5 Future Trainers: Developing a farmer run agriculture production monitoring program for the Farmer’s Cooperative Association of Guam (FCAG)

Project Overview

OW22-375
Project Type: Professional + Producer
Funds awarded in 2022: $58,401.00
Projected End Date: 06/30/2025
Host Institution Award ID: G377-22-W911
Grant Recipient: University of Guam
Region: Western
State: Guam
Principal Investigator:
Jesse Bamba
Email
University of Guam
Co-Investigators:
Joseph Tuquero
Email
University of Guam

Commodities

  • Fruits: melons
  • Vegetables: beans, cucurbits, eggplant, peppers, sweet corn

Practices

  • Education and Training: farmer to farmer
  • Farm Business Management: farm-to-institution, marketing management

    Proposal abstract:

    For the past 25-30 years Guam has struggled to collect data from locally produced farm products. WSARE PDP program has worked with FCAG for a decade in developing their penetration into local markets. Now wholesale operations handle the farmer's output and buyers need more accurate farmer production reporting and monthly harvest projections. The FCAG clearly needs a central production monitoring and near-term (1-2 month) harvest projection in the house system. Such a system, to be easily maintained by the FCAG, should be spreadsheet-based. UOG developed a similar system for the regional departments of Agriculture between 1996-1998 under the ADAP Market Information System. It started as a series of spreadsheet templates with crop and fruit specific local and regional production data (yield, plant spacing, time to harvest, length of harvest, etc.) Unfortunately Guam DoAG stopped monthly monitoring of farmer production around 1999. This project will utilize the data from this effort but develop a custom set of spreadsheets for the FCAG and its seventy members' needs to manage production data, identify proven yields, and enable monthly harvest estimates. The project will utilize local agricultural professionals (and pay honorariums) to assist in both developing the system and training FCAG members in reporting, and FCAG Board of Directors and Staff in system data entry and maintenance. The 3 years of accumulated data from the 70 farms will be compiled and compared to the estimated yields from the 2016 UOG Guam Crop Charts publication in order to revise these Extension Publication.

    Project objectives from proposal:

    1. Determine the opportunities and barriers in running a farmer production monitoring system for member farmers.
    2. Determine the yields of the 10 plus core Guam crops monitored under this project to improve the FCAG's monthly harvest estimates?
    3. Teach the core farmer management team the use and maintenance of the production monitoring system.
    4. Conduct farmer trainings for member famers on field production monitoring, yield documentation and reporting.

     

    Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.