Healthy Economies (International Program): On-line Agricultural Marketing Resource Center in Croatia
Daniel Burden, Mary Holz-Clause, and Reg Clause, P&S, Value-added Agriculture and Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (AgMRC)
Situation:
This project established an electronic agricultural resource similar to the US-AgMRC project that is a cooperative project between Iowa State University, Kansas State University, and The University of California at Davis. The project was developed by ISU Value-added Agriculture Project to assist the Faculty of Agriculture University of Zagreb, Department of Agricultural Marketing, to develop a similar web site and then to provide training to potential contributors and users in its concept and benefits, use of the site, and encouraged their potential contributions to the project. An objective of this training was to engage future participants, gage reaction to site format and content, and to establish and prioritize topic areas for inclusion or further development.
Objective:
The primary goals of the Croatian electronic resource project are to assist the various sectors of the agricultural community to recognize challenges posed by European Union ascension in 2010, develop tools to assist them in meeting those challenges, promote information exchange regarding proper quality management and business practices, and mentor extension faculty of the Faculty of Agriculture University of Zagreb. A subsequent benefit of this project is the creation of a student and faculty exchange program with students from ISU, Montana State University, Chief Dull Knife College, Penn State University; and the College of Agriculture, University of Zagreb.
Activities/Output:
- The Croatian cooperators gained a great deal of professional exposure to various aspects of project planning and management as a result of undertaking this project and its associated training sessions.
- A Croatian-AgMRC web resource now exists in English and Croatian. A great deal of useful material is posted on the English-language site and is awaiting translation in Zagreb for the Croatian-language site.
- Training sessions were held on time and the project was introduced to an engaged audience of 38 participants from industry, government and the private sector. All were actively participated in next-steps planning and contributed evaluation materials.
- Additional audiences of 50 Croatian faculty and agricultural students and twenty Bulgarian and Hungarian agricultural specialists were introduced to the site, as well as the value-added agriculture concepts that include value-chain development, the importance quality control systems and proper business-planning and development procedures.
- U.S. work leading to the training sessions spawned a next-steps plan-of-action, December 2006 and January 2007, that identified partial future funding for Croatia-AgMRC, and is focused on creating a collaborative project between Iowa State University, Montana State University, Chief Dull Knife College and Penn State University; and senior faculty at the University of Zagreb to create a student and faculty collaborative learning experience in Croatia titled Agricultural Economies in Transition. This project is slated to provide written position papers in English and Croat for the AgMRC-Croatia web resource. Funding from grants written for the collaborative education program will contain funding lines for maintenance of the AgMRC-Croatia web resource.
- To help push the project forward, an advisory board is now in place was created that includes prominent individuals within government, nationally-important industries and university administration.
Impact/Outcomes:
Iowa state University and the project participants thank World Learning, DAI, and USAID for allowing us the opportunity to address the goals and objectives of this project, as well as their patient assistance and support of our efforts. We are continuing to focus our time and effort into seeing this work expand and become a premier example of inter-institutional, cultural and agricultural education.
2007
180 Other ANR Programs
Page last updated:
August 3, 2007
Page maintained by Linda Schultz, lschultz@iastate.edu
