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A New Agent for the New Farmer
Meet the new American farmer. He or she may not have an agricultural background. Indeed, there's a good chance this new farmer came to agriculture from another career entirely, a career that may have been considered white collar. Then there's the farming operation; it's small and may be organic, likely catering to a niche market.
Now meet the Extension agent who's working with the new American farmer. Her name is Debbie Roos.
Roos has been a North Carolina Cooperative Extension agent responsible for organic and sustainable farming in Chatham County since 2001. Before that, she was the horticulture agent in Lee County. The farmers with whom Roos works tend to be different, at least when compared to more traditional producers of crops such as tobacco, soybeans, cotton and corn.
“Chatham County is one of the few areas in the country where the number of farms is actually increasing,” Roos says. This is happening at the same time the county's population is growing. Between 1990 and 2000, Chatham County's population grew 26 percent, to about 50,000, Roos says. The latest count puts the number of farms in the county at 1,128. That's a lot when you consider the number of farms is declining nationwide, and the average age of farmers is rising.
So what's going on here?
“A lot of the people I'm working with are first-generation farmers,” says Roos. “A lot are what I call career switchers. Many had white-collar jobs. One has a Ph.D. in biostatistics. They weren't satisfied with that lifestyle. They came to Chatham County to farm, many from outside the area. It's a growing community.”
The farms these new farmers created are generally small, often just a few acres. But Roos says those few acres are typically farmed intensively, producing crops such as high-value specialty vegetables or flowers almost year round. Of course, more traditional farmers, those who raise traditional crops on farms that encompass hundreds of acres, vastly outnumber these new farmers.
Yet Roos says what is happening in Chatham County is an example of a trend that is popping up here and there around the country, particularly where urban and rural areas bump up against one another.
Chatham County is, of course, the perfect spot for the new agriculture. It's still a largely rural county, yet it's close to affluent Triangle markets where consumer demand for high quality, locally produced food is growing. It's the kind of area where the new agriculture can flourish.
How does Extension operate in this new agricultural environment? Roos says her program is based on three elements, which she calls “pillars,” a Web site, a newsletter and workshops.
Roos surveyed her clientele when she first arrived in Chatham County and found that 95 percent used the Internet. That's when she decided to develop a Web site. She describes her Growing Small Farms site as a “labor of love. It just grows and grows.” The site contains around 300 pages. In addition to production and marketing information, it includes features such as local farm profiles and a buy local guide.
Roos produces a newsletter electronically and the old-fashioned way, as a hard copy, and has about 1,400 subscribers. She also created several e-mail listservs to promote networking and information sharing among farmers. Then there are the workshops, nine to 10 a year ranging from 2 hours to 2 days. As of early August 2006, Roos had held 39 workshops since 2001, with total attendance at 2,370.
Roos is unusual among North Carolina Extension agents in that she charges for her workshops, $10-$25 a head, depending on the length. She admits she was anxious when she first considered charging, but her advisory committee urged her to do so.
“Often when people have to pay for something, they automatically consider it more valuable, and I feel obligated to make it worthwhile,” she says. Registration fees cover the cost of refreshments, usually locally produced products, and a resource notebook. Roos has a core group of clients who attend all her workshops, and she's had participants from Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee and all regions of North Carolina.
Working with organic farms can be challenging, Roos says. She points out that Extension deals in research-based information. The problem is, research-based information on organic farming is sometimes in short supply because organic research programs at land-grant universities are relatively new.
“We are fortunate to have some great sustainable agriculture specialists at NCSU and NCA&T, and as interest in organic farming continues to grow, so will research and extension programs targeting organic farmers,” says Roos.
Roos sees the kind of intensive, small acreage, often organic agriculture that's prevalent in Chatham County expanding.
“It's very exciting,” she says. “It's not going away. It's the way the world is going. There's increasing interest in strengthening local food systems and protecting the environment.”
Debbie Roos offers the following tips for building and strengthening an Extension program that works with small farms:
- Identify and connect with your target audience; visit local farmers' markets, etc.; develop an email and snail mail database.
- Conduct a needs assessment survey, but keep it simple.
- Invest in proactive programming, and hopefully this will help reduce need for reactive efforts
- Determine appropriate delivery methods to reach your audience: workshops, newsletter, website, etc., and find out when your audience is available.
- Plan your program (start small, build your reputation and contacts, bring in other experts as needed.).
- Know and use your strengths: Research? Writing? Teaching? One-on-one? Photography? Web design? Curriculum development?
- Collaborate with others: agents, specialists, community colleges, NGOs.
- Team up with farmers to do programs.
- Market your program AND your farmers with flyers, press releases, newspaper, email, website, other agents, direct mail, business cards, brochures.
- Add value to the program; provide a high-quality program, give clients a nice notebook or folder of handouts and supplemental readings, provide refreshments and charge them.
- Create an appealing atmosphere for workshops, strengthening the sense of community and networking among farmers.
- Always leave clients with a way to learn more, such as resource lists.
- Don't forget about educating the nonfarming public: buy local guide, farm photos, farm profiles, farmers'markets.
- Watch for trends and anticipate needs (if you get a lot of questions about the same thing, it might be time to develop an educational tool or program.).
- Maximize your impact (share the information that helps one farmer with others).
- Evaluate your efforts and tweak as necessary; use post-workshop evaluations, follow-up surveys, on-line evaluations.
- Pursue professional development (look for opportunities to improve your knowledge and skills; explore grant opportunities to help with programs and equipment; attend small farm conferences to learn and network.).
- Most of all, enjoy what you are doing and have fun. This is a wonderful audience to work with - very passionate, dedicated, self-motivated, enthusiastic and appreciative of your help.
