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Long Term Results for Established Program

Mary Sobba

Summary

classes have been offered throughout the state with over one thousand participants. The participants were mostly women farmers and landowners. Participants ranged in age from sixteen to eighty-two. The participants backgrounds included full time farming, small niche operations, part-time producers with off-farm employment and non-farming landowners. All classes gathered short-term learning and class participation data, but there was a tremendous need to determine long term impact. The emphasis statewide and in many other states encourages showing long term impacts from programs to determine behavioral changes. The Missouri Annie’s Project state coordinators designed a long term survey tool to send to past participants. The survey was sent to three random participants of each class (2004-2017), for a total of two hundred seventy, via U.S. mail. The seventeen percent who responded, returned the surveys via U.S. mail. The purpose of the survey was to capture actions taken, changes in farm role, curriculum importance, networks formed and changes in confidence, leadership and an estimation of impact on farm finances. Many of the results of the long term data were expected, but also included several surprises. For instance, participants reported an average of eighty-five percent increase in quality of life and seventeen percent increase in farm profitability and increased family communications.

Details

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