Students Interview Nebraska Farmers: Sustainable Agriculture Videos for Voc-Ag and Extension.

Providing relevant and timely information on sustainable agricultural practices and systems requires proven information and thoughtful design of educational materials. We prepared a series of short videos on key topics such as crop/animal integration, sustainable dairy farming, shelterbelts, grass-fed beef, and cheese production.  Along with science-based experiments, we value the practical experience of Nebraska farmers, so these videos tapped into farmer knowledge to describe current operations and ways to improve them. To generate interest in the high school classroom, we asked voc-ag instructors to invite students to conduct hour-long interviews with farmers, which were then edited down to five-minute presentations of key issues. Ten farm-specific short modules were produced and archived, as well as complete interviews for more in-depth studies. From these interviews, we extracted segments to produce ten additional content-specific modules that included holistic thinking, biodiversity, soil health, community ties, and passion for farming. Twenty modules were made available to Nebraska teachers as well as through open access to anyone interested. They have been used in high school and university classrooms for content and to spur discussion. Some topics are also useful for introduction to important issues in Extension meetings. Of 42 educators who responded to an on-line survey, more than 80% agreed that the modules were a valuable way to introduce sustainable agriculture, engaging, easy to use, and would be integrated into their future teaching materiel. There was general praise for the choice of topics and value of the interviews featured in the modules and a majority felt students were interested in and would adopt ideas from the modules in the future. We credit this interest to viewing farmers in the field, to students conducting the interviews, and to choice of topics relevant to current farming challenges. Videos are available as open access [http://passel.unl.edu/communities/sustainableag?idsubcollectionmodule=1130274227&idindependentpage=358].