Assessment of Program Delivery to Small Farmers: Fax Information Center
System at Satellite Locations
John G. Richardson
Joey Knight
Fred May
Maurice McAlister
Due to the many variables associated with small and part-time farmers, such
as widely ranging educational levels and available time applied to farming,
effectively providing extension information to this group of farmers can be
quite difficult. The use of innovative, program delivery methods for reaching
small and part-time farmers has been tried in several North Carolina counties
with variable success. One means of reaching these special audiences is a
satellite information center at agribusiness or other locations away from the
extension office itself. A fax request system prominently placed directly in
these satellite locations has produced widely variable results in level of use
from the perspective of requests for information originating from the centers.
Yet, where the centers have been used for both an information request system
and an informational bulletin board with timely information sent to the centers
from Cooperative Extension for posting on the bulletin boards, the results
have been very favorable. While many factors have been found to affect the
success of individual locations, the fax satellite centers appear to be able
to provide a niche for innovative program delivery by extension and can have
highly beneficial side effects of positively marketing the extension programs
in the respective counties.
Full text (pdf)
John G. Richardson is Extension Program Delivery and Accountability Leader,
North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, North Carolina State University;
and Joey Knight, Fred May, and Maurice McAlister are respectively Extension
Agents, Person, Pamlico, and Madison Counties, North Carolina Cooperative
Extension Service. This paper was presented at the Southern Association of
Agricultural Scientists Conference, Agricultural Communications Section,
Little Rock, Arkansas, February, 1998.
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