Success StoryVirtual Tobacco Production Meetings



Virtual Tobacco Production Meetings

Author: William Bailey

Planning Unit: Plant and Soil Sciences

Major Program: Tobacco

Outcome: Intermediate Outcome

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, all of our live tobacco Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) trainings and tobacco production meetings were cancelled.  Instead, our tobacco group worked together to produce virtual tobacco GAP trainings as it is an industry mandate that all tobacco growers attend annual GAP training.  Although older tobacco producers (average age of tobacco producers in KY and TN is 57) have historically been reluctant to embrace virtual technology in tobacco educational events, these growers had no choice but to embrace this format in 2020-2021. Grower feedback showed that many growers actually preferred the virtual format for GAP training that was offered in 2021, and advocated for this format in 2022.  Although the tobacco industry insisted that we return to live GAP trainings in 2022, we did offer one virtual production meeting.  Over 100 tobacco growers attended our virtual tobacco production meeting on February 25, 2022, making this one of the most well-attended meetings that we offered in 2022.  We will likely continue to offer a combination of mostly live, but some virtual, tobacco GAP trainings and production meetings in the future.  






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