“Reducing Risk in Fruit and Veg Production through Improved On-Boarding of New Farm Employees” was intended to help fruit and vegetable farmers in NYS adopt better on-boarding and training practices for their seasonal employees. We had planned to hold in-person sessions at 10 locations statewide reaching 100 growers followed by a 4 week, online program to support their development of 50 on-boarding plans.
COVID-19 made this a fully online program, with introductory webinars followed by a month of online support using Google Classroom. Unfortunately the webinars were not effective training mechanisms and the Google Classroom was underdeveloped for teaching and difficult for many farmers to navigate. We reached 213 farms through webinars, 22 farms enrolled in the Google Classroom site as students, 8 actively worked on their plan during the program and 25 currently have Farm Google Classrooms.
The biggest positive outcome from this grant was helping us improve online-delivery of trainings. We developed an online class using Teachable, which Cornell provided to Extension summer 2021. The Google Classroom is now better organized as a template for farms to organize their information. And we developed a website to make resources and instruction more accessible and easier for us to update.