Project Overview
Annual Reports
Commodities
Practices
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, focus group, mentoring, networking, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
- Farm Business Management: new enterprise development, marketing management, value added, whole farm planning
- Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity
- Production Systems: agroecosystems, holistic management, integrated crop and livestock systems
- Sustainable Communities: partnerships, urban/rural integration, analysis of personal/family life
Abstract:
[Note to online version: The report for this project includes appendices that could not be included here. The regional SARE office will mail a hard copy of the entire report at your request. Just contact North Central SARE at (402) 472-7081 or ncrsare@unl.edu.]
Whole farm planning was presented in a large group working, using the Holistic Resource Management (HRM) curriculum, and then adapted to small group cluster, or management club meetings. Five official clusters met as part of this project, and training materials were also used for KSU Borrower’s Training workshops, and also incorporated into the new Kansas River Friendly Farms assessment tool. While the HRM curriculum, specifically identified as HRM, continues in Kansas in a small way, some of the concepts have been incorporated into other programs, which are on-going. Lessons learned from this project now inform both the River Friendly Farms program and the Nx Level business trainings, which were developed subsequent to, but grew out of this project.
Project objectives:
• Farmers and ranchers will be empowered through training in whole-farm planning to manage site-specific farming and ranching methods in a holistic manner.
• Component farm planning tools will be evaluated for planning and monitoring effectiveness in different whole-farm planning situation.
• Decision cases will be developed by cluster participants for classroom and extension education.