Conferences
Supporting Underserved Farmers: Lessons from a Multifaceted Approach to High Tunnel Production Education
Emily Round
Summary
Specialty crop producers face challenges from rising temperatures, seasonal shifts, and altered precipitation patterns, impacting farm viability. Our project aims to support small-scale, beginning, specialty crop, organic, and socially disadvantaged producers to mitigate production risks using covered production including high/low tunnels, caterpillar tunnels, and other covered production methods. These systems build climate resilience, extend growing seasons, diversify markets, and increase farm viability. However, covered production requires a specialized knowledge base distinct from field production.
To respond, we launched an innovative education series combining live webinars, on-farm tours, farmer-to-farmer education, and technical assistance. Topics include production techniques, financial planning, seed selection, pest management, and crop rotation strategies. To ensure long-term impact, we are building an online self-paced course building on workshop content. Course design leverages insights from previous asynchronous courses we developed and the success of prior educational short-form video series, which have demonstrated stronger engagement on our YouTube channel.
This project is designed for intermediate to advanced growers aiming to refine their crop production practices, expand markets, and boost profitability. Early participation metrics show strong interest, with over 30 attendees for each of the workshops and 82% of attendees being socially disadvantaged farmers.
This presentation will share our approach to building interest on social media for the events, how we leverage workshop content to build an online course, and early success metrics.
This project exemplifies innovative risk management education by meeting producers where they are—whether online or in the field—and empowering them to thrive under cover.
Details
| Conference | 2025 Extension Risk Management Education National Conference |
| Presentation Type | 30-minute Concurrent |