers need convenient, individualized, sustained, and anonymous access to support that is provided by farmer peers who understand agricultural situations and values and have the expertise borne of lived experience with farm transitions, farm stress, sustainability, and technology implementation.

Individuals who receive peer support have reported improved self-confidence and self-esteem, heightened sense of control and ability to bring about changes in their own lives, improved empowerment scores, belief that the mentoring relationship is responsive to and inclusive of their needs, improved sense of hope and inspiration, improved sense of empathy and acceptance (camaraderie), increased engagement in self-care and wellness behaviors, and improved

social support and social functioning.

Rural Resiliency Project lead – Doris Mold, doris@sunriseag.net