Tori Gross sat in the McIntosh County Courthouse, scrolling through the markets on her phone. Soybeans were down, she noted.

Months earlier, Gross wouldn’t have had an app on her phone to check the markets, and, even if she had, she may not have understood what it was telling her.

But that was before Gross and 17 other women in McIntosh County graduated April 4 from Annie’s Project, a farm management program for women that has been reintroduced in North Dakota after an absence of several years.

Crystal Schaunaman, McIntosh County Extension Agent and the North Dakota coordinator for Annie’s Project, said the national program aims to empower women to be better business partners on farms or ranches. The program teaches lessons on five risk areas: financial, human resources, legal, production and marketing.

North Dakota counties offered Annie’s Project for multiple years but stopped in 2013 amid waning attendance, Schaunaman said. As a few years went by, people started asking counties to offer it again, leading to a revived and updated Annie’s Project being offered on a pilot basis in the fall of 2016 and offered in numerous counties throughout 2017 and 2018.