Our Work With Farmers

Southern Mutual Help Association works with family farmers, helping them to meet the challenges facing agriculture today and assisting in their transition to sustainable agriculture through the following actions:

• SMHA provides technical assistance, educational programs and leadership training for sugarcane farmers and encourages the involvement of the entire family. Through this initiative, farmers and their families become teachers -- creating models, demonstrating the value of sustainable agriculture practices, and sharing their expertise not only with other farmers but with universities and other groups and institutions across the country. They have conducted workshops on such sustainable agriculture practices as cover cropping, composting, diversifying crops, rebuilding soil organics, reducing overall use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and transitioning from conventional harvest burning to green harvest of sugarcane.
  
  
• SMHA serves as a business and organizing consultant for sugarcane farmers and sugar mills, helping them develop value-added products from sugarcane's fibrous waste and from raw sugar itself so sugarcane farmers can survive and thrive in the face of increased competition and adverse world trade agreements.
  
  
• SMHA helps farm families create and implement strategies for retaining prime agricultural land in farming and assists farm families in creating models for farmers to gain ownership of their land as opposed to relying on short-term leases.
  
  
• SMHA worked at the national and regional levels to co-found the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (Southern SAWG) -- a working group of nonprofits and farm family representatives who provide technical assistance in implementing sustainable agriculture practices and providing leadership in sustainable agriculture policy at the regional and national levels.
  
  
• Through its leadership in co-creating the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, SMHA is able to leverage its work and have a greater voice in agricultural policy making at the state, regional and national levels. SMHA is in a position to recommend farm leaders trained in sustainable agricultural practices for positions on agricultural policymaking bodies at the state, regional and national levels.
  
  

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