On New Year’s Eve, a new paper came out online first and OA in Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems led by former postdoc Brooke McWherter, called From learner to leader: exploring learning, motivations, and roles of regenerative grazing mentors. This paper emerged from her collaboration with Farmers for Climate Solutions and the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association, funded by FCS and Mitacs, that followed and assessed the national  Farm Resilience Mentorship Program (FaRM) for adaptive grazing. This paper is based on interviews with half of the program’s mentors that explored their own learning journeys, and how and why they became mentors to others. I a meta move, Brooke also mentored MREM alum and RA Hunar Arora, who is a co-author on this piece.

Two people labelled social supports and mentor pull a learner up a stylized hill showing various stages of learning.

Figure 2 in the new ASFS paper led by Brooke, showing the process of becoming a mentor.