Congratulations to 2008 Award Winners in the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA) Search for Excellence program. This program recognizes high quality Extension programs that address a specific need, provide quality educational resources, and measurable outcomes or impacts.
The Extension Educators include Dave Bau, Gary Hachfeld, Rob Holcomb, and Jim Kurtz. Their award winning program is Farm Transfer and Estate Planning.
"For the past three years, a team of University of Minnesota Extension Educators in Agricultural Business Management have created a workbook and PowerPoint and provided several Farm Transfer and Estate Planning Workshops. The program continues to grow, starting with 7 workshops the first year, 12 the second year and 22 in the third year of the program.
The Farm Transfer and Estate Planning Program continues to evolve and change as laws and issues change. The workbook and presentation has gone through several modifications to keep the materials current. The workbook gives participant the opportunity to follow the PowerPoint presentation, take notes during the workshop and provides a great resource for them to continue with the farm transition process after the workshop. The fact sheets and other worksheets in the appendix provide a great wealth of information for participants to use after the workshop. The outreach of the Farm Transfer and Estate Planning program has continued to expand each year and the follow up evaluations support and demonstrate the success of this Extension Program!
The team received the University of Minnesota’s Dean and Director's Team Award in 2007. Team members have presented information on this successful program at: AAEA Conference in July 2006, North Central Risk Management Education (NCRME) Center Annual Meeting in April 2007, Tri-Annual Conference in June 2007, NCRME Center Advisory Committee in September 2007 and the NCRME Center Annual Meeting in April 2008.
The team will be receiving their awards at the NACAA Annual Meeting and Professional Improvement Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina in July 2008."
June 30, 2008 - Jerry Fruin was interviewed by KARE 11 news team
"Corn prices are high and will stay high," says Jerry Fruin, an associate professor of appled economics at the University of Minnesota. "But if you look at what happened when the report came out, corn prices dropped the limit."
The report shows farmers are now growing 87.3 million acres of corn nationwide, 1.3 million acres more than analysts had expected.
Last Friday corn futures shot above $7.50 per bushel in anticipation of a less rosy report.
Still, the USDA report shows farmers expect to harvest 9 million fewer acres of corn this year than last year.
Fruin says the decline can be blamed in part on the weather, but even more so on farmers swiching to wheat and soybeans to take advantage of high prices for those grains.
To view video click here
