Training Manuals and Professional Development Activities for Teaching Organic Farming and Marketing

Training Manuals and Professional Development Activities for Teaching Organic Farming and Marketing

Summary

We are incredibly grateful for the support from WSARE for the project entitled “Training Manuals and Professional Development Activities for Teaching Organic Farming and Marketing” at the UCSC Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS). This interim report covers the progress on the project from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013.

In 2012 CASFS initiated a major effort to update and expand its two instructional manuals that were developed ten years ago and are now used worldwide. The two curricula, Teaching Organic Farming and Gardening: Resources for Instructors (TOFG) and Teaching Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors (TDM), are being revised and new instructional material developed for the print and online versions.

The goal of this project is to revise, update, and expand CASFS teaching resources for organic farming and gardening, and to make these resources broadly accessible as free online teaching tools. To expand the reach of these new manuals, we will also devote considerable planning and resources to dissemination, outreach, and training. While the goal for dissemination and downloading of the manuals will be nationwide, the focus for the initial training of agriculture professionals in their use will be California, Oregon, and Washington.

Objectives/Performance Targets

This project will result in online and print teaching resources for sustainable agriculture education and on-farm training for a wide range of audiences. The objectives and performance targets for this project assume the completion of the revision and production of manuals for online and print publication in 2014, which we are on track to do. From our original timeline for this period we have accomplished core work activities for 2013.

The Objectives/Performance Targets included in proposal and in our Project Overview remain in place for our work in 2013 to 2015, including:

• Reach over 1,000 educators with mailed and online information about the manuals in 2014 and attract another 1,000 to view the manuals from links on other web sites such as eOrganic.org, Start2Farm, SARE, and other sites serving educators and producers by mid-2015.
• Disseminate the new manuals online and in print to over 2000 users in 2015
• Train 300 extension personnel and other educators in the three-state region through five one-day trainings, five conference presentations, and two webinars by June 2015.
• Build in evaluation of project by tracking downloads of the materials from the UC eScholarship and CASFS websites, surveying those using the manuals, and collecting workshop evaluations.

Accomplishments/Milestones

In 2013 significant progress was made on the revisions to the over 30 units in both training manuals, along with the pilot testing and development of new materials including lecture outlines, PowerPoint templates, and instructional videos. This work is summarized below and detailed on the attached document, “CASFS Training Manuals Revision Project.”

The curriculum work has been led by CASFS Senior Editor Martha Brown and CASFS Research Specialist Jan Perez in consultation with other CASFS staff. For each book Brown and Perez made a revision plan clarifying roles and assigning unit revisions to over twenty contributing authors and CASFS instructional staff. The project team received feedback on the curriculum from Apprenticeship staff and instructors, current students, and previous users of the curriculum manuals (through interviews). New and revised material was field-tested with the apprentices in the six-month CASFS Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture course.

In the following sections we will detail the work done to date on the revisions of the two training manuals. As of March 2014, the Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening: Resources for Instructors manual had four units with completed reviews, three units in review by the editor, three units in review by an outside reviewer, thirteen units being revised by the original or new authors, and one unit in development. After receiving feedback, it was decided to substantially rework seven of the 18 units and add five new lectures. The new lectures include: the benefits and challenges of cover crops, irrigation concepts and terminology, irrigation scheduling and delivery systems, transplanting and direct seeding, and field-scale composting. The social issues section also includes new lectures. Eleven new case studies and 14 new appendices were also added, as were PowerPoint templates for authors to use. Finally, three instructional videos, to supplement lectures and demonstrations, have been completed. Footage has been completed for three additional videos and three videos are in the planning stages.

For the Teaching Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors manual, we now have ten units in final review by the editor, six lectures in final revision with original authors, no drafts in review, four lectures in development, one written lecture being re-overhauled and two units have not begun. Overall, after receiving feedback from CASFS teachings staff, and other manual users, it was decided to substantially rework three lectures and add six brand new ones. The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) sections have also been substantially revised to reflect current research about how CSA projects operate.

New additions to the manual include lectures on other kinds of direct marketing, such as retail, agri-tourism, u-pick, marketing to faith communities, and online sales. We’ve included a chapter on the basics of marketing (branding, website development, etc.), and how to market products in ways that increase food access for those with limited access. Additionally, we’ve added chapters on food safety and farm labor, which are two increasingly important topics for new farmers. Finally, we will be expanding the business sections with more information on accounting, liability, and other topics, as well as an interactive case study. Please see the attached document for more detailed work summaries for each of the manuals.

CASFS staff instructors and unit writers will complete the development of new instructional materials, the revision of original teaching units, and the field-testing of instructional materials by June 2014. As units are completed, CASFS staff will edit the instructional materials and oversee the production of both the print books and online versions of these teaching tools.

• Manual Outlines, Revisions

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

By June 30, 2014, CASFS will have completed all the instructional materials and uploaded the free online versions to the CASFS website and other portals. In this same time period, CASFS will develop and initiate an outreach and dissemination plan for the teaching tools. In the summer of 2014, CASFS will begin to conduct targeted outreach to educators nationwide to raise awareness about the online and print materials. Press releases and other mailed and online information about the teaching tools will be sent to over 1000 educators. The online resources will be posted or linked to websites serving farmer and gardener educators such as Start2Farm, eOrganic.org, SARE.org, and others. Outreach will also include presentations and exhibit booths at conferences serving beginning farmers and farm educators.

CASFS will establish online usage tracking through its own website (using Google analytics) to show “hits” on the web pages housing the teaching materials, and through eScholarship (a project of the University of California’s Digital Library) to show downloads of individual units and supporting material. Distribution of printed manuals will be tracked through the CASFS office. In 2014, with funding from the Western Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education program, CASFS will begin planning train-the-trainer sessions for farmer and gardener educators interested in using the teaching tools, with initiation of training sessions in 2014-2015.

Once the revision of the training manuals is completed in mid-2014, educators nationwide will have access to these instructional materials, especially as free online resources. The main thrust of our targeted outreach will be to agriculture educators in California, Oregon and Washington, where we will involve Cooperative Extension and NRCS personnel; colleges and universities with programs in sustainable agriculture, student farms, and on-farm education programs; and urban agriculture and farm training programs. We will conduct outreach through mailed and online information as well as through web sites such as eOrganic.org, and Start2Farm, SARE, and other sites. We will directly train educators in Washington, Oregon, and California through the training developed to teach instructors about the manuals, including one-day workshops, conference sessions, and webinars.

Collaborators: