2019 State Plan of Work- Auburn University

View the project final report

Commodities

• Vegetables: cucurbits, okra, tomatoes, turnips

Practices

• Education and Training: decision support system, demonstration, extension, farmer to farmer
• Pest Management: biological control, biorational pesticides, cultural control, field monitoring/scouting, trap crops

Alabama SARE program is a strongly recognized sustainable agriculture program statewide and regionally. Within Alabama, this program is supported by 15 regional extension agents (REAs) and county extension coordinators (CECs); as a team Alabama Extension is able to extend the benefits across the state. Currently, over 1000 small/beginning farmers and market gardeners benefit from the program annually, mainly via in-depth workshops and high impact publications. This AU proposal aims at continuing to expand the focus on the high tunnel pest exclusion and biological control aspects since weather was prohibitive last year to carry on demonstrations and training. The Urban Farm IPM toolkit (wheel slide chart) developed in 2018 has become very popular among participants and it recognizes SARE as a funding source. We propose to continue revising and re-printing additional slide charts with new funds and use it for train-the-trainer (TTT) and key farmer training (KFT). We have several new CECs and Extension Specialists in the Alabama Extension team that will be benefited from the TTT activities.

Overall project objectives for 2019-2020: All SARE TTT events generally incorporate crop production,
irrigation, pest management, and food safety training since we have specialists and REAs with certain
specializations. All events are evaluated carefully for quality and short-term impacts; these are reported
annually to SARE. Following are the proposal objectives:

Obj#1. Continue TTT and Key Farmer Training.
Organize three vegetable production/IPM workshops for training Extension personnel and technical assistance providers (TAPs) in conjunction with key farmers. These workshops will utilize the SARE-funded on-farm high tunnel IPM
demonstration plots that will be easily accessible for attendees. All attendees will scout crops for pest and learn how to release beneficial insect species in netted high tunnels, discuss best management practices, and food safety and integrated pest management (IPM) tactics.
Timeline: July 2019 to Oct 2019

Obj#2. Revisions to the Urban Farm IPM Toolkit and High Tunnel Crop Production Handbook.
We have now developed the Urban Farm/Market Garden IPM Toolkit (in picture earlier) that has 17 crops (or crop groups) listed with 30 major pest species listed in color pictures. By turning the overlapping wheels, a producer can match the crop with insects for finding insecticide recommendation visible in small windows. This IPM toolkit is a great educational tool for train-the-trainer meetings with immediate utilization of the resource in the 2018 crop production season. In
this proposal we intend to revise this and publish additional copies to make them available regionally to producers and market gardeners near urban centers. We will also revise the High Tunnel Crop Production Handbook (first published in 2014) with new chapters on food safety, marketing, organic pest management including pest exclusion system and biological control tactics, and pesticide safety/spray calibration that are critical for small producers to know.
Timeline: August 2019 to March 2020

Obj#3. Complete the Farming Basics Phone App for TTT and grower education.
We had delay in developing our Farming Basics Phone App project due to personnel changes and technology shift
that we didn’t anticipate. A panel of REAs, CECs, and Specialists along with Program Assistant (Ann Chambliss) are assisting the PI with completion of this project in March 2019 after initial testing (we are in beta-testing phase right now). REAs and CECs from four Extension teams, TAPs and key producers will be initially trained in the use of the phone app which has major functionalities along with information stored native within the app. In 2020 (post-release) we will continue to provide updates to the app which will be available on Apple and Android devices.
Timeline: July 2019 to December 2019