Arizona SARE State Implementation Grant

Commodities

Practices

The Arizona State Implementation Program (SIP) for Western SARE has the overall objective of helping Arizona's agricultural professionals become more familiar with the core principles of sustainable agriculture and promote adoption of sustainable practices in commercial operations. By leveraging the excellent products already developed by the SARE program, our goal is to help teach agricultural professionals how to incorporate the sustainable agriculture concepts and principles into their Extension education programming. Through incorporation into individual education programs, we will successfully reach agricultural producers both large and small in all Counties and Native American communities across our diverse state. This will be accomplished primarily through providing travel grants to agricultural professionals to attend SARE related educational opportunities and then provide mini-grants to help implement knowledge gained in their respective applied research and Extension programming. Videos and other educational materials will be produced as part of this implementation grant to help support the educational effort related to sustainable agriculture.

The principal objectives of our Arizona SARE SIP program are to educate the target audiences of Extension professionals, NRCS personnel, NGOs, and other agricultural professionals in the concepts and principles of sustainable agriculture as they relate to specific conditions experienced by agricultural producers in the diverse climate regions of Arizona. The Arizona SARE State Implementation Program will accomplish these educational objectives by utilizing SARE resources to sponsor attendance at nationally recognized SARE events, sustainable agriculture conferences, grant writing workshops, and publications while also developing local and regional professional development opportunities related to sustainable agricultural production specific to Southwest production operations and Arizona conditions. We will also use SARE resources to sponsor small Extension grants (mini-grants) to explore sustainable techniques specific to local needs further and for local Extension and agricultural professionals to implement sustainable agriculture programming in their respective counties.  Local Extension agents, assistants, and associates in Extension professionals will be encouraged to apply for SARE grant opportunities, especially for opportunities they may have to improve their understanding and professional knowledge base on sustainable agriculture topics.