Benneth Phelps, program coordinator

Benneth Phelps is The Carrot Project’s program coordinator and served as a member of the Loan Review Committee prior to joining our staff. A farmer with a decade of Northeast farming experience, Benneth holds a Master’s degree in Land Use Planning; her academic work focused on the intersections between agriculture and larger-scale land use issues, including community food systems, food security, and agricultural lands. Other areas of expertise include farm planning, design, and management; winter growing; and management of perennial cropping systems. The year-round CSA Benneth developed at Enterprise Farm in Whately, Massachusetts, established a unique distribution system requiring collaboration among farms in the East Coast foodshed. A regular lecturer on topics related to community farms, Permaculture techniques for farmers, and her own farming history and practices, Benneth is looking to develop her own farm — Mosaic Farm — in Western Massachusetts. You can follow her progress at www.mosaicfarm.com.

Dorothy Suput, founder and executive director

Dorothy Suput is the founder and executive director of The Carrot Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating durable small-farm financing solutions in collaboration with farmers, lenders, farm support organizations, and investors. Since its inception in 2005, the organization has addressed the lack of research that’s critical to understanding small-farm financing. It has laid the groundwork for the establishment of financing programs by researching and documenting needs and testing alternative farm-financing strategies. In 2009 and 2010, The Carrot Project launched loan programs in three states with lending partners Coastal Enterprises, Inc., People’s United Bank, and MassDevelopment.