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3. 2005 National Extension Risk Management Education Conference

Risk Management Training Opportunities Resulting from the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Catfish Program

John Anderson

Summary

This presentation will describe the experience of the Mississippi team in developing TAA Catfish training material and in delivering that material to catfish producers in Mississippi. It will also discuss how the TAA program has been leveraged to secure resources for and generate producer interest in further risk management training opportunities.

In late 2003, catfish producers were certified as eligible to receive assistance under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which had only recently been expanded to include farmers and fishermen. Under this unique program, producers were eligible to receive benefits only after completing technical training offered by the Extension Service in the producer’s home state. Extension personnel at Mississippi State University served as a core writing team to develop the technical training material to be used by extension personnel in 18 states in helping catfish producers meet the requirements for TAA eligibility.

The TAA core writing team was also primarily responsible for TAA program delivery in Mississippi. In Mississippi, the TAA program represented a unique opportunity to expose catfish producers to the broad array of production and financial management and risk management program offerings available through extension. For many producers, the TAA program gave them some of their first exposure to training on economic concepts and decision making tools. Thus, one of the key benefits of the program is that it allowed agricultural economics extension personnel to lay the groundwork for developing and offering more rigorous and comprehensive training programs with this clientele group in the future.

Details

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