Building Capacity for Climate Extension

2014 Annual Report for ENC12-136

Project Type: Professional Development Program
Funds awarded in 2012: $65,934.00
Projected End Date: 12/31/2015
Region: North Central
State: Iowa
Project Coordinator:
Dr. Lois Wright Morton
Iowa State University

Building Capacity for Climate Extension

Summary

2014 Summary

As the Cornbased Cropping Systems CAP (CSCAP) enters Y5 (2015-2016), the final year of our project, the extension efforts of our18 extension educators have become a focal point for extending our research and development of products for our farmer-agricultural stakeholder audiences. The extension team virtually meets monthly to advance working group activities. The SARE professional development travel grant has enabled our extension educators to travel to two face-to-face meetings in 2014: one a professional development and program preparation meeting and the second to deliver programming to CSCAP agricultural audiences. A two day in-person professional development meeting was held at DeForest, WI in June 2014. The purpose was to transition towards a more cohesive and strategic group focused on producing outputs in five key message areas determined by the extension team: water management, nitrogen management, extended rotations, climate messages, and soil health. Michael Dahlstrom, Communications Professor at Iowa State University, was brought in specifically to educate in messaging and translating complex messages. He led a half-day workshop and discussion.

The second face-to-face meeting was the CSCAP national conference, Resilient Agriculture August 5-7, 2014 in Ames, Iowa. CSCAP Extension educators interactively engaged with the audience in multi-directional exchanges—learning from farmer participants and science presentations, and shared their own expertise at field day presentations. The conference drew 189 people including producers, farm leaders and agricultural organizations and was streamed to 70 registered remote attendees. This national conference showcased: 1) many project science findings to-date; 2) engagement of project farmers in the applications of the science; 3) strong partnerships built with the 25x’25 Alliance and the USDA U2U project (pilot testing of farmer decision support tools); and, 4) project team engagement with knowledge exchanges among disciplines and stakeholders to address weather and climate challenges associated with corn-based cropping system management.

A 48-page color magazine was published for the national conference with the farmer audience in mind. It highlights project findings including the work of the project extension educators. It was awarded 2014 Extension Education Materials Award of Excellence from the American Society of Agronomy.

 

Objectives/Performance Targets

  1. Convene the Climate Extension Educator team yearly to learn from the multidisciplinary team of agronomists, agricultural engineers, climate scientists, economists, sociologists, and entomologists, in the 9 state region. 2. Create sessions at the Climate CSCAP annual meeting for extension educators to build relationships with other climate educators. 3. Work as a team to refine and improve extension curricula that increase farmer implementation of climate risk management strategies.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Extension educators are working with about 160 farmer leaders and group members and have completed collecting farm management data to help build understanding of system management and areas to hone in messaging. For example, producers have commented that dealing with climate extremes include seed slot erosion from high rainfall events, timeliness of planting, and weed pressure shifts. These data will help to inform models and synthesis of findings as it relates to variability in farm management and risk. Many partner farmers also put up Sustainable Corn signs in their fields to promote their involvement with the team. Several extension educators also have on-farm demonstrations that they have sought out or received from grants; this is helping to get the practices out. 

As research findings are becoming more prolific, the programming and information used byextension educators becomes more CSCAP centric. For example, Minnesota had a field day with130 attendees comprised entirely of CSCAP presentations and materials. The focus was on water quality and it served as a strong example of numerous disciplines working together. Overall, the extension team has presented in numerous local and regional settings with most presentations themed around cover crops, soil health, crop productivity, and weather variability. Extension educators were highly involved in the team’s national conference by bringing partner farmers and presenting during several sessions.

In 2014, Extension educators and supporting staff produced a total of 139 outputs and reached 7353 individuals in-person. Outputs include: promotional report (1), proposal written by Dennis Todey (1), extension publications (1), conference presentations (6), extension presentations (87), websites (2), blog entry (14), popular press (12), university press (13), radio/TV spot (1), and video (1). The Twitter account has been built out this year with a substantial following now; this type of social media will help reach another subset of the population.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Post-conference evaluation of the August Resilient Agriculture national conference indicated that the focus on attaining resilience through region-specific adaptation approaches and the proactive planning necessary to address short-term and long-term implications of climate change resonated well with farmers and crop consultants. Extension educators in all CSCAP states incorporated climate and agriculture presentations, information, and discussions into their existing extension programming efforts and reached over 7000 farmers, crop consultants, and other extension educators. Cover crops continue to be a popular topic as well as water quality and drainage. Several extension educators have been able to step in with needed information and expertise because of their knowledge through and experience with the CSCAP. Garnering widespread support in the team’s efforts to programmatically strengthen the Land Grant University’s focus on climate education for agriculture represents a significant shift relative to past efforts. Educators in IN and MI have conducted extension in-service this past year to address this need. Also, during the extension summer meeting, the extension educators formed five key working groups focused on specific information delivery and messaging around topics they felt would be well received by clientele. This focused messaging is important in building capacity institutionally and increasing the focus on resilience and sustainability in extension programming across the region. Partnership with the USDA Purdue-led U2U project continued with promotion of U2U tools facilitated by CSCAP extension educators in extension presentations, newsletters, one-on-one conversations, and at the national conference.

In Years 1-3, the CSCAP has had annual (internal) team meetings but this year we hosted a three-day national conference in Ames, IA. There were 189 individuals registered in-person and 70 online including farmers, scientists, industry, etc. In addition, 4 times during the year,Objective based working sessions occurred in-person to advance papers, outputs, and strategic plans. The groups included: cover crop working group, drainage water management working group, including the extension educators.

The team website (www.sustainablecorn.org) focused on farmer audiences has seen an increase in traffic; site usage statistics from Oct. 2013 through Sept. 2014 include 14,175 site visits (53% increase from last year), 7,161 unique visitors (74% increase), 36,602 page views (37% increase). The most visited pages include the AgriClimate Connection blog, field research, and farmer perspectives about agriculture and weather variability.Efforts to increase communications in 2014 with key external target audiences include the following:

  • Ongoing blogposts made weekly on current topics through partnership with U2U.
  • A 48-page magazine was created containing 21 illustrated articles by our team members. It highlighted the science behind climate resilience strategies for cornbased cropping systems and featured some of the team’s research findings to-date. A totalof 320 print copies have been distributed to-date to farmers and crop advisors. Themagazine continues to be available electronically on our public website.
  • A video entitled, Views from the Field: Farmers on Changing Weather Patterns, wascollaboratively created by the team’s videography student intern and extension educators.It debuted at the conference and is available at youtube.com/sustainablecorn.
  • News releases were sent out to highlight the statistical atlas by Social-Economic team and to tie the extension team’s work in with nationally covered topics such as the release of the Third National Climate Assessment.
  • The 2014 national conference for Corn Belt farmers, crop advisors and CSCAP teammembers was promoted via news releases to ~400 local and national farm press, team website, blog, Twitter, postcards, ag and crop newsletters at partner universities, and outreach to corn and soybean farmer organizations through our relationships and our cohost 25x’25 Alliance. The CSCAP project and the science of crop resilience were carried in popular press publications such as Wallace’s Farmer, Successful Farming Magazine and the Farm Bureau Spokesman. All conference products are available at www.sustainablecorn.org, including the magazine, conference sessions on video, Sec.Vilsack’s comments on video, and posters.

Collaborators:

Dr. Lois Wright Morton

lwmorton@iastate.edu
Project Director
Iowa State University
317C East Hall
Ames, IA 50011
Office Phone: 5152942843