Using Environmental Management Systems to Enhance Farmer Environmental Awareness and Implementation of Innovative Resource Conservation Practices

The purpose of this award is for the grantee to assist four dairy farmers and four conservation tillage farmers implement environmental management systems (EMS). EMS will help them assess and prioritize environmental concerns on their farms, implement innovative practices to address their priority concerns, and monitor changes in environmental and economic conditions as a result of their practices. The University of Georgia will conduct one-on-one meetings with participating farmers, group meetings between farmers and technical specialists, farmer-to-farmer meetings, and farm demonstrations on agricultural EMS implementation. Technical personnel and farmers will work together to develop field and computer-based environmental record keeping tools. They will also develop field-based and technical environmental monitoring tools. Based on their farm environment policy statements, environmental records, monitoring information, and farm environmental assessments, participating farmers will identify and implement innovative resource conservation practices on their farms. They will also use their increased environmental awareness and improved record keeping enhancing their eligibility for CSP and EQIP. Throughout the project, farmers and technical specialists will conduct environmental baseline and monitoring assessments to measure changes in environmental conditions as a result of resource conservation practices. In addition, we will publish extension publications and technical papers to provide practical and technical guidelines for using EMS to enhance farmer adoption of pollution prevention practices. We will monitor and evaluate project activities through on-going interactions with participating farmers, collaborator meetings, farm meeting evaluations, and telephone interviews with randomly-selected farm meeting participants. This on-going process will allow us to modify project activities to best meet the needs of participating farmers and the environment where they farm.