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Alleviating Producers’ Risk Through Farmer Needs Assessment

Lila Karki and Enrique Escobar

Summary

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore Extension conducted a farmer needs assessment in agriculture to identify the target clientele's major needs, concerns, and issues to increase the efficacy and impact of Extension’s activities. The response was received from 124 producers that consisted of full-time (44%), part-time (29%), seasonal (23%), and prospective (2%) farmers, with 54% of them having over 11 years and 41% under 10 years of farming experience. The results delineated many programmatic areas of potential risks and mitigating approaches. Farmers' willingness for risk-bearing capacity varies with farm size. Most farmers practiced multiple production activities to diversify potential risks.
Conversely, emerging activities such as agritourism, winemaking, beekeeping, urban gardening, daffodil, fiber, and hop production will likely present some risks. Financial risk was reported as the main problem as correlated with the lack of capital stated by 93% of the farmers, followed by production risk derived from expensive production inputs (92%), and human risk as indicated by a shortage of labor (91%). The proposed risk mitigating activity was hands-on training for farm planning, budgeting, farm financing, crop and livestock insurance, estate planning, agri-marketing-business, and climate-smart agriculture. Also proposed were learning-friendly materials such as YouTube, digital learning videos, an Extension newsletter, factsheets, brochures, and flyers. Additionally, the farmer's market promotion was crucial for mitigating financial and marketing risks, as stated by 84% of the farmers. Social media such as smartphones, YouTube, and Facebook were the most preferred platforms for delivering risk management education.

Details

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