The agricultural industry is demanding a skilled workforce. Leadership is often identified as a desired employability skill but understanding the relationship between leader and follower during the leadership process in agricultural contexts is limited. The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand how employers contextualize the follower…

What do we really mean by sustainability and why is biodiversity so important? What is nature-connectedness and how can it be developed? By exploring these questions, the need for education within this context becomes ever more apparent. This article takes you on a journey of sustainability, exploring the term from a variety of standpoints. It…

Dairy-related Extension programming is important in many states, but the economic impact of such programming has received little attention. We examined the impact of Know Your Numbers, an educational program offered by the Penn State Extension Dairy Team. Using follow-up evaluation data and the economic impact tool IMPLAN, we estimated that the…

Purpose: To identify a skilled micro-credentialled training pathway for agricultural careers. Design/Methodology/Approach: A survey consisting of open ended and Likert-type ratings questions regarding workforce skills requirements, training priorities and training delivery preferences was administered with 17 agricultural business managers and…

An online survey was administered to all educators and specialists within the University of Maryland Extension to assess client-driven opportunities and priorities for energy-related programming, while in-service training evaluations were used to further assess programmatic needs. Results indicate the need for information related to energy…

This dissertation explores two main questions of farmers in Western Kenya -- how they see farming as a creative process and their role in that - and how change is made possible in their community. I explore stories from farmers themselves, using photographs they have taken and stories they tell about those photographs, which answer these two…

Raising livestock for food production is a unique cultural phenomenon. It has been well documented that showing livestock as part of 4-H contributes to practical skills, knowledge, and life skills. While it is common to view livestock production through skills-based or economic lenses, there are subtle nuances of the phenomenon, social, cultural,…

Educators within agricultural and natural resource disciplines are tasked with educating students to critically engage with and problem-solve complex issues. As society's relationship with science and technology changes, coupled with an information-dense environment, strategies for sustainably addressing complex issues are needed. One potential…

The study examined the perception and constraints of extension practitioners on utilization of communication technologies in southwestern Nigeria. This was necessitated by the need to ensure a practicable, vibrant, and efficient extension service delivery in the study area. 124 public and 41 non-public extension practitioners were selected through…

Purpose: The present descriptive-analytical study aimed to rank the barriers of the application of the value chain in the context of rural entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach: The statistical population was composed of 125 entrepreneurs from the provinces of Tehran, Hamedan, and Golestan, Iran. Data were analyzed by the TOPSIS technique.…

We leveraged collaboration by a county Extension office, apparel design undergraduate students, and university faculty to develop an innovative educational product to capture the attention of new audiences for invasive plant education programming. Nationwide press highlighted the project--titled Know the Land, Save the Land--generating national…

Purpose: This study aims at investigating how digitalisation (in the sense of industry 4.0) has changed the work of farmers and how they experience the changes from more traditional work to digitalised agriculture. It also investigates what knowledge farmers require on digitalised farms and how they acquire it. Dairy farming was used as domain of…

It is widely known that systematically developed training manuals can be used to improve knowledge and practical skills and promote positive attitude of trainees. This research thus aimed to develop a training manual to help reduce the use of pesticides by para rubber farmers in Nonkheng Sub-district, So Phisai District, Bueng Khan Province,…

Purpose: To systematically develop a farm safety intervention for farmer peer learning groups, to support safe working practice adoption. Design/Methodology/Approach: An iterative, multi-actor process was used, guided by the Intervention Mapping framework and the Socio-Ecological Model. The target peer learning groups were Irish dairy farmer…

Background: Although the literature on education and learning sciences determined how student identities influence their experiential learning process, this link is less clear in the agricultural context, where farmers have faced unique value chain challenges i.e., production to marketing. Purpose: This study contributes to examining how farmers'…