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 Western SARE 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 annual report covers the progress on the project from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014.

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 in the final stages of proofreading and production, with the new instructional materials ready for publishing in 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. The project has been much more comprehensive and ambitious than originally conceived, with every unit revised, new units developed, narrative supplements written, appendices added, resource sections expanded, and powerpoint presentations created for many units. For this reason it has taken longer to reach publication than anticipated. The TOFG has been completed and initial print review copies are being distributed to 50 reviewers in January. TDM will be completed in February 2015 and the online and print editions of these manuals will be available by March 2015.

To expand the reach of these new manuals, we have devoted considerable planning and resources to dissemination, outreach, and training. The goal for dissemination and downloading of the manuals will be nationwide, and the focus for the initial training of agriculture professionals in their use will be California, Oregon, and Washington. To complete the dissemination, outreach, and training phase of the project as comprehensively as planned, we will be requesting a No Cost Time Extension to December 31, 2015.

Objectives/Performance Targets

This project will result in free online and at-cost 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 assumed the completion of the revision and production of manuals in 2014. We are behind the schedule outlined in the original proposal timeline due to the fact that we underestimated the enormity of the task of revising, updating, and expanding more than 1000 pages of instructional materials with 27 contributing writers and 26 reviewers. The Objectives/Performance Targets included in the proposal and in our Project Overview remain in place for our work in 2013 through 2015. We plan to request a NCTE to December 31, 2015 so that performance targets will be met by the end of 2015, as outlined below:

• Reach over 1,000 educators with mailed and online information about the manuals in 2015 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 the end of 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 train-the-trainer sessions, five conference presentations, and two webinars by the end of 2015.
• Build in evaluation of the 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 2014 the 27 units of the two training manuals were revised, updated or expanded. New materials were developed and pilot tested, including lecture outlines, PowerPoint templates, and instructional videos. This work is summarized below and detailed on the attached document, “CASFS Training Manuals Revision Project: What is New in these Resources.”

The curriculum work has been led by CASFS Principal 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 22 contributing writers and CASFS instructional staff. The project team received feedback on the curriculum from 26 reviewers, 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.

The organic production manual, Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening: Resources for Instructors (TOFG), has been completed and 50 review copies printed for initial review by other farmer educators. This book had 37 detailed class lectures revised, reviewed, edited, and formatted. Twenty-one new narrative supplements and 27 new and updated appendices were added. Nine Powerpoint presentations to accompany the units in Part 1, Organic Farming & Gardening Skills, were completed or are in development. Finally, 12 instructional videos, to supplement lectures and demonstrations, have been completed. Two more videos are currently in production. Attached is the Table of Contents for the TOFG and along with a detailed list of each unit’s new materials in a document titled: “CASFS Training Manuals Revision Project: What is New in These Resources.”  Also attached is a sample unit (still needing final copyediting and not meant for reproduction).

Publication of Teaching Direct Marketing and Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors will happen in February 2015. There are nine units, with twenty-seven new or revised detailed lectures that have been written, reviewed, and revised, and prepared for final copy editing and formatting. Two lectures in final review. One chapter has been postponed. There are eleven updated or new appendices. Attached is the Table of Contents for the TDM along with a detailed list of each TDM unit’s new materials shown in the attached document: CASFS Training Manuals Revision Project: What is New in these Resources.

Following the initial review of the first print run of 50 books, the TOFG will undergo a final edit and then the final print and online editions will be published in February 2015. The completed units, with their accompanying powerpoint presentations and videos, will be posted online for free download as individual pdfs and links. Plans have been made to send press releases and other mailed and online information about the teaching tools to over 1000 educators directly following the online posting in February. The online resources will be submitted for posting or linking to websites serving farmer and gardener educators such as Start2Farm, eOrganic.org, SARE.org, and others.

Planning for outreach and training-the-trainer sessions has focused on three types of sessions: conference presentations and exhibit booths to raise awareness about the availability of the manuals and the basics of their use; webinars that will reach a broader audience with this presentation; and train-the-trainer sessions at CASFS and other teaching farms in three states.

The first conference presentation for agricultural educators about the training manuals, “Teaching Organic Farming: Resources for Farmer Educators” will be held on January 22, 2015 at the Ecological Farming Conference. Our long-time farmer instructor and farmer mentor Jim Leap will lead this presentation and has worked with other instructional staff members to develop a powerpoint that gives an overview of the training resources and walks educators through how they are used at the CASFS Farm to teach farming and gardening. This powerpoint will form the basis of other presentations, such as the one our Farm Garden Manager will present at the Small Farm Conference in San Diego in February. Two webinars are being planned for March and April to reach a broader audience.

Additional outreach and training of trainers is being planned for March through December 2015. There is interest from groups in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California in having trainings presented to other agriculture educators on these new instructional resources. We are planning to apply for a No Cost Time Extension so that we can better plan and execute these outreach and training sessions in three states now that the writing phase of the project is almost completed.

• Table of Contents—Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening: Resources for Instructors
• Table of Contents—Teaching Direct Marketing & Small Farm Viability: Resources for Instructors
• Sample unit Cover Crops
• CASFS Training Manuals Revision Overview: What’s New

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

By March 2015, CASFS will have completed all the instructional materials and uploaded the free online versions to the CASFS website, Grow a Farmer website, and University of California eScholarship Repository and submitted them to other portals. In this same time period, CASFS will complete two initial outreach presentations as a template for others, and will plan for other trainings and dissemination of these the teaching tools.

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.

With the distribution of the new training manuals online and in print, educators nationwide will have access to these greatly improved and expanded 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: