2023-2024 MODEL STATE PROGRAM ASSISTANT UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Commodities

Practices

The UGA SARE program is in the process of developing a new logic model and a 5-year plan to address upcoming needs for professional development opportunities. We will continue to provide support for Extension professionals to attend conferences and educational programming in addition to providing more opportunities to support the UGA Journeyman Farmer program, which has seen renewed interest in urban and peri urban regions of the state.  Further, the program will address needs in urban food production, which were not part of the prior logic model.  The new SARE program assistant is housed in the Center for Urban Agriculture at UGA in an effort to provide a greater connection to urban audiences.  Further, we will support programming efforts that seek to engage non-traditional audiences for outreach. The new logic model will be completed during the 2023-2024 project year.

We will continue to support the Journeyman farmer program.  This program was developed by former UGA SARE coordinator Julia Gaskin.  https://sustainagga.caes.uga.edu/about/sustainable-agriculture-programs-and-events/journeyman-farmer-certificate-program.html.  It has been very successful in helping train beginning farmers in diversified fruit and vegetable production, small ruminant production, and farm financial management.  We are proposing to supply training materials in the form of binders, handouts and USB drives containing recorded talks for this program.  This program has an important niche in that the majority of participants are from peri-urban areas that are under threat of development. 

The MSP routinely collaborates with Georgia Organics and the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Associations, both NGOs that work throughout Georgia to help growers. This includes developing the organic education program track for the SE Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference held annually in Savannah, GA.  More than 3200 people attended this conference in early 2023 and it is a great way to reach an audience that is primarily focused on large-scale agriculture. We will support SE Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference. This is the largest produce-related conference and educational program in the SE. U.S. We supported funds to send 3 agents and the SARE program assistant to this program in 2023 and are hoping to support 2 agents in 2024. The MSP program works with Georgia Organics every year in providing a Sustainable Agriculture exhibit at the Georgia Organics Conference, which includes information and publications from SARE. The MSP will be sponsoring a booth with educational materials at the 2023 Georgia Organics Conference in Perry, GA.

SARE materials and program results are distributed at events, workshops, and conferences. We provide SARE books, thumb drives, and materials to county Extension agents and PDCs in 4 Extension districts in Georgia.  There was strong need from UGA Extension for SARE books and flash drives again in 2022, and we expect to distribute more in 2023. In discussions with Extension agents and advanced growers, distributing SARE publications is highly impactful. We will try to do more distribution in upcoming years.

We will support on-farm training efforts through providing honorariums to local farmers who present at these programs.