Increasing the Effectiveness of Field Agent Response to Producer Requests for Alternative Marketing Assistance

Increasing the Effectiveness of Field Agent Response to Producer Requests for Alternative Marketing Assistance

Objectives/Performance Targets

The project objectives are: 1) To increase the ability of agents (and similar service providers) to provide well-informed initial responses to
producers asking for advice with alternative marketing questions, and to make referrals as appropriate. 2) To help agents better understand the unique marketing needs of small-scale and minority producers, and 3) To allow agents to establish familiarity and good working relationships across state and reservation borders in order to maximize resources available to
assist producers.

The idea is not to make these agents into marketing experts, but to allow them as a non-marketing specialists to help producers find the help they need. In addition to 30 or so agents from AZ, CO, NM, & UT, we will have
several marketing specialists and producers to help identify needs, issues, effective techniques, and resources. We expect that all will be learners and all will be trainers in this project.

Information generated at the workshop will be used to produce a draft handbook and web materials for use by agents. Participants will be asked to
review these materials to ensure their usefulness. They will be further tested and refined at a similar training workshop next year.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Utah State is due to send back the numerical conference evaluation results shortly, and we are also currently studying other feedback we have received from the extensionists who participated. I expect to be able to update this section by December, 2006.

Collaborators: