The Appalachian Beginning Forest Farming Coalition (ABFFC) and Edwards Mother Earth Foundation (EMEF) are accepting applications for the Assisting Agroforestry Grant Program! These grants can be put towards the costs of your forest farming operation, including for site preparation and planting stock.

The application review for round two projects is April 1st, 2024 and applicants will be notified of decisions in May, followed by application consultation. Rolling applications will continue after that date.

This YouTube channel features over 170 educational videos, showcasing a wide range of forest farming practices across the Eastern deciduous forests of the continental U.S. and beyond. This is a great way to get connected to the broader forest farming community and to learn about specific forest farms, plants, and practices. The channel is always being updated with more resources, so stay tuned and check back often.

By aggregating data on variables such as slope, aspect, and soil moisture, this site-assessment tool–created by Virginia Tech University–allows users to draw a parcel on a map and receive a detailed report on how suitable their site is for growing a range of potential understory crops. This tool should supplement, not replace, an on-the-ground assessment, but is a great way to begin to acquaint yourself with your forestland and its forest farming potential.

A project of Rural Action and United Plant Savers, The Forest Farmers Handbook provides all you need to know about growing, harvesting, and marketing five different commercially valuable understory species: American ginseng, goldenseal, ramps, bloodroot, Solomon’s seal, and black cohosh. Click below to view a free pdf of the resource, or you can purchase a hard copy of the handbook here.

This worksheet is designed to assist beginning forest farmers in selecting a site for establishing new populations of forest botanicals in their forest. Much of the information used to produce this worksheet is based on a) The Forest Farmers Handbook which was developed by Rural Action, United Plant Savers, and Appalachian Sustainable Development and b) the West Virginia Forest Farming Evaluation Guide designed by Appalachian Sustainable Development.

The Forest Farming Calculator is an Excel spreadsheet-based scoping tool for evaluating the economic potential of growing forest botanticals for the medicinal market. This tool estimates the prices per pound of dried roots that would need to be harvested to break even. A profit may be obtained if you can get a higher price for the product. This tool does not require internet access and no information is tracked. However, there are links embedded in the tool which link to additional resources that will not work unless you are connected to the internet. The Forest Farming Calculator is available on the USDA National Agroforestry Center’s website. *Be sure to enable macros when opening this Excel-based tool.