Foundations of Extension Design and Practice - Facilitators
Danielle England, AgInnovate
Danielle, the lead consultant with AgInnovate, a national people and culture consultancy servicing the Australian agricultural industries, has worked, over 20 years, facilitating strategic business development, industry and enterprise strategic planning, agricultural extension and communication, and project design and management workshops.
Click photo to go to Dani's bio.
Jeanette Long, AgConsulting
Jeanette, an experienced trainer and coach with a passion to influence positive change in agriculture, has developed and facilitated a range of communication, extension, leadership, personal development, mentoring and resilience workshops for many years for a range of organisations in regional and rural areas.
Click photo to go to Jeanette's bio
Masterclass Panellists
In past lives, Lab Wilson [NZ] has been a practicing veterinarian, technical service advisor and marketing manager for animal health companies. Since 2007, he has worked as a learning facilitator and performance consultant across a range of industries. Much of this has been in agricultural extension and, for the past 4 years, he has been involved in a major national project focused on farmers learning together in small groups. His primary contribution was the design and delivery of facilitation courses for rural professionals and others involved in rural extension. He has also collaborated in the creation of an online course, ‘On-farm Consultancy Skills’ for Rural Professionals. Lab’s mission in life is to help people experience the power of sharing knowledge. He is deeply interested in the conversations people need to have to develop mutually rewarding knowledge relationships. He views social learning as, perhaps, the most powerful vehicle to achieve these relationships.
Lab is the author of a book, Customers as Learners, published in 2010. Lab and his wife Mary, are Bats Inc Ltd. www.yourvisionyourfuture
Sarah Hain [NT] grew up on her family’s Merino and cattle grazing operation in Western QLD and graduated from the University of New England with a Bachelor of Rural Science (Hons). After university, Sarah volunteered with Australian Volunteers International in Laos as an Agronomy Adviser, working with smallholder farmers and local stakeholders to promote the incorporation of tropical grass forages into rice-cattle farming systems. Living in a non-English speaking developing economy presented Sarah with many hard days but gave her, “a new perspective on countless topics such as the difficulties with culturally appropriate international agricultural development.”
Sarah believes that effective extension professionals can improve unity within and among industries or regions, overcome barriers such as language and education levels as well as provide a platform for producers to present their ideas or concerns. “Extensionists serve as a broker for farmers to access the expertise and information they need”.
Angela Williams [Qld] is an Extension Practitioner with 30 years cross industry experience in Soil Conservation, Agroforestry, Landcare and a number of agricultural industries including sugar, grazing and cropping. She has worked for 10 years in both the community sector and private practice and has had a background in Landcare, Catchment Management and Natural Resource Management. Angela is passionate about agriculture and how authentic relationships with farm families are built and maintained to work to support continuous improvement on-farm and in-family.
Angela's true heart belongs in extension, working with farmers every day. She has recently led the co-design of a statewide cross industry Extension Model of Practice to guide extension practitioners in their work with farmers to achieve mutual goals. This work can be summarized as “What we do is important but it’s how we do it that makes all the difference”.
Peter Newman [WA] is the Western Extension Agronomist for WeedSmart. Pete works as a Consultant for Planfarm based in Geraldton WA and contracts part of his time to WeedSmart and AHRI to influence growers and industry to improve control of resistant weeds while increasing production.
Peter has extensive research and project management experience and is a leader of agricultural communications and a herbicide resistant weeds specialist.
One of Peter's pet hates is when people call communication, extension. There's a difference. Peter has been in the Ag game as an agronomist, researcher, communicator and farm business consultant for 28 years now and has always had a passion for excellence in communication. While he would love to call the very effective Weedsmart project that he is a part of extension, the reality is that it's a communication project, with some extension activities. Communication is an important part of extension, but it isn't extension. Peter will elaborate on this.