The Madison County Horticulture Agent took part in the SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research Education) Fellows Program in 2018 and 2019. That program allowed her to travel to different areas of the country to study farm sustainability. The capstone to the SARE Fellows program is that participants must lead a seminar and farm tour at the National Association of County Agriculture Agents annual meeting. Due to COVID, the Agent was not able to teach the seminar until the summer of 2022.

The goal of the SARE Fellows Superseminar and Tour was to show extension professionals a different way to approach on-farm visits as well as how to evaluate them. This technique is called “Reading the Farm” and it focuses on looking at a farm as a whole, rather than just from one’s own perspective. This method brings together ag service providers from different backgrounds to explore whole-farm interactions and sustainability through hands-on, case-study learning with farm families. By working together, they can see the farm in a much larger way than if they worked alone.

County Agents from across the country and from Puerto Rico attended the seminar. The Agent led the seminar by discussing how to conduct a “Reading the Farm” program. They focused on using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, oppurtunites and threats) analysis as a way to lead the discussion. After the discussion, the group made recommendations to the farm owner on how they might improve their enterprise.

The Agent did encounter some challenges when preparing for the seminar and tour. The other Fellows from the program lived in different areas of the country (South Dakota, Colorado, and Maryland) so all planning had to be done over ZOOM. The meeting was in Florida, so none of the Fellows were able to visit the farm prior to the tour and they had to rely on agents that lived in the area to help them prepare.. Finally, due to COVID, two of the Fellows were not able to attend or help with the program.