ENHANCING PRESENT AND FUTURE TEXAS FARMERS` DIGITAL MARKETING CAPABILITIES BY BUILDING CAPACITY FOR RESEARCH, EDUCATION, AND OUTREACH

In this project, we propose to create an Agricultural Digital Marketing Learning System to increase knowledge of Digital Marketing, enhance the implementation of data-oriented marketing approaches, and promote self-representation practices for Texas agricultural producers. Project activities will lay the foundation for ongoing, sustainable development that will continue to address stakeholder needs and our long-term goals to build additional educational and leadership development capacity in systems-based digital marketing in agriculture. In addition, it is crucial to develop educational resources to train our undergraduate and graduate students in this increasingly important agricultural job sector.Through the implementation of this project, we will: 1) expand the capacity for agricultural digital marketing education, research, and extension at Sam Houston State University; 2) develop educational resources centered around Digital Marketing Strategy, Online Brand Representation, Website Optimization, and Data Organization and Automation; 3) provide opportunities for students to interact with local producers, organizations, and scientific communities; and 4) develop five undergraduate courses, which will be part of a concentration in digital marketing for the bachelor's degree in Agribusiness, and an online certificate program for farmers on Agricultural Digital Marketing that can be taught at Sam Houston State University (SHSU).This application is an integrated proposal, which will create projects to strengthen higher education teaching programs in food and agricultural sciences. These projects will assist the School of Agricultural Sciences at SHSU (a non-land grant university) to expand its capacity to conduct education, research, and outreach/extension activities by providing opportunities for students to learn about digital marketing in agriculture, studying producers' challenges, beliefs, goals, and needs in marketing, and by empowering the relationship between academia and the industry. These projects will employ graduate students, and to increase the number and diversity of students entering food and agriculture-related disciplines, we will work with the SHSU Chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences (MANRRS). After developing the proposed bootcamps, we plan to expand our cooperation with Extension Foundation and make the bootcamps available through eXtension. This proposal is in line with NLGCA and USDA's strategic goal to facilitate rural prosperity and economic development, in which one of the main objectives is to expand rural businesses opportunity and rural quality of life.The long-term goal of this project is to establish a foundation for a dynamic agricultural digital marketing education initiative at SHSU through the enhancement of teaching, research, extension, and outreach capabilities. Since agricultural marketing is an extensive area for research and teaching, in this project, we plan to focus primarily on "promotion" and "place" strategies among the marketing mix factors (the "4 P's" of product, price, place, and promotion). We will build capacity to allow us to work on the other marketing mix variables (product and price) in the future and further develop the promotion and place components. This center would work as a consulting center for farmers, an education center that teaches digital marketing to undergraduate and graduate students, and a research center that focuses on digital marketing in the agriculture and food industry, reporting the results to all interested parties. Our connections with the county extension agent (please see the support letter) will be vital to getting agribusiness-changing techniques and knowledge out to practitioners through this partnership.We envision this project as further integrating Smart Farming and other technology into the program as the center develops. While these are not necessarily directly related to digital marketing, they can use the same data and technology bases and, as such, become a natural extension of the program.