ASHS 2024 Conference

The Missouri Produce Growers Video Newsletter (MPGVN) was established in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented in-person programming. The MPGVN is a bi-weekly video-based email newsletter targeting specialty crop farmers and is an offshoot of a project consisting of weekly live-streamed remote educational town halls, which lacked sufficient attendance to justify continuation. Maintaining impactful, ongoing digital engagement with extension audiences is challenging due to grower’s time constraints and competition with low time-investment and high reward non-extension educational media, such as video hosting and social media platforms. The 3–5-minute narrated PowerPoint™ presentations and live shot videos comprising the educational content in the MPGVN, are easily consumed, introducing key points on a timely cropping systems or farm management topic, with further topic resource links embedded. The MPVGN also features links to workshops, grants, and partner agency and non-profit resources. The core team of content contributors, 5 University of Missouri Extension Field Specialists in Horticulture, meets bi-weekly to plan content. Additional extension collaborators from various disciplines including agricultural business, natural resources, climatology, plant pathology, entomology, and food safety contribute content. The newsletter is created and distributed using the Dotdigital™ platform. The format and content have driven engagement amongst the 950 subscribers. The MPGVN engagement metrics relative to industry benchmarks for educational email newsletters are higher by 188% for unique opens, 345% for unique clickers, and 177% for click-to-open rate. To measure the impact of the MPGVN, a survey was sent to 948 subscribers in 2023, with a 14% response rate. Survey observations showed that 55% identified as growers “currently growing and selling produce or planning to grow and sell produce”, 45% as extension educators, and 5% as home gardeners. The survey showed that of the growers; 85% indicated knowledge gains; 78% reported adoption or change of farming practices ; 63% attended an extension class ; 56% connected with a partner agency ; 23% applied to grants ; and 10% received grant awards, thanks to information delivered in the newsletter. The MPGVN is a valuable educational tool, driving engagement with extension programming and resources.