Progress report for ENC22-219
Project Information
This proposal builds on Practical Farmers of Iowa’s (PFI) exceptional understanding of the food and agriculture system. Staff bring a multitude of experiences and education to the team ranging from formal agronomy or animal science educations to lived farming experience. Several staff at PFI have formal educations in sustainable agriculture specifically, which benefits the organization’s capacity to think critically about farming and conservation practice adoption within the context of opposing forces and philosophies. Our farmer-led organization recognizes, for instance, that despite strong environmental stewardship ethics, market realities are unavoidable and maintaining profitability is essential. To reinforce PFI’s institutional farming knowledge, we propose the development of a sustainable agriculture field course for staff that includes visiting key agricultural stakeholders. Then, to build on the knowledge gained from the field course, PFI staff and board will participate in scenario planning activities that help forecast potential programming needs. Staff will also participate in a grassroots training to enhance outreach and networking efforts. To build off of the success of our current project funded by SARE-PDP – “Expanding and Diversifying Farmer-Educator Capacity through Ambassador Academies” – we’ll continue to provide coaching and speaking opportunities to farmer-leaders trained in that grant. We’ll also build that network of farmer-leaders by holding additional communications trainings; and increase its impact by developing relationships with media and other farmer networks. The outcome of this work will be a team of staff and farmers better equipped to educate others and promote sustainable practices for wider adoption and food system resiliency.
Once developed, the curriculum materials (slides, handouts and reading lists) for the field course will be available for ongoing use. Staff (n~30) will participate in a three-day field course visiting various agriculture stakeholders and covering three perspectives of agriculture (ecological, economic, social). PFI’s board of directors and staff will participate in a scenario planning exercise (n~42) resulting in recommendations and insights to inform the next three-year strategic plan for the organization. Staff will participate in a grassroots training (n~30) and have access to a summary handout of strategies and tips. Farmers in the membership will attend three communications trainings (n~24) and encouraged to follow-up with additional coaching for specific outreach opportunities. The farmer outreach coordinator will develop relationships with journalists and farmer networks (n~25) that will lead to earned media and speaking opportunities featuring farmer-leaders.
Education
PFI's believes and practices a farmer-led approach to education. This not only applies to our educational opportunities geared towards farmers, but also to our trainings we hold with our staff. We believe that farmers are the best educators on agriculture because of the wealth of practical, hands-on experience that informs their knowledge. And, that their stories and knowledge have a unique ability to inspire the trainees that may not be easily achieved with other kinds of trainers and teachers.
PFI also practices experiential learning as much as possible. Getting people out onto farms to see the concepts of agriculture at work, providing live demonstrations of soil health properties, practicing grass roots organizing techniques by doing phone banking, and role playing and practicing speaking with the media after a media training. Most of our educational initiatives in this project contain some kind of hands on or experiential learning element to promote adoption of the concepts and learning after the training.
Education & Outreach Initiatives
Help farmers speak effectively to the media and in presentations
The first media and presentation training held on 11/2/23 trained five horticulture farmers to speak about their operations and goals successfully to the media as well as in presentations to a broad constituency. Farmers learned the history of media, the role it has in our lives, and practical strategies to prepare for effective media interactions. They had the opportunity to practice in different mediums, including in front of the camera.
PFI staff will gain knowledge about agriculture in the Midwest that they can apply to their day to day work to better serve PFI's farmer-members.
In 2024 PFI held our 3-day sustainable agriculture education course, split across three days from April 16-July 9.
- History of agriculture (April 16, 2024) 40 attendees: Full-day course on the history of agriculture in Iowa on April 16, 2024. This course was broken into modules based on time periods. Each module will include 30 minutes of presentation followed by 20 minutes of discussion. The modules are:
- Pre-Colonization, Original Peoples and Wildlife
- Settlement to WWII
- Green Revolution: Capitalization and Consolidation of Agriculture
- Green Revolution: Community Impact
- Farm Crisis
- Origins of PFI
- Presenters include agriculture researchers, farmers and an Indigenous peoples scholar.
- Soil and water unit (June 3, 2024) 38 attendees: This unit will look at the characteristics of Iowa’s soil and water and the interconnections with agriculture and included demonstrations of soil properties under different management practices (slake test, rainfall simulator).
- Modern agriculture solutions (July 9, 2024) 44 attendees: Full day field trip focusing on modern agriculture and ways to work toward PFI’s vision: an Iowa with healthy soil, healthy food, clean air, clean water, resilient farms and vibrant communities. The field trip took us to 3 farms in central Iowa. Our first stop was Uncle G's Farm, a direct-to-consumer, small-scale livestock farm producing chicken, poultry and hogs. Our second stop was at Iowa Cover Crop where we learned about how two young farmers started a cover crop seed and service business to support their conservation and income goals on their own separate farms. And then we ended at Deal's Orchard, an integrated horticulture and field crops farm producing apples, pumpkins, sweet corn and row crops as well as several value-added enterprises in their farm store, you-pick and hard cider.
The materials, slides and readings for each event are gathered and shared with all staff via our internal SharePoint site. For all three days evaluations were given to the staff who participated in the trainings, the results are summarized in the outcomes section later in this report. It is important to note that the staff participants came from every department across the organization, this included staff members whose roles directly engage with farmers, but also staff who work on finance or HR. Regardless of their role, staff rated their change in knowledge and usefulness of the training highly.
On August 12, 2024 we culminated the learning series with a reflection exercise on the following questions:
- What are some themes you heard about challenges farmers face on the farm tour?
- What are some themes you saw about how farmers are finding success outside of the agricultural status quo on the farm tour?
- What you found most valuable from the sustainable ag basics series? Where could you use this content in your everyday work?
Evaluations show the staff who attended the training events did increase their knowledge about sustainable agriculture and that they rated the new information as likely to be applied to their work.
| Training Event | How would you rate your overall change in knowledge from this event? | How likely are you to apply something you learned to your work at PFI? |
| April 16 - History of Agriculture | 100% experienced change in knowledge | 73% somewhat or very likely |
| June 3 - Soil Health Basics | 100% experienced change in knowledge | 84% somewhat or very likely |
| July 9 - Farm Tour | 94% experienced change in knowledge | 69% somewhat or very likely |
Enhance outreach, recruitment, and networking efforts with our farmer members.
We are planning this training to be held in Spring 2025. The training will cover phone banking basics as well as technical skills for tracking constituent interactions in PFI's CRM platform. The training will be solidified with a phone banking exercise where staff put the training into action.
The media coordinator will develop relationships with journalists and farmer networks (n~25) that will lead to earned media and speaking opportunities featuring farmer-leaders.
This project focuses on peer learning as well as building relationships with the media in order to increase the visibility of innovative farmers in Iowa. Elizabeth Wilhelm, PFI's media relations coordinator, built relationships with journalists during the reporting period that resulted in more than 30 reporters attending in-person events.
In addition, PFI worked to get more than 470 members featured in the media in 2023, and 60 members to speak at non-PFI events.
In 2024, an additional 351 PFI members were featured in external media and 90 farmers spoke at non-PFI events.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Learning Outcomes
Project Outcomes
From the sustainable agriculture training series evaluations we documented large change in knowledge and large likelihood to apply knowledge to staff members' day-to-day work. The table below summarizes the outcomes and impact.
| Training Event | Number of Attendees | How would you rate your overall change in knowledge from this event? | How likely are you to apply something you learned to your work at PFI? |
| April 16 - History of Agriculture | 40 | 100% experienced change in knowledge | 73% somewhat or very likely |
| June 3 - Soil Heath Basics | 38 | 100% experienced change in knowledge | 84% somewhat or very likely |
| July 9 - Farm Tour | 44 | 94% experienced change in knowledge | 69% somewhat or very likely |