A Training and Educational Program to Ensure the South's Future

Methods

To meet the first goal, we asked Mr. Boozer to serve on our advisory committee to lend his guidance in putting together our training programs. He made a presentation to his fellow committee members to assist in building on the strong components of his farmland protection project, while hopefully avoiding anything that did not work as well. Gerry Cohn from American Farmland Trust had worked closely with Mr. Boozer on the South Carolina project and was able to incorporate the experiences learned from that project into this regional program. Mr. Boozer and Mr. Cohn informed the advisory committee that a ripe audience for this training was forestry professionals. Mr. Boozer also let the committee know that publicity for the South Carolina project, while adequate, did not result in as high of attendance as hoped. He suggested that additional efforts should be taken for the regional project.

Methods used to meet the second goal included a great amount of communication between the project partners and the advisory committee. From April 1, 2003 until the first workshop was held in July, 2003, the advisory committee members assisted in the development of the workbooks to be distributed at the meeting, and in procuring speakers along with agenda development. The advisory committee met for a full day following the National SARE Conference in North Carolina. The committee worked to create an outline of the training sessions and curriculum. The minutes from that meeting are included in this report as an attachement. Gerry Cohn, Kevin Schmidt, and Andrew Brannen spoke with Anita Poole on numerous occasions by phone to finalize all details of the workbook and speaker line up. Committee meetings were held via telephone conferencing to plan special topic sessions including: farm tax and estate planning; minority land loss; and forestland loss. Anita Poole, Gerry Cohn, Kevin Schmidt, and Andrew Brannen incorporated input from advisory committee members Martha Monroe, Bill Hubbard, Jerry Pennick, Bo Beaulieu, and Adell Brown on such issues as formatting curriculum, forestry issues and recommendations of potential workshop participants.

To meet the third goal, press releases were sent to newspapers, universities, and organizations and through SARE contacts coordinated by Gwen Rowland. Gwen Rowland was extremely helpful in getting word out to the sustainable agriculture community. Advisory Committee members were very helpful in getting the word out about the training sessions, with some committee members being responsible for getting actual participants to the training session. Scholarships were available which enabled a larger amount of individuals to participate in the sessions. A brochure was mailed out to the target audience and was also posted on the Kerr Center website. Participants were even able to register online from the Kerr Center website and to pay the modest registration fee of $25.00 the proceeds of which were used to cover expenses that this grant could not cover. All of the publicity issued stated that scholarships were available. Contact was made with all SARE state coordinators, and with other governmental and forestry professionals.

The method used to meet the fourth goal was planning oriented. Originally, the workshops were planned for one day, but after considerable advice from the advisory committee, the workshops were lengthened to a day and a half. The advisory committee made recommendations regarding the cities in which training sessions would be held. It was decided that to spread the sessions across the South, the sessions would be held in Oklahoma City, Memphis area and Atlanta. Anita Poole and Barbara Chester searched for conference centers in those cities which would be adequate for the training needs while still economical. For the Atlanta meeting, Rosanne Minoravic was helpful in providing several possible locations. Negotiations were entered into with the facilities in each city and contracts were made. Setting the dates of the meetings also required a large amount of coordination between the partners. Anita Poole also spoke with the state SARE coordinators to make certain there were no other major training conflicts on the dates of the meetings. Additionally, speakers for each training session and their travel had to be secured. The end result was the offering of three training sessions each lasting one and a half days, in three different cities across the South.

To meet the final goal, more than one method was used. At each training session, written evaluations were collected which addressed the adequacy of the speakers and the materials provided. The evaluation surveys were compiled and the information analyzed. The compilation is included as an attachment to this report. In the weeks and months following the training sessions, many questions regarding further information were answered and information was mailed to participants. An overwhelming number of participants at each training session requested assistance in putting together proposals to fund future training, and for contact information from all three training sessions. Anita Poole wrote a guide to preparing a proposal based upon the proposal for this project that was mailed to all participants and project partners. The guide is included with this report as an attachment. Compact discs were mailed to all participants and project partners containing contact information for all participants, power point presentations from the training sessions. A copy of the compact disk is included in this report as an attachment.

Outreach and Publications

A workbook entitled “Ensuring the Future of the South’s Farmland and Forestland containing fact sheets and census data was compiled by American Farmland Trust upon the advise an counsel of the project partners and the advisory committee.

Brochures were developed to advertise the training sessions.

A guide to putting together a proposal for farmland and forestland preservation was mailed to participants.