Each fall, the Spencer County Cooperative Extension Service hosts a meeting for commercial pesticide applicators to help them receive Continuing Education Units so that they can keep their licenses from year to year.  Even though in person meetings were starting to begin again, the Agriculture and Natural Resources agent decided to hold a Zoom meeting in November as he did in 2020 with great results.

               Topics for the meeting included:  Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab Update, Top Pests of 2021, and Safely Transporting and Storing Pesticides.  The meeting was advertised on the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture CEU Training schedule.  

There was another great turnout as a total of 82 participated on this Zoom meeting, and comments from a follow-up survey showed the positive response to this meeting:  “Thank you so much for providing this for us!”, “Thanks for hosting this meeting, and for making it free”, “Everything was great! Thank you very much!”, and “Good variety of speakers. Thanks for a good session.”

               Responses to the survey questions showed the economic value of the participants to not have to pay a registration fee and to pay travel for the employees to attend trainings that could be many miles away from their work location.  A total of $27,842.00 saved was the total given by those responding to the survey.  Other questions dealt with respondents increasing their knowledge on Pests of 2021 (84%), Pesticide Safety (76%), and Transporting and Handling Pesticides (84%).  The agent and speakers were pleased with the results of this meeting and will evaluate whether to keep holding this meeting on Zoom for the future.