Information Delivery Methods for Management Decisions

Abstract

Advances in technology have opened multiple formats of rapid communication for Extension personnel to communicate with clientele. Today, Extension personnel at many universities use webpages, social media, applications on smart phones, and many other ways to deliver timely messages to clientele. For example, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension provides a hotline for the latest information for pest and disease occurrence, distribution, and control. This has been expanded into text-based information delivery, which has been well accepted. North Dakota State University and University of Minnesota potato Extension website contains information on potato production, current issues and provides many resources for potato growers. In addition to the website, information is shared by Twitter and Facebook. An application providing growers with late blight and early blight risk, current weather information, and inversion warnings is a new project being delivered to growers since 2017. North Dakota State University provides pesticide information on the Pest Management application. This application also allows users to submit a picture for pest identification assistance. The use of the web as an archival source for traditional extension documents has been expanded to distance education with videos for continuing education credits. These methods, mixed with traditional field days, winter meetings, and Extension bulletins, are how Extension is reaching today’s potato farmer and industry with timely information.