RE: To Charlie Atherton - Addendum

[Rebekah Tanner <foxgull@foxgull.com>]

In your message before this addendum you said:

"As an urban resident who has worked with rural residents and interest groups, ranchers, hunters, etc. I found I could work well with them if I and others like me, including some government employees, keep people informed from the very beginning of any process and deliver information that they can verify, to gain trust."

Herein you add farmers.

Yes, ranchers, hunters, farmers need to be included from the very start of the dialog and to be offered information they can trust.  I don't know much about ranchers & hunters, but in my work of trying to bring information to farmers through the local public libraries, I have learned that farmers have to be trusted to be the teachers of farmers.

Our most successful public programs (and we did over 40 in a 2-year period*) were not those where we brought in some expert, rather they were the farmer-to-farmer workshops and the Study Circles where 2 local farmers led groups of self-selected participant farmers in, what was for most, an experiment in confidental, democratic, adult self-education.

Over and over I heard farmers mourn the sterotype of "dumb hick farmer." Honestly, have you ever paused for an instant to conssider how off-target that myth is???? -- Farmers are multi-skilled in areas of knowledge that are highly scientific and at the same moment they act as patient parents to poetic seedlings (or infant animals) which, with proper nurture, grow to feed this nation and the world!

Do you want to know what ecological information and public participation is all about? Ask a farmer (rancher, hunter, fisherman, forester, etc.).

* Another point: respect the life-style of the client: If you want to reach farmers, if you want farmers to communicate with you, set the stage for success. Ours is largely a dairy region in the Northeast of the US. So, if we wanted to get farmers to attend a program at the local public library, we learned to hold it between January and April, between 10:30 am and 2:00 pm (in otherwords, between the morning and evening milkings) and to offer food, so that the needs of lunch hour could addressed be at the library instead of at the kitchen table. *

How do you achieve public participation? Respect your public, that's how!

Rebekah Tanner