Conferences
Building Negotiation Knowledge and Skills for Western Farm Businesses: Assessment of Program Design and Implementation
Patrick Hatzenbuehler, Kate Fuller, John P. Hewlett, Joel Schumacher, and Hernan A. Tejeda
Summary
This presentation describes an Extension program on “Building Negotiation Knowledge and Skills for Western Farm Businesses” from proposal stage, training implementation, and planning of future activities.
In the proposal and project development stage, insights from potential program participants were obtained through a survey targeted to Extension Educators/Agents in the US West and follow-on planning meetings. These activities provided key ideas for the design of curricula to enhance knowledge and skills for agricultural producers in negotiations, and, in doing so, reduce farm business risks.
Regarding survey results, 16 of 21 (76%) respondents stated that they receive requests from producers for advice on issues for which negotiation knowledge and skills would be helpful in addressing. Additionally, respondents identified key issues on which producers commonly request guidance, including land leases, contracts, neighbor relationships, and family intergenerational business arrangements.
Based on these ideas, curricula were developed on each of these topic areas, as well as others including defining negotiation and reasons to negotiate, successful communication, planning for and implementing a negotiation, mediation versus negotiation, and assessing success. A Train-the-Trainer program that encompassed these curricula and associated activities was implemented in October 2023. Post-training survey data showed that knowledge increases from before to after the training for the covered topics ranged from 1 to 1.9 on a 5-point scale. Ten participant comments described how the training knowledge will be used in their programming.
The presentation will close with a description of online resources (https://negotiation.farmmanagement.org/guides-to-negotiation-in-agriculture/) and plans for online training opportunities on the program website (https://agnegotiate.org).
Presentation Materials
Details
| Conference | 2024 Extension Risk Management Education National Conference |
| Presentation Type | 30-minute Concurrent |