Southern Region SARE 2023-24 - Sustainable Agriculture Training Programs (MSP23)

Commodities

Practices

North Carolina SARE through North Carolina State University promotes sustainable agriculture in North Carolina and supports sustainable agriculture trainings for agriculture professionals, which include North Carolina Cooperative Extension (NCCE) professionals and other educators defined by Southern SARE.  NC SARE offers these professionals the ability to attend and participate in these trainings primarily through scholarship for registration and travel costs.  These scholarships benefit agriculture professionals at all levels as educators, and may apply for trainings that best suit their service regions/counties needs and resources, as well as their own level of expertise.  Applications for technical and educational training in any area that impacts or advances knowledge and skills in the sustainable agriculture community can be submitted.  NC SARE will consider trainings offered both in state and out of state.  Possible training opportunities might be, but are not limited to, the annual Carolina Farm Stewardship Conference (CFSA SAC), the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) workshops, the NC Choices' Carolina Meat Conference/Women Working in the Meat Industry (CMC/WIM) and NCSU field days and well as new specialized training that tackle emerging issues.  Guided by the Advisory Committee, NC SARE provides for a good variety of training topics and helps get the word out about training opportunities available to the trainers.

Once again we plan to provide support so that agents and other sustainable agriculture professionals are able to participate in appropriate training opportunities.  We expect to offer scholarships to attend trainings, provide speaker/presenter fees to enhance training, and provide funds for training materials and/or guides, funding to support program presentation (ie, audio visual, tents or shelter rental for outdoor events where possible) to attract more agents to attend.

NC SARE plans to: provide scholarships for registrations/travel to approximate 15 professionals to attend CSFA SAC; approximately 15 professionals to attend North Carolina Association of County Agriculture Agents meeting;  approximately 5 professionals to attend NC Choice Meat workshop;  approximately 20 professionals to the Organic Commodities and Livestock Conference; provide funds to produce training materials or provide for presenter costs; and provide light snack at field day demonstration due to remote locations.

The focused sustainable agriculture training for professionals will be selected by the NC SARE Advisory Committee and Coordinator through competitive process in order to select who received the training funds.  The training will be chosen based on SARE priority areas for education in sustainable agriculture, the strength and practicality of the training, and how many can participate.

Promoting the availability of support and the sustainable agriculture training opportunities will be promoted through NCCE website, NC Extension portal/Intranet; partner mailing lists, through relationships with training providers, listservs, and NC SARE  promotional/marketing materials.

NC SARE provides NCCE educators and other agriculture resource professionals the opportunity to receive relevant trainings which suit the unique needs of the individual educators, their counties, and their constituents.  These diversified trainings provide learning opportunities that cover the broad scope of sustainable agriculture, fulfilling the goal of the SARE program to provide diverse education in sustainable agriculture.  The primary expected outcome is to have a broader based of well trained NCCE educators in sustainable agriculture serving our states farmers, produces, land owners and public.