Climate Topic Learning for Leaders

Last Friday, 31 of the 76 members of the Cooperative Extension Section, plus 1, 1994 Extension Director participated in the Learning for Leaders organized by the ECOP Professional Development Committee. Participants learned about the national collaboration between National Extension Climate Initiative (NECI) grassroots effort and ECOP Program Action Team (PAT) grasstops effort on Climate programming. The 2 organizations are still recruiting while considering next steps to determining the role of Extension in Climate Resiliency. The 2 groups will work together to continually inform the Advocacy Toolkit on Climate Mitigation, Resiliency, and Adaptation. The recording of the session is available for review at https://youtu.be/Esd5gi90qZQ and slides with active links is found here. 

Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities - ECOP wants to assure that the Cooperative Extension Section is aware of this important development and funding opportunity. On Feb. 7, 2022, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest $1 billion in partnerships to support America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. The new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities will finance pilot projects that create market opportunities for U.S. agricultural and forestry products that use climate-smart practices and include innovative, cost-effective ways to measure and verify greenhouse gas benefits. USDA is now accepting project applications here for fiscal year 2022. A range of public and private entities may apply including Public and State-controlled institutions of higher education. Please note that the Notice of Funding Opportunity (page 11) specifically lists university Extension as eligible to apply. Grant deadlines are: April 8, 2022, for the first funding pool (proposals from $5 million to $100 million), and May 27, 2022, for the second funding pool (proposals from $250,000 to $4,999,999). 

Military Families Learning Network is Now OneOp - OneOp continues a tradition of free quality information and education for professionals helping military families. OneOp is a single-point-of-entry professional development resource for service providers. For more than 10 years OneOp has collaborated with DoD and the US Department of Agriculture to provide free and open-access learning opportunities within a full spectrum of family service subject areas. This long-standing DoD partnership allows OneOp to meet the professional development needs of service providers with programming that reflects complex and dynamic DoD priority areas. As a virtual organization with global reach, OneOp facilitates the connections and shared knowledge required of providers within DoD’s Military Family Readiness System. Please share this announcement, recommend bookmarking of the new website oneop.org, and connecting with OneOp on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Recap of 2022 Agricultural Outlook Forum - 5,900 people attended our 98th annual Agricultural Outlook Forum last month. In case you missed it, a recap is available using the links to speeches and slides embedded into the program here. This year’s event included: The release of the 2022 Outlook for the U.S. Ag Economy and Trade, Keynote address by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and discussion on China, and 25 sessions covering topics ranging from commodity outlooks and supply chain resilience to climate change adaptation and ag innovation.

The ECOP Calendar is updated frequently and found here. Contact Caroline Henney carolinecrocoll@extension.org if you have any questions. Thank you.