Climate change and high-intensity wildfires increasingly threaten agriculture in the West. In 2019/2020 we supported 215 producers in wildfire risk management, response and recovery. The need clearly continues today- farmers across our networks lost everything or faced severe losses, with each wildfire season surpassing the last. Our Phase II program worked to reduce the human, production and financial risks of small-farmers to wildfires.
In Phase II, we offered concrete solutions based on decades of training small-farmers. This project addressed the needs of producers in high-risk regions. It built upon existing multimedia-curriculum with 11 new case-studies of impacted producers and updated modules with farm-based activities, supported by a new comprehensive workbook. The program’s largest results were expanded fire response networks in California’s fire-prone agricultural regions. Activity-driven learning networks comprised 406 new producers in high fire risk regions We successfully launched an online learning platform to share risk management strategies in a format that facilitates collaboration and self-assessment including 10 learning-modules, 54 videos/podcasts, 7 activities and 14 live meetings. Our online meetings, virtual farm visits, applied activities, town-halls, evaluations, written-action-plans, and interviews verified participants’ increased understanding of lowering their risk of wildfires and increased response-capacity.