An official website of the United States government.
Extension Program Objectives: Extension will continue to provide crop and pest management education in response to requests by the Tribe and reservation growers. Through the use of workshops, newsletter and one-on-one trainings , tribal producers will be gaining access to university specialist from both University of Arizona and the University of California Davis. Access to the university resources will increase the tribal producers ability to solve problems they encounter throughout the growing season and position themselves for long term sustainability Extension will continue to teach classes of nutrition principles, as well as agricultural literacy, local food systems, and promote food safety. The LePera elementary school garden will incorporate traditional foods into their schools and in the hands of the tribal elders. Youth will learn and apply nutritional concepts and practice techniques to ensure food safety. Participants will be able to understand and identify differences between conventional, natural and organic foods. Extension will continue all horticulture gardening programs at schools and communities integrating with the 4-H club and local schools, emphasizing gardening techniques, soils, and principles of growth and maintenance. We will expand our programs to include community and youth outreach: students and youth will complete 1 project each year for each group in order to increase gardening in the communities of the reservation. They will also explore local markets in the community to sell produce, with the aim of selling to at least one market. Youth will learn how to plant seeds, garden, and market produce, and will plant 5 gardens and sell produce at 1 market by the 3rd year. Extension will continue to revive the CRIT 4-H club and with the assistance of the newly hired ½ 4-H agent, will be able to recruit more club leaders and resource leaders, while introducing new activities such as archaeology, archery and arts and crafts clubs in the 4 years of the grant period. The Extension Agent and Staff will continue to pursue new grants to increase FRTEP program leverage--the amount of new grants applied for will depend upon staffing and existing grant workload.
<p>NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:<br/> This project desires to increase the knowledge and skills of the C.R.I.T (increaseing the awareness of integrated pest management techniques. Finally, 4-H Youth development will continue through the partnering with extension 4-H agents and the boys/girls clubs to promote increased Native American participation in 4-H and Youth activities. All participants will be encouraged adopt traditional C.R.I.T techniques, and to continue post-secondary education at colleges, universities and technical schools, so that they may have successful careers, in which they will pass on their knowledge to the wider C.R.I.T community.
<p>APPROACH:
<br/>In order to evaluate our programs and projects, we will use both qualitative and quantitative methods, which are apt for the population of Arizona reservation and consistent across all Arizona FRTEP programs. Complete integration and understanding of a recordkeeping system is a long-term endeavor for any operation. Whether the operation is implementing a recordkeeping system for the first time or converting to a more comprehensive and sophisticated program, the time required to learn the system and enter data is often a barrier to final adoption. Therefore, attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of our project will focus on direct feedback we receive from workshop participants, contacts made with our partners, and most importantly the adoption of livestock recordkeeping systems. Additional evaluation information that we are proposing to obtain from
participants includes the following: • Number of producers that attend our workshops, conferences, and field days, as validated by sign-in sheets and required for all Cooperative Extension Programs. We expect to directly impact upwards of 150 producers that will adopt one of the tools and or techniques delivered to the agricultural producers. We will track names of participants so that we can receive feedback and better evaluate the immediate impact of our workshops. • Number of Tribal producers who attend the Horticulture trainings and workshops. We expect to directly reach members of both the agricultural and urban communities on CRIT. We also anticipate reaching other neighboring community producer groups through our educational programs. This will be verified from contact information obtained on our sign-up sheets. • Number of producers that contact the FRTEP agent for
individual assistance with assessing their current resource base and addressing the items of an IPM plan, business plan, recordkeeping system, and enterprise analysis. • Native American producers that receive our trainings directly through a workshop, partner, or our website. • Number of producers that apply for federal or other program assistance as a direct result of information they obtained from one of the workshops or conference presentations, or cooperating partners. Number of Producers who successfully evaluated a new technology and integrated into their operation.</p>