Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** this project aims to collect…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** this project aims to collect farm-level production and financial data from new mexico producers using a two-prong approach. First, IT utilizes agricultural accountants and takes advantage of farmer's existing relationships to minimize producers' effort for participating in the farm business management and benchmarking (FBMB) database. The approach will make submissions faster, easier, and more accurate. Second, the project seeds the use of regional annie's project locally-led programs to identify and develop relationships with community leaders and ensure by-in and engagement with key farmers in each targeted area. The highly collaborative approach strengthens connections between farmers, university educators, agricultural accountants and other professionals, and nmsu extension systems. The extensive interactions funded through the grant continually highlight the critical role of the collected information for the agricultural service sector, policymakers, and applied agricultural research. The significant portion of the grant dedicated to face-to-face meetings serves to obtain quality information and build a farmer support network. The project also intends to summarize key findings and observations in the form of extension articles and outreach documents. The project does seek designation as a center of excellence.