USDA beginning farmer grants awarded in 24 states

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced earlier this month it would give more than $18 million to beginning farmer programs in 24 states through its Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. The money will go to groups that provide education, training, technical assistance and outreach programs to farmers or ranchers who've been working for less than 10 years.

The University of Kentucky College of Agriculture has been awarded a $561,000 grant for its KyFarmStart training program for those who are considering a farming career. Program director Lee Meyer told UKnow's Carol Spence that Kentucky's farm population is aging, with 30 percent of farmers over 65, higher than the national average of 57. "To keep farming viable in the state, we have to be able to replace these people," he said.

Rural Community Development Resources in Yakima, Wash. is another grant recipient, getting $562,500 to help Latino farmers in the Yakima Valley become interested farming. The grant will help the nonprofit host educational workshops about farm and financial management and expand its Center for Latino Farmers into the Wenatchee area to meet increasing demand, RCDR business counselor and loan specialist Maria Garcia told David Lester of the Yakima Herald-Republic.

A beginning farmer program in North Carolina received $180,000 and will give up to $8,000 each to farmers who create innovative opportunities in production, processing and marketing through the Tobacco Communities Reinvestment Fund. The program is administered by the Rural Advancement Foundation International-USA. The program is designed to keep farmers farming and maintain an economic base for North Carolina's traditional tobacco farming communities. (Read more)

Women outnumber men in ag-related programs

Women enrolled in agriculture-related programs at the 67 U.S. land-grant universities outnumber the men, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Agricultural Education Information System.

Men outnumbered women in 2008-09, but the number of women enrolled in agriculture programs has increased almost 20 percent since then. Male enrollment is still higher in ag economics, ag engineering and plant sciences, but women outnumber men in animal sciences, food science and technology and agricultural public services.

Farm Progress reports the increasing number of women in agricultural programs "draws comparisons to the number of female farm operators, which has risen 19 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture," the most recent available. It found that 14 percent of farm operators are women. For the full report, go here.

Extension agents were first hired to 'see both sides of the question, give wise counsel and leadership'

County extension agents have been helping rural communities across the U.S. with a everything from farming to food preservation to finances to 4-H, for a century or more, and as land-grant institutions mark the 150th anniversary of the law that led to their creation, some are marking the 100th anniversary of extension programs in their states.

Charles Mahan, right, was hired as the University of Kentucky's first full-time county agent in 1912, two years before Congress established the Cooperative Extension Service, Katie Pratt of UK Ag News reports. By the spring of 1913, UK had hired six more agents, and the first home demonstration agents, now known as family and consumer sciences agents, were hired the following year. County 4-H agents have existed since at least 1917, though under a different title and on a part-time basis until the 1960s.

Mahan wrote that one of his top jobs was to "develop sane, safe, local leaders who can be trusted to think things through, see both sides of the question, give wise counsel and leadership." He "helped determine that extension agents' function should be primarily education, offering unbiased, research-based information to their clients," Pratt reports. That continues to be the philosophy of Cooperative Extension, she writes. Though extension's role has evolved since 1912, Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service Director Jimmy Henning told Pratt that the agency is still "seeking to find and serve people where they are and in ways they want to receive information." (Read more)

For-profit colleges targeted for pitches to veterans; press call set for 3:30 Mon. on cost transparency

UPDATE: Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray will hold an embargoed press call with reporters at 3:30 p.m. ET today to make an announcement on college cost transparency. The call and all related materials will be embargoed for publication online until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and in print Tuesday morning. To receive the dial-in information, send an email to press@ed.gov agreeing to the embargo terms.

For-profit colleges have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars in GI Bill benefits, and veterans' groups, the White House and some in Congress say it's beginning to look suspicious. "They say the schools prey on veterans with misleading ads while selling expensive and woefully inadequate educations," David Zucchino and Carla Rivera of the Los Angeles Times report. This is a rural story because military members come disproportionately from rural areas, and there are indications that abuse by for-profit colleges may also be disproportionately rural.

Eight of the 10 colleges that have collected the most GI Bill benefits since 2009 were for-profit institutions, and they got 86 percent of their revenue from the program, Zucchino and Rivera report. It generally costs twice as much to attend a for-profit school as a public one, and congressional investigators say dropout rates, interest rates and default rates at for-profit schools are higher than at public institutions. Also, credits veterans earn at for-profits don't always transfer.

In April, President Obama issued an executive order requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to trademark "GI Bill" so it couldn't be used by for-profits to deceive veterans. The order also required the 6,000 colleges that receive GI Bill funds to offer "Know Before You Owe" information packets to veterans. (Read more)

Extension services create drought-help websites

The U.S. drought has become the most severe since the Dust Bowl, in some respects, and experts are now predicting it could get worse, with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack saying earlier this week that food prices will soar because of higher corn and soybean prices. Farmers are struggling, but at least two Midwest universities are attempting to help them deal with the oppressive dryness.

Iowa State University's and Kansas State University's extension services have created drought websites with resource lists to help farmers in those states. On Iowa State's website, farmers and ranchers will find several areas of information to help them deal with drought: crops, livestock, dealing with stress, home and yard, financial concerns and tips for businesses. Visitors to the site will also find disaster preparedness fact sheets about drought from the Extension Disaster Education Network. Visitors will not only find information about dealing with crops and livestock during a drought on Kansas State's website, but they can also access details of both the 2008 and 2012 Farm Bills and a weekly drought update for the state.

Agriculture professor says land-grant schools have lost sight of "people's university" mission

The 150th anniversary of the creation of the Public Land-Grant University System through the Morrill Act is this Tuesday, July 2. Public land-grant universities have made innumerable contributions to the people in states where they exist, establishing a rich heritage that will be celebrated next week in Washington, D.C. with a convocation. The problem, says Auburn University agriculture professor C. Robert Taylor, is that "common people," which land-grant universities were created to help, are "glaringly absent from the invitation list."

"Land Grant universities were intended to be the 'People's Universities,'" Taylor writes for the Daily Yonder, "with a three part mission of teaching, research and service for common people, ordinary people, the working class, the middle class in American society. People like me." He said he thinks land-grant universities are drifting away from their mission of helping and educating "common people," and the celebration in Washington highlights "symptoms of a serious disease organism," one that he hopes isn't "incurable."

Taylor says the U.S. population has shifted from mostly agrarian to mostly urban over 150 years, and he questions whether the needs of people today are the same as then, but ultimately concludes that what matters most for next week's celebration is that none of the "new people" will be represented. It's troubling for him, he writes, because the convocation will feature discussions to help set the agenda for land-grant schools for the next 150 years.

"Truth is," Taylor writes, "that elites in government and business have been increasingly influencing and often subtly setting the agenda -- especially the research agenda -- in land-grant universities for some time." He says cuts in extension funding over the years have caused a decrease in public support for land-grant schools, which was exacerbated by faculty turning inward and only conducting research and writing papers for peers instead of connecting with the public. (Read more)

Effort is on to use 'white spaces' of TV channels to bring wireless broadband to rural colleges

A new partnership plans to bring wireless broadband to rural college communities over the unused spectrum between television channels that are known as "white spaces," reports Adam Masmanian of National Journal. It's called AIR.U, short for Advanced Internet Regions. “University communities will be able to significantly expand the coverage and capacity of high speed wireless communities, both on- and off-campus,” said Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation, which is helping to lead the effort. The plan grew out of an effort led by former FCC official Blair Levin to bring super high-speed broadband to research universities. His project, called Gig.U, had attracted the interest of rural colleges that didn’t qualify to join.

Rural communities are seen as ideal for the use of white spaces for wireless broadband Internet connectivity, often called Super Wi-Fi, because they tend to have fewer licensed TV stations, and therefore more vacant spectrum in the white spaces. Further, the low frequency range of Super Wi-Fi means that a single base station can cover a radius of about 6 miles with high-speed broadband, according to Apurva Mody, Chair of the White Space Alliance.

The Federal Communications Commission authorized the use of unlicensed white space spectrum for broadband services and other applications, in September 2010. AIR.U hopes to have the first pilot networks up and running in the first quarter of 2013.

Rural states do poorly on higher education report card

Public higher education is failing when it comes to preparing students for the workforce, a new study by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce has found. It graded each state on how well its public colleges and universities prepare students. Sonali Kohli of The Ithaca Journal reports that the states with the worst grades trend rural: Alaska, Nevada, Idaho and Louisiana.

The report used data from different sources from 2008 to 2012 and graded four-year and two-year schools separately. Among the findings: Washington state, California and Florida scored the highest grades; 12 states scored D's for student success at four-year schools: seven in the Great Plains, five in Appalachia and the South; the Dakotas' two-year schools out-performed all other states; and, completion rates at four-year schools were close to 50 percent in 47 states.

ICW President Margaret Spellings said colleges and universities are more worried about maintaining reputations than actually examining how they are performing. The report says states should "focus less on attracting new students and work harder at making sure students who are already enrolled get their degrees," Kohli reports. Spellings, a former secretary of education, said making it easier to transfer credits from community colleges to four-year schools and expanding online classes would help. Both are options that would be of particular importance in rural areas, where many attend community colleges and utilize online classes. (Read more)