Farmer Extension and Mandarin Production

Cindy Fake University of California Cooperative Extension

January 2013

Extension Goals

• Strengthen agricultural community socially and economically

• Sustainability of land/ environment, community, and individual farmers

• If farming is to be sustainable, it must be profitable

Extension Goals

• Our goal: increase profits to farmer by improving quality, size, and yields of their mandarins

• In order to get there, we need to teach farmers what they need to know, and what is useful to them

Extension Principles

• Successful extension is an information exchange, not a one-way street

• Successful growers are smart and have a lot of accumulated knowledge

• We need to learn from them, as well as they from us.

Extension Principles

• Extension is focused on what the farmers need to know to succeed.

• It is not about you, the trainer, and what you know.

• Farmers have to know there is a problem in their orchard before they will be willing to fix it.

Extension Principles

• Extension is about clearly communicating what is most useful to farmers…

• As trainers, you must condense your knowledge down to basic facts

• Extension is also about training farmers in the way they learn best, not the way you are most comfortable teaching

Learning Styles

• Three main ways people learn:– Hearing

(auditory learners)

– Seeing (visual learners)

– Touching, feeling, and/or doing (kinesthetic learners)

Learning Styles: Hearing/Listening

• You, as academics are or have learned to be auditory learners

• You can learn by hearing information from a lecture

• This may not be the way you learn best, but you can learn that way

• Most good students are auditory learners

Learning Styles: Visual

• Most people do NOT learn by hearing

• Most people learn by seeing, they are visual learners

• Seeing a picture, a diagram or someone demonstrate a technique is much easier for most people to retain.

Learning Styles

• Most farmers learn best by doing(may also be visual learners)

• They need to:– Touch, feel, and do– Let their muscles do the activities

in order to understand and learn • This means your farmer training

must be primarily visual and learning by doing, not talking.

Training for “doing learners”

Those of you who like to lecture must force yourselves to show & do while you are talking: – pass around samples– show the farmers:• how to hold and use pruners• how to use a hand lens• what healthy roots look and

smell like• how an insect or disease

looks

Take home message…

• Tailor your training to needs of your trainees

• Make training active and hands-on

• Keep the messages simple and brief

• Be sure that farmers really need to know the information you are giving them

Technical Review

Cindy Fake University of California Cooperative Extension

January 2013

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Thank you for your attention!