Extending production techniques to mandarin farmers by Cindy Fake

1. Farmer Extension and
Mandarin Production
Cindy Fake
University of California Cooperative Extension
January 2013

2. Extension Goals
• Strengthen agricultural
community socially and
economically
• Sustainability of land/
environment, community,
and individual farmers
• If farming is to be
sustainable, it must be
profitable

3. Extension Goals
• Our goal: increase
profits to farmer by
improving quality, size,
and yields of their
mandarins
• In order to get there, we
need to teach farmers
what they need to know,
and what is useful to
them

4. Extension Principles
• Successful extension is
an information
exchange, not a one-
way street
• Successful growers are
smart and have a lot of
accumulated knowledge
• We need to learn from
them, as well as they
from us.

5. Extension Principles
• Extension is focused on
what the farmers need to
know to succeed.
• It is not about you, the
trainer, and what you
know.
• Farmers have to know
there is a problem in their
orchard before they will
be willing to fix it.

6. Extension Principles
• Extension is about clearly
communicating what is most
useful to farmers…
• As trainers, you must condense
your knowledge down to basic
facts
• Extension is also about training
farmers in the way they learn
best, not the way you are most
comfortable teaching

7. Learning Styles
• Three main ways
people learn:
– Hearing
(auditory learners)
– Seeing (visual learners)
– Touching, feeling, and/or
doing (kinesthetic learners)

8. Learning Styles: Hearing/Listening
• You, as academics are or
have learned to be auditory
learners
• You can learn by hearing
information from a lecture
• This may not be the way you
learn best, but you can learn
that way
• Most good students are
auditory learners

9. Learning Styles: Visual
• Most people do NOT learn by
hearing
• Most people learn by seeing,
they are visual learners
• Seeing a picture, a diagram or
someone demonstrate a
technique is much easier for
most people to retain.

10. Learning Styles
• Most farmers learn best by doing
(may also be visual learners)
• They need to:
– Touch, feel, and do
– Let their muscles do the activities
in order to understand and learn
• This means your farmer training
must be primarily visual and
learning by doing, not talking.

11. Training for “doing learners”
Those of you who like to
lecture must force
yourselves to show & do
while you are talking:
– pass around samples
– show the farmers:
• how to hold and use pruners
• how to use a hand lens
• what healthy roots look and
smell like
• how an insect or disease looks

12. Take home message…
• Tailor your training to needs
of your trainees
• Make training active and
hands-on
• Keep the messages simple
and brief
• Be sure that farmers really
need to know the
information you are giving
them

13. Technical Review
Cindy Fake
University of California Cooperative Extension
January 2013

14. Thank you for your attention!
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