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Helping Limited Resource and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers Develop Marketing Plans

Laurence Crane, Albert Essel, and Anthony Reed

Summary

This project empowered Limited Resource and Socially Disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in the Mississippi StrikeForce counties to respond to marketing risk, by developing their own marketing plans. The primary outcome was for participants to possess the skills and to understand their own operations well enough to develop marketing plans and strategies at the enterprise level, addressing the five decision variables in the Marketing Mix (product, price, promotion, place, people).

Three sequential workshops (18 hours) supplemented by personal assignments and individualized counseling (60 hours) were delivered to 53 producers via a partnership of subject matter experts and local educators.

Each participant who attended the three workshops established a unique goal for each of the five variables in the Marketing Mix, and delineated three specific actions they would take to reach each goal. At the end of the reporting period 43 participants had accomplished all fifteen actions they specified in their plans. They also reported spending an average of 66.09 hours each completing these assignments. The other 10 participants, completed some actions, but not all fifteen.

Secondary outcomes were to nurture long-term working relationships between the farmer participants and the extension educators, and to improve the technical skills of the educators in the area of marketing. The personal interaction of these farmers with the local extension educators as designed in this project initiated some potentially long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.

Results support the philosophy that a concentrated, participatory approach to education with sustained personal support increases the likelihood of long-term behavioral change.

Details

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