- USDA
- USDA Office of Outreach
- FSA
- Risk Management
- Rural Development
- NRCS
- Community Based Organizations
- Washington State Migrant Council
- OIC Employment & Training Program
- Washington State University
- Cooperative Extension
- Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Rural Community Development Resources
Luz Gutierrez, CEO
24 S. 3rd Ave. Yakima, WA
Telephone: (509) 453-5133 Fax: (509) 453-5165
Rural Community Development Resources, in Yakima, WA, has helped over 100 limited resource Hispanic producers enter agriculture and build successful collaborative businesses.
CENTER for LATINO FARMERS
Transitioning from Farm Worker to Farm Owner
A project of Rural Community Development Resources
Our Primary Goal
The primary goal of the Center
for Latino Farmers is to help beginning Latino 
farmers with limited English
skills to establish their own family farms with the help of USDA programs.
The Center staff provides workshops and one-on-one training sessions to
Latino farm operators who want to have access to the USDA programs; as well
as assisting them in filling out the required USDA forms.
Working in collaboration with the following partners:
Objectives and Successes
- Identify all Latino small farm operators in Yakima, Grant, Chelan, and Franklin counties. To accomplish this we conducted two workshops per county, and identified leadership and the specific needs of each county. Also, we categorized the farmers by crop types.
- Increase USDA information to 100 new Latino small farmers. Two workshops in Spanish were scheduled in each of the four counties in collaboration with USDA area offices and the USDA Office of Outreach. We assisted in the preparation of the presentations in cooperation with the USDA Office of Outreach. We continue to assist Latino farmers in filling out forms thoroughly with back up information as required by USDA.
- Provide 40 new and emerging Latino farmers with one on-one- training in using computers as a management tool. We developed simplified financial management, Risk management, and marketing training curricula in Spanish using existing documents available from USDA, USDA Risk Management Office, and other entities, and are using these to train Latino farmers along with teaching them basic computer skills.
Contact Dr. Malaquías Q. Flores
Center for Latino Farmers
24 S. 3rd Ave. Yakima, WA 98902
Telephone: (509) 453-3157 Fax: (509) 453-5165
E-mail: latinofarmers@charter.net