In northeast Texas, 47% of the adults over the age of 25 have not graduated from high school. Area agricultural businesses are rapidly implementing new technologies and quality control measures, both of which require literate and highly trainable workers. To meet these needs, a partnership project was undertaken between Northeast Texas Community College (NTCC) and the Northeast Texas Quality Work Force Planning Committee ("Vision-NeT") aimed at enhancing workplace literacy in targeted agricultural industries and occupations. The four goals of the project were to identify industries and occupations with high employment demands; conduct a literacy audit of employees at selected businesses to determine the relationship between workplace literacy and productivity; integrate the results of the literacy audit into the existing Agriculture 2 + 2 (Tech-Prep) and literacy programs; and disseminate the findings of the literacy audit at a Vision-NeT quarterly symposium. Using a labor market information system, three key industries with high projected employment demand were identified (i.e., food and kindred products, agricultural production-livestock, and forestry) and a prioritized list of target occupations was developed. A literacy audit of area poultry businesses led to the development of a literacy and occupational skills matrix for use in determining the training needs of specific occupations on-site, as well as to evaluate and improve occupational education curricula. Finally, as a result of attending the Vision-NeT symposium, Lonestar Steel, together with a local union, entered into a training partnership with NTCC which is currently providing workplace literacy classes to 35 employees/members. Recommendations included: (1) enhance communications between business and education by avoiding "educationese"; (2) business and education must reach consensus on the definition of basic skills; (3) a more workable taxonomy of basic workplace skills should be developed; (4) where possible inventories of job duties and tasks should be used to focus literacy audits; (5) community and junior colleges should use a team approach to literacy audits; and (6) in-service training should be provided to community and junior college staff on conducting literacy audits. (PAA)