NE Advanced Agroforestry Training for Natural Resource and Agricultural Educators

NE Advanced Agroforestry Training for Natural Resource and Agricultural Educators

Summary

Agroforestry is the intentional integration of trees with crop and/or animal production systems to create economic, environmental, and social benefits. Agroforestry practices provide protection for topsoil, livestock, crops, and wildlife; increase productivity of agricultural and horticultural crops; reduce need for energy and chemical inputs; improve water and air quality; enhance biodiversity and landscape diversity; and diversify local economies.A study of Pennsylvania farmers and land owners (Strong and Jacobson, 2006) found that 90 percent of the respondents would consider adopting agroforestry if information were made available and if they could see working demonstrations. In the past year, Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, PA Certified Organic, PA Women Agriculture Network, Woodland Owner’s Associations and the PA Farmer’s Union requested agroforestry support and education. However, despite growing interest and recent advances in the science and practice of agroforestry, regional adoption has been limited, in part, because few natural resource advisors and educators have sufficient agroforestry training to support landowners and practitioners in agroforestry adoption.Further, most existing agroforestry materials are designed for the Southeast and Midwest regions.

Agricultural service providers need educational resources and support to assist Northeastern farmers and landowners in developing and implementing agroforestry practices that enhance agricultural operations, diversify income sources, and build ecological resiliency and stability on farm and forest lands. This project will provide advanced training on the five key agroforestry practices

• windbreaks or living fences that buffer field, farmstead, and livestock;

• riparian and upland buffers, which act as sponges and filters to protect water quality;

• silvopastoral systems that combine trees, livestock, and forages;

• alley cropping integrates annual or perennial crops with high-value trees and shrubs; and

• forest farming where agricultural products are grown under a managed forest canopy.

Natural resource educators, including agency, NGO, early adopters, peer-to-peer volunteer networks, and extension staffs will be the primary project beneficiaries. These trainees will form the foundation of a regional community of educators that, in turn, will provide advice and information to farmers. Expanding the pool of producers and service providers who are comfortable with agroforestry practices and design will facilitate knowledge transfer and land steward adoption of agroforestry. This will have cascading effects by enhancing economic and ecological diversity and increasing the resiliency and sustainability of rural and urban forest and agricultural communities and food systems.

Objectives/Performance Targets

60 Northeast service providers who receive comprehensive agroforestry training will provide agroforestry assistance to 120 farmers and graziers who manage 3,600 acres of woodlot. 

Accomplishments/Milestones

Outreach:

“Agroforestry in Focus” — New column in Penn State Sustainable Ag News

 In January 2016, team members Erik Hagan and Tracey Coulter met with Charlie White, erstwhile PA SARE coordinator and extension specialist, to develop a new column in the Penn State Sustainable Ag News highlighting this NE- SARE PDP project and agroforestry opportunities in the NE. The inaugural article appeared in the March 2016 issue and was entitled: Agroforestry for the Northeast: New Project to Develop Regionally Appropriate Training Materials: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/sustainable/news/2016/spring-2016/agroforestry-for-the-northeast .  Other quarterly articles featured the Rt. 9 Chestnut Co-op in Carrollton, Ohio that Greg Miller presented at the September agroforestry training and an overview of that Biglerville training.

Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Agroforestry (NEMA) Working Group 

The Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Agroforestry (NEMA) Working Group formed in late 2015 and is a consortium of researchers, technical service providers, governmental agencies, practitioners and experts focused on educating, promoting and implementing agroforestry systems in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Region of North America. This NE SARE – funded project was a central focus of the team.

In the summer of 2016, Interns working for the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources enhanced the new NEMA website : www.nemaagroforestry.org   and the NEMA Facebook Page www.facebook.com/NEMAAgroforestry  by adding content and creating a logo for the group to use in promotional materials.

 September Professional Development Agroforestry Training

Just after Labor Day, 2016, the group hosted its inaugural training at Penn State’s Fruit Research and Extension Center in Biglerville, PA. Over 30 participants and trainers from nine states gathered for the 3-day training. Horticulture Educator Emelie Swackhamer and Penn State Ph.D. candidate Sara Fitzsimmons of The American Chestnut Foundation spoke about opportunities for integrating nut crops into agricultural systems, while Greg Miller from Empire Chestnuts talked about the formation of the Route 9 Chestnut Cooperative featured in Agroforestry in Focus in the spring 2016, Sustainable Agriculture Newsletter. Shawn Belt, horticulturist with the NRCS Norman A Berg National Plant Materials Center and Penn State Professor of Poultry Science, Paul Patterson, lead a tour of a windbreak system designed to capture particulates from poultry houses at a Hillandale layer facility in Adams County. The next tour stop was the Dickinson College Farm where farm managers Jenn Halpin and Matt Steiman guided the group through a tour of the farm’s on-site agroforestry practices; Julie Vastine from the College’s Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring shared the challenges of establishing and maintaining an on-site multifunctional buffer; and finally Brett Chedzoy, SCNY Ag Team-Forestry Specialist for Cornell Cooperative Extension and farm manager for Angus Glen in Watkins Glen, NY provided a lunch-time presentation on silvopasture. Katie Trozzo, Virginia Tech Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation and Don English, USDA Forest Service researcher and farm manager presented research and applied perspective of multifunctional buffer economics and establishment. Emily Best from Tuscarora Organic Growers, Cooperative shared insights into potential markets and supply chains for products produced in agroforestry systems.  To cap off the three days of intensive learning, Kate MacFarland, USDA National Agroforestry Center and Erik Hagan, USDA ARS and PSU graduate student, lead the group in a rousing design exercise where teams were challenged to apply agroforestry principles to different farm scenarios. All presentations from this training can be viewed at the NEMA website: www.nemaagroforestry.org

Training Milestone: 30 service providers and producers attend 3 day training, and complete pre-program knowledge surveys.  Participants complete post-training survey to identify future training needs and to measure knowledge acquired. (Summer 2016)

Out of the 30 attendees 20 participants filled out the post training evaluation form. Many attendees play multiple technical service provider roles ranging from forestry consultants to agricultural educators. 6 participants, or 32% of the total respondent group replied as farmer/landowner while 18, or 90% of respondents listed themselves as technical service providers. This data is highlighted in the table below.

The respondents also highlighted their geographic range of professional impact, highlighted in the table below. This gave us a good perspective on our outreach efforts and find a need for 2017’s 3 Day training to be focused largely on encouraging New England participants. We are expecting that a 3 Day training offered in Northern New York will provide suitable access for that community and beyond.

Gaining detailed data on quantities of landowners influenced and acres is rather challenging with our evaluation efforts. While needing to leave out some extreme outlier responses, service providers responses in the post-training evaluation at the end of the 3-day workshop estimated they annually influence 2,027 landowners across the Northeast and approximately 38,800 acres of land. This indicates the potential influence of our educational offerings. 65% of the respondents declared working with forestry type operations and 85% of the total respondents worked specifically with agricultural landowners. Responses estimate that 553 landowners impacted by service providers attending already implement agroforestry practices, with an additional estimated 768 landowners that may be interested in implementing. Additionally, of the 20 responses, 11 participants (58%) assist landowners with implementation funding which could be a big help in influencing landowner implementation. Data is too large for snapshot imaging, please see attached reporting spreadsheet, Sheet 2. “Location and Operation”,  for details provided above to determined estimated calculation of landowners and acres influenced.

This 3 Day Training presented a wealth of information covering the extent of agroforestry systems and their applicability here in the Northeast. Based on the responses reported there was a 57% net gain of knowledge due to this training, with a range of 97% (Agroforestry Resources and Planning Tools) to 29% (Agroforestry Riparian Buffers for Water Quality). This data certainly helps us to consider where there are gaps in knowledge and where our efforts have had the greatest impact. As will be detailed below, this data has influenced our decision to create multiple workshops on Designing Multifunctional Riparian Buffers for Water Quality as well as a Designing Agroforestry Systems. These workshops will be prioritized as additional field day training efforts throughout the Northeast and New England before and after the 2017 3 Day training to help further advance the efforts of the introductory 3 day trainings provided.

Beyond collecting data specific to participant background and knowledge gain, our post training evaluation allowed respondents to provide feedback on the 1.) 3 Things planned to do within 6 months from the training presented 2.) The most significant lessons learned and 3.) any additional feedback to help make our training stronger.  The majority of responses detailed participant interest in presenting outreach materials, consultations and/or developing training programs to encourage agroforestry developments to their contacts. It is difficult to find a trend in the most significant lessons learned as respondents replied with a full array related to information gained throughout the entire training. This is important in recognizing that many participants come with a range of knowledge prior to the training and are gaining important components that are relevant to encouraging perennial systems into their professional services. Similarly, the additional feedback present a various array of helpful information to improve future offerings. All responses have been provided in the attached reporting spreadsheet, verbatim to how the participants responded to each question.

On September 21, 2016, the NE SARE grant program administrator joined the planning team on a conference call to offer suggestions as to how to improve on the training design and to facilitate reporting for future workshops and trainings.  Among her recommendations:

• Get demographics at registration
• Ask participants to “share one thing” they’d like to learn at the workshop
• Encourage networking by having people partner with someone they don’t know and then introduce them to the group and
• Use round tables that accommodate 4-6 people
• Consult NE SARE “Reading the Farm” manual as template for participants to build case study of farm

The latter recommendation will be included in a June 2017 two-day training focused on agroforestry design applied to existing farmland owned by a conservancy.  This conserved land, Lundale Farm  http://lundalefarm.org   is unique because the land is leased to multiple farmers raising a variety of crops ranging from micro-greens to grass-fed beef.  The workshop will be held in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) and will allow technical service providers to collaborate with farmers to develop agroforestry plans that can then be integrated into these farming operations. Lundale Farm is located in Chester County, PA, within easy travel from neighboring states.

Plans are under way for the second  3-day training to be held in New York State in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension — by offering the training further north, we hope to capture more participants from New England.

Workshops/Field Days

Workshop Milestone: 120 Service providers and farmers attend agroforestry workshops (Summer 2016)

During the initial stages of planning, the project team put together a list of workshops beginning Spring of 2016 through Fall 2017. As we began coordination of the 3 Day training, manual revisions, workshops etc, we began to realize the wealth of agroforestry teachers, researchers and experts within the Northeast and the educational resources already available. After one planned workshop was canceled due to low registration (Mushroom Cultivation Fall 2016) and due to some substantial feed back taken from the 3 Day training and webinars, we have altered the schedule to accommodate the need for design and more regionally specific agroforestry trainings. Additionally, ensuring accessibility to the entire regions professional development community with micro-regional specific differences in approaches is a major challenge. Beginning Winter of 2017, we have an exciting and full schedule of workshops occurring throughout the Northeast Region.

Riparian Buffers – Riparian Buffers are at the top of everyone’s minds whose work relates to conservation and agricultural landscapes. The USDA has declared and defined Riparian Forest Buffers as an agroforestry practice. Fortunately, our project partners at Penn State and Virginia Tech are at the forefront of novel and innovative agroforestry riparian buffer system research in partnership with strong state agency outreach and prioritization, Multifunctional Riparian Buffers has become a new topic in the agricultural community. Developing agriculturally viable riparian buffers with a focus on water quality and wildlife habitat. Additionally, PA has just released a funding program in 2016 to help landowners implement these novel agriculturally viable riparian buffer systems across the state. However, this concept is not without challenges, and especially the need to train field staff, educators and the range of technical service providers on not just the concept of multifunctional buffers, but also the design and implementation of them. We are scheduled to offer 2, possibly 3 of these Multifunctional Riparian Buffers trainings from Maryland to Vermont. The curriculum for these trainings is novel and exciting, with the intention to be replicable beyond the scope of this grant. The training encompasses 2 days, day 1 focusing on the concepts, case studies and design principles of Multifunctional Riparian Buffers, while Day 2 will entail a site visit and a hands on design session. The design session is developed to allow participants to not only grasp concepts, but be placed in groups for real world challenges faced with designing these novel water conservation systems. The training will detail federal and state resources for further education and implementation funds.  

Silvopasture – Silvopasture is a big topic in the Northeast with training already occurring throughout PA and NY. However, new project partner Richard Smith at the University of New Hampshire has opened the door for providing trainings to professionals in the northern New England community. Fall 2017, we will host a full day field tour of large scale silvopasture system in Maine with additional project partners from New York (Cornell and Paul Smith College) and Vermont (University of Vermont and private partners).

Forest Farming – Working in partnership with the Beginning Forest Farming Program, we will be co-hosting a 2 day forest farming professional development training at Quiet Creek Herb and Farm School in Western PA, late spring 2017. This program will pull experts from across the Northeast Mid-Atlantic region to train professionals on the opportunities for mushroom cultivation and understory perennial establishment for conservation and marketing opportunities. This curriculum will focus largely on how forested landscapes can be managed for an array of understory agricultural crops as a means to conserve woodlots across the landscape, providing additional income streams to landowners while maintain forested cover for wildlife and natural resource conservation. This is an exciting partnership opportunity for NEMA members in collaboration with the USDA’s National Agroforestry Center

Alley Cropping – Alley cropping is an underutilized agroforestry practice in the Northeast with a tremendous amount of potential for increasing perennials and all of their ecosystem services into annual cropping systems. However, very few landowners or researchers have focused on this sort of agroforestry production for various reasons. Finally, after over a year of searching we have found an established farm with established alley cropping system in Northeast PA that will provide an opportunity for a full day workshop and field day on alley cropping and diversified farming systems. We have a scoping visit scheduled for the end of January, which will solidify workshop training date and agenda. We are tentatively planning this training for late Summer 2017. This training will be another great partnership with Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) a relationship that will allow our agroforestry efforts to continue beyond the scope of this grant.

Designing Agroforestry Systems – One of the big successes and take-aways from September’s 3 Day training was the need for professionals to advance beyond concepts and case studies and dive into how to plan and develop these systems to meet similar objectives they face regularly in their careers. Designing agroforestry systems is another 2-day training curriculum we are developing and launching this year with 3 trainings, beginning June 5^th and offered throughout the Northeast. Similar to the Multifunctional Riparian Buffer curriculum, the agenda will consist of the first day focusing on concepts and design considerations for the various agroforestry systems, placement in the landscape and the ecological context they create. Day 2 will entail a full day of site visit and design practicum. Groups, mixed with attending landowners and professional service providers, will be assigned portions of a landscape at the trainings location and given a detailed scenario of conservation and landowner objectives as criteria to meet. The training will conclude with presentations of design and approach to meeting the objectives of their groups scenario and landscape. As described earlier in this report, 2 of these training will be in partnership with PASA at Lundale Community Farm in Eastern PA and another in Central PA at the newly established Windswept Agroforestry Farm. Third and possibly fourth trainings will occur in partnership with Vermont Edible Landscapes and Cornell Cooperative Extension in Upstate New York.  

The Webinar Series

The NEMA planning committee reached consensus on utilizing this grant opportunity to develop a webinar series that would offer consecutive monthly hour-long online educational programs as a method for introducing advanced topics in agroforestry. Since many introductory agroforestry webinars already exist, the planning committee wanted to follow up on the in-person trainings with more advanced topics, thereby furthering the archived web-based resources available to the northeast professional community. Thus, it was decided to initiate the webinar series after the first 3-Day Professional Development training held in September of 2016. The  series was launched on October 7th, with “Agroforestry opportunities and Resources in the Northeast” presented by Kate MacFarland of the National Agroforestry Center (NAC). Erik Hagan, NE SARE Agroforestry Professional Development Coordinator and researcher with the USDA ARS at Penn State presented “Designing Multifunctional Agroforestry Systems” on November 4^th. The last webinar of 2016 was offered by Kate Commender and Emily Lachniet of Appalachia Sustainable Development, titled “ Mulit-functional Buffers and the NTFP Calculator.” For meetingthe deliverables of this grant, the series of 8 webinars will wrap up in May 2017 with a presentation by Michael Fournier, Vermont Resource Conservationist (USDA-NRCS), highlighting Farm Bill cost share opportunities in agroforestry. Attached to this annual report you will find the full schedule of webinars intended over the coming months. As you will see the over arching theme provides advanced topics in agroforestry as an approach to blending conservation and agricultural production as a means to bring professional service providers from across sector perspectives to engage at the agricultural landscape for aiding farming industry sustainability. The immediate success of the webinar series has represented a need for further online educational offerings. We are currently in the process of stream-lining the webinar coordination process in order to allow continued webinar offering beyond this grant capacity, whether managed voluntarily or from accessing alternative funding sources.

The webinar series is hosted and managed with the assistance and partnership of Penn State University’s Forestry Department who graciously offered the Adobe Connect Classroom and will continue to archive webinars for future access. The webinar series is archived on the NEMA website at: www.nemaagroforestry.org/webinars/

Webinar Milestone: 200 Service providers and farmers participate in webinar series, 120 respond to survey at close of webinar (February 2016 – May 2017)

The first three webinars have attracted 89 participants from across the Northeast with even representation from across Europe, with each presentation attracting more participants. One challenge we are having with webinar polls is user participation. We have developed pre webinar questionnaires as well as pre and post webinar polls to determine learning efficacy. Though user participation in the pre and post webinar poll is low, we are still able to garner useful information. Of those that have participated in the pre webinar questionnaire the following outlines data on participant type, leading to our milestone goal.

Thus, out of 52 respondents: 30 can be directly considered professional service providers; 10 producers, and 12 from professions not clarified. These numbers do not reflect the entire participant pool, however, as these solely reflect those that participating in the pre-webinar survey. Additionally, the webinars are archived and posted on the project website for post webinar broadcast viewing. These views are tracked through the Penn State webinar classroom system. As of December 31^st, 2016, 134 viewers watched the October webinar and 149 additional viewers watched the November webinar. December’s webinar has just recently been posted to the website with no data yet available.

The attached document “Poll Reporting NEMA Agroforestry Webinars” demonstrates participant representation and learning advancements in detail, which will be compiled and better represented towards our Performance Target in the final report, which will be developed in December 2017. The following tables provide insight into the learning objectives verified in terms of percent knowledge gain of the entire participating ground:

October Webinar #1 – Agroforestry opportunities and Resources in the Northeast

November Webinar #2 – Designing Multifunctional Agroforestry Systems

December Webinar #3 – Multi-functional Buffers and the NTFP Calculator

The Training Manual

Though not detailed as a Milestone or part of the learning verification planning, the project team is developing an Agroforestry Handbook specifically addressing agroforestry systems, resources and design considerations for the Northeast professional service providers and landowner community. The intent to update and revise the Missouri Agroforestry Handbook to apply more appropriately to your regions audience while providing an opportunity for our local agroforestry experts, educators and researchers to present perspectives, case studies and background on regional approaches. This endeavor is well under way with 4 of the 10 chapters already nearing completion. Experts in their respective field are currently developing the remaining 6 chapters. The agroforestry manual has many moving parts, with 2-3 authors per chapter and many folks only writing one chapter each. Due to a steep learning curve for the project coordinators awareness of agroforestry experts across the Northeast, the development of the NEMA networking group and related growth through enhanced communication and collaboration across institute, agency and stateliness, the manual has an anticipated release of late Fall 2017. The process of developing this project has given the agroforestry community across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region the first opportunity to collaborate across such extensive borders. Discovering the most apt member in the community to write manual chapters, provide ideal case studies or build comprehensive resource lists has been one of the most productive facets of this grant project, driving not just the education topics relevant to the professional community, but also in the methods by which we approach the topics. In conjunction with the development of the manual, case studies of agroforestry systems in place throughout the Northeast Mid-Atlantic region will be documented.  This will help to provide some real project context for these concepts while giving credit to the landowners/innovators achieving successful implementation in their field. Discovering these key early adopters and innovators in the field of agroforestry has been a tremendous bonus through our outreach and educational offering efforts. Though case studies will be a snapshop of current practice implementation and management both in the manual as well as online through the NEMA Agroforestry webpage, but discussions have been initiated in conjunction with partners at the National Agroforestry Center and the Savanna Institute to discover methods for tracking ecological and economic changes that occur within the landscape through the implementation of the concepts described by our service providers. This will provide a wealth of continuing supportive data in to the future, further driving professional development and implementation of sustainable perennial agricultural systems within our conservation and agricultural technical service provider communities across the Northeast.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Supporting Materials:

2016 SARE Milestone Table

Copy of Webinar Reporting

2016Training Evaluation Form_2016

Copy of 2016 Training Evaluation Reporting

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We have had many successes over the past year and half and are well on our way to meeting our performance target. Data collected at all trainings and presentations will be compiled at the finality of the project in Winter 2018. We will report our collective impacts and contributions at that time.

Collaborators: