The convergence of new technologies, increased farm size, increased input costs, and seismic culture shifts from COVID, have left folks in the ag industry and education wondering how to best connect with their clientele. MN Soybean organizations and the UofMN Extension are no different. While we adjusted our education and communication styles and systems considerably during COVID, farmers have found some of these ‘temporary’ channels to be useful in regular times. Others have been excited to return to the familiar face-to-face meeting. Regardless, there is no putting the genie back into the bottle. It’s a new world out there and folks expect to receive information differently than in the past.

In response to a request for an outreach project, we propose a one-time investment to better understand how farmers wish to receive information and support for infrastructure and technology to develop a new channel to communicate with producers. This project is made up of two pieces. 1) A survey of key individuals who have the pulse on local producers regarding what information soybean farmers are looking for and what channels they prefer to use to receive this information and 2) investment into newer technologies to allow a richer, more frequent, and more impactful communications with farmers.

Update:
We have made significant progress on this project, but have lots of work to do. We have finsihed the first round of updates to our Podcasting/Webcasting room for audio production. David Nicoali and I have been publishing a weekly podcast - MN CropCast that highlights agronomists and those working on soybean. To date, we have dropped 22 podcasts. Please listen and subscribe - https://mncropcast.transistor.fm/

Phase 2 will commence very soon. We have been researching video hardware for in-studio recording (video podcasts and webcasts) and in-field videography. Equipment will be purchased prior to the end of the calendar year. The room will be available for broad video use early in the new year.

The farmer survey portion of this project has been held up a bit. Extension recently hired a new Survey Specialist. We needed to give her time to get on-board before we hit her up with this task.

All in all, this has been a very successful project. I think that we will all be proud of it's accomplishments by this time next year.

Update:
To date, we have purchased most equipment required to develop our room into a fully functional AV recording studio. Our audio equipment has been functioning well and David Nicoai and Seth Naeve have recorded 30 episodes of the Minnesota CropCast podcast. While these have not been focused exclusively on soybean related topics, generally 75% of them or more focus on faculty or agricultural professionals working on improve soybean production for Minnesota farmers.

We have recently purchased video equipment and computer systems to allow us to record high quality videos and presentations in the studio. The equipment allows for high quality video and audio capture through multiple cameras, lighting, and green screens. Naeve needs to dedicate a week of his time to getting all of the hardware connected and working well. In addition, new cameras and mics have been purchased for video recording the field. This is all very new for Naeve, and there will be a learning curve, but he plans to begin practicing in the field soon.

Because of delays in hiring an evaluation specialist in Extension, we requested a no-cost extension on this project. Naeve plans to begin discussions with the new specialist in mid-March to discuss a survey and focus groups to identify learning patterns and preferences among farmers. We hope to wrap this project up within 6 months.

Thank you