Directory Profile

Poppy Davis is a business and policy adviser to agricultural and food and beverage enterprises, and to nonprofits and local governments. She provides farmers and ranchers with training and technical assistance on issues such as business formation, land tenure, credit, taxation, liability, regulatory compliance, and value-added inventory. She works directly with nonprofits, associations, and local governments to help them develop financial and managerial capacity and programs to improve the environment for farming, ranching and healthy food access. Poppy teaches the Introduction to Agricultural Taxation class in the LL.M. Program. She has ongoing affiliations with various beginning farmer and rancher training programs around the country.

Poppy began her career as a California Certified Public Accountant working in small accounting firms with an emphasis on family-scale farms and ranches and related estates, business, and not-for-profits. She translated her intimate knowledge of agricultural issues and farm-family decision-making to the policy arena, working for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), first for the crop insurance program in the Western Region and most recently as the National Program Leader for Small Farms and Beginning Farmers and Ranchers in Washington, D.C. While at the USDA she served as a member of the management team for Secretary Vilsack's "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative, and co-founded the USDA 4 Veterans, Reservists & Military Families, and Women and Working Lands workgroups.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics from the University of California at Davis, a Masters in Journalism from Georgetown University, and a Juris Doctor with a certificate in Agricultural Law from Drake University Law School. Poppy is also a past fellow of the California Agricultural Leadership Program (Class 35).

Her not-for-profit experience includes a year as the Executive Director of the Ecological Farming Association, and service on the boards of organizations including the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, The Carrot Project New England, Red Tomato, The Center for Land Based Learning, and The Community Alliance with Family Farmers. She currently serves as a board member for Oregon Tilth, and on the Advisory Boards of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute, and The University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.