The Illinois Sustainable Ag Partnership and Environmental Initiative (EI) hosted three half-day workshops in February to help participants “Reach Farmers Faster.” The events were held in Effingham, Bloomington, and DeKalb in early February.
This farmer-centered outreach program was developed over two years when the Environmental Initiative, Trust in Food (a Farm Journal organization), and the Midwest Row Crop Collaborative joined forces to spur the adoption of conservation practices on farm landscapes. Data from 55,000 row crop farmers in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska was analyzed to create a plan to reach those producers who still have not embraced the use of sustainable and conservation practices.
Participants discuss outreach strategies at the Illinois Farm Bureau office in Bloomington, IL .
Participants learned how using this strategic process could help improve the effectiveness of their outreach efforts to farmers. Attendees learned the five steps of the process: setting strategic goals, gaining deeper insights into a specific farmer audience, developing persuasive messages, designing and completing an engagement plan, and evaluating and adjusting that plan. Attendees worked in small groups for each step of the process and shared out to the larger group as the training went along. The time to learn from and collaborate with local conservation agriculture professionals brought success to the trainings and new ideas to share. Participants enjoyed hearing new and different ideas from their peers, enjoyed the collaborative and interactive portions of the session, and found it helpful to use data driven examples to learn about their target audiences.
Attendees worked in small groups for each step of the process. Participants used research data to create targeted outreach materials in the working groups.
For more information about this effort and to see if the teams from Environmental Initiative will do a training event for your organization, visit https://www.reachfarmersfaster.org/where you can do a self-guided training session on how to develop a strategy to reach faster farmers for your project.
