Get Grant-Ready: How Farmers Can Use Cash-flow to Prepare for Funding

August 21, 2025, 12:3o PM CST | 1:30 PM EST

Join the Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center for a webinar on Thursday, August 21 to help prepare your farm business for upcoming grant applications.

Understanding how to prepare for different types of financing available to farm businesses can help farmers be ready for opportunities and challenges.

Andy Larson, Food Finance Institute of the Universities of Wisconsin System, and Jamie Rahrig, Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems, together have a combined 40+ years of experience supporting food and farm businesses. In this webinar, they will share how cash flow can be used to help farmers prepare for grant funding applications requiring cost-share.

Our Featured Speakers

Andy Larson, Farm Outreach Specialist, Food Finance Institute at the University of Wisconsin System (FFI), works with entrepreneurial farm businesses to help them build farm financial management capacity and access the capital they need to grow. He provides one-on-one counseling sessions, builds financial projections, and teaches programs like Farm Finance Boot Camp. Andy has expertise in farm business and marketing, agricultural lending, and grantsmanship. Prior to joining the FFI, Andy worked as an agriculture lender at a community bank, and as a small farms extension educator in Iowa and Illinois. Andy and his family own and operate a small-scale, pastured poultry enterprise just down the road from the dairy farm where he grew up. They produce free-range brown eggs for local restaurants and retail stores.
Jamie Rahrig, Director of Food and Farm Business Support and Assistance and Assistant Director of Partnerships, MSU Center for Regional Food Systems, coordinates assistance for food and farm businesses through the Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center and is part of the MSU Product Center team. In her role, Jamie develops and manages programs in partnership with organizations across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, bringing business coaching from farm to fork with a goal of providing equitable access to healthy and affordable food. Jamie has supported hundreds of food and farm businesses helping them launch and scale.

Join us August 21, 12:30 PM CST | 1:30 PM EST on Zoom, to learn more about looking at cash flow to make funding decisions.This session will be recorded and shared at glm-rfbc.msu.edu and on Youtube.

Link to register: https://bit.ly/4f7rWgw

For more information, email glm-rfbc@msu.edu or visit glm-rfbc.msu.edu.

About the Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center

The Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center is dedicated to offering coordination, technical assistance, and capacity building opportunities for farmers, producers, and other food business owners, in support of a more resilient and competitive food system. Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems (MI) coordinates the Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center that is comprised of network coordinators – Chicago Food Policy Action Council (IL), Northwest Indiana Food Council (IN), Food Finance Institute of the Universities of Wisconsin System (WI), and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and Food Systems – who seek to take a transformational, rather than transactional, approach. Learn more at glm-rfbc.msu.edu

Per the USDA announcement on July 15, 2025, the Regional Food Business Center program has been terminated. The Great Lakes Midwest Regional Food Business Center will continue operations through mid-September. More information is available here.