Project Overview
Annual Reports
Commodities
- Agronomic: corn, wheat, grass (misc. perennial), hay
- Animals: bovine
Practices
- Animal Production: feed/forage, housing, parasite control, animal protection and health, free-range, feed rations, manure management, mineral supplements, preventive practices, probiotics, grazing - rotational, vaccines, winter forage
- Crop Production: windbreaks
- Education and Training: extension, farmer to farmer, networking, on-farm/ranch research
- Farm Business Management: whole farm planning, new enterprise development, budgets/cost and returns, cooperatives, feasibility study, agricultural finance, market study, risk management, value added
- Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, habitat enhancement, riverbank protection
- Pest Management: biological control, botanical pesticides, cultural control, economic threshold, physical control, sanitation, traps
- Soil Management: green manures, organic matter, composting
- Sustainable Communities: new business opportunities, partnerships, public participation, urban/rural integration, employment opportunities, social networks, sustainability measures
Proposal summary:
Consumer awareness of production practices and product quality is key to marketing, The objective of this project was to give small beef producers a competitive advantage by developing a customer-driven market. The coordinator’s strategy is based on product “localness” and customer environmental sensitivity, The coordinator wants to improve customers’ environmentally value-added concepts of natural beef, identify customers and track their satisfaction, use positive reinforcement to recognize and reward repeat customers, and empower meat managers to promote natural beef. A Quality System Certification Program (QSCR) Guide has been developed. The coordinator also upgraded kiosk graphics for an in-store consumer survey, developed a newsletter and planned a beef production and processing workshop for meat managers. The project has been extended to meet intended goals and assimilate data.