After five years of serving as a Cooperative Extension Agent in two counties I couldn’t help but notice the trend of farmers networking heavily after various extension educational meetings. I would eves drop, and even get in on some of these producer conversations and began to realize that just as much learning was taking place during these peer-to-peer informal conversations than did in the actual planned educational events of the regularly scheduled meeting.  As I gave this further thought, I realized the enormous value that these conversations have for the producers and I decided I would plan a meeting/class to capitalize on farmer networking and peer-to-peer conversation of various farm production topics. This is where the idea for the first “Farmer Forum” began.

                My goal for the “Farmer Forum” was to let farmers brainstorm together, learn from each other’s experiences, and possibly have participants take someone else’s ideas and implement them on their own farm. I would serve as a moderator to sort relevant information from maybe not so relevant information, and assist with the general flow of the forum. I decided the session should have a general topic to give the group somewhat of a track to start with, but I also wanted to keep the forums topic choices as open as possible so farmers could discuss topics that they felt were timely. The first forum took place in late fall of 2018 with the topic being “Winter Feeding of Livestock”.

                Thirty one area farmers attended the winter feeding forum and sat in a round table setting so discussion could easily take place. I started the night by giving a brief 15-20 minute PowerPoint presentation over winter feeding strategies for livestock producers. I did this as a formal way to share my thoughts and recommendation on the topic, and to spur the participant’s thoughts and interest on the topic. After I finished speaking I turned the floor over to the participants. We started by each producer introducing themselves and describing their farming operation. After this occurred the farmers began sharing the successes and failures of their winter feeding strategies. Questions, answers and dialogue between farmers followed. It turned out to be a great meeting. The forum began at 6:00pm and a small group of farmers didn’t leave the meeting room until close to 11:00pm! It is safe to say many ideas were shared and some friendships were made.

                The post meeting survey results indicated that the forum was a hit. Seventeen people completed surveys, out of those surveys here are some of the following results.  Seventeen people indicated they would enjoy attending another “Farmer Forum”. Sixteen people indicated they will utilize the Clark County Extension Service in their herd management. Seventeen people indicate that they learned something at the forum to utilize on their own operation.  

The open “Farmer Forum” is a very energetic, new way for me to look at classroom style, adult agriculture education. I am looking forward to utilizing this style of meeting in my future programing. This is one of my biggest successes since becoming an agent in Clark County.