Water Quality BMP Training Workshop for Florida Cattle Ranchers: Facilitator’s Guide

Target Audience: Beef cattle producers and their employees working on cow-calf operations in Florida. All information provided will be used for county or regional workshops to a broad audience with varying educational levels.

Learning Objectives: The goal of this workshop is to help Florida cattle ranchers demonstrate their efforts to protect natural resources within the constraints of practicality and profitability and prevent mandatory regulation by the Department of Environmental Protection and the local Water Management Districts.

  • Provide necessary practical information to teach the importance of protecting water quality.
  • Develop an understanding of the principles of the Best Management Practices in the Florida Cattlemen’s Association BMP Manual.
  • Provide practical training for implementing these practices on individual ranches to develop a ranch conservation plan complete with documentation of compliance.

Teaching Philosophy: The material provided is intended for use by county extension agents or other educators working directly with cattle producers. This will be a web-based resource, complete with a facilitators guide for a two-hour workshop on implementing BMPs for water quality with additional support materials, an interactive group activity, an exit survey, and a follow up evaluation tool. This workshop is intended as an introductory program to the Florida Cattlemen’s Association BMP manual and will explain the need for BMPs and the information contained in the 107 page BMP manual. The intent of this workshop is to provide instruction with practical examples of implementing BMPs on participants operations and how to document them.

Workshop Outline

This workshop is designed as a two-hour program with a lecture, small group discussion, and an example of record keeping. The power point presentation and the speaker notes will guides your through each section. This outline will give you an overview of  each part of the presentation. More specific instructions for the small group activity and records portion will follow.

  1. Introductory Information (30 minutes)

    Slides: 1-14

    Discussion of water quality concerns related to cattle production in the US and Florida. The need for BMPs, what they are and who created them.

  2. Developing an Individual Ranch Conservation Plan (30 Minutes)

    Slides: 15-23

    Overview of the major areas of concern for no-point pollution form cattle ranches in Florida and practices to prevent or reduce pollution.

  3. Break (10 minutes to organize materials and room for group exercise)

    Slide 24

    Provide instructions then break to set up room, provide fact sheets and large sheets of paper

  4. Practical Exercise (30 minutes--20 minutes in groups and 10 minute class discussion)

    20 minutes in 3 groups, summarize and present to whole group with discussion for 10 minutes.

    Activity to reinforce principles taught and allow producer input for practical ideas for local ranch conservation plans.

  5. Record Keeping and Employee Training (10 Minutes)

    Slide 25

    Provide suggestions for documented BMP implementation on individual ranches.

    Overhead projector with example records.

    Provide a glimpse of the type of records needed and provide an opportunity to discuss ranch record book.

    Slide 26

    Stress the need for employee involvement in implementing ranch conservation plan.

  6. Summary, Question and Answer Period (10 minutes)

    Slides: 27-29

    Review the major points of workshop and drive home the need to implement BMPs.

    Pass out exit surveys

  7. Exit Survey

    Determine the effectiveness of the program. Specifically designed for IFAS accomplish reporting.

  8. Follow Up Evaluation (Individual Ranch calls 6-12 months after Workshop)

    Determine the true impact of the workshop and allow for further interaction with clientele.

BMP Manuals

Each participant should bring their BMP manual with them to this workshop. These manuals were distributed to Cattlemen’s Association members in August of 2000, but not every member may have received their copy. The Association is willing to provide a manual to any cattle producer who would like a copy. Hard copies of the manual are available free of charge from the Florida Cattlemen’s Association and can be ordered by calling them at 407-846-6221.

These manuals are quite heavy so arrangements may have to be made to get them transported to your county or to cover the cost of shipping. You can also download copies of the manual at the link listed here, however, these manuals were intended to be printed in color and they are over 100 pages, so it is recommended to make arrangements ahead of time with the association to get hard copies of the manual.

If you choose to download the manual, be prepared for at least a 20-30 minute download time. This is a rather large file. You must also have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to view this document: Water Quality Best Management Practices for Cow/Calf Operations in Florida (pdf).

Power Point Presentation

This workshop is based around a power point presentation. Speaker notes have been provided for each slide and serve as the basic information source for the entire program. Additional resources have been provided on the web site to allow the presenter to customize the final presentation to fit the needs of their area.

The speaker notes and the presentation can be downloaded from the web site. You will need Microsoft Word for the speaker notes and Power Point for the slide presentation. This presentation has a number of pictures included so it may take 20-30 minutes to download. If you would like to view the file before downloading, a html version is available on the web site as well.

Practical Exercise

The purpose of the group exercise is to get producers to develop a list of practical examples of implementing BMPs on their ranches or key parts of a plan that would address specific areas they have identified after going through the risk assessment. The main goal for the individual groups is to go through the information presented in the presentation and the risk assessment found in section 2, page 10 of the BMP Manual and determine specific BMPs or current practices that individuals in the group would include in a ranch conservation plan. They can simply reinforce topics already discussed or others that are outlined in the BMP Mnaual, but their final list should be fairly specific to your area or their own operations.  

Divide the audience into 3 groups. Each group will cover one major area of a conservation plan: Erosion, Nutrient Management and Pest Management. Each group should select a spokesperson that will write the key points of the group on to a sheet of poster paper and tape it up on the wall. Each spokesperson will go through their major points and briefly explain the group’s suggestions. The poster should not be a detailed plan, but simply a bullet point list of ideas for specific management practices that address the major area assigned to the group.

Each group should be provided with information presented for each major section of the slide presentation along with the fact sheets listed below. These are direct links to fact sheets and information that may be helpful for each group. You can look through these and select those that might be the most helpful, or print them all so that the group can scan through them for specific concerns they have identified.

Erosion

Nutrient Management

Pest Management

 As the facilitator, your role is to help each group develop a list of ideas that they might include in their own individual ranch plans. The purpose of this activity is simply to get the audience to brainstorm on the ideas presented and provide some ideas that ranchers in your area might include in their own conservation plans. If they come up with ideas, they will take ownership of them and be more likely to apply them on their own operations.

Record Keeping Example

A ranch record book is available to download from the Web site. This record book was designed to be fairly complete for total ranch management. The first pages of the book deal specifically with the type of records that should be kept for a conservation plan and for individual pastures. The first four pages of pasture records have example records already included. After downloading the record book, print the first four pasture record pages on to overhead transparencies. You can add your own examples as well, but be sure to look up the pertinent information prior to the actual presentation. 

This record book fits the Integrated Resource Management (IRM) Concept and is similar to the IRM Redbook that can be used for Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA) or other ranch analysis software packages. These record books were developed to be printed on regular 81/2 X 11" paper and be used in a notebook that could be carried in ranch vehicles. You can mass produce these and provide them to the participants either already in small notebooks, or simply by applying the holes and clamping the pages together and let the producer purchase their own notebooks. The records that deal with the BMPs are essential for providing the proof that the conservation plan is being followed.

Evaluation Tools

There are two evaluation tools that you can download from the Web site. The exit survey is a simple one page form that participants can fill out very quickly. This is intended to provide the agent with a feel for how effective the program was and how well the information was presented. The follow-up evaluation is a tool that can be used with individual ranch visits 6-12 months following the program to get a better estimate of the impact of this training program. This document simply serves as a system for determining if the participants have followed through on developing a conservation plan and have begun implementing the BMPs.

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