Melissa Parks presents the initial findings from the interviews with Dry Farming Collaborative participants on September 5th, 2018. Melissa is a graduate student at OSU studying Anthropology where her research focuses on small farmers and climate change. She's been working as an intern with Amy Garrett at Extension and Gabrielle Roesch-McNally from the USDA NW Climate Hub to collect interviews with DFC participants throughout this summer. The goal of these interviews was to explore peoples' experiences with dry farming and weather extremes in Oregon and to assess:
- Their motivations for joining the Collaborative
- The benefits and/or challenges they are noticing with the practices
- Their feelings about how the collaborative functions and the participatory research process
There will be a general overview of the findings as well as a discussion of some actionable trends that the DFC or other participatory research projects can utilize to improve participation and outcomes in the collaborative research process.
