Farmer Interviews as a Tool for Educating Agricultural Support Personnel and Other Farmers

Farmer Interviews as a Tool for Educating Agricultural Support Personnel and Other Farmers

Summary

This project creates a two-hour video presentation on selected topics of sustainable agriculture and informs agricultural service providers through half-day workshops about using the video for their work with farmers. The selected topics include: starting from scratch, transitioning a conventional farm to sustainable agriculture, farm financing, managing risk, sustainable practices for larger industrial farms, cropping and livestock practices, and marketing. Two workshops were held and others are intended for agricultural support personnel from organizations such as University of Maine Cooperative Extension, USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA/Farm Service Agency, Maine Department of Agriculture, and Farm Credit of Maine.

In addition to producing the video and hosting the workshops, the publication of a report of the findings of the Northeast SARE project, LNE99-122, “Establish Integrated Systems Baseline & Educational & Mentoring Programs” is also intended within the scope of this project.

Objectives/Performance Targets

This project creates a two-hour video presentation with segments on selected topics of sustainable agriculture and trains agricultural support personnel in using the video and for their work with farmers. The selected topics include: starting from scratch, transitioning a conventional farm to sustainable agriculture, farm financing, managing risk, sustainable practices for larger industrial farms, cropping and livestock practices, and marketing. The video presentations are to be made at half-day workshops to groups of Cooperative Extension and NRCS personnel, farm-lending institution staff, and University of Maine students, in order for them to learn how sustainable agriculture practitioners have started, adopted, or managed sustainable systems.

Accomplishments/Milestones

The final version of the video was produced in June 2002. The video is two-hours in length and was created from over 30 hours of film footage of interviews with 19 farmers practicing sustainable agriculture. Two workshops were held — one in Gorham, Maine on February 14th, 2002 and one in Orono, Maine on March 13th, 2002 – using the video as the centerpiece of the workshops. The Gorham workshop was attended by eight agricultural support personnel while the Orono workshop was attended by 13 support personnel. Workshop attendees included five Extension, ten FSA, four Maine Department of Agriculture, one NRCS, and one Farm Credit personnel. The video will be used in an introductory sustainable agriculture class at the University of Maine in December 2002 and will be part of NRCS staff training workshops in the Winter 2003/2004.

Based on evaluations from participants of the first workshop, the second workshop format was modified to include panels, including some of the farmers shown on the video, to discuss the different topics of the video. This change was well received by the workshop attendees. In terms of responses to evaluation questions, with scores ranging from 1 (not useful) to 5 (very useful), the mean value of all evaluation questions was 3.8 for the first workshop (WS1) and 3.9 for the second workshop (WS2). By question, the responses were:

Usefulness of video for service providers
WS1=4.1; WS2=4.7
Did the workshop enable better understanding
of the farm client?
WS1=4.0; WS2=4.3
Usefulness of video for client farmers?
WS1=3.9; WS2=3.9
Did the workshop increase understanding
of sustainable agriculture?
WS1=3.5; WS2=3.7
Did the workshop change your attitudes
towards sustainable agriculture farmers?
WS1=3.3; WS2=3.1

To-date, 43 copies of the video have been distributed. Twenty copies of the video were supplied to Cooperative Extension so that they could be distributed to county offices and Extension Specialists.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

The impact of this project is significant in that the video “Elements of Sustainable Agriculture” was viewed by leaders of agricultural support agencies, and will be used to inform agency personnel of sustainable agriculture. It is now in every University of Maine Cooperative Extension county office, and in the offices of Extension Specialists. In addition, the Maine state office of the USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service will use the video as part of staff training workshops in the Winter of 2003/2004 – exposing another segment of agricultural support personnel to the video.

Collaborators: