Success Stories
IFAS Extension: 2009 Northeast District
Video Transcript
Bob Hochmuth:
“The small farms working groups here in Florida got started about a year ago and there are two locations in the state where they’ve gotten started. One is down in the Southwest part of Florida and the other is here in the Northeast part of Florida.”
“We put together an advisory committee members of farmers and stakeholders in the region.”
“For the most part they said, Bob we don’t want any Power-points, we don’t want any classroom stuff. We want to go to farms.”
“We certainly choose locations that give us an opportunity to share knowledge with farmers in that area whether it’s IPMs or BMPs or embracing change, hydroponics, whatever it happens to be.”
“For the most part we’ll have anywhere from 30 to 40 growers at a particular venue.”
“Each event seems to grow in the number of people that want to attend these. We’ve been very happy with the increasing response as we go from farm to farm.”
“It also creates an opportunity for us to more efficiently meet this particular audience. It’s a huge audience at 90-percent of the farms in the region it’s difficult for us to meet the needs of so many people.”
“We’ve been working over the last year to put together the first Florida small farms and Alternative Enterprise Conference held here in Kissimmee, and we look forward to making that an annual venue. We’ve got big plans for that. We hope that the small farmers will find that valuable and useful in their enterprises.”
Northeast District: Short Stories
Narrator: "In the Northeast, programming focused on preserving historical aspects of this district."
"Agent Anthony Drew helped community leaders in Cedar Key protect a historic part of their city with the Urban Tree Inventory program. Drew worked with a team of volunteers and support staff that used GPS and state of the art mapping technology to identified 163 trees through the city to protect during future road resurfacing and underground public works projects. "
"Mary Sowerby worked to keep dairies in Northern Florida and Georgia in business by analyzing their daily operations. The goal for this 23-year-old program remains the same… to show dairy operators how they can cut costs and maximize profits."
"And in Duval County, the Master Food and Nutrition Educators program trained community volunteers on a variety of health and nutrition topics ranging from how to read nutrition labels to seasonal canning of fruits and vegetables. A team of county agents train the volunteers, who then donate their time to teach nutrition classes in the communities. Last year these volunteers donated more than 4-thousand hours at a value of over 90-thousand dollars."
Back to IFAS Extension: 2009 Northeast District video
- Back to Success Stories
