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Understanding the Legal Risk Management Education Needs of Maryland Producers

Wanding Zhang, Paul Goeringer, and Lori Lynch

Summary

Legal education as a part of traditional Extension outreach is an area growing in importance. Farmers may feel that the statutes and regulations impacting their operations are constantly changing, getting stricter, or touching on areas unregulated before. This poster communicates the results of a survey conducted in July and August of 2013 by the Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Policy. This survey was targeted at University of Maryland Extension agricultural educators and specialists to better understand their views on legal issues impacting their clientele. The survey results are important to determining the important legal issues impacting Maryland agricultural producers. Ranking 1st was environmental issues followed by land use, marketing and diversification, USDA programs, and MDA programs. The survey also explored the outreach methods that would work best to educate producers in their respective counties. The majority of those surveyed believed workshops in the home county or a fact sheet were the best outreach methods, followed by online videos and webinars, and the least effective method would be a workshop within 75 to 100 miles of their home county. Developing risk management education programs relevant to these issues could fill voids in current Extension research, outreach, and education in Maryland. Conference attendees could potentially utilize similar methods to survey their diverse and traditionally under served clientele. Their results would also be helpful to women in agriculture groups that currently compete for grants as they could provide quantifiable evidence of the importance of their proposed program.

Details

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