The Role of Drought Preparedness in Improving the Sustainability of Great Plains Ranches

The Role of Drought Preparedness in Improving the Sustainability of Great Plains Ranches

Summary

In order to improve drought resilience and long-term sustainability of ranches and rangeland in the North Central Region, this project provided education on monitoring and planning for drought. The primary output was a series of five webinars on drought planning, targeted to a wide range of ranch advisors and professionals in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. More than 225 agricultural educators, professionals, policy-makers and producers viewed the webinar series live.  In addition, archived webinars and resources are available for public use, at http://www.drought.unl.edu/ranchplan. Outreach efforts to publicize the archived webinars have reached agricultural professionals across the region.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Project Goal: To increase the technical support available to help rangeland managers mitigate and plan for drought in ways that enhance ecological, economic, and social sustainability.

Project Objectives:

1. To increase agricultural educator/professional awareness of the need for, and challenges of, drought mitigation and planning for sustainable ranch management
2. To increase agricultural educator/professional knowledge of drought mitigation and planning strategies that improve ranch sustainability

To increase agricultural educator/professional knowledge of, and ability to comfortably use, drought monitoring and decision-making tools

Accomplishments/Milestones

The webinar series launched in January 2013, and included:

January 30: Managing Drought Risk on the Ranch: The Planning Process, by Jerry Volesky, Range and Forage Specialist at the UNL West Central Research and Extension Center in North Platte, Nebraska, and Lynn Myers, owner of Tippets-Myers Ranch in western Nebraska.

February 27: Avoiding Analysis Paralysis: Monitoring and Setting Critical Dates for Decision Making During Drought, by Dwayne Rice, Rangeland Management Specialist, NRCS, Kansas; Ted Alexander, owner of Alexander Ranch in south-central Kansas; and Cal Adams, owner of Adams Ranch in north-central Kansas.

March 27: The New Cumulative Forage Reduction (CFR) Index: Assessing Drought Impacts and Planning a Grazing Strategy, by Pat Reece, owner and senior consultant of Prairie Montane Enterprises and Professor Emeritus of the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.

April 24: Using a Drought Calculator to Assist Stocking Decisions, Stan Boltz, State Range Management Specialist, NRCS, South Dakota.

May 29: Economic Factors to Weigh in Making Decisions during Drought, by Matt Stockton, Agricultural Economist at the UNL West Central Research and Extension Center in North Platte, Nebraska.

The NDMC purchased an add-on package for Adobe Connect that allowed up to 200 lines to connect to each webinar.

NDMC staff and Dr. Volesky coordinated the planning of the webinars, contacting speakers, working with speakers ahead of time to familiarize them with webinar technology, and facilitating the webinar sessions. NDMC staff also worked with speakers to arrange for honorarium and speaker expense payments, as appropriate.

The South Dakota State University Extension’s livestock specialists contacted the National Drought Mitigation Center in January 2013 with the idea of broadcasting each of the webinars live at the state’s Regional Extension Centers. With the support of the NDMC, they advertised the events to range professionals, farm/ranch business professionals, and producers, and added on a live Q&A discussion time with local range management experts, following each webinar. SDSU Extension advertised and offered live viewings of the webinars at eight regional extension centers throughout the state. In addition, the NDMC was contacted by a Rangeland Ecology Professor at Fort Hayes State University about using the webinar broadcasts with his students.

As part of the registration process, NDMC staff gathered baseline data about webinar registrants’ confidence in doing many drought-planning type activities, as well as their engagement in providing drought-planning advice. This information will be compared with data from follow up evaluations to gauge the extent to which we met out goals and outcomes.

Each webinar was recorded and sent via email to all registered participants. In addition, links to the archived webinars were uploaded to http://drought.unl.edu/ranchplan, along with the slides that speakers presented and any supporting materials.

NDMC staff conducted progress evaluations after the first three webinars, to ensure people were able to access the webinar successfully, find out whether adjustments needed to be made the time allotted to any of the webinar segments, and to collect comments and questions. The feedback was used to shape the rest of the webinar series.

NDMC staff conducted an evaluation survey in June, 2013, after the conclusion of the webinar series. The survey focused on the likelihood of participants to use the information from the webinars, confidence levels related to the project outcomes, knowledge of drought planning, and suggestions and comments. This data will be reported in the final report.

NDMC staff also conducted a follow up evaluation survey in December, 2013, six months after the conclusion of the webinar series. In this survey, we focused on whether or not participants had increased their efforts in areas related to drought planning, to measure the project outcomes. This data will be reported in the final report.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Through this project, agricultural educators, professionals and producers increased awareness of the need for (and effectiveness of) drought planning in improving sustainability of ranch operations, and increased their knowledge of drought planning methods, monitoring, decision-making and drought planning tools. More than 225 individuals viewed at least one of the webinars live, including extension educators, NRCS specialists, non-profit and for-profit advisors, state and federal agency employees, ranchers, and other agricultural professionals. In addition, the webinar page received over 575 unique page views in 2013. As a result, participants reported increased amount time spent talking with producers about drought mitigation and planning activities, increased use of the featured monitoring, decision-making, and drought planning tools, and progress in developing a drought plan, as a consultant, advisor, or end user. Further, participants reported using the archived webinar resources as teaching tools in their work with rangeland managers and other decision makers.

Collaborators: