U.S. Extension Notes

From: Eastwood, Basil
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 4:51 PM
To: 'animalag@usextension.org'

FOLKS:

We’ve had a number of questions and suggestions regarding the Strawman for the Extension Executive Council. Please check the current status of the Strawman at http://usextension.org/strawman-by-species.htm and provide any additional comments you have.

Activities and decisions made by the Council will be determined by the Council members and therefore the vision that some of us have had as to what the Council could or should do have been removed from the Strawman. As Mark Varner stated in his comments a few months ago, the details can come later.

We have some excellent nominees for several of the species, but need many more, so please help on this. We’ve had good support from several department heads and some good questions from several others that the Council can deal with.

You may have noted the Extension Horse Specialists list is now available. We get requests for various lists from both university and private sector individuals, so any assistance you can provide to check the Master List occasionally and help us keep it up to date would be appreciated.

Please don’t be paranoid the Council will have a pre-determined agenda forced upon it as you are all aware of just how independent our State Specialists and Ag Educators can be. - BASIL

From: Eastwood, Basil

Sent: 12/4/2006

Subject: Extension Executive Council Strawman

FOLKS:

Please review this description of an Extension Executive Council and proposed method of Domain Development. This is written using "Dairy", but you may substitute Beef, Sheep, Goats, Poultry, Aquaculture, etc. We will help this happen for any of the species with the bottom line being a small council that may speak for Extension and Education needs of each of these groups. With your interest, an Extension AnimalAg Executive Council would then be formed. We hope establishment of these councils will improve communications between you and our Animal Systems folks here at CSREES and that animal agriculture Extension and Education will have a clearer and better recognized voice here in Washington and throughout the System.

Please give us your thoughts and questions. - BASIL

Dairy Executive Council Proposed Makeup - for discussion

7 Members (5 Group Leaders and 2 at Large)

Domain Leaders from each Group of Domains Select a Group Leader to serve on the Executive Council

Group Leader Group Leader Group Leader Group Leader Group Leader

Feeding & Nutrition Milking Mgt Food Safety/Quality Human Resources Veal/Dairy Beef

Grazing Manure/Waste Mgt Animal Welfare Marketing/Policy Calves/Heifers

Dry/Transition Cows Facilities/Equip Reproduction Business Mgt Genetics

Forages Farm Safety Herd/Animal Health Records Small Scale

Youth

Discussion topics:

Proposed approach for building the domains: Invite development of class projects for undergraduate students to build each domain. Students would work as teams under tutelage of their instructors, learning high-end search techniques, evaluation of educational materials, experience in project completion and some degree of proficiency in Microsoft Access and the knowledge domain of their choosing.

Domain Leader responsibilities would be to critique the team development via a Web worksite and pass final judgment on the domain. Funding support for student projects would be sought both locally and within the domain area.

From: Eastwood, Basil

Sent: July 27, 2006

Subject: Informal Discussions at ADSA/ASAS Meetings

Charlotte Kirk Baer, Rich Reynnells and I will be debriefing each other on the informal discussion sessions held in Minneapolis this month. I felt we had good discussions at each session, but would like to hear any comments or conclusions you have.

While the Monday morning session was nearly all dairy, we had a good representation from beef along with our CSREES and some dairy folks in the Tuesday afternoon session. There were some different directions explored Tuesday that need further discussion.

The general topics we started with were as follows:

1. The Executive Council Concept – Formal or Informal Organization. (One per species or one for all species? Executive Council, Advisory Council, Advisory Committee?

2. Election vs Appointment or Combination – by Region vs by Domain of Knowledge (As a body of the Extension Specialists or as an advisory body to CSREES?) (We somewhat discussed the regional concept, but didn’t really discuss selection by domain of knowledge.)

3. Formal Review of the Animal Systems Portfolio at USDA-CSREES. (We are looked at annually and reviewed every five years. Doing better is critically important to future Federal funding.)

4. Critique of the Extension Component of the Federally Funded Portfolio. (Extension was criticized for not having a system that demonstrated its accountability.)

5. Contacts database should account for nearly 90% of Extension funding. (Most of Extension formula funds are used for salaries. What did those Extension workers do? …and what was the impact on people?)

6. Research-based Knowledge Delivery – National product is needed. (Database/Infobase developments, eXtension project…Other?)

7. How do we tie the knowledge delivered by Extension to Research projects and their results and vice versa? (We need a way to show how research results are delivered to users, where the delivered knowledge came from, and what was the impact created by this knowledge.)

8. Domains of knowledge – How do they compare with the CRIS System Knowledge Areas

9. Assigning responsibilities for Domains – Development of Sub-Domains (How can the “Council” help in this area and bring a “National Leaders” concept to the Knowledgebase development?)

10. Developing funding for the National product. (If we move forward on the rest, this will fall in line.) (At the present time we have no budget here in Washington and therefore no funds for anything new.) - 1/07 update

We need to know what you think. - BASIL

From:        Geoff Benson
Sent:        July 07, 2006
To:            Eastwood, Basil
Subject:    Re: Informal Discussion Session at Minneapolis

Basil,
You make a good point as to what is meant by "formal." My notion of formal is a board that has a clear mission, defined membership criteria, a process for electing or selecting members, structured terms, etc.
My initial thought is that the type of decentralized mechanism you suggest won't work very well. First, you tend to lose the synergy that occurs when all the players are at the table (actual or virtual). Also, though I can't speak for the other non-dairy science disciplines, I do not attend the annual Ag Econ meetings and neither do many (perhaps most) of the extension economists, so we would lack a venue or vehicle for piggy-backing activities like this. Furthermore, it is unusual for Ag Econ annual meeting activities to have a commodity focus. Efforts are being made to improve extension participation. A third concern is the lack of professional incentives to support activities like this.
Geoff.

GEOFF:

Thanks for the positive comments. I agree with you, but with a question regarding what we mean by "formal organization." Many of the folks feel that such an organizational effort could be done within ADSA, however for obvious reasons that would not work for at least half of the folks.

It is my feeling that we need to take a modern, web-oriented approach to organization. That is to say, it should not require applying for membership, dues, or specific travel. If it were organized around the domains, each part of the organization would have its own annual society meeting. I would feel better about animal health issues being handled by the veterinarians via their regular meeting venue rather than forcing it into an ADSA format and location, etc. It is my feeling that you have some excellent cohorts in several community colleges and technical schools as well.

Membership might be assumed if an individual appears on the AnimalAg Master List. That list could accommodate any groups and indeed, the base list includes many researchers, teachers, consultants, industry people, etc.

If we can come to an agreement on the direction we wish to go, I believe we could come up with some travel or organizational assistance from CSREES the first year, but not continuing funding. If we make enough progress the first year, we should be able to secure some funding support from a variety of private and public sources.

Regarding the breadth of area which we should involve, have you taken a look at http://usextension.org/animalag.htm? I've tried to get comments and suggestions from the dairy and animalag groups on this approach without success. I believe strongly that this is the broad approach that is needed, but everyone is working full time in their niche and happy not to have to deal with anything broader.

Our interest here at CSREES includes all of animal agriculture and the discussions will likely be quite generic. - BASIL
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From:     Geoff Benson
Sent:      Friday, July 07, 2006 9:28 AM
To:         Eastwood, Basil
Subject: Re: Informal Discussion Session at Minneapolis

Basil,
Thanks for organizing this. I plan to attend but thought I would offer a few thoughts on the Executive Council ahead of time. I believe this council needs to be broad based, both from an industry and a disciplinary perspective. I believe industry folks from outside extension need to be included, to broaden the perspective, to keep us honest and to broaden the political base. From a disciplinary standpoint, I feel we need to include supporting disciplines as well as dairy science sub-specialties, including economics, veterinary science, crop science (forages), food science, etc. I also believe there should be researchers at the table because increasingly agriculture is being influenced by research conducted outside the traditional production departments of the land-grant colleges of agriculture.
If something like this is to be the structure of the board then it needs to be formally organized and funded, so the folks outside mainstream dairy production extension have a reason and the resources to attend. As you may recall, I can only make the Dairy Science annual meetings about once every 10 years and many other supporting disciplines have the same problems I do with time and money.
Just my two-cents worth.
Geoff.

We have proposed that an Executive Council be established for Extension Dairy Specialists and Educators to represent and speak for that group on various issues of national importance. Several nominations for individuals to serve on such a Council for Dairy have already been received. Any voting will have to be done via e-mail to give everyone an opportunity to participate.

The Swine Educators group has already established such an Executive group which is working closely with the National Pork Board on programming and national projects. Would such an Executive Council be desirable for Beef Extension? Sheep Extension? Goat Extension? Horse Extension? An obvious advantage for each group to organize in this fashion would be the ability to speak out on issues of importance to animal agriculture and to jointly advise our Animal Systems group here at CSREES.

At our initial review in 2004, the review team was critical of our ability to document the impacts of Extension funding. The Current Research Information System (CRIS) was quite effective for Research, but we have no system to show what Extension has achieved. If we fail on our next opportunity to show the effectiveness of Extension, it would reflect poorly on you and your institutions.

We would like to involve you in the development of a state of the art system to deliver research-based knowledge to users and to obtain their feedback, questions, suggestions and priorities. Such a system must be developed and managed by you. This is a prime reason for discussing formation of an Executive Council structure for decision making. We can provide encouragement, but can’t make decisions for you. - BASIL

From: Johnson, Timothy R.

Sent: June 30, 2006

Subject: RE: Meeting at ADSA

Basil:

Being in the North Central district, at Purdue we have had an invitation to become part of a Midwest Dairy Extension coalition of Universities with very similar goals and objectives to the National Council which Basil has suggested. I personally favor the more national approach, with regional compacts which are already established not being ignored but represented, i.e. NE group NH, MA, NY, PA, VT, and others, the Southern states group AL, FL, GA, LA, N & SC, VPI, and others, the four state group, IA, IL, MN, WI; + MO and eastern-KN and others?; the Inter-Mountain group, West-KN, UT, CO, TX, WY, OK and others; the "Tri-State" near east group IN, KY, MI, OH, and TN and ONT, CA; and the Western States group AZ, CA, NM, NV OR, WA and others. No offense is intended to any states or provinces not named that have been previously involved in one of these or other groups. Each of these groups has established ties to the available commercial partners, many of them are the same ones that support other regional conferences and are involved in national ADSA and ASAS events. I feel what we really need is to be able to attract dollars from commercial producers like the swine and poultry groups do. In dairy the check-off process has been well established and some feel over used for product promotion, CWT, and most recently discussion of funding inspection and enforcement of regulations have taken place at least here in Indiana. - Tim Johnson

I think a National Extension Dairy Council is a great idea. With fewer of us out there, this makes a lot of sense.

I endorse this idea and hope that it get a chance to become reality. I have received Basil’s emails for years, but I don’t always feel ownership with the issues he raises. An Executive Council would provide state and local extension personnel with a more direct voice in national policy issues and would improve communication from the federal to state and local levels.

One drawback to such an organization is that travel costs would be faced by Council members and local resources are often inadequate.

I agree this is an idea worth pursuing and that the membership should include all disciplines that contribute to the US dairy sector, including ag engineers, agronomists, economists, etc. Many years ago we (NC extension) had multidisciplinary "extension commodity coordinating committees" that met periodically to discuss extension programming. I found them to be a productive use of time but they were discontinued as we struggled to find a mechanism to cope with GPRA and AREERA goal setting and reporting requirements.

I suspect this is a good idea. I'm not sure how it feels in Animal Science (probably better) but in Ag Econ the ranks of folks who know anything about dairy and care about extension have become awfully slim. The need for a more national approach to the creation and dissemination of dairy-related material is keen.

Here is one from Missouri; http://www.agebb.missori.edu/dairy If you go to the grazing block we have grazing wedges posted weekly. Dry matter is estimated using the “rising plate meter”. Barry

From:     Jeffrey F Keown [mailto:jkeown@unlnotes.unl.edu]
Sent:     Tuesday, April 11, 2006 3:58 PM
To:         Eastwood, Basil
Subject: Re: www.southeastdairyextension.org

I want to describe an opportunity that will require a little imagination and a small amount of input by a group of you. We need to create national resources that will build upon the work many of you did with the National Dairy Database versions 1-3 and later, the Dairy Infobase version 4, the Beef Infobase version 1.2, the National Sheep Database which are all still available on CD and at http://www.adds.org, and the electronic version of the Extension Goat Handbook. We learned much from these earlier efforts. The web has grown up, better software has been created, you have developed magnificent collections of educational materials on your university websites. Producers have become highly web literate. As one of you pointed out, we’ve been out-Googled. Yet, many excellent materials don’t show up in a commercial search. And some of those that do are out of date or provide poor information.

But the worse scenario is our current lack of system credit for the research results, user applications, educational programs and materials partially paid for by Federal tax dollars. An equally damning result of our current situation is that we are not gathering what the bureaucrats refer to as “stakeholder input” in any comprehensive way.

We are trying to build the structure for the kind of Dairy and Beef Knowledgebases envisioned for the ADDS system. We now have the ability to develop this at very little cost, leaving nearly all of the materials on your web servers, searching across servers, and making the product available at no cost to the user. User input would become a major component of our Federal gathering of stakeholder input. The domains and subdomains will demonstrate an organized and comprehensive approach to delivering to users the results of research reported in the CRIS system. With further thought we should be able to develop a method of gathering data on the impact of Research and Extension efforts as well.

The next step in development of this national resource is to address the subdomains that are missing. You or your cohorts have developed a number of domain and subdomain lists. If you go to http://usextension.org/adds/dairy/domains.htm and click on Human Resources, Marketing & Policy, Manure/Waste Mgt, Feeding & Nutrition, Forages, Records or Food Safety, you will see the subdomains for each of these.

We need someone to delineate the subdomains for Business Management, Grazing, Calves/Heifers, Veal/Dairy Beef, Dry Cows/Maternity, Small Scale, Milking Management, Genetics, Animal Welfare, Herd & Animal Health, Reproduction, Facilities/Equipment, Farm Safety and additional beef, sheep and goat domains. Any volunteers or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Any suggestions you have for this entire effort are also in order. Anything accomplished here will be available to eXtension projects or other interests. We will work to ensure a system that is comprehensive, credits the System research and Extension, is useful to producers and others, and allows input to research and education planning.

A small group of us had a good discussion at the Midwest ADSA/ASAS Meeting in Des Moines. Central to the discussion was the status of National dairy project efforts including the Dairy Infobase and the dairy project for eXtension. The Dairy Infobase Version 4 which is available on CD in the Folio format and on the web at www.adds.org, has not been updated for about five years. The Folio software used on the CD is no longer competitive for information delivery. The product on the web is useable, though out of date. The fact there is a subscription charge is a hindrance to its usefulness as well. There is much useable material in that product that should be captured and made available in an updated product.

We also discussed our needs here at USDA to be able to show what has been done with federal funds distributed to the states. The CRIS (Current Research Information System) is being expanded to include Extension projects, but nearly all of the Extension funds are distributed on a formula basis to states and are not tied to projects. The dairy domains of knowledge at http://usextension.org/adds/dairy/domains.htm correspond to the CRIS KA’s or Knowledge Areas. This approach will allow us to capture the results and accomplishments of research and Extension efforts in an organized fashion.

Once this system has been completed it can harvest much “stakeholder input” which Congress requires of all landgrant institutions and of CSREES. - BASIL

*"Extension" includes those providing information, education/teaching or support for decision-making as a university, college or field staff professional. ...everyone in the List at http://usextension.org/animalag-master.pdf.
Updated 2/15/07


U.S. Extension* Notes...