NEWARK, Del. — The Extension Risk Management Education (ERME) Program announces its 2020 Outstanding Project Awards. Supported by the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), ERME provides competitive grants that fund education projects focused on helping farmers and ranchers to manage the unique risks associated with production agriculture. The goal is to strengthen the economic viability of agribusinesses.
The Outstanding Project Award Directors would have received their awards during the 2020 ERME National Conference; however, the conference is canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The award recipients, one from each region, will be presented with their awards at the 2021 ERME Conference in Omaha, NE. This year’s Project Director winners are Northeast — Elizabeth Higgins, Cornell University; South — Laurence Crane, National Crop Insurance Services; North Central — Jim Jansen and Allan Vyhnalek, University of Nebraska; West — Natalia Pinzon Jimenez, Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA), Inc. The awards are based on the accomplishments of projects completed from the 2017 grant recipient cohort.
The Northeast ERME Center, located at the University of Delaware, congratulates our regional award recipient, Elizabeth Higgins, of Cornell Cooperative Extension. Her project, “Good to Great — Improving Labor Management on Fruit and Vegetable Farms in New York state,” provided important risk management education to 192 participants. Elizabeth noted that “labor shortages, worker turnover and poor communication are critical concerns for farm employers.” Through a series of workshops and webinars, her project trained farmers to move beyond legal compliance to more effective overall labor management, enabling them to retain good employees and ultimately strengthen their farm business.
Elizabeth Higgins
Agricultural risk management involves selecting tools and approaches that reduce the adverse effects of the uncertainties of weather, yields, prices, credit, government policies, global markets and other factors such as human resource and legal issues. These factors can cause wide swings in farm income or threaten the economic viability of a farm or ranch.
The national ERME Competitive Grants Program is conducted annually by the four regional ERME Centers. Eligible entities include any public or private organization with a demonstrated capacity to develop and deliver results/outcome-based risk management education to agricultural producers and their families. The 2021 request for applications will be issued in mid-September, with applications due mid-November. For more information, please visit www.extensionrme.org.
The mission of the Extension Risk Management Education Program is “educating America’s farmers and ranchers to manage the unique risks of producing food for the world’s table.”
–Katie Young, University of Delaware Cooperative Extension