Sustainability Workshops

Hands-OnWorkshops Teach Educators More about Sustainability

Conducting soil tests on the Konza Prairie in Kansas was just one of several learning opportunities offered to agricultural professionals during four years of North Central Region trainings. Photo by Charles Francis

A North Central Region-wide program for extension educators and other agricultural professionals has prepared hundreds of people to teach sustainable agriculture concepts and principles in their states. Over four years, program leaders put on 10 "train-the-trainer" workshops that reached 850 people in 10 states. After conferring with constituents each year to ensure topics would be relevant, program leaders conducted workshops that included tours of farms or research stations and placed producers as teachers in many settings. Workshops featured units about innovative learning methods and evaluation techniques; whole-farm planning and financial analysis; community-based examples of sustainability; ecologically based ways to control pests; and the challenges posed by urbanization, tourism and large-scale row cropping. "The project has been a tremendous help to us in Missouri in getting our state professional development programs going," said one participant. "We have never sent anyone to a workshop who did not come back more inspired and more dedicated to making something good happen for sustainable agriculture programs in Missouri." [For more information about this North Central Region project, go to www.sare.org/projects/ and search for ENC96-001.]

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