Our Whole Farm Planning Training for Ag Educators program began this winter and we are pleased to report on initial results from the participants. This unique distance learning program is being funded by Western Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education (WSARE). We started in January with 40 agricultural educators and professionals throughout 12 western states and we just finished the Introduction to Whole Farm Planning course taught by Certified Educators Phil Metzger and Seth Wilner.
Here are the results.
Introduction to Whole Farm Planning Results |
|
| Knowledge/Confidence Increase |
% Increase |
| Ability to develop a Whole Farm Goal |
103% |
| Ability to integrate social, economic and environmental factors into your decisions |
79% |
| Ability to identify needed systems and protocols to create a successful farm |
94% |
| Ability to make complex on-farm decisions |
67% |
| Behavior Change |
% of Participants |
| Partial completion of whole farm goal |
97% |
| Participant Satisfaction | |
| Satisfaction with Instructors |
90% |
Participants also noted some of the following things they liked about the course:
“I have TOTALLY enjoyed this course and am eagerly looking forward to the next one.”
“The information was very useful and the instructors were excellent. Really appreciated their willingness to schedule extras time and comment on resubmitted assignments.”
“Overall I thought it was great and I look forward to continued conversation and interaction.”
“The webinars were excellent. Seth and Phil did a great job of giving the content via stories and personal experience which is always much easier to stay engaged with and retain.”
“This program was just right, well done, and if you wanted to put more time into it nobody is stopping you. The workbook was a wonderful addition and allowed one to easily go deeper. There is a lot of information in the manual, which meshed nicely with Internet-based training.”
“I learned a very well thought out process for assessing a farming operation and making smart decisions that move you in a direction you and all your management team want to go. It’s a very powerful process and it allows me to utilize all my disparate knowledge in a very structured and directed process that makes information easily available and apparent to my clients.”
“It helped me to see that brittle environments are more common in farming than I realized. I’m more aware of the systems and cycles and the concept of “holistic” than previously. It’s interesting to participate in the class with folks from different states/bioregions. I’m on the lookout for more indicators of ecosystem health, than before. It makes me look at client’s farm/production issues with “new eyes”. I attended a meeting on farming in the drought—what measures producers can take to survive this low water year—and I kept thinking “holistic management”!”
“I’m raving to friends and family about what I’m learning and practicing on them to the point of annoyance. The amount of information I’ve received and the “wider view” of the course are priceless.”
“I think the most useful things have been learning about the triple bottom line and incorporating that in to the decision making process on the farm. I will definitely look more at the whole picture when clients come in with questions.”
Featured Participant
Dave Muehleisen
Dave is a member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where he teaches Sustainable Agriculture. Dave was the Education Director and Farm Manager at 21 Acres Sustainable Living Center in Woodinville, Washington. Prior to that, Dave was the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Washington State University (WSU) Small Farms Program located in Puyallup, Washington. While at WSU his research focused on alternative nontoxic control of cabbage maggot and carrot rust fly, focusing on the strategic uses of bio-pesticides, cultural and mechanical control of insect pests.
Dave was born in Paterson, New Jersey and moved to South Carolina at the age of 17. He received his BS in Zoology and MS in Botany at Clemson University, and his PhD from Texas A&M University in Entomology with a focus on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Toxicology. Prior to coming to work for the WSU Small Farm Program, Dave was an Associate Professor of Biology at The University of Utah teaching Human Physiology, Entomology and biochemistry. Dave was a National Institute of Mental Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, working on Insect Developmental Neuroendocrinology.
Adelene is a resident of Arkansas and loves exploring the state’s natural trails. Her passion for education and technology led her to earn a master’s in learning systems technology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. With her professional experience managing student/client databases and instructional design, Adelene will bring skill and understanding to her role as Office Manager & Instructional Designer at HMI. Her focus on making education more accessible to diverse communities is evident through her volunteer work as an board member for a scholarship program. Adelene is devoted to creating educational opportunities that align with HMI’s mission to promote healthy, resilient lands and thriving communities.
Seth Wilner has been a Holistic Management International Certified Educator since 2005. For 22 years he has worked as an agent educator with University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension where he specializes in farm business management with an emphasis on whole farm planning.
Dana was first introduced to Holistic Management in the 1990s while working in the Texas Hill Country. She strongly believes that Holistic Management can positively impact families that are on the land, the communities they are a part of, and larger landscape resource regeneration efforts.
Sarah Robertson grew up in Taos, New Mexico and has always been passionate about land stewardship, growing things, and nurturing others. After completing a BA in Communication from the University of New Mexico and working with local non-profits, she started her journey as a first-generation farmer. Since 2015, she has been learning and growing alongside her husband on various leased properties in Albuquerque, NM and running a small market farm with goats, chickens, and a CSA. In her role as Programs Assistant at HMI, Sarah brings her enthusiasm for regenerative agriculture, devotion to supporting others, and drive for lifelong learning and growing.
Jozua Lambrecht is from South Africa and divides his time between their home in Somerset West and their family farm in Sutherland, one of the coldest places in South Africa, where they farm with sheep. He is married to his wife Therese and they have two daughters.
Alejandro Carrillo is a fourth-generation rancher, and he is quite familiar with the challenges of running a profitable cattle ranch in the Chihuahuan desert. Because annual precipitation seldom exceeds nine inches, every drop counts when it comes to growing more grasses. Grazing year-round with only sea salt as an input, he is not willing to waste any water in such a brittle environment.
Jared L Talley was born and raised in Southwestern Idaho and now seeks to help rural communities adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Service at Boise State University, earning his PhD in Philosophy from Michigan State University and his MPA in Environmental Policy and Natural Resource Management from Boise State University. An environmental philosopher by training and an interdisciplinary scholar in practice, he seeks to better understand how communities relate to the land and how this relationship poses obstacles and opportunities for collaboration and governance. In doing so, he studies the role of science in collaborative policy, the role of place in environmental identity, and the role of the imagination in mediating both. Specifically, he studies grazing management and public land permitting, community-led conservation programs, rural education and entrepreneurship, place-based environmental governance, and the imaginative experience of our natural and built environments — all in the contexts of the intermountain American West.
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