AgriLife Extension Offers Online Courses For Landowners
Brian Triplett
One of the trends I noticed during my career as a county Extension agent is an increase in the number of clientele who would like to learn more about managing their land, but who are unwilling or unable to attend formal educational programs during the day, evening or even on the weekend.
I realize that our society operates more on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week mindset than it used to, and this is very likely one result of the increasing availability of nearly the sum total of all the information in the world at our fingertips, through the Internet, at our demand.
The Internet is great! There is no doubt about that. I purchase books, plan vacations, rent hotels, check the stock market (livestock and hay market, that is) and use it to search for background information sometimes for our weekly visits. However, you can't trust everything online.
When researching agriculture topics online, I encourage others to search out Web sites that end in ".edu," as these are the domain names for educational institutions and should prove to be a reliable source of information. Domains that end in ".org" are typically names from nonprofit organizations, and these sites can be found to be full of reliable information as well.
However, just finding information on a university's Web site does not automatically make it suitable information to follow for our area of the nation.
For example, not all forages are adaptable to the entire United States. Bermuda grass, our warm-season pasture staple forage crop, is not really an option for farmers living in mid- to northern Missouri.
You can find tons of credible information related to growing both of these crops online, but unless you match that information to your locale, you may be destined for disaster, not sailing toward success.
Texas AgriLife Extension Service is offering for the first time this year three online courses designed with the busy, small-acreage landowner in mind. One-third of all farms and ranches in the state are comprised of 50 acres of land or less and are operated by landowners who have entered into agriculture for many reasons.
These courses are designed to address the needs and concerns of the small-scale farmer or rancher involved in the most common types of agricultural enterprises and the problems they are likely to face. Courses will be offered in an asynchronous manner (meaning that students can complete the modules any time of the day or night and post questions to the county Extension agent who is facilitating their session whenever they like) and can be completed from home. Cost for each course is $50 per person. The first three online courses being made available are:
q Resource Inventory (four-week course): This course is aimed at helping landowners identify the resources they have available before selecting an agricultural enterprise.
Ultimately, a resource inventory will be compiled that will help answer the typical new landowner call to the county agent of, "I bought some land...now what do I do with it?"
q Beef Cattle Management (six-week course): This course introduces students to the major components of beef cattle management, ranging from nutrition to breeds and breeding systems to waste management issues. Marketing options for cattle are also discussed.
q Pasture Management (five-week course): This course addresses the needs of new landowners related to establishing and managing forages, proper stocking rates and proper hay storage and feeding. This course will help landowners prepare property for a future livestock enterprise.
For more information on these three courses, including the times they will be offered, please visit the Web site http://grovesite.com/tamu/RI.
Brian Triplett is the Smith County Extension Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources. He can be reached at 903-590-2980 or via e-mail at b-triplett@tamu.edu.
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