Session Descriptions
Assessing Legal Issues for Farm & Ranch Women (1-1:50 pm, Thursday 1/31).This session will assist service providers in assessing when to recommend that farmers or ranchers might need to seek legal advice, and focus on avenues to find attorneys who understand agricultural law and related issues. The session will cover issues related to land tenure, contracting, and legal liability including suggested legal resources for individuals handling sexual harassment claims on the farm. Presenter: Erin Shirl Parker, J.D., LLM, Research Director and Staff Attorney at the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, University of Arkansas School of Law.
You Did a Program, So What? (2-2:50 pm, Thursday 1/31). Your stakeholders want to know what difference your programs make. You have limited time. In this session, we’ll show you a way to go from program relevance to program impacts as efficiently as possible. Gather local needs and plan your program response. Then offer your participants a brief one to two page paper survey. We’ll share a survey template you can adapt for your use and offer tips and tools for analyzing the data. Don’t stop there! Now, report program results to your stakeholders with a compelling story. We’ll walk you through a two-page report template you can adapt to describe your program relevance, response, results and impacts. Add photos and quotes to give your impact report a finishing touch. Presenters: Arlene de la Mora, Cori Hyde, and Madeline Schultz, Iowa State University.
Coaching the Woman Farmer/Rancher (3-3:50 pm, Thursday 1/31). Woman to woman networks are powerful strategies for beginning farm and ranch women to learn how to build businesses that fit their needs and lifestyles. One of the reasons that networks are so powerful is that they employ more coaching techniques than education techniques. In this session we’ll explore several models that employ coaching strategies in different ways to attain business goals, learn skills, and take some calculated risks. Our panelists will share their experience in developing programs and curricula designed to meet women farmers and ranchers where they are and create dynamic learning networks to carry them forward. Presenters: Maud Powell, Oregon State University Small Farms Program; Jean Eells, PhD, E Resources Group, LLC and Lisa Kivirist, Senior Fellow, Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems, University of Minnesota, author of Soil Sisters: A Toolkit for Women Farmers, co-owner of Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast in Monroe, WI; Moderator: Mary Peabody, UVM Extension.