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Penn Jersey Extension Partnership helps farmers master crop challenges across state lines By Celena E. Kusch
	The Penn Jersey Extension Partnership started 20 years ago when a group of Cooperative Extension agents crossed some very visible borders — the Delaware River and the Pennsylvania-New Jersey state line — to serve farmers in an interstate multicounty region. Today, the group continues to bridge boundaries and build new lines of communication among area farmers, faculty experts and county agents from Rutgers and Penn State universities.   The latest major Penn Jersey initiative uses the Internet to deliver weekly farming updates and problem-solving support for grain and forage farmers in the area and nationwide. The online fact sheets are the first across-state extension effort of this kind.   Launched in 2000, the program’s Integrated Crop Management Crop Master Web site (www.cropmaster-icm.com) provides weekly crop alerts, crop and pest scouting schedules, rapid links to crop management information for each pest and pasture management information. The site also offers users opportunities for interaction with agents to report problems and obtain research-based information and answers.   “Farmers appreciate the weekly reports, because they can’t always watch all their fields every week,” explained Gregory W. Solt, agricultural agent for Penn State Cooperative Extension in Northampton County and chair of the Penn Jersey Extension Partnership.   “If farmers are working on hay, they might not have time to look at the corn- fields that week. The site will let them know if there has been a pest or disease in their area. Very rarely, a pest will hit one farm and leave the neighbors alone, but a farmer will be able to catch 90 percent of what’s going on in his or her field by reading the reports about other farms visited in the area,” he said.   According to Solt, this winter marks the end of the site’s pilot year. The initial efforts targeted Crop Master graduates, crop consultants and scouts, many of whom reported that they visit the site regularly to keep up with the weekly bulletins. The site received more than 38,800 hits in the 2001 growing season.   In addition to gathering information, farmers themselves, as well as extension agents, crop consultants and farming scouts, contribute to the reports.   “It’s nice for the farming community to get answers from the people they know,” added Donna Foulk, agricultural program associate for Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Warren County.   This interaction was also an important goal in designing the site. The online resource grew out of the earlier programming partnership between Rutgers and Penn State. In 1999, the Penn Jersey Extension Partnership coordinated a Crop Master program, a crop management educational series, including classes, workshops and field visits. More than 70 farmers graduated from the program. Solt and the other agents who coordinated the program wanted a way to maintain contact, without conducting time-consuming follow-up visits to such a large group. They found their solution in a dynamic and interactive Web site that could have benefits far beyond the group of graduates.   From this initial goal, the site has evolved into an innovative farmer’s resource that provides quick access and responses to the detailed answers farmers and crop consultants need. The aim of most conventional resources, like the Penn State Agronomy Guide, is to gather together comprehensive information about agriculture and farming. By contrast, the Crop Master site offers concise answers to specific and timely questions.   “We looked at the site as a way to get the information out quickly,” Foulk said. “The turn-around time to get information to farmers in a newsletter is just too long. By the time you write the information, print it and mail it out, it could be two weeks. They need to have answers as soon as they see a problem. The site’s bullet statements alert them to a problem, and they can click right to the answers they need.”   Solt stresses that the site relies on the information and expertise of faculty specialists from Penn State, Rutgers and the University of Delaware, but it packages the information differently.   “So much of our effort went into sorting through the resources to provide an index to all the information,” Solt explained. “We don’t just tell farmers to go to the agronomy guide, which contains more information than they need for quick problem solving. We link them directly to the page and paragraph from the guide or another resource.   It took weeks of investigating how to find those exact links, but now our farmers can press one button and the site takes them right to the sentence that addresses what they need to know.   “We’re most proud that the site helps the farmers reach the information as they need it. We used to be the intermediary between the farmers and all this information, but now we’ve converted it into a digest form for the farmers to use. It’s much more accessible,” he added.   In the coming year, the site’s quick-access strategies will be built into Penn Jersey Extension Partnership educational workshops about precision farming and integrated crop management. The group also plans to expand the audience, increase awareness and complete a formal analysis of Web site use.   Already the site has received national recognition. Purdue University has praised the site and advised all their Cooperative Extension agents to use its resources. The Crop Master Web site and related Crop Master Program also gained recognition in the National County Agents Association Search for Professional Excellence. Members of the Penn Jersey Extension Partnership received an award and an invitation to present at the group’s national meeting.   According to Dr. Theodore R. Alter, associate vice president for outreach, director of Penn State Cooperative Extension and associate dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, “This initiative demonstrates how our customers, in this case farmers, can be better served through the combined power of the Internet and collaborations across state lines among Cooperative Extension organizations.”   Dr. Zane R. Helsel, director of Rutgers Cooperative Extension and dean of Outreach for Rutgers University, added, “These new methods of communication provide our clientele with the opportunity to seek educational services from many more experts in the field than the traditional focus on their home county resources.”   Partnership members include Foulk and Solt, as well as Everett A. Chamberlain, county agriculture and resource management agent for Rutgers Cooperative Extension; Nancy Kadwill, agricultural agent for Penn State Cooperative Extension in Montgomery County; Robert Mickel, county agriculture and resource management agent for Rutgers Cooperative Extension; and Duane Stevenson, Schuylkill County extension director for Penn State Cooperative Extension.   “With federal programming guidelines now requiring a significant portion of our efforts to be across state lines, it is nice to know that we already have a successful track record in this collaborative effort with our Penn Jersey Extension Partnership,” added Frederick W. Davis, regional director for the Southeast Region of Penn State Cooperative Extension and Outreach.