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Reaching New Audiences: Implementing the Nevada Beginning Farmer and Rancher Project

Carol Bishop, Staci Emm, Holly Gatzke, Pamela Powell, Loretta Singletary, Jay Davison, Steve Lewis, and Steve Foster

Summary

The Nevada “Herds & Harvest” program, funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Beginning Farmer and Rancher program, combines a series of workshops on different production topics, and provides educational business management and mentoring skill building to support Nevada agricultural producers. Outreach efforts were specifically designed to reach Nevada beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers to build relationships with this emerging audience. Consideration was also taken to not ignore current Nevada agriculture producers to sustain Nevada agricultural economics. An overall marketing and program development protocol was developed to integrate hands-on learning, leadership, mentorship and business development. Program team members consist of producers, University Extension faculty, USDA agency personnel and project assistants, and foster relationships with Nevada beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. Mentoring activities are designed to encourage producers to create enterprise budgets for new businesses and/or the diversification of existing ones. “Great Ideas from Growers,” a discussion forum, provides producers from across the many remote locations in Nevada the opportunity to learn from each other’s’ niche crop experiences, good and bad. Evaluation design employs a multi-method, multi-year approach, consisting of questionnaires, interviews, retrospective and mail-out surveys. Impact data collected will provide important information about methods used to educate this new audience of producers.

Details

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